Except for a few gawkers, rigidly held back by a police cordon, buyers and reps passed and repassed the scene of the crime without a single downward glance, intent on their commercial goals at the next destinations on their itineraries. Saxon and Harrison had gone on to the Trim-Tram showroom on the second floor of FAB. Scott, Hilary, and I were allowed just inside the NYPD barrier by a fat, mustachioed inspector named Betterman, who turned out to be an old friend of Hilary’s, one who used to come to the house, bringing her presents, when she was a little girl and still on good terms with her father. Most of the stairways in FAB are as heavily trafficked as the elevators. But the one between the second floor and the lobby usually is blocked off during Toy Fair, for no discernible reason, by the building management. Whereas every other stairway in the Center has a platform and a twist in the steps halfway between floors, the one we were looking down was a dizzily straight affair—a single oblique shaft describing an angled line plummeting a long way down to the lobby below.
