Ghazi shook his head. “Check every suitcase. He may have forgotten to lock one.”

They tried each one. All had combinations or tiny locks made for tiny keys.

“Next time, I bring a knife,” Ghazi said. “We slice here.” His finger traced the narrow band of cloth against the teeth of the zipper. Aziz lit a cigarette. He looked at his watch.

“Ghazi,” he said. “I swear to God, we have to go back.”

“He hides something here.”

“This is Rafik. You know this.”

Ghazi sat down on a suitcase. “I should have brought something for these locks. I could open them easily. I brought nothing.” He went back to Mourad’s car. Aziz watched him rummage in the glove compartment. “He has no woman. So there is no hairpin.”

“Please,” Aziz said. “It is better not to know.”

“I want to move a barrel,” Ghazi said. “To see how heavy it is.”

Aziz stubbed out his cigarette. They moved aside some suitcases and two of the boxes and positioned themselves around a drum.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Ghazi said.

They braced and hoisted. It went over their heads in a swoosh. It felt like a foam cup.

“Empty,” Aziz said.

“Maybe,” Ghazi said.

They placed it back on the floor. They tapped it. The metal gave up no sound. Aziz backed away.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Ghazi laughed. “Relax.”

He started putting the suitcases back. He put a blue one next to two black ones. Aziz put a brown one next. “No, that one was here.” Ghazi motioned to the far right.

Aziz tried to think. Why this urgency? And yet, not urgency, because Ghazi came unprepared in a way. The key, but not the hairpins. The Rafik and Heather reunion, but not the knife to cut open and really see. Was it a show? Something to convince Aziz that Ghazi was upright? Something to say, I will not tolerate wrongdoing? Or did he want to control Rafik, by knowing his wrongs. If so, he still did not know them.

When he had confronted Rafik about the suitcases long before Mourad and Ghazi came, Aziz had seen hash. In plastic. In one of the suitcases. But only one suitcase. The rest of the suitcases, obviously, Rafik had brought here. Maybe these suitcases had no hash but something worse. Ghazi said the smell here was not hash. They were both thinking chemicals.

Ghazi’s words were not the words of a man posing. Ghazi’s words belonged to someone puzzled, who wanted the truth. Ghazi had been outraged at Rafik’s buying two suits for five thousand dollars on Newbury Street. Ghazi could have kept that from Aziz. Ghazi had talked of sending Rafik to prison. It had been Aziz who had defended Rafik. Ghazi had been intent on finding out what was in the U-Stor-It. It was he, Aziz, who was acting like Rafik’s accomplice.