No FedEx person had ever before sought out Dortmunder, so he wasn’t exactly sure what was the protocol, but the person walked him through it, and the experience wasn’t hard at all.

What was being delivered was a Pak, which was a bright red-white-and-blue cardboard envelope with something inside it. The Pak was addressed to May Bellamy and came from a law firm somewhere in Ohio. Dortmunder knew May had family in Ohio, which was why she never went there, so he agreed to take the package, wrote “Ralph Bellamy” where the person wanted a signature, and then spent the rest of the day wondering what was in the Pak, which made for a fine distraction.

The result was, by the time May got home from the Safeway at 5:40 that afternoon Dortmunder couldn’t have told an Anadarko from an Annapolis graduate. “You got a Pak,” he said.

“I’ve got two entire bags. Here, carry one.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dortmunder told her, accepting one of the two grocery bags containing May’s daily unofficial bonus to herself. He followed her to the kitchen, put the bag on the counter, pointed to the Pak on the table, and said, “It’s from Ohio. FedEx. It’s a Pak.”

“What’s in it?”

“No idea.”

May stood beside the table, frowning at the Pak, not yet touching it. “It’s from Cincinnati,” she announced.

“I noticed that.”

“From some lawyers there.”

“Saw that, too. It came this morning, a little before ten-thirty.”

“That’s what they say they do,” May agreed, “deliver everything by ten-thirty in the morning. I don’t know what they do, the rest of the day.”

“May,” Dortmunder said, “are you going to open that thing?”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “If I do, do you think I’m liable for something?”