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evening papers, and stray notes of condolance. There was the same creaky rattan furniture I remembered as a kid, and thick dust. I was glad she hadn’t come here.
    The inner office was worse. I turned on the desk light. I’d been sorting, filing, every day since pulling in from California. Stuffed manila folders were stacked on file cabinets, desk, chairs, everywhere. Loose papers and books littered the floor, along with old tobacco tins, gnawed and broken pipes, a couple of raddled fly swatters, and other aged and even nostalgic junk, like a sack of marbles—selected cat’s eyes and steelies I remembered having back in grammar school. My old man had left me a mess.
    I sat behind the desk in the old swivel chair. The phone directory was on the floor. I heaved it up on the desk and lit a cigarette.
    James Baron was still in this room. A human being doesn’t leave a place in which he’s lived and worked for over a quarter of a century just because he dies.
    For years he’d been after me to throw in with him, help him make something of the agency. I’d been too much of a fool to know for certain that all I wanted to be was a good private cop. So when I finally made up my mind and figured to burst in on him and surprise the hell out of him, he was already three days dead.
    I phoned Hoagy Stills’ home again. His wife said he was still sleeping. She would appreciate it if I’d cease calling. The ringing phone might wake him.
    I checked the directory. There was an Elk Crafford listed at 7 Canawlside Drive, over on Grove Point. I wanted to see him, or his wife. I thought about his wife, remembering her as Ivor’s long-legged kid sister. She’d been a pretty wild kid, and I wondered how she’d be now. Thinking about her letters to Carl reminded me I needed a shower.
    At my apartment in Bahama Shores, I shaved, took a fast shower, and finally quit thinking about what I’d heard of Asa Crafford. I got dressed. I wore my brown sharkskin and a pair of crepe-soled shoes. I felt wide awake; crisp, hard, hot and hungry.
    In the living room, I stared at the phone. It didn’t ring. I decided to give it half a chance.
    I went through the evening paper. Nothing new on the Laketown robbery. Out in the kitchen, I poured half a water glass full of bourbon, took a swallow, had a flash.
    I remembered seeing a large carton of newspapers in a closet down the hall by the fire exit. I got that, hauled it back to the kitchen, and set it on the table.
    There was a summing-up story on the Laketown job in a week-old
Journal
. I took my glass of whisky and the paper into the other room, sat in the one comfortable chair facing the big window overlooking Tampa Bay, and started checking.
    Close to four hundred thousand dollars. A lolloping sack of jack. Sheriff’s Department theorized getaway car headed south, maybe Miami. Whoever pulled it had sure scraped the paint. His one bad slip was creaming a guy named McCarthy, a teller, with a .32. It was hard to figure anybody planning to rob a bank with a .32. Two men in the robbery, so far as was known. They had come up with a fresh witness, a Mrs. Cargy Johnson. Mrs. Johnson said: “I was scared to tell what I saw, but I’ve been thinking it over. It’s really not so much, but I thought it might help. I was in Union Trust Wednesday noon when it was held up and robbed. There were two men. The vault was open, just like the paper said. But what I saw was, they had a big suitcase and that’s what they put the money in. A big brown leather suitcase, with leather straps and brass buckles. On the top were small black initials. Just as plain. It looked as if somebody had tried to scrape them off with a knife. They were ‘K. S. L.,’ “ she told the deputies.
    My hands were cold as I reread those words. And I was out by that trailer in the rain, kicking tin cans, not a care in the world, staring into the trash pit where they burned things at the large brown leather suitcase, three-quarters burned, with