The sun was shining, the temperature a crisp forty degrees. The streets seemed to dance with their own energy. People conversing, horns honking, the smell of yeast dough and onion and grease wafting through the air. Decker took out the picture of Noam and started his task at the beginning of the block, questioning people in each store as well as approaching random passersby. After two hours of inquiries, he came back to the car. Rina was reading a book—a biography of Menachem Begin. At her side was this morning’s crumpled newspaper, the crossword puzzle completed in ink.

He got into the driver’s seat. She looked up.

“No luck?”

“No one I spoke to recognized Noam. I’ve got a list of two Zvis and five Hershes or Hershels still in their twenties, with approximate addresses. You know how people are. ‘Oh, there’s a Hersh Goldblum who lives down that way.’ Well, ‘that way’ could be any one of five streets or forty houses. I’m going to drop by the local police station, which I found out is the 72nd Precinct. They’ve got all the backward directories at their fingertips. I can phone telephone security and DMV from there.”

Rina said, “Do you want some lunch first?”

“Nah, I’ll wait until I get this over with. You go get yourself something.”

“If you don’t need that picture of Noam, maybe I could try my hand at canvassing the houses, talking to the women. I could pick you up at the station house in about an hour.”

“You really want to do that?”

“Yes,” Rina said.

“Okay, lady, you’ve got a deal.” He handed her a bunch of photographs of Noam. “It would help me out.”

Rina said, “We make a good team, huh?”

Decker laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

She sounded hurt.

“We make a great team,” Decker said. “It’s just that Shimon said the same thing to me yesterday.”

“Everybody wants to pair up with a winner,” Rina said.

“I wish,” Decker said.

An hour later, Decker returned to the car and they exchanged their findings. The Hersh/Zvi list had been pared down to three possibilities since two Hershes and the two Zvis had moved out of town. He’d spoken with Hersh One’s wife and found out her husband owned a fish store in Williamsburg. He was a bearded man of six one, approximately two hundred pounds and thirty years old. Decker scratched him off the list. The other Hersh learned in a kollel all day and spent evenings at home with his wife and newborn son. He was about the right size, but was bearded and didn’t seem to have any muscles to speak about. The third—a Hershel—was a jeweler and worked in Manhattan. Decker had talked to his wife and found out that he had blond hair and blue eyes and was twenty-eight.