I figured the boyfriend was the key to this whole thing and she told me his name was Vincent, but she didn’t have a last name. He worked at a bar called Lakes on Avenue B. Rachel, on an earlier trip to the city, had gone there with her sister. The NYU students liked it because the place was lax when it came to asking for proof of age.

“Do you have a picture of Lisa?” I asked.

“No,” she said. Then she remembered that her sister had sent a picture of herself with Vincent to her cell phone. From Vincent’s cell phone. This was a coup—I had a picture and a number to work with. She showed me the picture—Lisa was more severe than her sister, high cheekbones, a sensual mouth, but the same dark hair and marble white skin. Vincent had a yellow, long face, a tattoo of some kind on his neck, and a false look of rock-band confidence in his eyes.

I called Vincent’s number and his voice mail, like Lisa’s, was full. But at least I had a number. I suggested to Rachel that we go over to Kinko’s on Astor Place and that she e-mail me the picture and we print it up.

But first we called the sister, on the off chance that this could be solved right here and now and the two girls could go see Beauty and the Beast as planned and live happily ever after. Not unexpectedly, the call went right to the filled-up voice mail. So then we swung by the dorm, with the same hope of an easy resolution, but the sister still wasn’t in her room. I instructed Rachel to ask the guard in an offhand way if he had seen her sister—she showed him the cell phone picture—and he said he hadn’t.

It was now almost five thirty and as we walked over to Kinko’s, I said, giving her an out and giving me an out, “Are you really sure you don’t want to go to the cops or let your parents know?”

“I’m sure,” she said. “Lisa’ll go ballistic. She’s probably forgot about the play and is just having sex for hours. Somebody told me that if you do heroin you just keep having sex and don’t want to stop.”

“I think that’s crystal meth,” I said, “but I could be wrong.” My problems have always been with alcohol and cocaine, so I wasn’t too sure about these other drugs.

“Whatever,” she said. “I don’t even like beer. She always goes with the worst guys possible. He’s either shooting her up with heroin or giving her crystal meth. It’s like it turns her on to find a serial killer or something.”