I decided, once I was back to the car, that I would go to Lawrence’s apartment and try to find him there.

As I approached the doughnut shop, winded and damp, I could see that there was still no Buick there, but a taxi had pulled in next to my Virtue. I got out my key, slipped into the car, and turned the ignition.

Whir. And that was it. Nothing more.

“Shitfuckdamn!” I shouted, banging my fist into the steering wheel. I tried it again, then again, without success.

I went into the shop. There were customers at only three tables. A man and two boys in soccer jerseys, evidently coming home from a late game or practice, sat at one, a young man and woman whispering to one another were at another, and at the third, a fat, unshaven guy in a Celtics sweatshirt. He was drinking coffee from a paper cup, hovered, pencil in hand, over the crossword puzzle from The Metropolitan. He took a bite of his apple fritter.

“That your cab?” I asked.

He chewed slowly on his fritter, barely looking up from his paper. “Yeah.”

“I need you to take me someplace.”

“I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”

I breathed in and out twice. “It’s kind of an emergency.”

“I tell ya what,” he said. “Answer me this. Five-letter word, last letter ‘h,’ and the clue is ‘Luke’s pa.’ You tell me what that is, we leave right now.”

“Darth,” I said.

The cabby cocked his head, pursed his lips in surprise. He studied the puzzle. “Shit, I think that’s it. Oh yeah, right, Luke Skywalker’s daddy. I shoulda been able to get that, but you know, sometimes, it’s just not there.” He penciled in the answer I’d given him.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, where you headed?”

I told him, and he snapped the plastic lid back onto his coffee, then folded back the opening that would allow him to drink it while he drove. It was about a ten-minute ride, and my driver tried to engage me in conversation about some trades in the NHL, but my mind was elsewhere, and he quickly gave up.

We pulled up in front of the address from Lawrence’s card, which turned out to be a single door fronting onto a sidewalk in a business district, sandwiched between a hairstyling place and a cheese store. Lawrence’s apartment had to be over one of the shops.

“Stay here,” I said, handing the cabby a twenty.

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll work on my puzzle, save the hard ones for you when you get back.”

I got out of the back of the cab and rang the buzzer next to the door. I leaned on it for several seconds and then, after getting no answer, tried to open it myself. It was locked. I went back to the cabby and said, “Don’t go anywhere. I’m going round back, see if his car’s here.”

I ran to the corner and down the cross street until I had reached the lane and parking lots behind the row of shops. When I figured I was behind the cheese store and beauty parlor, I looked for some familiar vehicles and spotted them right away. There was Lawrence’s Jaguar and, parked next to it, his old Buick, rear window replaced. Both cars were locked and no one was inside either one of them, at least as far as I could tell. I couldn’t exactly open the trunks.

That gives you an idea of how my mind was working. I was expecting to find something bad. There are times when you just know.

There was a fire escape at the back of the shops, and I mounted it as quickly as I could, which wasn’t very fast. It was steep, and narrow, and the metal steps were slippery from the drizzle that continued to come down. I gripped the metal handrail to steady myself on the way up to the second floor, where there was a small landing outside a door. The window in the door was covered with a blind that kept me from seeing inside.

I knocked. I waited about ten seconds, then tried the door. It was unlocked.

I eased the door open, ran my hand up alongside the wall just inside, hunting for a light switch. I found one and flicked it up. “Lawrence?” I was pretty sure I was in the apartment that also connected to the door that led in off the street. “Hey, Lawrence! It’s Zack. You home?”

I eased the door open wider, stepped in, and closed it behind me. The door to the fire escape was off the kitchen, which was compact and immaculate. The appliances appeared to date back to the late fifties, but looked as though they’d been delivered yesterday. There were new but retro gadgets tucked back on the counter, under the cabinets. A gleaming metal toaster, a Hamilton Beach mixer, a waffle iron that showed no signs of ever having any batter in it. The clutter-free countertop had a small stack of mail on it, a Visa bill, a phone bill, a couple of flyers.

There was a small corkboard next to a wall-mounted phone, with a few business cards pinned there, including mine, and a color photo, taken at the beach, of Lawrence and a male friend, arms looped around each other’s necks playfully, grinning into the camera. White guy, brown hair, brown eyes. I wondered whether this might be his friend Kent, the restaurateur.

In the sink I saw a rinsed cup and a couple of spoons and an empty beer bottle, and atop the adjoining counter was a bowl filled with apples and bright yellow bananas. I reached over and touched one of the perfect-looking bananas, wondering whether it was wax. It was not.

Enough light spilled out from the kitchen to allow me a view of the living area, which included a small dining room table, couch, big TV in the corner, and four small silver speakers on stands placed strategically around the room. Surround sound. Part of an entertainment system. On a set of shelves were hundreds of CDs-Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, every other great jazz artist who ever lived-and dozens of DVD cases.

“Lawrence?”

I crossed the room to the main door, the one that must open onto a set of stairs that led down to the door on the sidewalk. I flipped back the deadbolt and opened the door, confirming for myself that it did indeed open onto the flight of stairs leading downward.

There was a short hallway leading off to the right away from the main door. I flipped on a light switch, and now I could see there were three doors leading off it. The first was a bathroom. I flicked on the light, eased my head in, peered around the back of the door into an empty bathtub. Shampoos and soaps were perfectly arranged in a device that hung from the shower head. The shower curtain was as clean as the day it came out of the package, the tiled corners free of mildew. Lawrence was one mean neat freak.

The next room had to be Lawrence’s study. It was not nearly so neat.

Filing drawers had been pulled out, papers tossed across the floor, books thrown off shelves. It didn’t look as though someone had just searched this room. They’d torn through it in a fit of rage.

I felt my unease move up a notch. Especially when I glanced down and saw drops of blood in the blue carpeting that appeared to start near the study door and lead toward the third door in the hallway.

The blotches on the carpet grew larger as I neared the door. Whoever had lost blood was losing more of it as he moved along.

There was an inch of light between the door and the frame, and I pressed my palm up against the door and eased it open.

I went very cold. I had found Lawrence.

He was on the bed, stretched out from one corner to the other, on top of the covers, fully dressed in a sports jacket, slacks, and black dress shoes. He was on his stomach, and his right arm was down by his side, his left stretched out awkwardly above his head.

The powder blue duvet was soaked red with blood.

He was not moving.

I stepped into the room. “Lawrence,” I whispered. “Oh man, Lawrence, what the hell did they do to you?”

I placed my hands, tentatively, on his back, not knowing what else to do. I knew I couldn’t roll him over. I’d only been playing amateur private eye for a few hours, and hadn’t expected to run into anything like this, but I knew enough from watching TV that I wasn’t supposed to move the body.