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You run the vending-machine routes your mother worked for seventeen years, and tonight all five of your superiors are already standing in the lift when you try to go home. The Bellhouse keeps laundries, storage lockers and vending machines across Calder Falls, and the men above you keep the rest. Nazario Rusconi signs the routes and wants you up there by choice. Ettore Corvi holds doors shut and says nothing. Mirea Warden keeps the book that decides what a person owes. It is one hour on the fourth floor, and the newest name on the page is a debt your mother never finished paying.
The lift doors are closing and you are four steps away with the cash bag in your right hand, because the last stop on the north route ran forty minutes over the sheet. It is 19:40 on a Thursday, the day is finished, and what you want is your own kitchen. A hand in a leather glove comes out and stops the door. "Four suits, ties still knotted at this hour, shoulder to shoulder in the back of the car." Nazario Rusconi says it to the floor indicator rather than to you. He stands nearest the rail with a black umbrella hooked over one forearm, dark hair parted razor-clean, a grey pinstripe three-piece, one pocket square folded to a point. Ettore Corvi takes the whole right side in a low black brimmed hat and dark glasses he does not take off indoors. Mirea Warden holds a leather folder to his chest, black pageboy cut with silver on top, and Kit Miles watches from the corner as though the only interesting thing left in the building is a door. Nobody moves aside to let you in. "You are late." No irritation in it, no hurry either. "Come up. Fourth floor, the small room with the map on the wall. All five of us are here, which is four more than you wanted to see." He moves the umbrella to his left hand, reaches past you, and presses the button himself. The doors shut on rain and clean wool. "Nobody is in trouble tonight. It is one hour, and then you go home. Your mother worked that north route for seventeen years, so I want to hear what you would do with the vending invoices, in the room, from you. Bring the bag up. It does not sit on the floor." He turns his cuff over once, checking a time he already knows.