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staring at the attaché case. I actually tried to open it, then remembered locking it and consigning the key to limbo. It was a shame. I couldn’t very well leave either of Brassard’s bags lying around. If the case were open I could transfer the heroin to one of his bags and let the case lose itself. This way I had three bags to carry. It would be no problem at first, but it might be trouble when I switched trains.
    I packed all of my stuff and all of Brassard’s stuff into his two suitcases. Since I had come with next to nothing, this wasn’t the hardest thing in the world. Then I went back down to the lobby, let a bellboy carry my bags to the inevitable waiting taxi, and wandered over to the desk. The monkey hoped I had enjoyed my stay.
    “Wonderful town,” I told him, lying in my teeth. “I needed the rest. Feel like a new man.”
    That much was true.
    “Going back home now?”
    “Back to Philly,” I told him. I’d used a good address off Rittenhouse Square when I checked in.
    “Come back and see us.”
    I nodded. He should sit on a hot stove until I came back. He should hold his breath.
    I went out the side entrance. The cab was there with my bags nestled together in the trunk. I gave the bellhop a buck and hoped he would forget all about the luggage.
    At the railway station I bought a ticket straight through to Philadelphia. I carried my baggage on the train. It was tough to lug three pieces without looking awkward but I managed it somehow. The conductor came by, took my train ticket and gave me a seat check good to Philadelphia. I settled back and let the train chug its way past Egg Harbor and Haddonfield. Then we were in North Philly and I was leaving the train. Me and my three little suitcases. I remembered the story of Benjamin Franklin as a young man running through the streets of Philadelphia with a loaf of bread under each arm and another one in his mouth. I knew precisely what he looked like. And I hoped Philly was used to the sight by now.
    I tried to get excited but I couldn’t raise the necessary enthusiasm. There was no problem, no sweat, no headache. Who was going to remember another proper young man with three suitcases? Who would Brassard’s men question—commuters? Conductors?
    No problem.
    If some cutie-pie figured out the orthographic relationship between L. Keith Brassard and Leonard K. Blake, he might trace me through to the railway station, might find a clerk who knew I’d bought a ticket to Philly. But nobody in the world was going to figure that I’d gone to New York.
    No problem.
    In less than three minutes I was off the train, down the stairwell, through the tunnel, and on the opposite platform. I waited there for less than five minutes before a train for New York pulled up and I got on. I put my suitcases up on the luggage rack and relaxed in my seat. When the conductor came by I let him sell me a ticket straight through to Boston. It wasn’t necessary, not in the least, but I wanted to play everything to the hilt.
    It sounds like a spy movie. Cloak and dagger. Bob Mitchum in a trenchcoat.
    I thought about Mona and wondered how long it would be before I saw her again. I thought about the first time on the beach, and the times in my hotel room. I thought about the way she moved and the tricks her eyes played.
    She was right as rain with the Bob Mitchum line. I was overplaying things. We had nothing at all to worry about. I was on my way to New York without leaving a trace of a trail. Brassard was out looking for wrong trees to bark up. We had it aced.
    All we had to do now was get away with murder.

5
    I checked into the Collingwood Hotel as Howard Shaw. The Collingwood was a good second-class hotel on Thirty-fifth Street just west of Fifth. My room was thirty-two dollars a week; it was clean and comfortable. I had a central location without being in the middle of things, the way I would have been in a Times Square hotel. I stood that much less chance of running into old