Decker asked, “Did Tony and Ernie do more than room together?”

Thin shook his head. “Don’t think so. Tony, he sure knew a lot of teenage boys, I always suspected that kids was his thing. But I don’t know that he did something with them. Ernie liked girls—least he used to talk like he liked girls.” He looked at the twenty in his hand. “I think I’ve given you more than your money’s worth.”

Decker said, “We’ll see about that.” But he dropped another ten on the counter anyway. Informants in foreign cities were hard to come by.

“Ernest Benedetto,” the desk sergeant said. His name was Mahoney, a man in his forties with a florid complexion and pecan-colored hair that had been combed straight back. “No, Ernest Benedetto don’t ring no bell to me. But that don’t mean nuttin’. All it means is that there’s so many assholes, I can’t keep track of ’em all.”

It was four in the afternoon. Decker had wanted to drop Rina off, but she was determined to stick it out with him. Besides, she said, she was reading a good book. So she waited in the car while he talked shop with the boys at the Six-Seven. One thing about NYPD, they were accommodating to the brothers.

Decker said, “Can you punch Benedetto into the computer, find out if he has a yellow sheet?”

“No problem,” Mahoney said, typing in the name. “Let’s hear it for electronic wizardry.” He waited a moment, then said, “Oh my, oh my, Ernie’s been a busy boy.”

Decker studied the monitor. Benedetto had been busted for possession—six months’ jail sentence. Served his time as a trusty until one day he’d walked off the premises and forgotten to return. A warrant had been issued for his arrest.

Mahoney regarded Decker. “Is he involved in your kidnapping?”

“I don’t know,” Decker said. “Can you punch up his last known address?”

Mahoney said, “Man, with these computers, I could tell you the last time he took a dump.”

Mahoney fed the computer, gave Decker the information a few moments later.

Decker said, “Now can you cross-reference that address with any other names?”

“I can cross-reference it,” Mahoney said, “but the computer’s only gonna spit out names of record holders. To get names of Joe Civilian, youse gonna have to use the backwards directories or call the phone company.”

Decker said, “Try it anyway.”

“Sure.”

There were no other names.

“Okay,” Decker said. “Can you try this? Can you see if you can get hold of Benedetto’s former addresses.”

“We can try,” Mahoney said. Three other sets of numbers appeared on the monitor. “Now you want me to cross-reference those with other names?”

“You bet,” Decker said. He held his breath.

Nothing.

Which meant either Tony/Hersh didn’t have a record or the list of addresses was incomplete.

“I’ll have someone bring you out the last five years’ worth of backwards directories,” Mahoney said. “You can look up the addresses; they’ll tell you name and phone numbers of the people they used to belong to.”