Gaia unfolded the note and squinted at the words for the twentieth times. She had to take a few steps down the sidewalk and hold the note up under a streetlamp before she could see well enough to read.

TOM MOORE, APT. 1801, ABERDEEN BLDG.

Pretty sketchy note. Whoever had slipped the piece of paper under Natasha’s front door was a long way from Tolstoy.

Since finding the paper that night, when she’d come home, Gaia had folded and unfolded the sheet so many times that the little piece of paper was already starting to wear thin along the creases. Another couple of hours and she’d have nothing left but some gagged confetti.

Gaia raised the note and squinted at the sloping handwriting in the poor light, trying to see if there was some secret she might decipher from the six short words. Had her father written the note? Maybe. She couldn’t tell. The letters were scribbled, which could mean whoever had written the note had been in a hurry. That could mean someone was after the note writer, and that could mean it had been written by her father. Sure. And it could have been written by Santa Claus. Maybe with a little help from his pal, the Easter bunny.

Gaia scowled at the letters until the message started to blur. Was this an invitation? Was her father asking her to meet him at this location? It was just as likely–probably more likely–that her uncle had written the note and the thing was nothing but an invitation to get herself neatly dissected under a microscope. That was, assuming her uncle really was the killer Loki. Gaia didn’t know that. Not for sure. She took one last look at the note, then jammed the paper into the pocket of her jeans. She wasn’t sure of a damn thing these days.

If mysterious people were going to drive her crazy with cryptic notes, Gaia wished they could at least leave a decent address. It had taken two hours at the library and the help of an old woman who smelled like mothballs before Gaia was able to locate the Aberdeen Building. By the time she climbed up the subway on the west side of Central Park and hunted through the maze of apartment buildings and brownstones, the sun was already long down. Even with an address, it took another twenty minutes to identify the Aberdeen as a skinny, twenty story affair that looked out of place among a crowd of newer and much shorter duplexes.

Gaia stopped on the corner and watched the building as cabs rolled slowly by on the narrow street. Despite its height, the Aberdeen had a weary, worn-down look about it. The building was faced with some kind of gray stone, which had grown smeared and dark from years of air pollution. There were carvings at the corners. Big gray faces. They might have been faces of presidents, or famous explorers, or rich old farts who had put up the cash fro the building. Whoever they were supposed to be, they all had a serious case of acid rain acne and were too eroded for Gaia to make out much more than hollow eyes and grim expressions.

She counted narrow balconies along the flat front of the building until she found the eighteenth floor. Some of the rooms were light. More were dark. One of them might hold her father. Or a killer. Or both.

Either way, Gaia hoped from some answers.

She hustled through the traffic and up onto the sidewalk in front of the Aberdeen. When she reached for the worn brass handle on the front door, it unexpectedly flew open, and a man in a dark red uniform stepped out. “Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?”

Gaia studied the man for a second. There was some kind of unwritten rule: the shoddier the building, the more elaborate the doorman. This guy looked like he was ready to lead French forces at the Ardennes. Or maybe the British in the Boer War. He looked almost old enough to have been at both battles. His red wool uniform was several sizes too big for his buzzard shoulders, and the long, sweeping coat brushed the tops of his boots. Gold braid spilled off the brim of a ridiculous felt hat. There were even some things that looked like medals jangling against the man’s pocket. Gaia wondered what kind of medals a doorman might get. The Silver Star in taxi hailing? The Purple Heart for bad Christmas tips?

The doorman stepped completely out of the old apartment building and let the door swing closed behind him. “You ant something here” he asked, folding his thin, uniformed arms across his thin, uniformed chest.

Gaia shrugged. “Just visiting.”

“And who is it you were visiting?”

“My father lives here. I was going up to see him.”

“You father is it? And what would his name be?” the doorman had an accent that sounded like Dublin by way of a decade in Brooklyn. Gaia started to say something, stopped, and tried to think. What name would her father have used?

“What’s wrong there, miss? Don't you know your own father’s name?”

“Moore. His name’s Tom Moore.”

The doorman’s colorless lips puckered. “I’ve not heard of him.”

“What about Oliver?”

“Mr. Oliver?”

“No, Oliver Moore.”

The man shook his head, sending the gold braid on his cap into a dance. “Never heard that name, either.” He squinted at Gaia with pale gray eyes. “You sure you’ve come to the right building, miss?”

Gaia gritted her teeth and stared through the glass door behind the man . She could see a long, marble-floored hallway leading back to a pair of elevators and the old metal button between them that would take her up to her father. “This is the right building,” she said. “My father lives here, and I want to see him.” she started to move around the doorman, but the old man stepped back against the door and shook his head again.

“You can’t come in. Not unless someone inside says it’s ok.”

“My father–”

“I don’t know your father,” said the doorman. “You give me a name I know and I’ll ring a bell, see if someone wants you on the inside; otherwise you need to get out of my door.”