“Are you going to eat the rest of that sandwich?”

“Probably not,” I said.

“Can I have it?”

“Knock yourself out,” I said, but even before I said it, she was reaching for the half of the corned beef special that was still on my plate.

“Mmm, that’s good,” she said after she took a bite. A shred of coleslaw hung from the corner of her mouth before she wiped it away with her finger. “I get so hungry after I work.”

“Tell me about your sister?” I said.

“Oh, Chantal, she was like a saint herself. The darling of the neighborhood. She was only six when she disappeared, but she was already special. She loved church, loved animals, took in a bird with a broken wing, a stray dog. I have a dog. Luke. He’s a shar-pei. The one with all the wrinkled skin?”

“I don’t know it.”

“From China. Not Luke, I picked him up in Scranton. The breed, I mean. Quite an aggressive sort. Don’t mess with a shar-pei. Don’t play accordion either. That’s about the sum total of my advice on life.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“And anchovies.”

“What about them?”

“I don’t know, I’m still up in the air about anchovies. A little too salty, don’t you think? But they’re not bad on pizza. Chantal liked pizza, and french fries. But especially she liked to dance. She was, like, great. My parents still have old movies of her in her outfit, doing her routines. They watch them all the time. She was on that Al Alberts Showcase. Do you know the one on TV on Sunday mornings? With all the local talent?”

“Yeah, I remember it.”

“She did a dance solo on it once. The Amazing Chantal Adair. Tap, with little red shoes. I still have those shoes, like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.”

“What happened to her?”

“No one knows. One day she went out into the neighborhood to play, like she did every day, and never came back. It was in the papers for months. The police were all over it, but they never found anything. Not her body, not a ransom note, nothing. It’s like she clicked her ruby tap shoes and disappeared.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yeah, it is.” She reached over to my plate and swiped a potato chip. I pushed the plate toward her, and she took another. “It destroyed my parents. They had me to try to make up for it, but I wasn’t quite enough, so their disappointment was doubled. They’ve never recovered.”

“What do they think happened?”

“Everyone just assumed she was murdered somehow. There was an old rummy in the neighborhood that was acting weird, but they could never pin anything definite on him. And then a rumor had it that some guy in a white van had been trawling the neighborhood for kids.”

“It’s always a white van, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, why is that? I have to remind myself that next time I rob a bank I should use the brown van. That’s the second time you looked at your watch. Do you have someplace you need to be?”

“It’s just late,” I said. “And I have to be in court tomorrow.”

“Something important?”

“No, just a custody thing.”

“It sounds important to me. Who do you represent?”

“The mother.”

“That’s nice. I’m all for mothers. Do you know who the patron saint of mothers is?”

“No.”

“St. Gerard. He was accused of getting a woman pregnant and refused to speak until he was cleared.”

“He must have had a good lawyer.”

“You ever shoot a gun, Victor?”

“Never.”

“I have one. I’ve never used it, but one day someone’s going to break into the wrong apartment and bam.”

“What with the dog and the gun, Monica, I think I’ll stay out of your neighborhood.”

“Oh, Luke. Luke wouldn’t hurt anyone. And that one guy in the park, well, he was smoking, and Luke has this thing about cigarettes. But I don’t think she was murdered. My sister, I mean. I don’t think she’s dead at all. Remember the girl that was supposed to have been burned to ashes in a fire, but it turned out she was stolen and living somewhere in New Jersey?”

“I remember.”

“I think that’s what happened. I think Chantal was taken someplace, taken because she was so perfect, and given a perfect life.”

“By who?”

“By someone who loved her very much.”

“It’s nice to think it, I guess.”

“I feel her presence all the time, like she’s close, looking over my shoulder, looking out for me. That’s what I meant when I said she’s my St. Solange. Gone but still preaching. Chantal guides my life. Because of her my life has a purpose. I was conceived to fill a gap. That it hasn’t worked out so well is a little sad, but still, it’s more than most people have. That’s why I use her name at the club. As a tribute.”

“I’m sure she’d be touched.”

“Really?” she said, her smile blinding, as if I had complimented her on her hair. “I hope so, though I expect she’ll let me know sooner or later.”

“You think after all these years she’ll just up and call?”

“Oh, Victor, I don’t just think it. I’m certain of it. How about some pie? I could go for some pie. Do you think they make pie here?”

“I’m sure they do,” I said.

It wasn’t lost on me that she didn’t ask anything about how I had come up with her sister’s name. She had waited all her life for the word, I suppose she figured she could wait for it to come out on its own. And in any event I wasn’t about to tell her of my tattoo. It was both too embarrassing and too bizarre to share that with her, especially as I observed her slightly deranged discussion of her sister. Her sister, Chantal, was a strange fire burning within her, she didn’t need me to toss on a bucket of gasoline.

So we ordered pie. I had the peach, she had the blueberry, with a dollop of ice cream on top. Even with the blue streaks on her teeth, she was beautiful. And sad, too. Usually I can spot it right off, that streak of sadness that speaks to some primal part of my personality, but with her I didn’t. It was only as she spoke that it became clear, how her life had been so sadly influenced by the missing girl who was the warp and woof of her existence.

But about one thing I was certain. All of it, the whole sad story of her missing sister, had nothing to do with me. The Chantal Adair she had been waiting her whole life to hear from was not the Chantal Adair whose name I had foolhardily tattooed onto my chest.

Sometimes my head is as dense as a solid block of ebony.

I have a big red file folder that I keep for special occasions. Sometimes it’s full of documents, sometimes it’s empty, but either way what’s inside is not as essential as the file folder itself. I clutch it close to my breast as if it contained nuclear launch codes, or the phone number of a decent Chinese restaurant, or anything else important enough to belong in a big red file folder.

“What’s in the file?” said Beth as we waited in the hallway of family court for Theresa Wellman.

“Just some information Phil Skink unearthed.”

“Did he get anything on Bradley Hewitt?”

“He’s working on it.”

“Then what’s in the file?”

“Oh, look,” I said. “Here comes our client.”

Theresa Wellman, with her hair done and her dress subdued, approached us warily.

“Are we going on with it today?” she said.

“Of course we are,” said Beth. “Now you’ve got the firm of Derringer and Carl on your side. Bucking the odds is what we do. You’re the first witness. Are you ready?”

“Oh, I’m ready. I love my daughter more than anything in the world. I just want to see her and hug her and take her home.”

“I’m going to be asking you the questions, Theresa,” I said. “There might be some things you don’t expect.”

“Like what?” she said.

“Stuff about your past and how things are going now.”

“What things?”

“It’s best if we do it all in court. You don’t want to seem rehearsed. But whatever happens, Theresa, you have to trust that I’m doing what I can to help you.”