“Frank and Myra . . . they’re still in Paris, right?” Faust asks, eyes sparkling with good-natured jealousy. “I can’t understand why you came back last night and didn’t stick around for the after-party,” he says, and then, seeing my blank expression, shuts up.

After a few seconds, he murmurs, “Man, we could sure use your Champion here. We’ve got our own bad stuff going down. But I’m sure you’ve heard all about that.”

I follow him down six long flights of stairs. This building is massive, taking up a whole city block. Faust explains the floor plan as we descend.

“So you’ve already seen the roof. Next floor down, the seventh floor, is exhibition space, concert hall, and—as you probably saw last night—party headquarters. It’s the only floor allowed to humans. That’s why it has a dedicated elevator and stairway that don’t access the other levels.”

Faust points to a wall where industrial-size elevator cars are caged in by retracting metal gates. “Those go down to the basement. Man, you have to see that. It’s so huge, there are actually two antique railroad tracks down there—used to bring goods in and out. At the front of the building we have river access for boats, and a dozen ambulances. The armory’s down there too. Basically everything that’s high security, and the stuff we don’t want people to see, is belowground.”

We exit the stairwell on the ground floor and begin making our way down the cavernous stone-gray corridors toward the front of the building. As we walk, I try to get a reading on Faust. He’s got this regimented air, but not as much as a soldier or policeman. And he struts straight-backed, but with his arms slightly spread, like his muscles are getting in the way. He’s already built big but has doubled his size with some serious time in the gym. Like most guys I’ve seen here, he favors facial hair: long razor stubble for him. Taking a wild guess, I would peg him as a fireman. I wonder if that’s what he was before he died.

“So I’ve given you the layout. Now let me explain what it’s all about,” Faust says, switching into tour guide mode. “The building’s a New York landmark, built of reinforced concrete in 1913 for a food processing company and then abandoned in the fifties.”

I nod, and he continues. “Gold scooped it up for a song and made it our secret headquarters. No one realized we were operating out of here until the nineties . . . at which point it was decided to make it an open secret.”