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At the same time as I noticed this, I heard a police siren in the distance, and I hesitated for a moment, but then I went over to the bed, stood on it and reached up to the loose panel. I pushed it out of position and peered into the dimness above, where I could just barely make out pipes and ducts and aluminum casing. I stuck my hand up and felt inside and around the edges. My fingers came into contact with something. I reached in further, straining my arm muscles, and grabbed whatever it was, pulling it down out of the square hole. It was a large, brown padded envelope, which I let fall on to the upturned mattress.

Then I paused and listened. There were two sirens wailing now, maybe three, and they were definitely in the vicinity.

I reached back up to the ceiling and repositioned the loose panel as best I could. Then I got down off the bed and picked up the envelope. I quickly ripped it open and tossed the contents out on to the mattress. The first thing I saw was a little black notebook, then a thick roll of bills – I think they were all fifties – and, finally, a large plastic container with an air-lock seal across the top, a bigger version of the one Vernon had produced from his wallet in the bar the previous afternoon. Inside it were – I don’t know – maybe three hundred and fifty, four hundred, five hundred of the tiny white pills …

I stared down at them, with my mouth open – stared down at what was possibly as many as five hundred doses of MDT-48. Then I shook my head and started doing rapid calculations. Five hundred, say, by five hundred … that was, what … $250,000? A mere three or four of these things, on the other hand, and I could have my book finished in a week. I looked around me, acutely aware all of a sudden that I was in Vernon’s bedroom, and that the sirens – which had been getting louder as I opened the envelope – were now winding down, and in unison.

After another moment of hesitation I gathered all the stuff up off the mattress and put it back into the envelope. Carrying it under my arm, I went into the living-room and over to the window. Way down at street level I could see three police cars clustered together, their blue lights rotating. There was a buzz of activity now as uniformed officers appeared out of nowhere, as passers-by stopped to look and comment, and as the cross-street traffic on Ninetieth began clogging up.

I rushed over to the kitchen and searched for a plastic bag. I found one from the local A & P and stuffed the envelope into it. I went down the hallway and out the main door, making sure that I left it open. At the far end of the corridor – in the opposite direction from the elevators – there was a large metal door I’d seen earlier, and I ran towards it. The door opened on to the emergency stairs. To the left of the stairs, there was a small area where the garbage chute was located, and a concrete alcove with a broom and some boxes in it. I dithered for a second, before deciding to run up the stairs to the next level, and then up to the next level again. There were four or five unmarked cardboard boxes stacked in the alcove. I put the plastic bag in behind these boxes, and without looking back I ran down the stairs again, taking the steps two or three at a time. I stumbled out through the metal door, still running, and back into the corridor.

With a couple of yards to go, I heard the elevator doors opening, and then a rising tide of voices. I got to the door of the apartment and slipped in. I went as fast as I could down the hallway and into the living-room – where of course at the shock of seeing Vernon again my heart lurched violently sideways.

Totally out of breath now, I stood in the middle of the room, panting, wheezing. I put my hand on my chest and leant forward, as though trying to ward off a coronary. Then I heard a gentle tap on the door outside and a circumspect voice saying, ‘Hello … hello,’ – a pause, and then – ‘police.’

‘Yep,’ I said, my voice catching a little between breaths, ‘in here.’

Just to be busy, I picked up the suit I’d dropped earlier, and the bag with the breakfast in it. I placed the bag on the glass table and the suit on the near side of the couch.

A young cop in uniform, about twenty-five years old, appeared from the hallway. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, consulting a tiny note-book, ‘ … Edward Spinola?’

‘Yes,’ I said, feeling guilty all of a sudden – and compromised, and like a bit of a fraud, and a low-life – ‘yes … that’s me.’

[ 6 ]

OVER THE NEXT TEN OR FIFTEEN MINUTES, the apartment was invaded by what seemed like a small army of uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives and forensics technicians.