“We were talking a little while ago. You said things about the way it would be. I want that. I don’t want to have to worry anymore. I want to know that we made a decision here. I want to be taken care of, me, who and what I am.”

It was no kind of a trade. She wanted something that was more than an assurance. “All right, what we said.”

“And no more of this—what happened here in Port Smith. I don’t want to be deceived, either. I mean it.”

He said all right, and she asked him what it was that he wanted her to do. He said that he wanted her to help him to steal something.

A streetlamp down the block cast a set of faint lines on the ceiling and it was all he needed to find his way around the room. There were many more cabinets than he had imagined. He had to go to the window, take a key off the ring, then return to the cabinets to try it. He was going as quickly as he could, but he felt depressed and empty. The man was out of reach. Earlier, someone had brought in the news that James Scanlon had confessed to the rape-murder of Mary Shoftel. The attention had focused on Leland. In the confusion of remembering what his father had said about Scanlon and relating it to what he himself would be doing before the end of the night—this—Leland had had to think that people lied terribly about the amount of television they watched. It had seemed as if everyone had seen him. What his father had quoted the doctor as saying about Scanlon slipping away and disintegrating had reached out to Leland and grasped at his own mortality. It had made him see the frailty of his own orderly life. It made him feel a fierce, spine-freezing fear from which anger had seemed the only escape. The anger was still receding, weighing heavily. He was working steadily, evenly, sanely, but he had the feeling that he could hold the object of his search in both hands and not be able to see it for what it was.

There should be a folder. With MacIver dead, it could have been moved to another location, but what Leland knew said no. The number of file cabinets supported him. Nothing was ever thrown away. Nothing was put beyond arm’s length.

At ten minutes to four a Port Smith Police Department prowl car cruised beneath the window. Leland did not see it, only heard it. He stayed still until it was gone. Manitou was using the same cars, six-cylinder automatic Fords, and Leland would recognize their tubercular exhaust note anywhere. He was a quarter finished and he had not seen MacIver’s name. He knew that he had had no right to expect an easy time, but he was already fighting with a sense of failure.