The Meridian keeps its money on five floors and its honesty in a clock.

The clock hangs over the ground-floor stairwell, and when it runs out the shutters come down on every floor at once — steel, hydraulic, a sound like a car door shutting in a quarry. What you are holding when it drops is yours. What is lying behind you belongs to the Meridian.

The Meridian does not post lost property.

Ten men went in. Five came out with something.

Start at the top, because that is where it was done properly.

Gabes cleared his floor and left nothing on it. No dropped bundle, no sealed side room with the light still burning inside it, no man he decided against and walked past twice. Two editions I have written about doors this man chose not to open. This time he opened all of them and carried out every last thing that was behind them.

172.68.

It is the twenty-second-largest take anybody has ever brought out of this building. Only twenty-one have been bigger. And it was clean — sixty-six clean floors in one thousand and fifty attempts on record, which is the rate at which men in this league actually finish what they came in to do.

Nine other crews were working the city that night. He would have beaten all nine.

The man he went past on the stairs was Justin, who was not doing badly either. Justin came out of the Meridian with 142.6, the third-heaviest bag in the building, enough to beat seven of the nine men he was not scheduled against.

He was scheduled against Gabes. 30.08 the wrong way.

In this same week a year ago it was Justin who took the floor off Gabes, by 32.44, and walked out into the morning with it. He has not walked out with anything since the season began. Four jobs, four empty hands, and in the basement of this building there is a deposit box with a brass hundred screwed to the front of it.

Ninety-seven. Three keys short. The clerk has stopped coming down.

Now go two floors below, where the night went wrong in a way men will still be describing at the draft.

Bolek got the room open. That part was never in doubt. He stood in it with the lights off and there were two duffels at his feet, and he had time to take one.

He took Swift's.

There were 6.9 points in it.

The other one had Monangai in it and it weighed 32, and it was still sitting on the tile when the shutters dropped, along with everything else he decided he could do without. 42.48 left on the floor of a room he had personally broken into.

He lost by 36.68.

Look at those two figures and note which is the larger. He did not need a better crew. He needed to pick up the bag by his left foot.

The man on the other side of that floor was Nate, who does not leave bags. Nate came out with 172.36 and two points on the tile behind him, and two points is dust, the sweepings, what falls out of a seam. He is 4-0. Across four weeks he has been matched against the field thirty-six times and been beaten six.

The two heaviest hauls of the night were Gabes's and Nate's, separated by less than half a point, taken in the same hour in the same building. They never saw each other. One of them was taking it off a man who is 0-4 and the other off a man who had just set it down.

On the second floor the shutter caught Mario's coat.

He got through by 0.72 — the narrowest exit anyone made all night — and he got through it carrying substantially less than he had found, because 34.32 of it stayed in the room. This is the man I praised a fortnight ago for the tidiest housekeeping in the league, the one who locked every door behind him and was beaten anyway. He has now been paid for a sloppy job after being punished for a meticulous one.

Daniel was the one still inside when the steel came down. He would have been beaten by seven of the nine other men working that night regardless. He was beaten by the one with his coat in the door.

Jack's floor was carried by a man nobody had brought for it.

Tetairoa McMillan had been in the crew three weeks and contributed roughly what a lookout contributes. That night he took the whole safe off the wall by himself: 36.2, against an average of 7.93. Meanwhile Jaxon Smith-Njigba, the specialist, the reason the job was planned the way it was, sat down on the stairs with 9.1 and stayed there.

Jack came out by 11.38 and is 3-1.

Bryan came out light again. 120.1, third straight empty morning, and one win in nine against the rest of the city. He is not losing because he is careless. He is losing because he keeps being put on the floor with whoever is having the best night of their life.

Bill took his floor by 35.66 with the sixth-largest bag in the building, which is the sixth consecutive variation on the same sentence I have written about him. He is 3-1 and four of the nine men he did not play would have beaten him.

Eric/Blakey brought out 91.94. Lowest in the Meridian. Beaten by all nine. He owes Gabes ten dollars and he has run out of ways to explain how a man can keep finishing last on the night and stay level in the standings.

The shutters went up at dawn and the fourth floor was exactly as Bolek left it.

One duffel. Thirty-two points in it. Nobody came back for it, because nobody is allowed to.

They took the belt off its hook and buckled it on him. Second time he has worn it. No man in this league has worn it more.