It was Nancy who got me to try out for the junior high basketball team. I’d always been good at sports, but softball was my game. When I made the team my dad tacked a hoop to the side of the house and played with Nancy and me. He used to come to all our games in high school, and after our last game in college, the one against Lake Forest, he’d taken us to the Empire Room for drinks and dancing. He’d taught us how to fade, how to fake the pass then turn and dunk, and I’d won the game in the last seconds with just that move. The fake and the dunk.

I sat up. Nancy and I had worked it so many times in the past, why not now? I didn’t have any proof, but let young Art think I did.

I pulled Nancy’s most recent diary from the stack on the seat next to me. She had entered three phone numbers for him in her crabbed handwriting. I made my best guess at deciphering them and went to the public phone outside the beach house.

The first number turned out to be the ward office, where Mrs. May’s syrupy tones denied knowledge of young Art’s whereabouts while trying to probe me for who I was and what I wanted. She even offered me to Art, Sr., before I could end the conversation.

I dialed the second number and got the Jurshak, Parma insurance offices. There a nasal-toned receptionist told me at length that she hadn’t seen young Art since Friday and she’d like to know since when she’d been hired to baby-sit for him. The cops had been around this morning looking for him and she was supposed to get a contract typed by noon and how could she possibly do it if—

“Don’t let me keep you,” I said shortly, and hung up on her.

I dug in my pockets for change but I’d used my last two quarters. Nancy had penciled an address next to the third number, down on Avenue G. That had to be Art’s home. Anyway, if I got the kid on the phone, he’d probably hang up. Better to confront him in person.

I got back in the car and drove back down to East Side, to 115th and Avenue G. The house was halfway up the block, a new brick place with a high fence around it and an electronic lock on the gate. I rang the bell and waited. I was just about to ring again when a woman’s voice came uncertainly through the squawk box.

“I’m here to see young Art,” I bellowed. “My name is Warshawski.”

There was a long silence and then the lock clicked. I pushed the gate open and moved into the estate. At least it looked more like an estate than it did your typical East Side bungalow. If this really was Art’s home, I presumed it was because he still lived with his parents.