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number for messages.
    The man who answered told him that he had two messages. “The first one is stamped
     3:55, and reads ‘Tried to call back—’ ”
    “I picked that one up at the desk,” Poole said.
    “The second is stamped 4:50, and reads ‘We just arrived. Where are you? Call 1315
     when you return.’ It’s signed ‘Harry.’ ”
    They had called while he was still downstairs in the lobby.
2
    Michael Poole paced back and forth between the window overlooking the parking lot
     and the door. Whenever he got to the door, he stopped and listened. The elevators
     whirred in their chutes, carts squeaked past. After a little while he heard the
ping!
of the elevator, and he cracked the door open to look down the corridor. A trim grey-haired
     man in a white shirt and a blue suit with a name tag on the lapel was hurrying toward
     him a few paces ahead of a tall blonde woman wearing a grey flannel suit and a paisley
     foulard tied in a fussy bow. Poole pulled back his head and closed the door. He heard
     the man fumbling with his key a little waydown the hall. Poole wandered back to the window and looked down at the parking lot.
     Half a dozen men dressed in unmatched parts of uniforms and holding beer cans had
     settled on the hoods and trunks of various automobiles. They looked like they were
     singing. Poole walked back to the door and waited. As soon as he heard the elevator
     land once again on his floor, he opened the door and leaned out into the hall.
    Tall, agitated Harry Beevers and Conor Linklater turned into the hallway together,
     a harried-looking Tina Pumo a second later. Conor saw him first—he raised his fist
     and grinned and called out “Mikey baby!” Unlike the last time Michael Poole had seen
     him, Conor Linklater was smooth-shaven and his pale reddish hair had been cut almost
     punkishly short. Conor normally wore baggy blue jeans and plaid shirts, but he had
     taken unaccustomed pains with his wardrobe. Somewhere he had obtained a black T-shirt
     with the stenciled legend AGENT ORANGE in big irregular yellow letters, and over this garment he wore a large, loose, many-pocketed
     black denim vest with conspicuous white stitching. There were sharp creases in his
     black trousers.
    “Conor, you’re a vision of delight,” Poole said, stepping out into the corridor while
     holding the door open with his outstretched left hand. Half a foot shorter than Michael,
     Conor Linklater stepped up to him and wrapped his arms around his chest and hugged
     him tightly.
    “Man,” he said into Michael’s jawline, and playfully kissed him, “what a sight for
     poor eyes.”
    Smirking at this ripe Linklaterism, Harry Beevers sidled up beside Poole and, in a
     wave of musky cologne, embraced him too, awkwardly. The corner of a briefcase struck
     Poole’s hip. “Michael, a sight for ‘poor eyes,’ ” Beevers whispered into Poole’s ear.
     Poole gently pulled himself away and got a vivid close-up of Harry Beevers’ large,
     overlapping discolored teeth.
    Tina Pumo bobbed back and forth before them in the corridor, grinning fiercely beneath
     his heavy moustache. “You were asleep?” Pumo asked. “You didn’t get our message?”
    “Okay, shoot me,” Poole said, smiling at Pumo. Conor and Beevers broke away from him
     and moved separately toward the door. Pumo ducked his head like Tom Sawyer, all but
     digging his toes into the carpet, said, “Aw, Mikey, I want to hug you too,” and did
     it. “Good to see you again, man.”
    “You too,” Michael said.
    “Let’s get inside before we get arrested for having an orgy,”Harry Beevers said, already standing in the entry to Michael’s room.
    “Don’t get weird,
Lieutenant
,” Conor Linklater said, but moved toward the doorway anyhow, glancing sideways at
     the other two. Pumo laughed and pounded Michael on the back, then let him go.
    “So what have you guys been doing since you got here?” Michael asked. “Apart from
     swearing at me, that