The thing was, there wasn’t that much we could print even if we’d had more time. Lawrence, it was clear, might already be dead on the operating table at Mercy General, and we couldn’t go naming him in the paper before the police had made their attempts to contact members of his family. Nor could we say, with any certainty, that the smash-and-grab at Brentwood’s was related to the assault on a man who lived above a hair salon. Nor would we want to say, in a two-paragraph story, that the injured man had been found by a Metropolitan reporter, thereby tipping the competition and undercutting that reporter’s exclusive for the following day’s paper.

So Dan decided the best thing to do would be to run a bare-bones item on the Metro page, tucked into the digest, that police were investigating a violent attack on an unnamed private investigator, but details were unavailable at press time.

“You’ll have to come in tomorrow and write something major,” Dan said. “I’ll leave a note for dayside to expect you.”

I slipped the phone back into my jacket, feeling chilled and exhausted. It was only now, sitting in the Virtue, that it occurred to me that there was a chance that the car was not going to start. I prepared myself to dig my auto club emergency card out of my wallet. I slid the key in, turned it, and to my astonishment, the engine came on just like that.

“You are one unpredictable piece of shit,” I said, backing the Virtue out of the doughnut shop parking lot.

On the way home I detoured by Mercy General and went to the ER to find out how Lawrence was doing. There was a cop there, just standing around, who told us Mr. Jones was still in surgery, but he was either not at liberty to say anything more or simply didn’t know.

A man who looked like the guy in the photo pinned to the bulletin board in Lawrence’s was pacing in the waiting area and, when he heard me ask the cop about Lawrence, approached.

“Are you the one who phoned the restaurant?” he said.

I nodded. “You must be Kent. I’m Zack.”

He extended a hand to me. “Kent Aikens. Thanks for letting me know.”

“I didn’t know who else to call. Has Lawrence got family?”

“Not local. I think his parents are dead, but he’s got a sister named Letitia out in Denver, I think. I’m going to try to locate her, let her know. And when …” He hesitated, not sure whether the word he was looking for was “if.” He composed himself and continued. “When Lawrence wakes up, I can find out from him who else he wants me to call.”

“Sure,” I said. “Have you spoken to the doctors?”