Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

espresso. Lots of very big people went up there. So what was he doing here?
    Waiting to connect with a contact. He was in the record business.
    Realllly! Her cousin Stevie had a fab basement band. Radical but not too, you know? Ready for a big-time commercial break. He didn’t look like a DJ. They were usually such losers in the looks department. He should be on MTV.
    Yeah.
    Matt finished the dregs of his caramel-whipped cream latte, just a dozen calorie counts shy of a hot fudge sundae, and went back up to the forty-fifth floor.
    To lurk.
    Krys, who had okayed his outfit this morning, would be amazed to know how dull subterfuge was. He was amazed to know how dull it was. He thought about Carmen Molina, back in Vegas. Had she ever done this detail? Maybe. Maybe not.
    What were the chances? The law office staff seemed to recognize him. So how likely was it that some relative of his lost father would breeze up in the elevator and into Brandon, Oakes, and McCall? Today or any other day.
    Infinitesimal. Matt bet that DJs didn’t often use that word.
    Ex-priests did, though, having been conditioned to think in terms of infinity.
    In terms of infinity, what were the chances that he would find any trace or trail that led to the man who’d fathered him?
    Almost zero. He didn’t care. He’d learned long ago not to care. He’d tried to tell his mother that. Trouble was, she did.
    What had been the high point in her life had been the nadir in his.
    Nadir. Speak of the Devil. Rafi Nadir. Another unwanted father. Carmen Molina had made it clear that Nadir hadn’t deserved to know he was the father of a child she would bear and rear without him.
    The usual rap was men were unreliable. Men skated out from under fatherhood and its obligations. They were louts. Rats. Immature. They seduced and abandoned. They made Matt sorry he was one.
    Except...
    He didn’t believe it. He’d seen it during the Sacrament of Reconciliation, formerly known as Confession. Men were scared. They thought they had to be the whole enchilada, 24/7: strong, sole supporting, macho men. It was too much.
    He considered his mother at nineteen—her critical condition. Pregnant, with him. Catholic. Young. Damned. Despised. No support of any kind. Hard not to hate the guy who put her there. Except that she hadn’t. And he’d gone off to a foreign war and died. No chance to prove his mettle on the domestic front.
    The elevator made all the grunts and groans of being about to open again. Matt peeked through the stairway door like a kid playing hide and seek.
    Another “briefcase” walking into Brandon, Oakes, and McCall.
    Except... this guy didn’t carry a briefcase. He wore an expensively pale suit. His ash-blond hair was silver at the temples. Same height, same build, thickened a little around the middle.
    Matt gaped, as if he’d seen a ghost walking through a wall, as the form vanished into the dark wood door of Brandon, Oaks, and McCall.
    The proof of the pudding was what this man would look like from the front, when he walked out.
    Matt stuck the toe of his new sports tennies against the heavy metal door. This he had to see, no matter how long it took.

    It took forty-eight minutes by his stainless-steel watch.
    Several people came and went. Matt began to worry about a discreet exit door farther down the hall... but, still, the elevator had to be taken, unless someone wanted to walk down forty-some flights. And then that someone would come face-to-face with Matt lurking in the hidden echoing concrete spine that ran up the length of every skyscraper.
    The lawyers’ office door didn’t so much squeak as rumble a little when it opened and shut.
    It was opening now, spitting out the front view of the man Matt had glimpsed from behind. He managed to eel out of the stairway to meet the man at the bank of elevators.
    To meet himself.
    Related, no doubt.
    How to mention it?
    The guy did the usual big-city elevator shuffle: push the DOWN button, stare at the computerized numbers of floors and cars above. Pace. Glance at his watch. Glance askance at the guy who’d joined him in waiting, trying not to stare at strangers, of course.
    Matt’s throat was so dry he couldn’t have received Communion to save his soul.
    Alex Haley’d had Kunta Kinte. Now Matt had his own Roots. Someone who looked like him. Someone he looked like besides his mother. It didn’t matter, he’d always said. It mattered.
    The man slipped a look at him again. He seemed