He looked around for the case that would hold brochures and maps. There it was, on the wall by the concierge’s stand. He plucked a city map from it before going up to his room. The room was nicer than the ones he’d used on his cross-country journey, but of the same kind.

He got the hotel’s address from a notepad on the dresser. A moment later, he found it on the map. He used the pen that had lain next to the pad to make a dot in the right place. Then he looked to see where he’d be going in the morning.

1125 Sixteenth Street NW. He’d memorized that after finding it on one of his visits to the UCLA Research Library. The map told him the address lay between M and N Streets. It wasn’t very far away, either; he hadn’t come to this part of town by accident.

Down to the restaurant for a steak and a Michelob, which was the best beer they had. Then back to the room again. He sprawled out on the bed. “Damn!” he told the ceiling. “I made it!” He figured he’d earned the right to be surprised. The Corvair had run like a champ. The CIA hadn’t caught up with him.

Tomorrow … Tomorrow, in Roger Zelazny’s immortal words from Lord of Light, the fit would hit the Shan.

He dressed for the occasion, as best he could with what he’d quickly thrown into the suitcase. He had a blue dress shirt. He had a pair of brown cords. They weren’t dress slacks, but they weren’t jeans, either. He had shoes that weren’t Blue Tips and socks that weren’t white. And he had the tweed jacket his father had got him for Chanukah. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he had trouble recognizing the serious-seeming young man who looked back.

“Good,” he said, and went downstairs.

He had both manila envelopes with him. After the valet brought his car, he put one on the front seat and the other with the spare tire in the trunk, where the engine should have been. He hoped his cash would be safer in the car than in his room, where the cleaning lady might snoop through his stuff while he was gone.

He also had the city map. He’d memorized his route, but he wanted to be able to work out where he was if he had to detour because of an accident or construction or something. He thought of it as being a suspenders-and-belt man. His father probably would have said it sounded familiar.

“There it is!” he said, when he got where he was going. The building was four stories tall, and looked to date from the early years of the century.