The wig makes her scalp itch. She feels clammy, uncomfortable with sweat: partly fear, partly the end-of-June heat. Even behind the reflecting lenses of her sunglasses she has to keep her eyes squeezed into a painful squint.

This climate can make one listless-or careless. It won’t do to drop one’s guard; it won’t do to disregard even for a moment the fact that they’re after her.

Pennants hang listlessly above a lot that offers enormous mobile homes for sale. Little stucco houses have weeds, cactus, old cars and broken-down pickup trucks for yard ornaments. And there’s not a pedestrian in sight. Not even a dog.

Arizona Daily Star. The modern structure is as wide and low as a trucking warehouse. She finds a space in the parking lot and walks inside and the cool is as sudden and free as what you feel when you emerge from a sauna.

“I wonder if I could see the obituaries for the first three months of 1953.”

She is steeled to answer questions with inventions but the girl behind the Information counter is incurious. “That’s in the microfilm section.” The girl directs her back into the maze.

She carries the bulky shoulder bag tight against her side as she explores the corridors. Really it’s too big for a handbag but she hasn’t let it out of reach in the three days since she bought it.

Half the money is inside it; the other half, with the diamonds, is in the suitcase locked in the trunk of the car.

An old man with sad bassett eyes brings out his film containers and shows her how to use the viewing machine. “Pretty soon they’ll have all this stuff in the computers and it’ll be real easy to find. But the computer don’t go back that far just yet, thank God, so they still need me.”

She thanks him and sits before the screen of the microfilm reader, turning the crank, searching each day’s issue for the obituary page.