Wilma's door was a dingy white. The paint upon it was thick and cracked. I imagined that every time it got too dirty the super just whitewashed over the filth.

"Who is it?" a woman said in answer to my knock.

"John Tooms. Breland Lewis sent me."

"Who?"

I repeated my words.

"Who is it?"

It felt as if I were in a Cheech and Chong skit.

"I'm here to speak to Ron Sharkey for his lawyer. My name is John Tooms."

Muted voices sounded from down the hall. Smells of cooking rose from the floors below. Four different kinds of music came from a dozen sound systems of varying quality, and now and then traffic sounds broke through from the street below.

The door opened.

A woefully frail and slender woman stood there before me. She wasn't a day over twenty-nine but her brown hair was already shot through with gray. Her breath came in laconic gasps and her green eyes hadn't been clear in a very long time. For all that, you could see that she was once quite fetching.

"Can't you people leave him alone?" she asked without much conviction.

"I'm here to help Ron, Ms. Spyres. I'm working for his lawyer."

The skin of Wilma's face pulled back, creating a scowl intended to express her disdain for lawyers and their toadies. I couldn't, in all conscience, disagree. The wordless grimace told me that no one had ever wanted to help her, or any man she laid claim to.

"May I come in?"

"What do you want?"

"I just need to go over a few details with Ron. That's all."

Her shoulders shook. The scowl was trying to obliterate me.

"Will," a man said.

Ron Sharkey came up from behind her.

He was on the short side but still two inches taller than Wilma and me. He wore gray slacks that were too big for him and green suspenders to hold them up. His grayish-white T-shirt was frayed, and his feet were bare, pale creatures.

He rested his hands on the woman's shoulders and said, "Lewis sent you?"

I nodded and maybe frowned some.

"What was your name again?"

"John Tooms."

"Come on in, Mr. Tunes. Don't worry about Will here. She doesn't bite."

The living room was furnished with mismatched couch and chair, both covered over with dark-colored and stained sheets. The coffee table was a rude wooden crate turned upside down. There was a bong and a hypodermic set on the makeshift piece of furniture.

"Give me and Mr. Tunes a few minutes, will you, honey?" Ron said to his woman.

She snorted and then lurched through a doorway that I supposed led to their bedroom.

Ron closed the door after her.

"Have a seat, Mr. Tunes," he offered.

There was a fold-up wooden chair leaning in the corner. Thinking about the apparent stains and hidden needles, I took that for my seat.

"Tooms," I said.

"Say what?"

"My name is Tooms, not Tunes."

"Sorry. How can I help you, Mr. Tunes?"

He tried to sit on the crate but it cracked a little and so he moved to the couch. There he sank deeply in the dark-maroon fabric.

"I do specialized work for Breland," I said. "He thinks you might need some help getting out of the trouble you're in."

"No. Naw. Not me. He got me out on bail. I'll just do a plea or something. I won't even get any time. I mean, it wasn't even my car."

"Whose car was it?" I asked.

"Listen, Mr. Tunes. I'm okay. Nobody's gonna worry about a little fish like me. All I have to do is tell the judge that I found that car with the keys inside and took it for a ride. That's the way it happened. I'm really okay."

"There was contraband in the trunk," I said.

"Not mine."

"But we can safely say that it belonged to someone," I replied.

"From what I understand, there was a lot of money wrapped up in that property."

Sharkey began pumping his left heel up and down like a sweatshop seamstress working a mechanical sewing machine.

"I didn't know about what was in the trunk."

"Somebody does," I said. "And the feds will want to get hold of that information. They're gonna lean on you… heavily."

Ron had a boy's face. It had aged many years past what it should have been but he still had that innocent, adolescent look.

"Look, man," he said, "somebody in my position can't worry about what might happen. I mean, look at me. Somethin's bound to get to me sooner or later anyway. I mean, I don't even know how I ended up like this. I was supposed to be an entrepreneur selling computer components and spending my summers in Bermuda or Bimini. Now I'm rolling my own cigarettes and lookin' up to Wilma because at least she can put the rent together almost every month."

I wanted to say something but had no words.

"You could do me a favor, though," Ron said.

"What's that?"

"My wife. My ex-wife. Irma."

"What about her?"

"I asked Breland to find her for me but he said he couldn't do it. You know, I'd really like to find her… to tell her how sorry I am for destroying her life. She has my son. I'd like to see Steven before I die."

How would it help, I wondered, to tell him that his loving Irma had betrayed him and put the drugs into his shoe?

"Her last name is Carson now," Ron was saying. "Her maiden name was Connors, then Sharkey, Beam, and finally Carson. I guess that's why it's so hard to find her."

"I can look into it, I guess." What else could I say?

"Hey, man," Ron said with deep feeling. "That would be great."

I left Wilma's apartment in a foul mood. The young lovers were still on the fourth-floor landing. They were huddled in each other's arms, pressed into a corner. His eyes were closed as she watched me walk by. Looking into her distant eyes, I tasted blood.

I'd been biting my lower lip that hard.

ON THE STREET I looked at my watch. The blue iridescent hands told me that it was 7:07. I figured I was on a roll and so trundled over to a liquor store I knew on Bowery and picked up a pint of cheap scotch. When buying scotch I always looked for the lowest price. Why spend good money when you hate the taste? For me, bourbon was king, while scotch was a mere pretender to the throne.

I CAME TO A building a little farther down on C that was dark even for the buildings in that neighborhood. There was a buzzer, though.

"Yes?" a mature woman said through the speaker.

"Mrs. Lear?"

"Yes?"

"My name is Tooms. I'm looking for your daughter."

"What do you want with her?"

"A man named Spender asked me to find her," I said, using a name from Rinaldo's files. "She hasn't been to work in a few days and he's worried."

"Did you call her?"

I rattled off her home number. I had, of course called it; no answer, no answering machine.

"I also went by her place on Twelfth," I added. "So I'm here to ask you."

For a while silence ruled our conversation. In the heartland of our nation, I've been told, people are happy to meet you and sit and talk. But in New York, a stranger's voice is, at the very least, a potential threat-definitely possible.

"Why are you looking for her?" Mrs. Lear asked at last.

"May I come up, ma'am?"

"I don't know who you are."

"Tooms, ma'am. I'm working for Larry Spender… Angelique's boss."

"Yes," she said, "Spender." Her "S" got stuck for a second more than she intended.

A buzzer sounded and I pushed the door open.

It was a much tidier building than the one Ron Sharkey inhabited. The halls smelled of mold, but I found no people shooting up in the stairwells. On the fourth floor there were small welcome mats in front of each apartment door. When I got to 4C, a willowy woman in her middle forties was standing there, peering out, ready to slam the door at a moment's notice.