The Legacy by Stephen Frey Page B

couldnt wait to be with her again. They would tell each other many things tonight. Things they had always wanted to say, but never had.
    The elevator stopped on eight, and the doors slid open to a dimly lit floor. As Cole stepped into the hallway and the elevator doors closed behind him, he suddenly realized how quiet it was here. The only sound was the hum from the few fluorescent bulbs still lighted. He moved through the glass doors leading to the inner offices, turned right, and walked down a long dark corridor toward the screening room he had used this afternoon to view the tape.
    Halfway there Cole stopped suddenly. A shadow at the end of the corridor seemed to be moving. He squinted. There it was again. He swallowed hard as he realized the moving shadow was only being made by a bulb about to die. Stay calm, he told himself. Control your fear.
    He moved forward once more, checking back over his shoulder every so often. Finally he reached the screening room and moved inside, flipping on the light as he entered. He walked directly to the rows of videocassette cases lining the shelves and pulled one out. As he gazed at it, he laughed to himself. This was the tape he had retrieved from the Chase safe-deposit box earlier in the day. The one he had hidden in the stacks of the New York Public Library was a decoy, an old presentation a Gilchrist investment banker had produced for a buy-side client. If anyone had followed him into the library and watched him hide that tape behind the atlases, then retrieved it thinking it was the tape of the Kennedy assassination, they would be sorely disappointed.
    Cole flipped on the television and the VCR, then pulled the tape from its case and inserted it into the slot. He wanted to make certain no one had pulled a switch. Almost instantly the limousine was turning left in front of the building, and a wave of relief coursed through his body. The idea of hiding the real tape here and taking another one away had occurred to him as the cleaning woman had pushed for immediate access to the screening room. When he had opened the door, hed seen her glance down at what she thought was the Dealey Tapeas he was going to call the cassette when he began his auction tomorrow with the media. He was fairly certain that the woman would never have thought to check the tapes in the screening room, but you never knew.
    His shoulders sagged and he leaned back against the wall for a moment. The last few hours had seemed interminable without the Dealey Tape actually in his possession, and he suddenly realized how drained he was, physically and mentally. But he would probably improve when Fox offered ten million dollars for the Dealey Tapeand feel even better when ABC offered more.
    When the tape had ejected from the VCR, Cole replaced it in its black plastic case, turned off the television and the VCR, and headed toward the screening room door. In the event that someone had followed him to the library and taken the tape from behind the atlases and now realized he had been fooled, Cole was going to be careful. He was going to stay at the Marriott Marquis tonight and would get a room for Nicki as well. There was no reason to take a foolhardy chance by returning to the apartment. The blond man who had chased him down Fifth Avenue could easily find out where he livedafter all, two mobsters in sunglasses hadand it wasnt as if one scrawny doorman was going to stop someone looking for this piece of history. By this time tomorrow a megadeal for the Dealey Tape would be struck. It would be too late for those who might want to keep it from the public, or to acquire it for themselves so that they could make the deal and get the money.
    Cole flipped off the screening room light, stepped into the hallwayand nearly ran into a short dark man with a scar slicing from the bridge of his nose down his left cheek all the way to his jaw.
    Before the man could react, Cole slammed his scarred cheek with a hard right fist. It was