Liam looked him straight in the eye, his face intent. “You know the rumors about me, that me and that Blackstone kid might be one and the same. I don’t know if they’re true, but I have eyes in my head. I saw a picture of Theodore Blackstone, and we look alike. I wouldn’t put it past Mick to play mean and dirty. My dad had a long and healthy hatred for the Blackstones. He’s been dead for ten years, so there’s no asking him, but he played dirty too. Crocket Malone was a brute, and I left home as soon as I could get away from him. I’ve been working in the Philly shipyards ever since.”

“And your mother? The one who bemoans delivering a ten-pound child? Is she lying too?”

“Maybe,” Liam said. “She still lives in Pittsburgh and has a big box of legal papers under her bed. I’ve tried looking through it to find a birth certificate or something else to prove who I am, but I can’t make much sense of all those papers.”

“Why not?” Patrick asked. “It shouldn’t be hard to spot a birth certificate.”

Liam stared moodily down the alley. “I’m not much for reading,” he admitted. “I need help going through that box.”

“Can you read at all?” Patrick didn’t want to embarrass Liam, but he needed to know.

“Not really,” Liam said. “I can sign my name but not a whole lot more, and there’s no one I can trust to help me with those papers.”

The prospect of traveling all the way to Pittsburgh to help a virtual stranger look for a birth certificate was absurd. Patrick had a stack of new clients, and his mother still needed him.

“Take the box to the nearest Catholic school and ask the nuns to help,” he said. “They’ll keep your confidence.”

Liam’s shoulders slumped, but only for a moment before straightening back up. “Yeah, I figured you’d say something like that. Hey, thanks anyway. You did a good job for my uncle, and I’m grateful.”

Liam headed down the alley, hands stuffed in his pockets.

Unbidden, the drawing of Hansel and Gretel in Gwen’s dining room rose in Patrick’s mind. It had been thirty years since her brother’s kidnapping, and it still nagged at her. If Patrick could prove who Liam Malone was, one way or the other, Gwen would want to know. He could never repay her for the serum that saved his mother’s life, but maybe he could grant her deepest wish by finding out what happened to Willy Blackstone.

“Wait!” he shouted down the alley, but Liam had already disappeared into a sea of pedestrians and lumbering wagons on Mulberry Street. Patrick ran a few blocks, constantly scanning the crowds until he spotted Liam heading toward the streetcar stop.