The book was a signpost.

Everything in it — the deposits, the dates, the red stamp, the pencil note — pointed at something else, somewhere else, that was never in any danger from anybody.

And I spent nine weeks guarding a receipt.

I slept with it in a drawer.

I wrapped it in a towel.

I carried it into a bank in a plastic bag like a hand grenade.

What I did not do, for nine weeks, is the one thing the book was telling me to do, which took ten minutes and cost two dollars, and which is Part Twenty-Five.