Riley smiled his goofy smile and swiveled the chair first to one side and then the other, nodding happily. “All the facts,” he said, “sure.” He seemed to be enjoying himself.

“Yes,” Glass said with stony emphasis, “all the facts. That’s why I’m hiring you.”

In one corner of the office there was a big square metal desk, and Glass went now and sat down carefully behind it. He felt less panicstricken sitting down. The office was on the thirty-ninth floor. It was absurd to be expected to conduct business-to do anything-at such a height. On his first day there he had edged up to the plate-glass wall and peered down to see, a couple of floors below, fluffy white clouds that looked like soft icebergs sailing sedately across a submerged city. Now he put his hands flat on the desk before him as if it were a raft he was trying to hold steady. He very much needed a cigarette.

Dylan Riley had turned the chair around to face the desk. Glass was sure the young man could sense how dizzy and sick he felt, perched up here in this crystal-and-steel eyrie.

“Anyway,” Glass said, moving his right hand in a wide arc across the desktop as if to sweep the subject aside; the gesture made him think of footage of Richard Nixon, sweating on the evening news all those years ago, insisting he was not a crook. The studios were so harshly lit in those days of paranoia and recrimination they had made pretty well everyone look like a villain in an old Eastmancolor movie. “I should tell you,” Glass said, “that Mr. Mulholland will give you no assistance. And I don’t want you to approach him. Don’t call, don’t write. Understand?”

Riley smirked and bit his lower lip, which made him look all the more like-what was it? A squirrel? No. Close, but no. “You haven’t told him,” Riley said, “have you. About me, I mean.”

Glass ignored that. “I’m not asking you to be a muckraker,” he said. “I don’t expect Mr. Mulholland to have guilty secrets. He was an undercover agent, but he’s not a crook, in case you think I think he is.”