Ralph dialed the number and listened. “Mr. Menzies? Jeff, the doorman, would like to speak with you.” He handed the phone to Jeff.

“Hello, Mr. Menzies?” Jeff said.

“Yes, Jeff, what is it?”

“There’s someone down here wanting to see you, but I wanted to speak to you before I let him in.”

“Who is it?”

“He says his name is Hausman, Peter Hausman.”

There was a long moment’s silence on the line, then Menzies spoke. “Oh, yes, that’s my nephew. He was in town for my wife’s funeral last week. Please send him up.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Menzies, but could you describe your nephew, please? I want to be sure it’s the right person.”

“He is about my height, has very short hair, and dresses rather oddly,” Menzies replied.

“Does he have an accent?” Jeff asked.

“Yes, he does.”

“I’ll send him right up,” Jeff said. He walked back to the front door and opened it. “Come in,” he said to the young man. “Take the elevator to the sixteenth floor; Mr. Menzies is expecting you.”

Hausman said nothing but went straight to the elevator and pressed the button.

Jeff felt he had covered himself, but he didn’t like having someone like that in the building. The other apartment owners wouldn’t like it, either, he knew.

“Jeff,” Ralph said.

Yeah?

“Carlos called in sick, and it’s recycling day. Would you please put the cans and newspapers out?”

“Sure, Ralph,” Jeff said. He didn’t like doing this very much, but there was no one else. He took the other elevator to the garage level, where the bags of recycling material and bound newspapers waited in a corner. He hung his uniform jacket and cap on a hook, pressed the button to open the garage door, and went to work. He humped the bags up to the street, four at a time, then turned to the heavy newspaper bundles. The people in his building sure read a lot of newspapers, he thought. He had never seen the attraction, himself. He sometimes watched the local TV news, but the news, in general, seemed to have little to do with him.

He broke a sweat with the newspapers, and as he piled the last bundle on top of the others, something caught his eye. On the front of Sunday’s Metro section was a drawing of a man, and he looked alarmingly like the young man he had just let into the building. There was also a photograph of another, older man.