He put his hand on top of his head like an ice pack. “Aspirin.”

So I would play delivery boy. I only hoped this errand wasn’t meant to get rid of me just long enough for Steve and his money to move on without me. If Sandy had told him about the nine millimeter on my nightstand, he might think I wasn’t here for the advertised purpose. Which I wasn’t.

Of course, that would require Sandy telling Steve she’d been in my room, which would not thrill him, since he was the one paying for the pleasure of her company; and anyway, I was representing the Chicago Outfit, wasn’t I? Why wouldn’t I travel heavy?

I returned in forty minutes or so with three fried-egg sandwiches and paper cups of coffee from a diner up the road and Bayer aspirin from a Katz Drug. When Steve sat on the edge of the bed, to eat his sandwich, setting his coffee on the bedside stand, I picked up his hat to make room for myself, tossing it onto a chair.

“Don’t you know it’s unlucky,” I said, “to leave your hat on the bed?”

Through a mouthful of white bread and fried egg, Steve said, “Do I look like some superstitious chump?”

Well, he didn’t look superstitious. A glimpse at the fedora’s sweatband had revealed “CAH” and “LEVINE HAT COMPANY, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.” Not being a chump myself, I knew at once Steve Strand’s initials were not CAH.

Nobody had much to say. Sandy turned on the TV while she ate and a sickeningly folksy Arthur Godfrey kept us company by way of a bunch of blather and Julius LaRosa singing “Eh, Cumpari!” When “Strike It Rich” came on, it was a relief.

Meanwhile, Steve prowled and paced, pausing on occasion to peek through the Venetian blinds at the rear parking lot. Finally I stepped up next to him. “Checking for cops?”

“No, no—insurance investigators, maybe.”

About a quarter after eleven, Johnny Hagan arrived, wearing the same working man’s clothes as last night but minus his ACE CAP. He had a tan leather two-suit bag over one arm, a matching briefcase in one hand, and a brown-paper-bagged bottle in the other. Still barefoot, Steve strode over, annoyed.

“Where the hell have you been?” he blurted. “We been sitting around all morning with our thumbs up our asses!”

The big good-looking cabbie cowered, as if this pudgy punk was a threat; of course Steve did have a gun in his sport coat pocket.

“I’m sorry, pal,” Hagan said. “That was some laundry list of errands you gave me. I got that luggage you wanted. Hey, and I rented you a swell ride—a ’52 Plymouth sedan, two-tone green.” He held out a handful of pills. “Plus I got you Bennies off a bellboy.”

“Gimme!” Steve said. He snatched the pills from the cabbie’s palm and stuffed them in a pocket. At least he didn’t just toss them down his throat like Vitamin Flintheart in the funnies.