…Minus 072 and COUNTING… The fifth floor hall stank of pee.

Richards reaches the fifth floor of the Boston Y.M.C.A. and finds a narrow, filthy hallway marked by poverty, fear, and decay. The smell of urine, damaged doors, chanting, sobbing, music, arguments, and unseen restless occupants make the place feel like a cage for desperate people.

Richards enters his bare room, locks the police bar, and takes in its minimal furnishings: a bed, a damaged bureau, a religious picture, a rod with two hangers, and a window facing darkness. The time is 10:15, and the room’s emptiness deepens Richards’s sense of isolation.

After hanging up his jacket and lying down, Richards breaks under the accumulated strain and cries briefly. He does not record this on tape, instead reflecting that the Hunters have been after him for more than eight hours and that his earnings still have not offset his original stake.

Richards worries about where the Hunters might be and whether they could have traced him from Harding, New York, or the bus to Boston. Richards reassures himself that he left New York anonymously, passed no roadblocks, and is registered under an assumed name, making the Boston Y.M.C.A. potentially safe for a short time.

Richards considers possible routes after Boston: north toward New Hampshire and Vermont, south toward Hartford, Philadelphia, or Atlanta, or even east toward Europe, though lack of identification and the danger of being caught make overseas escape unrealistic. Too exhausted to retrieve a gun that night, Richards decides to get it the next night, turns off the light, and sleeps.