Yet here, sitting across from me, was a woman who had no existential hole to fill. She had been taught, from her earliest moments on earth, that her life contained a singular purpose. She was conceived and raised and carefully trained to fill the gap created by the loss of her sister. And she had succeeded in her own strange way. Chantal was a precocious little dancer with a pair of ruby slippers, and so Monica became a dancer herself, using her sister’s name as she strutted in red shoes of her own. Chantal loved animals, so Monica owned a maniacal guard dog with a taste for smoked flesh. Chantal had been killed or abducted, and so Monica guarded Chantal’s replacement with a dog and a gun and a series of locks, no doubt, on her door and her heart. No word had been heard from Chantal in decades, and so Monica dedicated herself to listening for a voice in the ether. If you think it’s tough being born without a purpose in your life, imagine how tragic it must be being born with one.

“Monica, you must know that I am not a message from your sister.”

“You don’t know that.”

“But I do. This is all just a sad misunderstanding. The tattoo was a mistake, and telling you about it was even worse. I’m sorry.”

“Can I see it?”

“No.”

“Please?”

She stared at me with her big blue eyes, the simple, faithful eyes of a baby or a pilgrim. I think maybe those eyes were the reason I had been treating her so badly. They seemed to need too much of me, pleading for me to fill a want I could neither fathom nor satisfy. Her parents must really have done a job on poor Monica. And, in turn, I had been a jerk. I felt ashamed.

“If that’s what you want,” I said. “If that will end all this.”

“Yes, it is what I want.”

I stood up from my desk, walked around it, closed the door and pressed the button on the knob. I sat on the front of my desk and shucked off my jacket. I stuck my finger above the knot of my tie. When I gave it a tug, it slipped down a bit. I tugged it again.

With the tie completely undone and hanging loosely from my collar, I unbuttoned my shirt, slowly, all while she was closely watching. It must have been a strange reversal for her. Now she was in the small locked room, waiting with bated breath as someone else stripped. I had the urge to warn her against being handsy, but the seriousness of her expression stopped me. She was not a drunken frat boy urging the girls on the balcony to lift their shirts, she was the devout, waiting for a glimpse of the miraculous.

I pushed away the edge of my white shirt. She leaned forward, her eyes widened, she tilted her head. “I thought it would be bigger,” she said.

“I get that a lot,” I said.

As she leaned her head still closer to get a better look, she reached out her hand and gently traced the name with her finger.

I pulled back a bit and thought about stopping her, but it felt so strange and comforting, her soft flesh brushing my still-wounded skin, that I let it go on. And when she leaned yet more forward and drew her face closer to the tattooed heart, I found myself waiting, expectantly, for the soft kiss of devotion.

A sharp knock at the door.

She pulled back. I almost clocked her with my elbow as I hastily clutched the front of my shirt together.

I jumped off the desk and said loudly, in a voice strangely high-pitched, “Yes?”

“Mr. Carl,” said Ellie from the other side of the door. “Detective McDeiss called and said he was sending an officer over to pick up the evidence and take a statement. He also said that Mr. Slocum is in court today, and A.U.S.A. Hathaway told him – and this is a quote – ‘I never want to see his ugly face again.’”

“Ouch,” I said. “Okay, thank you, Ellie.”

“Do you need anything else?”

“No, that’s it.”

We looked at each other, Monica and I, and then we both turned our heads away in embarrassment. We had let something go a bit too far, and we both knew it. I started buttoning my shirt. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms.

“Well, that’s that, then,” I said as I went to sit behind my desk and started retying my tie. “You can see it’s just a silly tattoo and it has nothing to do with your sister.”

“I suppose.”

“It was actually nice meeting you, Monica, and I wish you luck in the future.”

“That means you’re not taking the case.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Finding a missing person, especially one missing for decades, is not really my thing.”

“And you won’t be coming back to the club?”

“No, it’s not my kind of thing either.”

“So no more dates.”

“It wasn’t a date.”

“Oh, right. I guess that’s it, then,” she said, standing. “By the way, the Hathaway you’re meeting with today, is that the police detective?”

“No, she’s a prosecutor. Why?”

“Because it was weird hearing the name. The police detective who was investigating Chantal’s disappearance was a Detective Hathaway.”

My hands suddenly grew clumsy and the knot I was tying disintegrated.

“My parents still speak very highly of him. Detective Hathaway spent years looking for Chantal. He and my parents became very close. It was like he was one of the family.”

“You don’t say.”

“We haven’t seen him in a while.”

“How old are you, Monica?”

“Twenty-six.”

“And your sister disappeared how many years before you were born?”

“Two. Why?”

“Just thinking, is all.”

“Thank you for showing me the tattoo, Victor. I don’t know what it means, but I won’t annoy you anymore, I promise.”

I watched as she turned around, as she turned the knob, as the button popped and the door opened. I watched and I thought and I tried to make sense of everything.

“Monica,” I said before she was out the door. She turned around again, and she had that look of need and expectation on her face. “Maybe I ought to meet your parents. What do you think?”

My God, she had a beautiful smile.

“It wasn’t any trick to find your boy Bradley Hewitt,” said Skink. “A guy like that, he needs to let it be known that he’s a player. Lunch at the Palm, dinner at Morton’s, doing the stroll among the well-heeled and the powerful, and always accompanied by his three guys with their suits and their briefcases.”

“He’s got an entourage,” I said.

“That he does.”

“I want an entourage.”

“You couldn’t handle an entourage. And why is it the power joints all serve steak?”

“Like in the days of the dinosaur, the most feared are always carnivores.”

“You wants to know why the cemeteries are filled with indispensable men? Because they all eats steak.”

We were walking north, on Front Street, quiet and cobblestoned, with a few cars slipping back and forth looking for parking. Most of the city action was to the west, Old City and Society Hill, the bright lights, the bars. Front Street was staid and dark, close to the river and its mist, a street for the cozy rendezvous or the quiet conversation, a place to walk and talk unobserved.

“That was the public face of your Bradley Hewitt. Nothing of interest there,” said Skink. “But I don’t give up, it’s not in my nature. I keep following. And then, on a quiet Tuesday night, just like this one, I follows him down to the river, away from the crowds.”

“Entourage in tow?”

“It’s an entourage, so of course it is. Down toward the river, right here to Front Street, and then up a few blocks until he finds hisself a swanky little chew-and-choke just off Market. They all pop inside. A few minutes later, I slip close and scan the dining room. Nice, truly, red walls, marble floors, old school. And chowing down at a table is the entourage, enjoying the hell out of themselves. But no Bradley.”

“He was in the men’s room?”

“No extra plate at their table. He was somewhere else, and they weren’t invited.”