After a day of offering no comments and suspicious denials, officials at the university had finally issued a statement confirming the rumors. On the previous Tuesday night, thieves had broken into the Firestone Library while the campus was responding to 911 reports of an active gunman. It was evidently a diversion, and one that worked. The university would not disclose how much of its Fitzgerald collection had been stolen, only that it was “substantial.” The FBI was investigating, and so on. Details were scarce.

There was no mention of Mark and Jerry. Denny was suddenly anxious and wanted to hit the road. He paid his check, and as he left the restaurant he dropped his Sat-Trak into a waste can outside the front door. There were no more ties to the past. He was alone and free and excited about the turn of events, but also nervous now that the news was breaking. Getting out of the country was imperative. That was not what he had planned, but things could not be lining up more perfectly. Plans—nothing ever goes as planned, and the survivors are the ones who can adapt on the fly.

Trey was trouble. He would have quickly become a nuisance, then baggage, then a liability. Denny thought of him only in passing now. As darkness began to dissipate and he entered the northern sprawl of Pittsburgh, Denny slammed the door on any memory of Trey. Another perfect crime.

At 9:00 a.m. he walked into the office of the East Mills Secured Storage operation in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont. He explained to the clerk that he needed to store some fine wine for a few months and was looking for a small space where the temperature and humidity were controlled and monitored. The clerk showed him a twelve-by-twelve unit on the ground floor. The rate was $250 a month for a minimum of a year. Denny said no thanks, he wouldn’t need the space for that long. They agreed on $300 a month for six months. He produced a New Jersey driver’s license, signed the contract in the name of Paul Rafferty, and paid in cash. He took the key back to the storage unit, unlocked it, set the temperature on fifty-five degrees and the humidity at 40 percent, and turned off the light. He walked the hallways taking note of the surveillance cameras and eventually left without being seen by the clerk.

At 10:00 a.m. the discount wine warehouse opened, and Denny was its first customer of the day. He paid cash for four cases of rotgut chardonnay, talked the clerk out of two empty cardboard boxes, and left the store. He drove around for half an hour looking for a spot to hide, away from traffic and surveillance cameras. He ran his truck through a cheap car wash and parked by the vacuum machines. This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned fit nicely in one of the empty wine boxes. Tender Is the Night and The Last Tycoon were placed in another. Gatsby got a box of his own, once the twelve bottles were removed and left on the rear seat.