The Weight of Brass

The elevator ride to the fourth floor was entirely silent. The brass indicator arrow moved slowly from one floor to the next, a pale yellow light ticking upward in the cramped mirrored box. My reflection stared back at me—a woman in her thirties with her blonde hair still pinned neatly in an updo, though a few stray strands had come loose around my temples. I looked composed from a distance, but my hands, pressed flat against the sides of my dark coat, were trembling.

When the doors slid open with a soft chime, the corridor smelled faintly of old wool, floor wax, and the damp chill of a coastal fog rolling in against the massive plate glass windows at the far end of the hall. I walked down the runner of heavy patterned carpet, my heels making no sound at all now, until I reached the polished mahogany door bearing the brass numerals 214.

My fingers went into my pocket, closing around the cold, heavy shape of the key the boy had handed me. It felt real enough—heavy, worn smooth on the edges, smelling faintly of old brass polish and something metallic, like pocket change.

I didn't knock. There was no sound coming from inside, no television murmur, no trace of life behind the heavy wood. I slid the key into the antique lock. It turned with a dry, heavy click that sounded like a pistol cocking in the stillness of the hallway.

Pushing the door open, I stepped inside. The curtains were drawn against the dark evening, and the room was bathed in the amber wash of streetlights filtering up from the avenue below. It was a standard executive suite, but it had been lived in recently. A light wool jacket hung over the back of an armchair—a dark tweed jacket that bore a familiar shape at the shoulder. On the low glass coffee table sat an open leather notepad, a half-empty glass of amber liquid, and a small stack of mail held down by a smooth river stone.

I crossed the room on silent feet, my breath catching in my throat as I reached out and touched the spine of the notepad. The paper was crisp. I turned it so the lamplight hit the page. Written in handwriting I would have known anywhere—the sharp, slanted crossbars on the t's, the hurried loop of the g's—was a short list of addresses and phone numbers I had never seen before, dated from Tuesday of this week.