Thibaut helped himself to a chunk of the pecorino I was eating. “I can’t carry you down the stairs. I’m not sure the case would hold your weight, but I’m sure I can’t.”

“I’ll come down the front stairs and get out to the garden through the basement door. When you’re at the bottom of the back stairs, I’ll try to creep along in your shadow. I’ll wait to climb into the case until you’re at the back gate. You can wheel me down the alley to your car.”

I went into my bathroom to rub mascara on my cheekbones so they wouldn’t reflect light back from the streetlamps; I hoped it wouldn’t come off in Thibaut’s case. I put on a navy windbreaker and stuck my keys and my new wallet, with cash and passport inside, in my hip pocket. I checked that the safety on the Smith & Wesson was on, pulled a Cubs cap low over my forehead, and ran as lightly as I could down the front stairs.

The only difficult moment came as I passed Mr. Contreras’s front door. Mitch let out a sharp bark and a whine, demanding to join me. Once I went past him and into the basement, he quieted down.

When I slid back the bolt on the basement exit, Thibaut was just bumping his case down the last flight of back-porch steps. I waited for him to reach the walk, then slipped into his shadow. He worked the move like a pro, not looking over his shoulder for me but pulling out his phone and complaining to someone he addressed as Lily, “You must be stoned as well as drunk to want to practice the Schulhoff piece this hour of the night. But, my little chickadee, to hear is to obey. I’m on my way.”

At the back gate, I managed to stuff my sixty-eight-inch frame into the fifty-six-inch case. As Thibaut had warned, I could barely breathe. The few minutes where he bumped along the broken concrete into the alley and, panting and wheezing, laid the case across the flattened-out entrance to the backseat were an agony for my spine and neck. Once I was on the seat, he unhooked the case’s hinges. I pushed the lid up a few inches with my knees so that I could straighten out my spine.

Again without looking over his shoulder, Thibaut asked for my office address. I told him he could drop me on Belmont, where I’d flag a cab.

“V. I. Warshawski, I didn’t seriously risk the life of this twenty-two-hundred-dollar case to drive you four blocks. Tell me where you’re going.”