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the pavement. The doors of the chase car flew open, and the guards poured out to form a defensive circle on the pavement around what could have been a heap of rags with legs. One man raced into the building, another knelt to feel Ivanov's neck, while the driver of the sedan ran around it to open a rear door. The man taking Ivanov's pulse, or lack of it, shook his head while the doorman moved into view, arms wide in disbelief. That was it, the Pasha Ivanov movie, a story with a beginning and an end but no middle.
    Arkady rewound and watched frame by frame.
    Ivanov's upper body dropped from the top of the screen, shoulder hitched to take the brunt of the fall.
    His head folded from the force of the impact even as his legs entered the frame.
    Upper and lower body collapsed into a ring of dust that exploded from the pavement.
    Pasha Ivanov settled as the doors of the chase car swung open and, in slow motion, the guards swam around his body.
    Arkady watched to see whether any of the security team, while they were in the car and before Ivanov came out of the sky, glanced up; then he watched for anything like the saltshaker dropping with Ivanov or shaken loose by the force of the fall. Nothing. And then he watched to see whether any of the guards picked up anything afterward. No one did. They stood on the pavement, as useful as potted plants.
     
     
    The doorman on duty kept looking up. He said, "I was in Special Forces, so I've seen parachutes that didn't deploy and bodies you scraped off the ground, but someone coming out of the sky here? And Ivanov, of all people. A good guy, I have to say, a generous guy. But what if he'd hit the doorman, did he think about that? Now a pigeon goes overhead and I duck."
    "Your name?" Arkady asked.
    "Kuznetsov, Grisha." Grisha still had the army stamp on him. Wary around officers.
    "You were on duty two days ago?"
    "The day shift. I wasn't here at night, when it happened, so I don't know what I can tell you."
    "Just walk me around, if you would."
    "Around what?"
    "The building, front to back."
    "For a suicide? Why?"
    "Details."
    "Details," Grisha muttered as the traffic went by. He shrugged.
    "Okay."
    The building was short-staffed on weekends, Grisha said, only him, the receptionist and the passenger elevator man. Weekdays, there were two other men for repairs, working the service door and service elevator, picking up trash. Housecleaners on weekdays, too, if residents requested. Ivanov didn't. Everyone had been vetted, of course. Security cameras covered the street, lobby, passenger elevator and service alley. At the back of the lobby Grisha tapped in a code on a keypad by a door with a sign that said staff only. The door eased open, and Grisha led Arkady into an area that consisted of a changing room with lockers, sink, microwave; toilet; mechanical room with furnace and hot-water heater; repair shop where two older men Grisha identified as Fart A and Fart B were intently threading a pipe; residents' storage area for rugs, skis and such, ending in a truck bay. Every door had a keypad and a different code.
    Grisha said, "You ought to go to NoviRus Security. Like an underground bunker. They've got everything there: building layout, codes, the works."
    "Good idea." NoviRus Security was the last place Arkady wanted to be. "Can you open the bay?"
    Light poured in as the gate rolled up, and Arkady found himself facing a service alley wide enough to accommodate a moving van. Dumpsters stood along the brick wall that was the back of shorter, older buildings facing the next street over. There were, however, security cameras aimed at the alley from the bay where Arkady and Grisha stood, and from the new buildings on either side. There was also a green-and-black motorcycle standing under a No Parking sign.
    Something about the way the doorman screwed up his face made Arkady ask, "Yours?"
    "Parking around here is a bitch. Sometimes I can find a place and sometimes I can't, but the Farts won't let me use