Dave stood at the windowless metal door that led to the top floor of the run-down building in which Larry Smith lived. Nervously, he waited there for a moment, hands in the pockets of his coat; he took a deep breath and tried to steady himself, tried to work up the courage to take the next step.
Sighing, he finally turned his attention to the buzzer for the upstairs rooms-a small, gray box with two black buttons on the front, mounted at eye-level on the wall beside the door. Beneath one of the buttons was a strip of masking tape with "Smith" scrawled across it in black ink; there was no label under the other button.
Dave extended a finger toward the labeled button, then hesitated; an anxious shiver flickered through him and he took another deep breath. In pressing that button, he woul
