“Do you know where this address is?”

The driver nodded. “It’s in Wedding, in Mitte.”

“Where’s that?”

“In the center of the city.”

“Perfect. Let’s go there.”

Twenty minutes later, Desmond stood outside the dry cleaner, which was a narrow store with a plate glass façade. The buildings along the street were run-down, but the area was bustling; the sidewalks swarmed with younger people and immigrants from around the world. A cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the air above them, and farther up, satellite dishes lined the roofs. Through open second-story windows, Desmond could hear radio and TV shows in foreign languages—Arabic and Turkish, he thought.

Behind the counter in the dry cleaner, he found a short, bald Asian man with round glasses sewing a shirt. The shopkeeper set down his needle and thread, got off his stool, and nodded once at Desmond.

“I need to pick up.”

“Tag?”

“I don’t have a tag.”

The man slid over to a keyboard and monitor on the counter. “Name?”

“Desmond Hughes.” He spelled it.

As he typed, the shopkeeper said, “ID?”

Desmond stood silently, contemplating what to do.

The shopkeeper eyed him. “No ID, no pickup.”

Desmond held up the police ID he’d taken from the officer in his hotel room. “This is a police investigation. We’re looking for Desmond Hughes.”

The Asian man raised his hands slightly. “Okay, okay.”

The shopkeeper repeated the name, spelling out each letter deliberately as he finished typing the name. He shook his head.

“There’s nothing. No Desmond Hughes.”

Desmond wondered if he had misread the clue. Maybe he was supposed to meet someone here—not pick up his dry cleaning. “How many people work here?”

That seemed to scare the man. “No one. Only me.”

“Look, this has nothing to do with your business or employees. Is there someone else in the back I can talk to?”

“No. No one.”

Desmond glanced behind him, out the large front window, just in time to see a police patrol car roll by. He turned, waiting for it to pass.

He wouldn’t get anything else from the dry cleaner. Maybe it was just a random coupon and had nothing to do with who he was or what was going on. Finally, he said, “Okay, thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

On the street, he moved with the throngs of people, trying to stay out of the line of sight of cars passing by. Two blocks from the dry cleaner, he spotted a mobile phone store, where he bought a disposable smartphone. They were common in Europe; tourists and temporary workers often used them to avoid roaming charges for calls and data. The phone and a prepaid GSM SIM card severely depleted his cash supply. Money would become a real problem soon. He made a note to only use the mobile data in an emergency until he solved his cash problem.

He bought a döner kebab from a street vendor, wolfed it down, and slipped into a crowded coffee shop with free WiFi. He locked himself in the single toilet bathroom, ensuring no security cameras could see his actions or record his conversations. His first instinct was to search the internet for himself, to dig into the mystery of who he was—and to look up Peyton Shaw. But he had to cover the bases of survival first. He needed to get off the street as soon as possible.