“Detective. Private investigator. And I have to be on a-a-”-I couldn’t think of the Italian, so I used English-“shipping dock in four hours.”

“Ah, a detective.” He pursed his lips. “I see now why this Murray was warning me about you. You and he are lovers? Or is that a shocking question to ask an American woman?”

“ Murray ’s a reporter. His path crosses mine from time to time.” I went to the phone and summoned a cab.

“And, Cousin, I may take this handwritten score with me? To study more leisurely?”

“If you return it.”

“I will be here with it tomorrow afternoon-when you return from your detecting.”

I went to the kitchen for some newspaper to wrap it in, wondering about Vico. He didn’t seem to have much musical knowledge. Perhaps he was ashamed to tell me he couldn’t read music and was going to take it to some third party who could give him a stylistic comparison between this score and something of our grandmother’s.

The cab honked under the window a few minutes later. I sent him off on his own with a chaste cousinly kiss. He took my retreat from passion with the same mockery that had made me squirm earlier.

All during the next day, as I huddled behind a truck taking pictures of a handoff between the vice president of an electronics firm and a driver, as I tailed the driver south to Kankakee and photographed another handoff to a man in a sports car, traced the car to its owner in Libertyville and reported back to the electronics firm in Naperville, I wondered about Vico and the score. What was he really looking for?

Last night I hadn’t questioned his story too closely-the late night and pleasure in my new cousin had both muted my suspicions. Today the bleak air chilled my euphoria. A quest for a great-grandmother’s music might bring one pleasure, but surely not inspire such avidity as Vico displayed. He’d grown up in poverty in Milan without knowing who his father, or even his grandfather were. Maybe it was a quest for roots that was driving my cousin so passionately.

I wondered, too, what item of value my mother had refused to sell thirty summers ago. What wasn’t hers to sell, that she would stubbornly sacrifice better medical care for it? I realized I felt hurt: I thought I was so dear to her she told me everything. The idea that she’d kept a secret from me made it hard for me to think clearly.

When my dad died, I’d gone through everything in the little house on Houston before selling it. I’d never found anything that seemed worth that much agony, so either she did sell it in the end-or my dad had done so-or she had given it to someone else. Of course, she might have buried it deep in the house. The only place I could imagine her hiding something was in her piano, and if that was the case I was out of luck: the piano had been lost in the fire that destroyed my apartment ten years ago.

But if it-whatever it was-was the same thing Vico was looking for, some old piece of music-Gabriella would have consulted Mr. Fortieri. If she hadn’t gone to him, he might know who else she would have turned to. While I waited in a Naperville mall for my prints to be developed I tried phoning him. He was eighty now, but still actively working, so I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer the phone.

I snoozed in the president’s antechamber until he could finally snatch ten minutes for my report. When I finished, a little after five, I stopped in his secretary’s office to try Mr. Fortieri again. Still no answer.

With only three hours sleep, my skin was twitching as though I’d put it on inside out. Since seven this morning I’d logged a hundred and ninety miles. I wanted nothing now more than my bed. Instead I rode the packed expressway all the way northwest to the O’Hare cutoff.

Mr. Fortieri lived in the Italian enclave along north Harlem Avenue. It used to be a day’s excursion to go there with Gabriella: we would ride the Number Six bus to the Loop, transfer to the Douglas line of the el, and at its end take yet another bus west to Harlem. After lunch in one of the storefront restaurants, my mother stopped at Mr. Fortieri’s to sing or talk while I was given an old clarinet to take apart to keep me amused. On our way back to the bus we bought polenta and olive oil in Frescobaldi’s Deli. Old Mrs. Frescobaldi would let me run my hands through the bags of cardamom, the voluptuous scent making me stomp around the store in an exaggerated imitation of the drunks along Commercial Avenue. Gabriella would hiss embarrassed invectives at me, and threaten to withhold my gelato if I didn’t behave.

The street today has lost much of its charm. Some of the old stores remain, but the chains have set out tendrils here as elsewhere. Mrs. Frescobaldi couldn’t stand up to Jewel, and Vespucci’s, where Gabriella bought all her shoes, was swallowed by the nearby mall.

Mr. Fortieri’s shop, on the ground floor of his dark-shuttered house, looked forlorn now, as though it missed the lively commerce of the street. I rang the bell without much hope: no lights shone from either story.

“I don’t think he’s home,” a woman called from the neighboring walk.

She was just setting out with a laundry-laden shopping cart. I asked her if she’d seen Mr. Fortieri at all today. She’d noticed his bedroom light when she was getting ready for work-he was an early riser, just like her, and this time of year she always noticed his bedroom light. In fact, she’d just been thinking it was strange she didn’t see his kitchen light on-he was usually preparing his supper about now, but maybe he’d gone off to see his married daughter in Wilmette.

I remembered Barbara Fortieri’s wedding. Gabriella had been too sick to attend, and had sent me by myself. The music had been sensational, but I had been angry and uncomfortable and hadn’t paid much attention to anything-including the groom. I asked the woman if she knew Barbara’s married name-I might try to call her father there.

“Oh, you know her?”

“My mother was a friend of Mr. Fortieri’s-Gabriella Sestieri-Warshawski, I mean.” Talking to my cousin had sunk me too deep in my mother’s past.

“Sorry, honey, never met her. She married a boy she met at college, I can’t think of his name, just about the time my husband and I moved in here, and they went off to those lakefront suburbs together.”

She made it sound like as daring a trip as any her ancestors had undertaken braving the Atlantic. Fatigue made it sound funny to me and I found myself doubling over to keep the woman from seeing me shake with wild laughter. The thought of Gabriella telling me “No gelato if you do not behave this minute” only made it seem funnier and I had to bend over, clutching my side.

“You okay there, honey?” The woman hesitated, not wanting to be involved with a stranger.

“Long day,” I gasped. “Sudden-cramp-in my side.”

I waved her on, unable to speak further. Losing my balance, I reeled against the door. It swung open behind me and I fell hard into the open shop, banging my elbow against a chair.

The fall sobered me. I rubbed my elbow, crooning slightly from pain. Bracing against the chair I hoisted myself to my feet. It was only then that it dawned on me that the chair was overturned-alarming in any shop, but especially that of someone as fastidious as Mr. Fortieri.

Without stopping to reason I backed out the door, closing it by wrapping my hand in my jacket before touching the knob. The woman with the laundry cart had gone on down the street. I hunted in my glove compartment for my flashlight, then ran back up the walk and into the shop.

I found the old man in the back, in the middle of his workshop. He lay amid his tools, the stem of an oboe still in his left hand. I fumbled for his pulse. Maybe it was the nervous beating of my own heart, but I thought I felt a faint trace of life. I found the phone on the far side of room, buried under a heap of books that had been taken from the shelves and left where they landed.