Point Blank

with you this afternoon. We can have it patched through to your car.‛
    ‚Thank you, Helen.‛
    ‚Shall I have your coffee sent in to you?‛
    ‚No, thank you, Helen. I won’t have coffee today.‛
    Helen Bosworth left the room, seriously alarmed. No coffee? What next? Mr. Roscoe had begun his day with a double espresso for as long as she had known him. Could it be that he was ill? He certainly hadn’t been himself recently—not since Paul had returned home from that school in the South of France. And this phone call to Alan Blunt in London! Nobody had ever told her who he was, but she had seen his name once in a file. He had something to do with military intelligence. MI6. What was Mr. Roscoe doing, talking to a spy?
    Helen Bosworth returned to her office and soothed her nerves, not with coffee—she couldn’t stand the stuff—but with a refreshing cup of English Breakfast tea. Something very strange was going on, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.
    Meanwhile, sixty floors below, a man had walked into the lobby area wearing gray overalls with an ID badge attached to his chest. The badge identified him as Sam Green, maintenance engineer with X-Press Elevators Inc. He was carrying a briefcase in one hand and a large silver toolbox in the other. He set them both down in front of the reception desk.
    Sam Green was not his real name. His hair—black and a little greasy—was fake, as were his glasses, mustache, and uneven teeth. He looked fifty years old, but he was actually closer to thirty. Nobody knew the man’s real name, but in the business that he was in, a name was the last thing he could afford. He was known merely as ‚The Gentleman,‛ and he was one of the highest-paid and most successful contract killers in the world. He had been given his nickname because he always sent flowers to the families of his victims.
    The lobby guard glanced at him.
    ‚I’m here for the elevator,‛ he said. He spoke with a Bronx accent even though he had never spent more than a week there in his life.
    ‚What about it?‛ the guard asked. ‚You people were here last week.‛
    ‚Yeah. Sure. We found a defective cable on elevator twelve. It had to be replaced, but we didn’t have the parts. So they sent me back.‛ The Gentleman fished in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. ‚You want to call the head office? I’ve got my orders here.‛
    If the guard had called X-Press Elevators Inc., he would have discovered that they did indeed employ a Sam Green—although he hadn’t shown up for work in two days. This was because the real Sam Green was at the bottom of the Hudson River with a knife in his back and a twenty-pound block of concrete attached to his foot. But the guard didn’t make the call. The Gentleman had guessed he wouldn’t bother. After all, the elevators were always breaking down. There were engineers in and out all the time. What difference would one more make?
    The guard jerked a thumb. ‚Go ahead,‛ he said.
    The Gentleman put away the letter, picked up his cases, and went over to the elevators.
    There were a dozen servicing the skyscraper, plus a thirteenth for Michael J. Roscoe. Elevator number twelve was at the end. As he went in, a delivery boy with a parcel tried to follow.
    ‚Sorry,‛ The Gentleman said. ‚Closed for maintenance.‛ The doors slid shut. He was on his own. He pressed the button for the sixty-first floor.
    He had been given this job only a week before. He’d had to work fast, killing the real maintenance engineer, taking his identity, learning the layout of Roscoe Tower, and getting his hands on the sophisticated piece of equipment he had known he would need. His employers wanted the multimillionaire eliminated as quickly as possible. More importantly, it had to look like an accident. For this, The Gentleman had demanded—and been paid—one hundred thousand dollars. The money was to be paid into a bank account in Switzerland; half now, half on completion.
    The elevator door opened again. The sixty-first floor was used primarily for maintenance.
    This was where the water tanks were housed, as well as the computers that controlled the heat, air-conditioning, security cameras, and elevators throughout the building. The Gentleman turned off the elevator, using the manual override key that had once belonged to Sam Green, then went over to the computers. He knew exactly where they were. In fact, he could have found them wearing a blindfold.