“My ass and your face,” Jerry said sweetly. They both laughed. As long as they were woofing on each other, things couldn’t be too bad. They could pretend things weren’t, anyhow.

Tim drove off toward the freeway. He’d head back to his place in Lawndale, to his wife, to peace and quiet. Jerry started in the same direction, but he couldn’t go home yet. He just hoped the CIA was still renting that apartment on Ocean. Without documents that proclaimed who you were, how could even you tell?

He found the white stucco apartment building with the blue roof, and also found a parking space. He walked in through the gateless entrance and went to apartment 127. The door opened almost as soon as he used the coded knock. The tough guy standing there wasn’t somebody Jerry’d seen before. “If you’re selling something, we don’t want any,” the fellow growled.

The mad demon that infested Jerry’s brain made him wish he had Watchtower tracts to shove at the (probably) CIA man. Since he didn’t, he just said, “I’m off the Glomar Explorer. I’m here to get my real license and my credit card and my Social Security card back.”

“Oh.” The man looked at him differently. “What’s your name—your real one?” Jerry told him. The guy checked a list, nodded to himself, and stepped aside. “C’mon in.” He turned. “We got another one, Vic.”

For all Jerry could prove, Vic hadn’t moved from behind that table in the past two and a half months. He held out his hand. “Lemme have the documents we gave you back in June.” Jerry handed them over. Vic nodded to himself. “All here—good.” He looked up. “Have any trouble with ’em?”

“No. I didn’t use them much, but they worked when I did.”

“Good deal. That’s what we want to hear.” Vic opened his cash box with a key and flipped through envelopes till he found the one with Steinberg so neatly written on it. He took out Jerry’s authentic documents and gave them to him. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” Jerry checked to make sure they really were his before he put them in his wallet. Vic chuckled, for all the world as if the idea that the CIA might play identity games with him was the funniest thing in the world. Jerry stuck the wallet in his pocket and got the hell out of there.