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“But you are their bitch.” I was ready for a fight. Those residents of Aramaya had made me mad at God and all his, or her, creation.

“What?” Forthman said in a threatening tone.

The Asian sentry, an older man, read Forthman’s shoulders and hurried toward us.

“What’s the problem here?” he asked. He had a slight English accent. At least this surprised me.

“I asked him if he had an appointment,” the young black man blamed.

“I’m here to see Jocelyn Bryor,” I said to the new player.

“But he don’t have no appointment.”

The Asian man looked at me, into my eyes, and asked, “What is your name, sir?”

“Joe Oliver. Some people call me King.”

“Wait here, sir,” the older sentinel asserted gently.

“But, Chin—,” Forthman managed to say.

“I’ll take care of this, Robert” was Chin’s reply.

Chin went to a standup desk anchored to the wall and pulled a phone from behind the plain facade.

Robert Forthman was staring daggers at me so I made a gesture with both hands, welcoming him to make manifest his anger.

He clenched his fists and I smiled. He took a step forward and the white guard moved up behind Forthman and uttered something. Forthman hesitated and the white man said something else. With a violent turn, the tall black uniform did a complete one-eighty and walked down the aisle of elevators to and through a doorway on the opposite end.

“Ms. Bryor will see you,” Chin said before Forthman was gone.

The white guard gestured for me and I went to stand next to a lift door.

He pushed a button and said, “That kid’s a light heavyweight.”

“That all? I thought he might’a had a gun.”

The elevator door opened and I went through.

The white guy leaned in after me, held a card in front of a sensor plate, and pressed the button for floor fifty-seven.

The car floated up at a respectable speed. I wondered about my reception. Gladstone told me about Bryor quitting the force and moving to the private sector. I had reason to hate that woman. This was why I was willing to pick a fight with a boxer.

The doors to the onyx-and-gold elevator car opened onto what looked like a foyer to some grand East Hampton mansion.

A beautiful black girl in a very tasteful dress greeted me.

“Mr. Oliver?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She was tall and thin, probably athletic. Her dress was the pink of the inside of a deep-sea clamshell. The necklace she wore was beaded with light-blue sapphires and her shoes were the pale and red-brown of the fur that some forest creatures produce.

“Miss Bryor will see you now.”

“And your name is?”

The question caught her off guard but the smile didn’t falter.