“What’s it say?”

“Seems like after they beat him, somebody strung him up over a pipe, using his own belt. That’s not nice. Not nice at all.” The woman shook her head, but she wore a small grin on her face. No sympathy for Rafael Johnson, a type who’d probably passed through her door once too often.

Ricky reeled back. It wasn’t hard for him to guess who’d found Rafael Johnson. And why.

From the same pay phone in the lobby he was able to track down the detective who’d filed the criminal investigation report on the death of Rafael Johnson. He did not know if the call would yield much, but thought he should make the call, regardless. The detective had a brisk, but energetic manner over the phone line, and after Ricky identified himself, seemed curious as to why he would be calling.

“I don’t get many calls from midtown medical types. They don’t usually travel in the same circles as the late and little-lamented Rafael Johnson. What’s your interest in this case, Doctor Starks?”

“This man Johnson was connected to a former patient of mine some twenty years ago. I’m trying to get in touch with her relatives and was hoping that Johnson might be able to steer me in the right direction.”

“That’s doubtful, doc, unless you’d been willing to pay. Rafi would do anything for anybody, as long as there was some cash involved.”

“You knew Johnson before he was killed?”

“Well, let’s just say that he was on the radar screens of a number of cops up here. He was a bad news kinda guy. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone around here who’d say one damn nice thing about him. Petty drugs. Muscle for hire. Break-ins, robberies, a sexual assault or two. Pretty much the whole sorry useless badass package. And he ended up pretty much as one might have expected, and, to be frank, doc, I’m not thinking there were too many tears shed at that man’s funeral.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

“Doc, that’s the million-dollar question. But the answer is, we got a pretty good idea.”

Ricky’s mind leapt at this statement.

“You do?” he asked excitedly. “Have you arrested someone?”

“No. And not likely to, either. At least not too quick.”

As quickly as he’d filled with some hope, he plummeted back to earth. “Why is that?”

“Well, case like this, generally speaking there’s not a whole lot of forensic evidence. Maybe some blood work, if there’d been a fight, but none available, because it seemed old Rafi was trussed up pretty tight when he was beaten up, and whoever worked him over was wearing gloves. So, really, what we’re looking for is to squeeze one of his buddies, come up with a name, build a case that way, with one guy ratting out the next, right up the ladder to the killer.”

“Yes. I understand.”

“But no one wants to rat out the guy who we think did up Rafael Johnson.”

“Why not?”

“Ah, prison loyalty. Code from Sing Sing. We’re looking at a guy that Rafael had some trouble with, while they were sharing state-sanctioned accommodations. Seems they had a real problem in prison. Probably arguing over who owned what piece of the drug trade. Tried to do one another while up there. Homemade knives. Shivs, they call ’em. Very unpleasant way to go, or so I’m told. Seems like the two bad boys carried the bad blood out to the street with ’em. This is, maybe, one of the oldest stories in the world. We’ll get the guy who lit up old Rafi when we get something a little better on one of his jerk-off buddies. One of them will trip up sooner or later and then we’ll wheel and deal. Need to be able to squeeze a little tighter, you see.”

“So, you think the killer was someone Johnson knew in prison?”

“Absolutely. A guy named Rogers. You ever run into anyone that name? Bad dude. Easily as bad as Rafael Johnson, and maybe even a little worse, because he’s the guy still walking around and Johnson’s fertilizing a plot out on Staten Island.”

“How can you be so sure he’s the guy?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this…”

“No, I understand if you don’t want to give out details,” Ricky said.

“Well, it was a little unusual,” the policeman continued. “But I don’t suppose there’s no harm in your knowing, as long as you keep it to yourself. This guy Rogers left a calling card. Seems he wanted all of Johnson’s buddies to know who did him up so badassed, bloody, and beaten up. A little message for the boys back in the hole, I’m thinking. The old prison mentality. Anyway, after pounding on Johnson for a good while, turning his face into a mess, breaking both his legs and six of his fingers, not nice scouts, let me tell you, and right before he strung him up by the neck, this guy took the time to carve his initial right in the middle of Johnson’s chest. A big bloody goddamn R cut in the flesh. Right unpleasant that, but gets the message across no doubt.”

“The letter R?”

“You got it. Some calling card, huh?”

It was indeed, Ricky thought. And the person whom it was truly meant for just received it.

Ricky tried not to imagine Rafael Johnson’s final moments. He wondered whether the ex-con and petty thug had had any idea whatsoever who it was that was delivering his death to him. Every punch that Johnson had thrown at the unfortunate Claire Tyson twenty years earlier had been repaid, with interest. Ricky told himself not to dwell on what he’d learned, but one thing was obvious: The man who called himself Rumplestiltskin had designed his revenge with considerable thought and care. And that the umbrella of that revenge spread farther than Ricky had imagined.

For the third time, Ricky dialed the number for the New York Times advertising department, to ask his final question. He was still standing at the pay telephone in the lobby of the courthouse building, holding a finger in one ear to try to drown out the noise of people leaving the offices. The clerk at the newspaper seemed annoyed that Ricky had just managed to beat the six p.m. deadline for the ad. The clerk’s voice was curt, direct. “All right, doctor. What do you want the ad to say?”

Ricky thought, then said:

Is the man I seek, one of the three?

Orphaned young, but now no fool,

seeking those who were so cruel?

The clerk read the lines back to him, without making a single comment, as if he were immune to curiosity. He took down the billing information rapidly and just as quickly disconnected the line. Ricky could not imagine what the clerk had waiting for him at his home that was so compelling that Ricky’s question did not even elicit the smallest comment, but he was thankful for that.

He walked out to the street and started to lift his hand to flag down a cab, then thought, oddly, that he would rather ride the subway. The streets were crowded with the evening rush hour traffic, and a steady stream of people were descending into the bowels of Manhattan to ride the trains home. He joined them, finding an odd sanctuary in the press of people. The subway was jammed, and he was unable to find a seat, so he rode north hanging from a metal rail, pummeled and jostled by the rhythm of the train and the mass of humanity. It was almost luxurious to be gripped by so much anonymity.

He tried not to think that in the morning, he would have only forty-eight remaining hours. He decided that even though he’d asked the question in the paper, he would assume that he already knew the answer, which would give him two days to come up with the names of Claire Tyson’s orphaned children. He did not know whether he could manage this, but at least it was something he could focus on, a concrete bit of information that he could either acquire or not, a hard and cold fact that existed somewhere in the world of documents and courts. This was not a world he was comfortable in, as he’d amply demonstrated that afternoon. But at least it was a recognizable world, and this gave him some hope. He wracked his memory, knowing that his late wife had been friendly with a number of judges, and thinking that perhaps one of them might sign an order for him to penetrate the adoption records. He smiled, thinking that he might be able to pull that off, and that would be a maneuver that Rumplestiltskin hadn’t anticipated.