“When you said there are ways to cover my tracks, what did you mean, precisely?”

I found myself back in Gallagher’s office first thing Tuesday with a strange sense of déjà vu. Yet again, it was way too early for a meeting, and yet again, I hadn’t gotten anywhere near enough sleep.

It had been close to one by the time Peter had set up a new e-mail account for me at a free service and we’d e-mailed Man of the People via the same resend provider he’d used. The e-mail-a simple and noncommittal request for more information-had been the easy part. It was the tracks-covering part that had taken so long. Peter had run a number of different programs he promised would erase all traces of Man of the People and our response from my computer. I’d never realized that paranoia could be so time-consuming.

“I feel like a criminal,” I’d said.

“Look, this guy is probably a crackpot and it won’t amount to anything. But it’s not like you’re telling him anything you shouldn’t, and if you do find out there’s something corrupt about this deal, you’ll have the facts you need instead of just pissing off Gallagher.”

“He’s already pissed off.”

“Well, instead of pissing him off more.”

What Peter said made sense, but I couldn’t help feeling uneasy. The very act of track-covering was an admission that I was fully aware what I was doing was wrong on some level, even if Gallagher’s attitude left me with little choice.

By the time we got to sleep, it was after two, and it seemed as if the alarm went off only a moment later. It made me cranky that Peter got to roll over and go back to sleep, and it made me even crankier to have to take my things into the bathroom to get ready so I wouldn’t wake him again.

The bathroom was a small room to start with, and for a man without much vanity, Peter had a lot of toiletries-toiletries that were taking up a disproportionate share of space in the shower and on the countertop. It had been handy to have him around the previous night, to have his help in figuring out how to respond to mysterious e-mails and hide the traces of my potentially criminal actions, not to mention the homemade meal, but there was nothing like accidentally taking a big slug of aftershave (the bottle of which bore a sly resemblance to my mouthwash) to bring home the practical realities of sharing an apartment in New York.

Given that he’d set the meeting time, Gallagher evidently didn’t mind the hour; besides, his face was always haggard. At least he’d actually shown up on time today. Jake looked like he’d just returned from a month of lounging on a Tahitian beach, and Mark was his usual bland self, but I was all too conscious of the dark hollows under my eyes and the bitter taste of aftershave in my mouth. We were in our same seats from the previous morning, and my hands had already assumed their tight grips on the armrests of my chair in anticipation of another dose of verbal abuse. Gallagher didn’t disappoint.

“This is crap,” he announced without preamble, tossing his copy of the materials we’d spent most of the previous afternoon and evening preparing into the trash. In obscenity-laden detail, he began enumerating the changes we’d need to make before the conference call he’d scheduled with Perry for later that day.

The buzz of the intercom interrupted him. He hit a button to put the phone on speaker. “Yeah?”

“It’s your lawyer on line one,” said Dahlia.

“Got it. And brew a fresh pot of coffee. The stuff you brought me tastes like crap.” Gallagher hit another button on the phone. “Barry? How are the papers coming along?”

“We’ll be ready to file in a couple of days,” answered the disembodied voice.

“Let me know when the delivery’s confirmed. Not that I won’t hear from her the second she opens the envelope.” The lawyer said something in response, and Gallagher said something back, and I settled in for another session of listening to Gallagher charmingly air his dirty laundry.

I managed to tune out most of the conversation, but when he selected a pencil from the silver mug and rammed it into the sharpener, I couldn’t block it out. Nor did I trust myself not to laugh if I caught Jake’s eye after yesterday’s discourse on “the pencil thing.” Instead, I kept my gaze fixed stolidly ahead and tried to think about sad things, like abandoned puppies and global warming.

Sure enough, Gallagher inserted the newly sharpened end into his mouth and sucked on it, long and hard.

I dug my nails into my palms, trying to distract myself with the pain. Beside me, Jake made a weird noise that somehow combined a snort and a cough. Even Mark was pressing his lips together tightly, as if trying to ensure that no sound escaped.

Gallagher didn’t seem to notice. He hung up a moment later and resumed his critique of our work as if there’d been no interruption.

“That’s it,” he said finally, after thoroughly ripping to shreds everything we’d done thus far. “I want to see another draft of everything by noon. Capiche?”

“Capiche,” answered Jake.

“Okay, then,” he said. “Get out of here.” Hardly inspiring words, but anything that involved leaving his office sounded good to me.

We were almost out the door when he called us back. My earlier sense of déjà vu returned. At least today he wanted us all and not just me.

“There’s one other thing.”

He selected a fresh pencil from the mug, and we waited as he repeated his ritual with the sharpener. This time I had to work so hard not to react I worried that I might choke. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jake’s shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

Thoughtfully, Gallagher lifted the pencil to his lips, and thoughtfully, he inserted the newly sharpened tip into his mouth as we waited for his final instructions.

But when he withdrew the pencil and opened his mouth to speak, all that emerged was a tortured gasp.

His eyeballs bulged, and a gurgle escaped from his throat, flecking his lips with blood-stained foam. His body jerked with spasms that pitched him out of his chair and onto the floor. His limbs flailed on the carpet as a horrifying wheezing sound came from his mouth.

I rushed to the door, to get help or tell someone to call an ambulance, but then the room went silent behind me.

Slowly, I turned around.

Gallagher lay still on his back, his eyes wide and unseeing.

It was all over in a matter of seconds.

I f we’d been doctors instead of MBAs, I suppose one of us would have tried CPR or something like that, but it seemed very clear that there was no bringing Gallagher back. A smell of burnt almonds tinged the air. I’d read about that scent in Agatha Christie books and had thought it was more a mystery novel convention than the real smell of cyanide. It turned out that she hadn’t been making it up.

Jake crouched down by the dead man, checking awkwardly for a pulse. Mark stood frozen, motionless in the spot he’d been in when Gallagher took his fatal lick. We both watched as Jake rose slowly to his feet. He shook his head, a stunned expression on his handsome face.

Dahlia arrived on the scene just then. She took one look, dropped the coffee cup she’d been carrying, and then followed it to the floor in a faint. Rather than step over her to get to another phone, I reached over Gallagher’s desk to call 911. Then I called Winslow, Brown security to explain that there was a dead banker on the 39th floor.

Paramedics arrived within minutes, followed closely by uniformed policemen, who were followed in turn by plain-clothes detectives. A photographer captured images of Gallagher’s body sprawled on the carpet. Then a team from the medical examiner’s office zipped up the corpse in a black rubber bag and wheeled it out, but not before the presumptive murder weapon had been extracted from the dead man’s fingers and inserted into a labeled plastic envelope. My little joke about poisoning Gallagher by pencil no longer seemed so funny, although it had been surprisingly prescient.