EIGHT-THIRTY PM. On the sixteenth story of a monster New York skyscraper a lonely light shone at the end of a cavernous floor. The deserted space was a storage center for office furniture; 36 desks piled up, dozens of sofas in heaps, desks, swivel chairs and file cabinets. In this modern bureaucratic wasteland a publicity director for a large record company worked after hours to catch up on urgent affairs. Suddenly, a telephone rang, cutting through the ghostlike gloom. "Hello?" the publicity man answered cautiously.