They came at length to 22nd Street, which is narrow. And shortly they were drawn up before the Brewster Hotel, which is squat.

The buildings in that shabby section are only a few stories high. The garbage cans abounded.

While the Brewster may not be the worst hotel in New York, it is where the winos probably stop when they have money.

Heller removed his baggage and paid the driver — who probably already had been paid — and was shortly at the desk in the narrow excuse for a lobby.

The clerk, a man whose complexion was totally gray, looked at him with sunken eyes and then reached for a key. It must be all set up, even the exact room!

A card was pushed at him and Heller registered with a flourish. Al Capone. Address: Sing Sing.

The clerk gave him a key, not even bothering to read the registration card.

Heller squeezed his baggage into the elevator, worked out it must be the fourth floor and was shortly in his room.

What a shabby room! A double bed against the far wall. One easy chair. One straight back. A side table by the easy chair, an 1890 bathroom and a TV.

Heller put his baggage on the bed and went over to the double window. Directly across the street, the building there was exactly the same height: it had a flat roof and parapet — the exact requirements for a sniper post.

But Heller gave it no special heed. He tried to turn on the TV. The picture and sound came on but it was a black and white TV.

Heller tapped it on the side. Then he fiddled with the settings and got it all out of kilter. Then he opened a panel and found some more settings and twisted those with a tool from his tool kit.

I couldn’t comprehend what he was up to. Rigging a bomb? Doing something equally sensible?

And then it came to me. No stereo picture, no color. He thought it was broken!

He finally got the interior settings straight again and then the exterior knobs and got the picture and sound back.

He pulled the TV, which was on casters, slightly into the room and adjusted the easy chair. He had the back of that chair to the windows! My Gods, didn’t he realize that’s where the shot would come from?

And then this utter simpleton sat and watched the evening news in all its gory details.

Then he found a motion picture on the channels and sat yawning while the Mafia won World War II for America in Italy.

I did not wait for the end of that. Gripping my paper picture, I sped through the tunnel to Faht’s office.

I slammed the picture in front of Faht’s face. “Who is this man?” I demanded.

He shrugged and indicated the cabinets marked Student Files. They contain, amongst other things, a rogues gallery of customers so that we do not go adrift and sell to the wrong people.

It took me half an hour of digging — and how I longed for a proper computer system, illegal though it might be to install one on this planet.

I found him!

Unmistakable!

He had visited Turkey on two occasions to inspect the work of buyers for their mob.

It was Razza Louseini! Consigliere of the mob of Faustino “The Noose” Narcotici. The New York Mafia lot that is the outlet for I. G. Barben Pharmaceutical!

Important people.

The direct-line connection to Rockecenter’s disguised control of the drug industry!

And the consigliere, the advisor and administrative head of the most powerful mob in New York, had personally gone down to act as the finger man on Heller!

One of our best customers had been given the job of knocking off Heller!

It was just, of course, but none of these people would know any part of this connection to Heller. Lombar had known. He had quite understood the fury that would boil in the Rockecenter camp when an imposter showed up. The Rockecenter name is sacred!

I felt an awe of Lombar. He had fed Heller straight into the fire. For a moment, at the FBI in Washington, I had thought Lombar had gone wrong. But no! The power of the Apparatus chief was reaching straight through, handled unwittingly by puppets!

And then the awe turned into sickness. Heller had a contact in the Grand Council we had not known about. And I did not have the code!

There was no possible way to get Heller’s baggage ransacked in time.

This planet was a goner!

But who cared about the planet? It was I, Soltan Gris, who would be dead in the echo of a fatal rifle shot through that window!

At 7:10 New York time, there was a knock on Heller’s hotel room door. A sloppy delivery boy with Gulpinkle’s Delicatessen on his coat was handing Heller a bag.

Heller took it!

“That’ll be two bucks and a four-bit tip,” said the boy.

Heller made out that this was two dollars and fifty cents, paid him and closed the door. He opened the bag and found a plastic container of coffee and two jelly rolls.

No hotel like that ever had service like this! Was the stuff poisoned? Drugged?

Heller sniffed the coffee. He broke open a roll and sniffed it. Then the (bleeped) fool proceeded to consume them. He didn’t pass out or drop dead, so I realized they had just been making sure he didn’t leave his room or walk about to be seen.

He put on a clean baseball pullover. He finished dressing and combed his hair. He spin-brushed his teeth.

He arranged the room. He put the easy chair with its back to the window, put the side table against it to the left hand. He put the straight-back chair in front of it, facing it. Then he took the two glass ashtrays and put them on the side table near the easy chair.

Then, possibly finding waiting heavy, he seemed to discover that the inside doorknob of the hall door was loose and he got a tool from his kit and worked at it. Then he unlocked the door completely.

He went over to the bed, made it and then opened both his suitcases on it, wide open!

He emptied the carryall and made a neat pile of the contents at the bed top.

The portable radio he had bought attracted his attention and he fiddled with it, getting a station or two. It seemed to amuse him that the music was not stereo. How could it be, with Earth electronics! The whole thing was made just to dangle from the wrist by a strap. He took it back to the easy chair and sat down. He listened to the morning news. Toys! All Fleet guys are crazy with toys. Here he was about to be hit and he was amusing himself with a toy. The muggings and murders and political corruption of New York aren’t news.

It was getting close to eight. He got up and went to the window. He was looking down into the street, maybe watching for his caller to arrive.

But I saw something else! By peripheral vision, I saw a man come out of a door on that other roof! A man carrying a violin case!

Heller went back and sat down. The radio came to the end of the news.

The elevator door down the hall opened. Heller, possibly because his toy was new, had to do a lot of fiddling to get the radio off. He dropped it into the top of an open suitcase, stepped backwards and dropped into the easy chair.

There was a knock on the door. Heller called, “Come in. It’s open.”

In walked the perfectly groomed Wall Street lawyer. The type is legendary. Three-piece suit in a somber gray. No hat. Impeccably neat. Dried up like a prune from holding in all the sins they commit. He was carrying a fat briefcase.

“I am Mr. Bury of Swindle and Crouch,” he said. Very Ivy League accent.

Heller gestured to the straight-backed chair. Bury sat down on it and put his briefcase beside him. He wasted no time. “Where did you get this idea?” he said.

“Well, most people get ideas,” said Heller.

“Did somebody talk you into this?”

“Don’t know anybody much around here,” said Heller.

“How many times have you used the name Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior?”