Folderman appends Esterhazy’s phone number and e-mail address. I shoot him a fervent thank-you, then send my original e-mail to Esterhazy along with a copy of Folderman’s message.

A few minutes later, I call Esterhazy. He might be one of those guys who checks his e-mail once a week. At least I ought to bring it to his attention.

“Esterhazy,” the reedy voice says.

“Mr. Esterhazy, my name is Alex Callahan. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance-”

“Yesss. I got your e-mail. And of course I remember that brilliant little rabbit. Byron B. Very frustrating.”

“Byron B.? What do you mean?”

“That was his name – all the name we ever got. As I was saying, it was very frustrating. Some on the committee wanted to strip the championship from him, but I was against it. Wouldn’t have been right. It was a blind competition, you know, and his rabbit was head and shoulders above the other submissions.”

“Excuse me, but how was the rabbit submitted, if you didn’t know the identity of the person who made it?”

“Turned out the fellow who sent the piece was an occupational therapist at the… wait, I’ll remember.”

“Port Sulfur Forensic Facility in Louisiana?”

“Yes! A madhouse! Not unknown, of course. Jules Kravik – a famous folder – he was deeply disturbed and lived most of his life in a mental institution.”

“Hunh.”

“With this Byron B. fellow, we might have been permitted to communicate except that by the time the competition was judged and we were ready to inform the winners and announce results, he’d been released. And our attempts to persuade the institution to pass on the news of victory and the small cash award were very firmly rebuffed.” A sigh. “So that was it. I was a bit surprised that he didn’t resurface in the origami world – clearly a talent, very innovative use of the stretched bird base. But that was it.”

I’m so excited I barely have the manners to thank the man before I hang up.

Byron B. might not be much, but it’s something. It’s not like the facility in Port Sulfur is a detox center or a rehab facility with patients checking in and out at will. It’s an institution for the criminally insane. Which is to say that, whoever Byron B. is, he fucked up badly and in a very public way – otherwise he wouldn’t have been in that particular bin for so many years.

And he hadn’t checked in of his own volition. Which meant that somewhere in Louisiana, there was a court-order committing a man named Byron, last name initial B., to the Port Sulfur Forensic Facility. Depending upon what the guy had done, there might even be a news story. Thanks to Anderton, I know the year: 1983.

Ordinarily, I might not select a private investigator on the advice of a thirteen-year-old girl, but nothing about my life is ordinary anymore. Jezebel Henton is happy to give me Pinky Streiber’s name, which she spells for me, and his number, which she apparently knows by heart.

“Thanks, Jez.”

“One thing about Pink maybe you should know?” She hesitates.

“What’s that?”

“Just ’cause it kinda startles people. See, Pinky – the reason that’s his nickname? He’s an albino.”

I meet Pinky Streiber at his office in the French Quarter. A hard-looking blonde in a red linen sheath sits at the reception desk. She tells me to take a seat in what has to be one of the hippest offices I’ve ever been in. Jazz on the sound system. Paintings and antique furniture and a scatter of big plants. Tall ceilings and rotating fans. Huge windows with white shutters. Pinky Streiber is doing all right.

Five minutes later, he’s shaking my hand and leading me to his dimly lit and sparsely furnished inner sanctum. He sits behind a slab of polished wood, which has nothing on it but a red telephone. I sit on a red leather Barcelona chair. Streiber wears sunglasses and his skin is dead white. There’s a familiar smell in the air, but I can’t quite identify it.

“Sunscreen,” Streiber says, as if he’s read my mind. “I’m drenched in it. That’s what you smell. Coppertone Sport 48. And I apologize for the sunglasses, but I only take ’em off at night.”

After he understands the task, Pinky says, “Well, it’s labor-intensive, but even so, it’s just legwork. If we can get a million hamsters hopping on keyboards long enough, we’ll eventually get a copy of ‘Gunga Din,’ n’est-ce pas? The question is: How big is your budget?”

I shrug. “Don’t hold back. Whatever it takes.” For the time being, I’m just going to keep writing myself more of those checks the credit card companies send in the mail. Eventually, I’ll hit up my dad. And then…

“I’ll give you a break, seeing as how this ain’t exactly a run-o’-the-mill divorce case, but I’ll still need a retainer, let’s say five hundred dollars. And just so you know, I don’t do courthouse searches myself. I’ve built up a kind of motley crew of paralegals, retired folks, teenagers, and the chronically underemployed. You say go, I’ll turn ’em loose on this and they will hit every single courthouse in Louisiana until they find that commitment order.”

“Great.”

“I pay my subs twenty bucks an hour. Now, this could take a lot of hours. Or a few. You never know.”

“Right. I understand.”

“Ohhhhh-kay. So it’s Byron B. Commitment order to the Port Sulfur Forensic Facility. Entered the system in 1983.” He writes this down. “That’s it, right? That’s all you got. You know when he got out?”

“Ninety-six.”

“Okay, then, that’s all I need.”

“I might as well help,” I tell him. “If there’s somewhere you don’t have enough bodies, I know how to search records.”

“Dynamite. You just earned yourself a stint in St. John the Baptist Parish. Parish seat’s in LaPlace. My number one sub there just had a baby and my backup took a job at the new Target.” He pronounces the word as if it’s French: Tar-zhay. “It’s not far from here, actually. Highway 10 will take you right to it.”

“Okay.” I pull out my wallet, extracting a dog-eared check.

“Becky will deal with that. We do take Visa and MasterCard,” Pinky says. “Some folks like to get their miles.”

Days in the LaPlace courthouse, nights in the local Comfort Inn. Poring through the records, I drink gallons of coffee and work to keep the name Byron in the forefront of my mind. It would be easy to run right by the citation the way I’ve missed my turn and driven right past Ordway Street on my way home from work.

The third day, I’m on my way back to the motel when my cell phone rings.

It’s Pinky. “You in your car?”

“Yes.”

“Pull over.”

“What?”

“I’m excited and chagrined and a little disappointed, my man,” Pinky says, with a little bray of a laugh.

“What?”

“This search coulda really helped out with the unemployment statistics here in Louisiana.”

“Pinky.”

A sigh. “Yeah. Deal is I hired a woman to work St. Mary’s Parish. She’s off visiting her sister in Houston until today, but she’s worth waiting for because this lady is really smart. Schoolteacher. Anyway, the assignment from me is waiting on her fax machine when she gets home. Bingo. She calls me right off. Turns out, she knew the sumbitch. ‘Byron B.,’ she says to me. ‘Pinky, you can only be talkin’ ’bout Byron Boudreaux.’”

“You’re kidding.”

“‘Oh?’ sez me,” Pinky continues. “‘I think so,’ she says. ‘See, I grew up in Morgan City and right across the river they had this crazy kid name of Byron Boudreaux did some terrible stuff. I remember when they put that boy away because we all slept a little better. And it had to be round about 1983 or so because I was in high school at the time and I graduated in eighty-five. I think it’s just gotta be him, Pink.’ Sounds like it, I told her. So how ’bout that?”