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be careful, girl. You’re the marryin’ kind, the both of you. And there’s nothing like a little pregnancy to hurry things along.”
    “You think I don’t know that?”
     

 
There was this Irish brain surgeon… (pause for laughter)
– British music hall routine
     
     
    B Y THE time he neared St. Louis, Missouri, on his third day on the road, John had decided on the name under which he would first conceal himself. There would be other name changes required later, he realized, but a new one was needed immediately.
    It was early afternoon and already there was color in the deciduous trees along the highway. The hills were brown and a nip could be felt in the air. The cornfields were a rubble of cut and broken stalks. Billboards advertised “winterizing.”
    There would be a world-wide hunt for John Roe O’Neill before long. That name had to be abandoned , he thought. McCarthy – that had been his mother’s name and it felt comfortable. Someone might make the connection but he would have abandoned it by then. His first name, that he felt he would have to keep; too late to learn to answer to anything other than John. John McCarthy, then, and to give it the proper Irish-American flavor, John Leo Patrick McCarthy.
    He entered the city and was enclosed by its living movement without much noticing. His awareness was goal-oriented: ordinary lodging. A Central District motel rented him a room and he still had time to lease a large safety deposit box in a nearby bank. The money went into this box and he breathed easier when he emerged onto the street, which was busy with its evening foot traffic.
    As he drove out of the parking lot, he glanced at his wristwatch: 4:55 P.M . Still plenty of time to take those first steps on the identity change. A newspaper classified advertisement led him to a rental room in a private suburban home. The landlady, Mrs. Pradowski, reminded him of Mrs. Neri: the same heavily weighted and cost-accounting watchfulness in her manner and behind the eyes. It was too soon to become John McCarthy. He had to leave a few “footprints” for the bloodhounds to follow. He showed Mrs. Pradowski his O’Neill driver’s license and said he was looking for a teaching post.
    Mrs. Pradowski said he could have the room tomorrow morning. She gave no sign that she recognized his name from the news stories, now months old. The Grafton Street bombing was, after all, many tragedies back in time and far distant from St. Louis. Her conversation revealed a primary interest in advance payment of rent and noninterference with her “bingo nights.”
    Now, to find out if the choice of St. Louis was correct. A pharmacy customer had warned him the previous winter: “They got a regular factory there making phony ID papers. You gotta watch it when you’re cashing checks.”
    It took him six days and uncounted glasses of beer in seedy bars to make contact with the “factory.” Eight days later he paid five thousand dollars and received a Michigan driver’s license and assorted membership and identification cards in the name of John Leo Patrick McCarthy. Another thirty-five hundred dollars got him an intensive lesson in altering passports plus a kit for making the alterations.
    “You got a real talent for this,” his instructor said. “Just don’t set up shop in my territory.”
    Next, there was the problem of the car. Honest Andrew’s Previously Owned Cars on Auto Row gave him twenty-two hundred dollars cash, the dealer sighing: “Boy, them big cars don’t move too fast anymore.”
    The next morning, he took a bus to Marion and bought a used Dodge Power Wagon. It was one of Mrs. Pradowski’s “bingo nights” and she was gone when he returned. He parked in the driveway, the wagon’s license plates obscured by mud, and loaded his gear. A note with fifty dollars “for the inconvenience” went on the kitchen table weighted by his house key. His note said a family crisis called him away unexpectedly.
    John spent