“I covered the gap so nobody filed a lien against the company.”

“Name one.”

“Halstead.”

“Halstead was paid in August.

The stub is in my kitchen drawer.”

“Then you have the wrong Halstead,” he said, and pushed his office door open with two fingers.

A woman from accounting held the elevator for me, saw whose office I was walking into, and let the doors close on herself.

The office smelled of new carpet and the mints he kept in his top drawer.