“What kind of trouble, Joey?”

“He’s still got a mother and sister, don’t he? They still got a house, don’t they? It ain’t smart business to trifle with a desperate man on the run from ghosts.”

“Did you hear that, Monica?”

“I heard that.”

“That is a threat, which is absolutely against the law. As an officer of the court, I have a duty to report any crimes I see.”

“I have a cell phone,” she said.

“You ain’t making no call.”

“I don’t need to,” I said. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Joey. Don’t mess with Mrs. Kalakos. She’ll carve you proper and then make soup from your bones.”

He thought about it for a while, driving north on Broad, toward her territory and his past. “She’s old.”

“Not old enough. Your concern about the shares is duly noted and, all the time remembering my responsibilities, I’ll see what I can do to make your grievance understood.”

“Am I going to get any more than that lame assurance from your skinny ass?”

“No.”

“Then I guess it will have to do.”

“Good. Now I have some questions for you.” I leaned forward, took a photograph out of my pocket, shoved it in front of him. As he drove, he glanced down at it, looked up, glanced down again.

The taxi swerved left, a horn honked, the taxi swerved right again.

“Mind your own damn lane,” Joey yelled out the window.

“You recognize her?” I said.

“No.”

“So says your words, but the steering wheel gave you away.”

“Take another look,” said Monica. “Please.”

He glanced nervously up to the rearview mirror.

“Her name was Chantal Adair,” said Monica. “She was my sister.”

“Your sister?”

“She disappeared twenty-eight years ago,” said Monica. “Could you please take another look?”

He glanced again at the photograph. “Never saw her before.”

“That’s what Charlie said, too,” I told him, “but he was lying, just like you.”

“Who you calling a liar?”

“Calm down. Let’s talk a little bit about what happened after Teddy gave you his speech in that bar. When did he tell you that the opportunity he had in mind for all of you to save your miserable lives was to rip off the Randolph Trust?”

“That very night. He laid it out, and then he left us to chew it over. I had already been in the pen, didn’t want to go back, ever. Ralph never had a larcenous bone in his body and Charlie was not the type. But with Teddy gone, it was Hugo who went about convincing us. Said all that talk about changing our lives didn’t have to be only talk, that we could do it. We just needed the balls to step up and take what was ours.”

“He was in on it from the start.”

“Hugo?”

“Sure,” I said. “How else did Teddy know so much about what was going on in your lives? From what you told me before, I figured one of you was recruited before Teddy ever stepped into that bar.”

“Hugo. Damn.”

“So the four of you signed on.”

“All that talk of becoming something new, it was more intoxicating than the booze we were swilling. So we were in, and Teddy, he had a plan for each of us.”

“You took care of the burglar alarm.”

“That was my job, that’s right, that and the driving. Teddy, somehow he got the electrical drawings for me. The setup was complicated, the drawings looked like a plate of spaghetti, but I eventually figured a way to beat the thing. A wire’s just a wire, a current’s a current, it ain’t too hard to make them electrons dance the way you want.”

“What was Ralph’s job?”

“Muscle during the operation. And all the while we was preparing, he was quietly setting up a shop in his mother’s basement to take charge of whatever gold and silver we brought in. He was going to melt it into something we could sell without it being traced.”

“What happened to all the equipment after?”

“We buried it, right there in the basement. Cracked the cement floor with a sledge, buried it in the dirt, along with our clothes and the guns we used to keep the guards quiet. We poured homemade concrete right on top. It’s all still there, best I know.”

“Buried in the basement so that nothing could be traced.” I made a mental note to give Sheila the Realtor a call. “And Charlie was there to take care of the safe, right?”

“If he could. If not, Teddy said they’d blow the damn thing. When he laid out his plan, it was all ‘if this, then that, if not that, then this.’”

“How did you guys get inside?”

“That was Hugo’s department. Hugo was hard and sly, like a fox with brass knuckles.”

“How did he get in?”

“I’m not talking about Hugo.”

“Why not?”

“Remember what I said about ghosts? Some of them are more dangerous than others. More solid, too.”

“Then just tell us how the girl got mixed up in everything.”

“What girl?”

“The girl in the picture, Joey. Chantal Adair.”

“I never saw her.”

“Joey?”

“No, I admit, I recognize her picture. I seen that picture before, in all the papers. About the same time as the heist, this girl went missing. It was that girl, right?”

“That’s right,” said Monica.

“But it wasn’t her who was hanging around all the time as we were making our preparations.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Who was hanging around?”

“Teddy was a real pied piper. All the kids took to him. Always had a piece of candy or a little toy. It was just the way he was. And there was one kid who was hanging around all the time, flitting around like a moth. A boy. Towheaded dude.”

“What was his name?” said Monica.

“Who the hell remembers?” said Joey. “Who the hell knows?”

“I do,” I said.

Sometimes it’s a chore to find someone, sometimes it can take days, years, an entire bureau of detectives. Whole investigations have stalled because one key witness couldn’t be found. Sometimes it’s a chore, and sometimes it’s the easiest thing in the world.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted.

The room was an airless filthy mess, the floor covered with clothes and crumbs, the bed an unmade tumble of creased sheets and blankets. It smelled of the sickly-sweet scent of contained sweat. The screen of the computer in front of which he was sitting suddenly transformed from a lurid mix of flesh tones and red to a photograph of a gently rolling hill of green beneath a lightly clouded sky.

“No one’s allowed in here,” he said. “Get the hell out. Both of you.”

He was wearing a grimy T-shirt and ripped briefs, a pair of black socks, a pair of glasses. His arms were flabby, his jaw unshaven, the hair on his legs bristly. And when he turned to stare at us, his expression was one of horrified indignation, the holy imam whose mosque had been invaded by gaunt crusaders.

“Hello, Richard,” I said. “How’s tricks?”

“Monica,” he whined, “get him out of my room.”

She looked around at the mess, shook her head, and then leaned forward to pick up a wrinkled pair of sweatpants. She tossed the pants to her brother. “Put these on,” she said.

He clutched them to his groin. “Go away. Please.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We have business to discuss.”

“Monica.”

“Put on your pants, Richard dear,” she said.

He looked at his sister, then at me, then back at his sister before standing and turning around. His skin was the color of hard-boiled eggs, his ass was saggy, the back of his neck was pimpled. Until looking at Richard Adair in his underwear, I had never realized the health benefits of simply walking outside. With his back to us, he climbed into the sweatpants and then turned around again.

“Now will you go?”

I stepped to his desk, littered with half-eaten food, empty soda cans, scraps of paper, magazines, rolled-up panties. Panties? I fiddled with his mouse until the verdant hill was transformed once again into the mass of lurid colors. I tilted my head and stared at the colors for a moment until the array of limbs and breasts and lips and cocks all came clear.