Page 105 of King’s Ransom

But I’d met Lenny Grossman in person at 59West on December 21st.

This was getting very weird.

I pulled out my phone and showed this superintendent Grossman’s Facebook photos.

‘Just so I’m certain,’ I said. ‘This is who we’re talking about. This is Lenny Grossman, right? The day superintendent at 59West.’

‘Yup. That’s Lenny.’

I shook my head, a flurry of thoughts racing through my mind.

First, something Roman Oberov had said: the Grandmaster had been missing since December 10th . . .

. . . only to turn up at the Sleepy Hollow cemetery on December 21st and get shot.

Now, Lenny Grossman, the superintendent at 59West, had apparently also been absent since Thanksgiving, November 26th.

So who was the ‘superintendent’ I’d met in Aristo King’s apartment on December 21st who looked exactly like Lenny Grossman?

Who had been the man dressed in white coveralls who’d unlocked the elevator doors for me to save Alexei in the elevator shaft . . .

Who I’d glimpsed on the blow-through level beneath the roof . . .

Who I’d seen entering the panic room on the 93rd floor, just before I’d been shoved into the sauna . . .

And who the night superintendent at 59West thought was sick . . .?

Could someone have impersonated Lenny Grossman for almost an entire month?

It actually made some sense.

Posing as the superintendent of the tower would’ve given the perpetrator(s) behind the events of December 21st unfettered access to every corner of the building and thus complete freedom to arrange all the deathtraps.

Hell, they would have had keys to every apartment on every floor, too, and thus could’ve moved around in plain sight as they prepared.

They also would’ve had access to Aristo King’s penthouse, making kidnapping him during the night very doable.

Looking at Lenny Grossman’s photo, I saw that he would’ve been pretty easy to mimic: glasses, moustache, paunch, white coveralls.

Indeed, the glasses and the moustache made it particularly straightforward.

I mean, how much attention do we really pay to the workers in our buildings?

I didn’t think the self-absorbed New Yorkers in the supertalls of Billionaires’ Row would pay much at all.

I doubted that Ajax and Cassandra King knew Lenny’s name, even though it’d been embroidered on his coveralls.

Add to this mix the strange company on the darknet that Roman Oberov had mentioned: Modern Alchemical Solutions. Apparently, it specialised in giving its customers unusual forms of vengeance, like setting up that rich boy for rape—

‘Yo, Sherlock Holmes,’ the super of Lenny’s building interrupted my thoughts. ‘We done here?’

‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you for your help.’

I walked back up to the street, came to Georgy’s car.

As I opened the passenger door, I paused again as I rechecked the photos of Lenny Grossman on his Facebook page.

I tried to recall the man I’d met at 59West.