I scowled at him. I could figure out that much of the deal for myself. Slipping the folder into my pocket, I nodded quickly and slouched back against the wall. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore.

From here on in, I was Vic Lowney.

I waited five minutes, and just before the other passengers started coming back on board I got in line with the people getting on in Chi, and passed through. I sauntered aboard the way Vic Lowney would. The stewardess gave me a pretty smile and welcomed me on board. I reminded her that I was a through passenger from L.A. That shook her up a little. The nose and the lips were all wrong, but the glasses hid the eyes, and the clothes were pretty much the same. I went to my seat. Lowney had reserved one in advance, and the stub was attached to his ticket.

The plane filled up fast. One by one, the engines started up. We moved out onto the runway.

Lowney had left an Angeleno newspaper on his seat. I picked it up and started reading about the Dodgers. A minute later, we were in the air.

I kept the paper open in front of me, but I wasn’t really interested in the doings of Sherry and Snider and Gilliam. I was going over and over Vic Lowney’s dossier in my mind, letting it seep into my brain until it became my own biography.

Your name is Victor Emanuel Lowney. Born 12 October 1927, Encino, California. Mother an Italian nightclub singer, Maria Buonsignore, died 1944 age 40. Father a movie bit player, Ernest Lowney, died 1932, drowning, age 30. You grew up in Pasadena, went to high school there, left in 1944 after three years. 1944-48, small-time crime. Car thefts, smuggling out of Tijuana, mostly girls. Met Charley Hammell October 1948. Originally hired as muscle, but quickly rose in the Hammell organization. For the last six years you’ve been his left-hand man. You have no police record, so he sends you all over the country as his personal representative. Like this trip to Philly.

You’re a bachelor, and you’ve got a big house in Pacific Palisades. You hate filter-tip cigarettes, drink vodka martinis above anything else, and you’ve got a good eye for women. You eat steak for breakfast. You’re hot-tempered but shrewd. You’ve made half a dozen kills, but nothing proven. You were rejected by the army in 1950 on account of heart palpitations, thanks to the special injection Charley Hammell’s doctor gave you before your physical. In general, Vic Lowney, you’re a cold-blooded louse.

I was used to being a louse. In my line of work you don’t get to impersonate nice people.