“What the fuck are you talking about? Help you with what?” The voice was angry, hostile, fierce.

“Finding this girl.”

“Where’s Vincent. I need to speak to him.”

“This is going to sound strange. I don’t know if you’re good friends. But he’s dead.”

“What the fuck you saying?”

“I was looking for this girl, Lisa Weiss, and I found Vincent. He was in a hotel and he OD’d.”

“This is fucked-up. You’re a friend of Vincent’s? Where are you?”

“I’m not a friend. I’m looking for the girl.”

“How do you know he’s dead if you’re not a friend.”

“I found him dead.”

“You’re fucking lying to me. Who are you? Tell me your fucking name.”

“Jonathan Spencer. Do you know where the girl is?”

“Okay,” he said, less heated. He was suddenly all calm and gentle. “I know Lisa. She’s a friend. She’s a good girl. You and I should meet up and talk this out. Figure out what is going on. Where do you live?”

“I’m in Brooklyn, but I’ll meet you somewhere. Where are you?”

“I’m in Brooklyn. Red Hook. Come to where I work. You know Coffey Street, off of Van Brunt? You know Red Hook?”

“Yeah, it’s not far from me. Where do you work?”

“C and L.”

“What’s C and L?”

“Beverage distributor.”

“Okay… How about we meet at this restaurant in Red Hook—Hope and Anchor, you know that place? It’s open for breakfast.”

“Yeah, sure, I know it. We deliver to them.”

“Want to meet there in half an hour?”

“Okay.”

“And you’ll tell me where Lisa is?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Can you just tell me on the phone, then?”

“Listen you f—” He reigned himself in. “I want to talk to you about Vincent, this shit about OD’ing. It’s not something to talk about on the phone, hearing that someone you know is dead, if he is dead. So let’s meet up and talk this shit out.”

“All right, see you at the restaurant in half an hour. I’ll be wearing a tan cap and a gray sport coat.”

“I’ll find you,” he said, and hung up.

Like somebody sleepwalking and going out a ten-story window, not knowing what they’re doing, I called Promenade car service, the one I always use. They came in fifteen minutes and ten minutes after that I was at Hope and Anchor, which I had been to a few times. It was almost ten thirty in the morning. It was a faux rustic little place—a cutesy, gentrified outpost in the old waterfront neighborhood of Red Hook, which in the last five years had started attracting artists, the kinds of people who fifteen years before had been colonizing the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, and they colonized it so well that they can’t afford to live there anymore. So now it’s Red Hook.