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at the stairs. Dortmunder was brooding at the wall and Kelp was examining the lock on the gate when a man appeared in the hall doorway behind them and said, cheerfully, “Help you, gentlemen?”
    Dortmunder leaned more heavily on his cane, in order to look inoffensive. “Trying to find the men’s room,” he said.
    â€œOh, I’m sorry,” the man said, smiling at them. He was about thirty, large, built like a football player with a neck wider than his head and hands made of balloons. He was neatly dressed in a dark suit and white shirt and slender yellow tie, but there was something bulky under the left side of his jacket. “There are no public restrooms up here,” he said. “You’ll have to go back down to the lobby, turn left, and go into the garden.”
    â€œOkay,” Dortmunder said.
    â€œIt’s just around behind the ficus,” the man said helpfully, as they headed for the elevators, their tails between their legs. “You can’t miss it.”
    â€œReally appreciate it,” Kelp said. “Thanks a lot.”
    â€œDon’t overdo it,” Dortmunder told him.

8
    There’s so much unhappiness in this world. The strong prey upon the weak, injustice is rampant, evil succeeds everywhere and good is trampled in the dust. Ai, caramba , it makes you just want to piss!
    Enriqueta Tomayo did nothing so crude or vulgar, of course, but contented herself with fiercely banging together the frying pans in the soapy water and glaring around at this antiseptic blond-and-chrome kitchen in the clouds, where she’d been working now for over a year. Back home in Guatemala the rich ladinos oppressed the Indians with the help of their armies, both public and private, and up here in Nueva York the rich still oppressed everybody they could get their hands on, even their own flesh and blood. By St. Barbara, this Frank Ritter man even oppresses his own daughter. He even defies God Himself!
    Enriqueta whammed a frying pan into the drainboard and looked up to see the poor red-eyed little Sister herself coming into the kitchen, sighing, weary with grief. The little Sister gave Enriqueta a wan smile and crossed to the refrigerator for a glass of skim milk, while Enriqueta dried her hands on her apron and delivered herself, at top speed, of several dozen words in Spanish, the essential translation of which was, “You poor kid!”
    The little Sister smiled her gratitude, and drank milk. Enriqueta walked closer to her, lowering her voice and switching to English: “Another letter from the good Sisters.”
    How the poor child’s eyes lit up; it was only these letters from the good Sisters that kept her spirit from breaking entirely. Enriqueta, who knew without doubt she would be fired and probably arrested and certainly beaten and undoubtedly deported if Frank Ritter and his minions ever found out about the correspondence she was smuggling between the convent and the little Sister, also knew it was the finest thing, and therefore the only real thing, she could do with what was left of her life. Her own children were grown now, dead or dispersed. The evils of Guatemala were behind her; please, Dios , forever. She had grown old and fat, she was here in this strange cold land working as a cook in a kitchen in the clouds for an evil monster and his poor imprisoned daughter—locked in a tower, just like in the fairy stories!—and she had a sodden husband sprawled in their nice apartment in public housing up on Columbus Avenue. What else could she do but help this poor mistreated child in the best way she could?
    If only she could somehow smuggle the little Sister herself out of this tower, she’d often thought, but that was just impossible. Enriqueta was never permitted to ride the golden elevator alone, but was always “escorted” up at eleven in the morning and back down again at nine in the evening by one or more of Frank Ritter’s