Patrick Lee - Ghost Country

The largest of the lateral cracks had opened up all the way to the girder on one side, and the concrete had sagged free of its seat against the beam there, its hold having crumbled completely except for a single, fist-sized formation. That piece, clinging to the steel by an inch, was all that had stopped the pad's total failure. It was all that was preventing it now.

Bethany found her voice again. "Off." Her hands made little circular gestures, calling him back to the beam.

Travis still had both his hands on the desk, most of his weight distributed to its footings. He looked at the drawers. He could probably open all four from here without shifting his mass around very much.

"Travis," Bethany said.

He looked at her again.

Her eyes: don't.

"It's okay," he said. What else was he going to say?

He turned to the tray drawer on the top left. He raised one hand from the desk. Felt the weight that'd been on it transfer to the other hand. No real change to the pressure the desk was putting on the pad.

He pressed four fingers behind the rounded top of the drawer's face panel and put his thumb against the edge of the desktop just above it. He pushed with his thumb and pulled with his fingers. There was a moment of resistance. Then he heard the lock mechanism crumble like a pretzel, and the drawer opened smoothly on plastic rollers.

The drawer's sides and bottom were made of the same material as the rest of the desk. They'd held up perfectly. The contents of the drawer hadn't. There were three metal paperclips that'd rusted to what looked like orange chalk drawings of themselves. Travis blew on them and they vanished in a little cloud. There was a stapler that had corroded to a solid lump. Right beside it was a perfect little rectangle-shaped piece of rust that Travis couldn't identify at first. Then he understood: a box of staples, the cardboard long since eaten away by mildew and the tightly arranged staples inside fused together by oxidation. There were three nickels and a quarter. There was a pile of rubber bands that'd broken down to dried crumbs. There was a layer of dead mold coating everything. Once upon a time it'd been paper: memos, Post-its, business cards, maybe check stubs.

And that was it. There was nothing else in the drawer. Nothing with a name on it.

Travis considered the larger one below it. A file drawer. Was it even worth bothering with? What could have been in it but paper? What could be in it now but an inch-deep layer of mold dust?

He opened it.

It contained an inch-deep layer of mold dust.

He lowered his hand carefully to the mold and sifted through it. It came up in ragged tufts. They caught the wind as they cleared the top of the drawer and were scurried away. There was nothing lying concealed beneath the mold layer.

Travis pivoted carefully on his feet, trying not to move them or change the amount of weight on them. He put his free hand back on the desk, and slowly raised the other, letting the pressure transfer. He faced the other two drawers.

He tried the file drawer first. An inch of mold. Nothing under it.

He opened the tray drawer.

Empty.

Not even a dusting of long-gone paper.

He exhaled. Closed his eyes. Opened them again and began to stand upright.

And then he stopped.

Because there was something in the drawer.

Something narrow and black, lying against the back end. It blended with the dark cherrywood color and all but escaped notice. It was a pen. It looked expensive. He picked it up and drew it into the light. The metal parts-the clip and the point-were rusted dark, but the body looked fine. It was made of something that felt harder than ordinary plastic. Something that wasn't cheap. Its grip was ornate but not fancy. It looked serious. Like something a high-powered executive would whip out on special occasions-maybe the signing of final contracts for a hostile takeover. Travis rolled it between his fingers.

There was a name engraved on it: eldred warren.

Travis turned and held the pen up so Bethany could see the engraving.

"Very good," she said. "Now can you get the hell off there so I can start breathing again?"

Travis pocketed the pen and for a moment rested both hands on the desk. He looked at the fragment of concrete that was keeping him alive. He looked at the distance back to the girder.

Then he stood up straight and crossed the pad in five steps, ready to jump and grab for the beam if necessary. It wasn't necessary. If the concrete moved at all beneath him he didn't feel it. He saw Bethany exhale hard as soon as he was fully onto the girder, but he didn't pause to share the sentiment. They had information now. Something they could work on. Just like that, his urgency had fuel to burn. He turned atop the beam and made for the stairwell at close to a sprint.

They were six flights down when they heard the concrete fragment snap high above them. They turned in time to see the massive slab, desk and all, plunge through the channel of space defined by the girders. It blasted through the intact pad on level twelve without slowing, and the entire mass fell a hundred feet further to the foundation pit. The impact kicked up a halo of ash and dead leaves.

They stared for less than a second, then continued down the stairs as fast as they could move.

Three minutes later they were on top of the pile of girders at the southwest corner of the Ritz-Carlton. The rope hung from the iris above, exactly as they'd left it. Bethany went up first, and Travis followed a few feet below. By the time he'd climbed through the iris she was standing at the window with her phone in hand, already going to work. T ravis stared south at the green-tinted high-rise while Bethany worked on the name. He looked at the top floor and visualized the desk there in the present, bolted to the concrete through some expensive carpeting or hardwood. Maybe Eldred Warren was sitting there right now, with the same pen in his drawer that Travis now had in his pocket. Literally the same pen. That was a hard concept to get a grasp on.

"He's not in the federal tax records," Bethany said. "Not too surprising, someone way up in a company like that. We already know they're big on secrecy. I'll try corporate registration in the Caymans."

Thirty seconds later she came up empty there, too.

"There are lots of other tax shelters to try," she said, "but before I start on those I'll pull his social security file. That'll give us at least some basic info on the guy."

She navigated for twenty seconds. She pressed a last button and waited for something. She smiled.

Then she frowned.

"What?" Travis said.

"Got it. Only one Eldred Warren with a social security number in the United States."

"Must be our man, then."

"Yes and no."

"What do you mean?"

"Give me a minute."

It turned out to be ninety seconds. She spent them navigating to some other information on her phone, and reading it. Her frown deepened as she did.

"It's the right guy," she said, "but he's not going to be any help to us."

"Why not?"

"Because he doesn't work in that building yet. I'm looking at his blog right now. He graduated number two in his class from Harvard Law School… three months ago. He hasn't taken a job anywhere yet."

"That's hard to believe," Travis said. "Wouldn't someone like that have offers waiting for him before he bought his cap and gown?"

"Tons of them, but a guy like that knows he can pick and choose. It's not unthinkable that he'd take his time. I had a dozen offers myself, and spent two months making up my mind. And this guy's degree is more versatile than mine was. He'll have everyone from movie studios to lobbying firms filling up his voice mail these days."

"All right, so maybe he doesn't work for this company yet," Travis said. "But he's probably in talks with them. We could go have a chat with him, shove a gun in his face if we have to."