No windows opened onto the outer office. It was completely dark, except for the green cursors flashing urgent messages on blank computer screens. I shivered involuntarily and ran a hand across the burn spot on the back of my neck.

Using my light as little as possible, I picked my way past desks and mounds of papers to Preston Tilford’s office. I wasn’t sure how often the security guards visited each floor and didn’t want to risk showing a light. Tilford’s door was locked, too, and took a few minutes of fumbling in the dark. I’d learned to pick locks from one of my more endearing clients in the public defender’s office, but had never achieved the quickness of a true professional.

Tilford’s door was solid wood, so I didn’t have to worry about light shining through a panel as I did with the outer door. Closing it softly, I flipped a switch and took my bearings. One desk, two filing cabinets. Try everything first to see what’s locked and look in the locked drawers.

I worked as quickly as I could, keeping my gloves on, not really sure what I was trying to find. The locked file cabinet contained files for Tilford’s private customers. I picked a couple at random for close scrutiny. As far as I could tell, they were all in order. Not knowing what should be in a customer statement made it hard to know what to look for-high debit balances, maybe. But Tilford’s customers seemed to keep on top of their accounts. I handled the pages carefully, leaving them in their original order, and refiled them neatly. I looked at the names one by one to see if any of his customers sounded familiar. Other than a handful of well-known Chicago business names I didn’t see any I knew personally until I came to the P’s. Catherine Paciorek, Agnes’s mother, was one of Preston’s clients.

My heart beating a little faster, I pulled out her file. It, too, was in order. Only a small amount of the fabled Savage fortune amassed by Agnes’s grandfather was handled at Tilford &

Sutton. I noticed that Mrs… Paciorek had purchased two thousand shares of Ajax on December 2. That made me raise my eyebrows a little. Hers was a blue-chip portfolio with few transactions. In fact, Ajax was the only company she’d traded in 1983. Worth pursuing further?

I could find no other clients trading in Ajax stock. Yet Tilford had registered many more than Catherine Paciorek’s two thousand shares. I frowned and turned to the desk.

This was carefully built, of dark mahogany, and the lock in the middle drawer was tough. I ended up scratching the surface as I fumbled with the picklocks. I stared at it in dismay, but it was too late now to worry.

Tilford kept an unusual collection in his private space:

Besides a half-empty bottle of Chivas, which wasn’t too surprising, he had a fine collection of hard-core porn. It was the kind of stuff that makes you feel we should work toward Shaw’s idea of a disembodied mind. I grimaced, flipping through the whole stack to make sure nothing more interesting was interleafed.

After that, I figured Tilford owed me a drink and helped myself to some of the Chivas. In the bottom drawer I uncovered file folders of more clients, perhaps his ultrapersonal, super-secret accounts. There were nine or ten of these, including an organization called Corpus Christi. I dimly remembered reading something about it recently in The Wall Street Journal. It was a Roman Catholic lay group, made up primarily of wealthy people. The current pope liked it because it was conservative on such important points as abortion and the importance of clerical authority, and it supported right-wing governments with close Church ties. The pope liked the group so much, according to the Journal, that he’d appointed some Spanish bishop as its leader and had him-the Spaniard-reporting directly to him-the pope. This miffed the archbishop of Madrid because these lay groups were supposed to report to their local bishops. Only Corpus Christi had a lot of money and the pope’s Polish missions took a lot of money, and no one was saying anything directly, but the Journal did some discreet reading between the ledger lines.

I flipped through the file, looking at transactions for the Corpus Christi account. It had started in a small way the previous March. Then it began an active trading program, which ran to several million dollars by late December. But no record existed of what it was trading in. I wanted it to be Ajax. Tilford & Sutton was supposed to have taken largish positions in Ajax, according to Barrett. Yet the two thousand shares Mrs. Paciorek bought in December were the only trace of Ajax activity I’d seen in the office. Where were copies of Corpus Christi’s statement showing what it was actually buying and selling? And why wasn’t it in the file, as was the case with the other customers? Tilford’s office didn’t include a safe. Using my flashlight as little as possible, I surveyed the other offices. A large modern safe stood in a supply room, its door to be opened by someone who knew which eighteen numbers to punch on the electronic lock. Not me. If Corpus Christi’s records were in there, they were in there for good.

The bells at the nearby Methodist Temple chimed the hour: two o’clock. I took the Corpus Christi and Mrs. Paciorek files out to the main room and hunted around for a photocopier. A large Xerox machine stood in the corner. It took a while to warm up. Using my flashlight surreptitiously, I copied the contents of the two files. To separate the pages I had to take off my gloves. I stuffed them in my back pocket.

I had just finished when the night watchman came by and looked in through the glass panel. Like a total imbecile, I had left Tilford’s office door ajar. As the watchman fumbled with his keys, I hit the off button and looked around desperately for a hiding place. The machine had a paper cupboard built in underneath. My five-feet-eight frame fit badly, but I squeezed in and pulled the door as nearly shut as I could.

The watchman turned on the overhead lights. Through a crack in the door I watched him go into Tilford’s office. He spent long enough in there to decide the place had been burglarized. His voice crackled dimly as he used his walkietalkie to call for reinforcements. He made a circuit of the outer room, shining his flashlight in corners and closets. Apparently he thought the Xerox machine held nothing but its own innards:

He walked past it, stopped directly in front of me, then returned to the inner office.

Hoping he would stay there until help arrived, I gently shoved the door open. Silently easing my cramped body onto the floor, I crawled on hands and knees to the near wall where a window overlooked a fire escape. I slid the window open as quietly as possible and climbed out into the January night.

The fire escape was covered with ice. I almost ended my career forever as I skidded across its narrow iron platform, saving myself with a grab at the burning-cold railing. I’d been holding both the originals and photocopies of Tilford’s documents, as well as my flashlight. These flew across the ice as I seized the guardrail. Cursing to myself, I crawled precariously across the platform retrieving documents, stuffing them into my jeans waistband with numbed fingers. I pulled the gloves from my back pocket and put them on while skidding my way down as quickly as possible to the floor below.

The window was locked. I hesitated only seconds, then kicked it in. Brushing glass fragments away with my sweatshirted arm, I soon had a hole big enough to climb through.

I landed on top of a desk covered with files. These scattered in my wake. I kept bumping into desks and cabinets as I tried running to the far door. How could people get to their desks in the morning with so much clutter blocking their paths? I cracked the outer door, heard nothing, and made my way down the hall. I was about to open the stairwell door when I heard feet pounding on the other side.