Suddenly he called something, but I missed it. “What did you say?” I called back. I really hated this shouting match.

“How much you paying?”

“We have to talk about it.”

“I’m not letting you in till I’m sure I want to.”

“Tell me what you charge.”

“Tell me what you’re paying.”

A standoff where I’m out in the cold and he’s inside where it’s warm is not my idea of equal opportunity. I thought quickly about how much of Sandy’s money I had left. “Two hundred,” I called.

“Forget it.”

So we were going to have to bargain. I am not good at this, I thought miserably. What if he wanted thousands? I couldn’t commit Sandy to a fortune. “Two fifty,” I responded.

There was silence. I waited, wondering if I would ever feel my toes again. “Three hundred,” I said, “and that’s my last offer. I’m freezing out here and I have to get somewhere warm.”

Silence again. What am I doing here? I asked myself. This is a man who wouldn’t even let an old friend in, someone who cared enough about him to make the trip from New York. I walked over to the car and got in. From there I could see the whole front of the house, but all the windows were curtained and I couldn’t see inside. If he had some special viewing place, I couldn’t detect it. I put the key in the ignition and started the motor. The car was facing the wrong way and I would have to swing around in a U to get back on the narrow path to the road. DiMartino didn’t have that problem. I could see where his tire tracks were; he backed up and turned toward the road easily.

I started forward, making a wide swing to my left, away from the house, pushing through snow that was fairly high. But it was too much for the car, which ground to a stop as I felt the beginnings of panic. I didn’t want to have to leave my car here as I begged for help from the orchard a mile down the road, where the farmer, if he had any sense at all, would have left for a warmer climate weeks ago.

I backed up and tried again with no luck. I turned the motor off and got out. Thanks to Jack, I kept a small snow shovel in the trunk and a container of sand. The sand wasn’t necessary at this point, but the shovel might do the trick. I started working at it, but it was tough going and I stood back to survey the terrain and catch my breath. That’s when it occurred to me I was doing everything backward. I got in the car and backed up as nearly as I could in my own tracks till I reached the ruts DiMartino had made as he backed out of the carport. Slowly I moved the car till it nearly touched the back of his. Then I went forward in his path into the carport.

I paused to let the system rest. It had been both physically and spiritually taxing. As I recovered, I heard something and I turned around. DiMartino was standing outside his door, waving to me. I inched the car forward to make sure I could continue and got out.

“Come here,” he called. “What you doin’ that for?”

“You told me to get off your property. I was getting off.”

“Come inside before you freeze to death.”

Thanks, I thought. I’m already three-quarters there.

The house was one large room, more like a studio apartment in New York than a place to live in the country. And it was clearly an artist’s studio. Although there was a bed off to one side and what looked like a kitchen against the back wall, the rest of the space was covered with sculpture. I didn’t know how the man got from one piece to another, so close were they to each other. And centered in the large room was a stove with a chimney rising through the roof.

It was actually hot inside. I waited a minute, then unbuttoned my coat with stiff fingers, pulled off my gloves, and finally took the coat off. He didn’t offer to take it, so I made my way to the bed and left it there.

“Who are you?” DiMartino said.

“Chris Bennett. My husband is a detective sergeant at the Sixty-fifth.”

“The Six-five. I know the Six-five. What’s his name?”

“Jack Brooks.”

“Brooks. I remember him. He’s OK.”

I thought he was a little better than that, but this wasn’t the time to promote the man I loved. “He said you were the best.”

“A lot of good it did me.”

“I need your help.”

“Yeah.”

That seemed the end of the conversation. DiMartino reached for an open bottle of liquor and poured some into a water glass, looking questioningly at me as he did so. When I shook my head, he drank some.

“I drink a little,” he said.

It didn’t come as a surprise. He settled back in his chair. I found another one next to his bed and dragged it to the center of the room. DiMartino looked like a man who had given up all those little things we take pains to do to show ourselves we are civilized human beings. His clothes were less than clean and he wore them sloppily. His hair, which was receding, was too long and choppily cut, as though he took a chunk from here and a chunk from there when it suited him or when he got tired of looking at it in the mirror. He had a gut, which must have made it hard to chop wood, and that seemed to be the fuel of choice in his stove.

“You know what they did to me?”

“Jack said you got a raw deal.”

“I was always a little outspoken, said what I thought when I thought it. I had a little disagreement with my lieutenant about some evidence, and later on I got cornered by a reporter. So I told him what I thought, which wasn’t what everybody else thought, and the dummy quoted me and printed my name and it got back to the guy who runs the lab.”

“You mean they fired you for expressing an opinion?” I could feel my ire rise.

“Nobody fired me. They just piled up a lot of junk against me.” He had started to speak more carefully, his diction more correct, as though he might be a man not afraid to show the effects of education. It was hard for me to believe it was this same man who had shouted “Get outa here” only an hour ago. “Then one day I took a piece of evidence from the property room, checked it out with the clerk, and forgot to get it back in time. I put it in my locker overnight and the next morning they said I’d stolen it.”

“How terrible.”

“Right. How terrible. Something people do all the time, only that time they wanted me, so it became a violation of department rules and procedures. I had a great choice, sit in a radio car in Brooklyn for two years or retire.”

“It really was a raw deal.”

“So here I am. My wife left me and I’m living the life of Riley in Broome County. Sure you don’t want a drink?”

“I’m positive.”

“So you want me to help you find someone.”

“She disappeared at the Thanksgiving Day parade the year before last. The police haven’t found her and a private detective hasn’t found her. I’m looking as a favor to her family.”

“You have pictures?”

“Out in the car.”

“Let’s take a look.”

20

It was dark when I left. The transformation that had taken over DiMartino had been wonderful to watch. As his speech had changed, so did his demeanor. Before my eyes he went from the sloppy, angry hermit to the consummate professional. He looked at the pictures with a magnifying glass he found in a desk almost hidden behind sculptures. He looked at the dentist’s report and the hair swatches I had gotten from the hairdresser. He listened to everything I had to say and took notes.

“Probably made herself over,” he grumbled at one point. Then he went back to the pictures.

Finally he asked if I would leave everything with him overnight and we would talk in the morning.

“I’ll bring breakfast,” I said. “What time do you open for business?”