The wide eyes of Sir Gerald and his managing editor were too much for Fallow. They sent a surge of poetic license up his brain stem.

"I must confess, I couldn't resist a look. So I decided to retrace the route Mrs. Lamb and her son had taken when they first moved into the Edgar Allan Poe Towers."

In fact, after the warning, Fallow hadn't dared go near the stairway. But now lies, graphic lies, bubbled up into his brain at an intoxicating rate. In his intrepid trip down the stairs he encountered every sort of vice: fornication, crack smoking, heroin injection, dice games and three-card monte, and more fornication.

Steiner and Highridge stared, agape and bug-eyed.

"Are you serious?" said Highridge. "What did they do when they saw you?"

"Nothing but slog away. In their sublime state, what was a mere passing journalist?"