Murders' Row

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THE MOTEL WAS Off the left side of the highway leading from Washington, D. C., to the eastern shore of Maryland by way of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. So said the map; I’d never been there and wasn’t about to go. At least I didn’t think I was. In my line of business, you can’t ever be absolutely sure where you’ll wind up tomorrow.

As I made the turn and headed into the driveway, my watch said I was arriving precisely on schedule at a quarter-past-ten in the evening. I parked the little car that had been assigned to me among others displaying an assortment of license plates. Mine read Illinois, and I had a complete and phony identity to go with it, in case of trouble.

My real name is Helm-Matthew Helm-and certain government records have me cross-flied under the code name Eric, but for the evening I was James A. Peters, employed by Atlas Enterprises, Inc., a Chicago firm. The nature of the company, and my exact position with them, remained carefully unspecified on the identification I carried. Anyone who became really interested, however- interested enough, say, to send a set of fingerprints to the Chicago police-would be informed that I was known locally as Jimmy (the Lash) Petroni, a man with influential friends and an unsavory reputation.

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