I considered taking the wallet with me. I didn’t care about the money but maybe there was something in there that I needed.

But what if I got caught?

I’d tell the truth.

That thought made me laugh.

It seemed like I was on the commode for hours. The fear in my gut was worse than many intestinal viruses I had contracted. I felt relieved and weakened when the bout was through. I’d had enough time to check everything, so I just took one of Wexler’s business cards and returned the wallet to the dead man’s pocket.

I passed through the house wiping every surface that I had touched and many that I might have touched. I put the dining room chair back in its place and moved out of Suite P4 with less fuss than a butterfly leaving a dank cave.

I made it down the stairs without taking a breath. I was at the swinging doors to the back alley entrance when a man yelled, “Hey you!”

I turned, seeing a tall and slender white man dressed all in white. He wasn’t a cook but it certainly was a uniform he was wearing.

“Yes sir,” I said. The words just came out of me. Betrayed by four centuries of training, but I didn’t worry about that right then.

“Who are you?” the white man asked.

He had a pencil-thin mustache and a crooked face, though you could see by the tilt of his brimless hat that he thought he was handsome. There was a thin gold band on the ring finger of his left hand.

“Cort Stillman,” I said, hoping that he didn’t wonder about a Negro named Cort.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for a Mr. John Stover.” I handed over the blue envelope.

Lance Wexler’s business card felt like a bomb in my pocket.

“There’s no John Stover living here,” he said, twisting his already ugly mouth. “And even if there was, what are you doing out back?”

“The lady out front said that there was no Stover. And I told her that I knew that he was staying with a woman on the fourth floor. That’s what they said when they brought the package in. You know it’s my job to make sure the package gets to the man it was addressed to. They told me at the front desk that they wouldn’t take it, so I came in the back way to sneak up and knock on some doors.”