“And you’re paying for whoever can give you the skinny on this. How much?”

I shrugged. “A couple of dollars.”

“Like a bill? Like a half a K? How many dollars?”

I shrugged again. “I don’t know, Danny. It depends on the information and where it comes from and where it goes. I haven’t got a million dollars to play with but I’m not strapped either.”

“You said she was one of Chance’s girls.”

“Right.”

“You were looking for Chance a little over two weeks ago, Matthew. And then you took me to the boxing matches just so I could point him out to you.”

“That’s right.”

“And a couple of days after that, your big blonde had her picture in the papers. You were looking for her pimp, and now she’s dead, and here you are looking for her boyfriend.”

“So?”

He drank the rest of his vodka. “Chance know what you’re doing?”

“He knows.”

“You talk to him about it?”

“I’ve talked to him.”

“Interesting.” He raised his empty glass to the light, squinted through it. Checking it, no doubt, for purity and clarity and precision. He said, “Who’s your client?”

“That’s confidential.”

“Funny how people looking for information are never looking to furnish it. No problem. I can ask around, put the word out in certain quarters. That’s what you want?”

“That’s what I want.”

“Do you know anything about this boyfriend?”

“Like what?”

“Like is he old or young, wise or straight, married or single? Does he walk to school or take his lunch?”

“He may have given her presents.”

“That narrows the field.”

“I know.”

“Well,” he said, “all we can do is try.”

It was certainly all I could do. I’d gone back to the hotel after the meeting and found a message waiting for me. Call Sunny, it said, and included the number which I’d called earlier. I rang her from the booth in the lobby and got no answer. Didn’t she have a machine? Didn’t they all have machines nowadays?

I went to my room but I couldn’t stay in it. I wasn’t tired, the nap had taken the edge off my tiredness, and all the coffee I’d drunk at the meeting had me restless and edgy. I went through my notebook and reread Donna’s poem and it struck me that I was very likely looking for an answer someone else already knew.

That’s very often the case in police work. The easiest way to find out something is to ask someone who knows. The hard part is figuring out who that person is, the one with the answer.

Who might Kim have confided in? Not the girls I’d talked to so far. Not her neighbor on Thirty-seventh Street. Who, then?