When we got home I insisted first on inspecting the Rustmobile to make sure no contraband had been slipped into the trunk. Then I brought Mitch and Peppy up to the third floor with me while I made a circuit of my apartment. I was ashamed of my jumpy vulnerability, but every time I thought of those bags of white powder, the skin on the back of my neck crawled.

My neighbor put fresh charcoal on the grill outside his back door and started cooking chicken. Before going down I called Lotty, hoping for sympathy—and a prescription for my sore neck. She gave not just sympathy but alarm, trying to persuade me to spend the night in the safety of her eighteenth–story apartment. I thought I’d be happier in my own home, among my own things, but told her I’d keep the dogs with me until things simmered down.

“As far as your neck goes, my dear—aspirin and ice. Ice now and before you go to bed. And call me in the morning.”

I felt irrationally bereft when she hung up. She’d offered me a bed—why did I want technical medicine instead of love? Ice, when the left side of my neck was sore to the touch? What did Lotty know about neck injuries, anyway. I stomped into the kitchen, filled a freezer bag with ice, and pressed it against the sore area, as if determined to prove her wrong. Instead, by the time Mr. Contreras phoned up to say the chicken was cooked, I could move my head more easily. Which made thinking more possible as well.

The cassettes that I’d made of Lemour in my office—I needed to do something with those. A copy for my lawyer, and maybe one for Murray. Would he run a story on the break–in? Was I testing him, to see whose orders he was following?

After dinner I went back upstairs and hooked the cassette pack up to my VCR and ran the tape. Knowing I had sat passively while Lemour grew ever more demented made me feel the violations of the afternoon all over again. My stomach clenched. I could hardly bring myself to keep watching. When I heard the call that made Lemour let me go, though, I sat up and played it back several times.

His caller kept cutting him off. Perhaps he didn’t like Lemour’s thin nasal voice. But maybe he didn’t want Lemour revealing too much on an open line. Lemour’s evil grin, and the way he said he’d look forward to that—whatever that was—made it clear they had some more elaborate frame in store. Although what could be more elaborate than drugs planted in my office I didn’t know. Maybe I should go to Lotty’s after all.