The Intuitionist led Tommy Two-Time down the narrow hotel hall.

“No more funny business, you little fairy,” Two-Time said, discreetly jabbing the man in the ribs with his snub-nose. “I don’t wanna find another missing sock in the back of a getaway car, I don’t want to trip in another warehouse fulla smuggled rugs and have the ER doc turn up a killer blood clot right in the nick of time. You get me? I’m onto you, fenook: we better be on the trail of Veritutio’s Big Score for real, now.”

The Intuitionist—being, in brief, a mongoloid type—gave no answer save an anxious whine. But as they shuffled forward, his upraised index was pulled like a divining rod over this door and that. When he bumped into the housekeeper’s cart he stopped short with a whine, turned, and traced several slow figure eights in the air.

“C’mon, jadrool. C’mon,” Two-Time hissed. “Time is money, hurry it the fuck up.”

And both watched in wonder as the finger finally came to rest on Room 402. Two-Time tiptoed over, Intuitionist in tow, and pressed his ear to the door. He could make out the gravelly grumble of Johnny the Throat, talking on the phone.

Unceremoniously shoving the Intuitionist away, Tommy kicked the door open and drew down.

The Intuitionist sneezed in anticipation of the gunpowder.

“We’re made! Bring the car round the loading dock, get It outta—” the Throat cried, before the bullet stopped him.

Tommy Two-Time rushed for the stairwell, but the Intuitionist, howling, pushed him back toward the elevator with inhuman force. Right, Two-Time thought. Probably guards down on the landing. Won’t expect us this way.

He mashed the button for the service level and started at the sound of a scream down the hall. He looked up: registering first the cart, closer now; then the slab of crisp white uniform between lithe shoulders, broadening as the housekeeper turned from the open door to 402.

And then the housekeeper’s strange, startled eyes—so green and pelagic, so knowing and so sublimely doomed—met Two-Time’s through the already waning channel of the elevator door. Worse than a blackjack to the gut, the charge in that look knocked the wind out of him.

Tommy learned a few things quickly about electricity and time. And he knew there would never be enough of either, even as a lifetime can thunder by in a flash, even when so much can and has been wasted, even before the doors slid home and the circuit broke.

Tommy’s heart sank in the sudden vacuum of the elevator. Marone, he thought, the panic of a neck caught in the pianowire dawning. Awfully, incredibly, undeniably. That—that was him! That was… Outside and above he could hear the housekeeper’s footsteps, hear him slam against the stairwell panic bar. No! No! Not now, not when I’ve only just found you! The frantic steps were echoing down, down, down, fading as the elevator left them behind.

“Turn back, you fucking chooch!” He thrashed at the buttons as he shouted but his violence knocked something loose in the control panel and their descent toward unimaginable wealth continued.

“You lousy fuck, goddamn you! Goddamn you! G—” His breath caught in a gag of sorrow as a confused shout, in the hollow distance now, was followed by the Intuitionist’s sneeze.And then the gasp’s breadth of silence before the shot was an eternity Tommy was drowning in—a skipped heartbeat, so terrible, so brief—of grieving too soon, too soon for the Love of His Life, while like a proud terrier the Intuitionist watched the light-up numbers counting inexorably past numbers.