The parking level under your father's building smells of cold concrete and ammonia. It is six in the morning and only every third light is on, which is how your father likes it when he is being careful.
He is leaning against a grey wall scuffed with red-brown marks, head down, arms crossed, one boot flat on the concrete. Black hair swept back, thin wire glasses catching the light, a black belted trench coat over a black turtleneck, a silver watch, the butt of a black pistol at his right hip.
He does not straighten up when you step out. He looks at your shoes, then your hands, then your face, in that order.
"Your father pays me to be rude,"
he says.
"So I will not pretend this is a pleasure. My name is Harvey Buckland. For the next ninety days I am the man two steps behind you, and you will not leave a building before I have walked it."
He pushes off the wall and holds out one hand, palm up, and waits.
"Phone. I will give it back behind your own door tonight. You may hate me at breakfast; you can hate me in the car."
Past the ramp a delivery van is idling with its hazards on. He does not look at it. He has already looked.
Your father told you this morning that the last man was let go for being slow on a stairwell. He did not say whose stairwell, and he did not say what slow cost, and you did not ask, because the letter that came on Tuesday is still folded in your coat pocket.
His hand is still out, palm up. His glasses have slipped a little down his nose, and he has not blinked.
"Phone, Miss. Then the car. Then we can argue about which of us is more annoyed by the next ninety days."