The super knew about the wreck of August’s apartment—he’d been the person who called the police. “And that was yesterday. Why is only today a detective coming?”

“I’m private, not with the police.”

“Ah, private. Someone has hired you to solve this crime?”

“Someone has asked me to find Mr. Veriden. I didn’t know about the break-in until I got here this morning. It doesn’t look as though the police did much yesterday.”

Baros spit. “The police did nothing. They asked was Mr. Veriden often fighting with his lovers, and I said he was always quiet, not a fighting kind of man. And always very neat. Whenever I go into his apartment—which is only when there is a problem, I am not spying, believe me, but sometimes I must fix a radiator or a refrigerator—everything is clean, orderly. The flowers—those broke my heart. He cares for his flowers, and they bring cheer to the apartment. He knows my wife is not well, and often he gives me flowers for her. What has happened to him? They did not harm him, did they?”

I spread my hands, universal sign of bafflement. “The night before Halloween, there was a major act of vandalism at a big Evanston gym where he works. Police think he was stealing their drug supply, but his apartment looks as though someone was trying to find something.”

“He would not be stealing drugs. He is so honest.” Baros pronounced the h as my mother used to—Latin speakers uncertain about when it is silent in English, when it is aspirated.

“He took off about ten days ago without saying where he was going,” I said. “Does he have a lover, or friends in the building or the neighborhood, he would talk to?”

Baros shook his head. “I don’t know everything about the tenants—there are thirty-six apartments here, after all. But we live opposite, my wife and I, so we see this entrance more than the others, and my wife, she worries about August, that he is too lonely. He is so polite, so kindhearted, one of the few who even knows she is having radiation treatments. He has taken care of Rosquilla for us sometimes.”

He pointed at the little terrier, who barked at his name.

“Can I talk to your wife? Maybe August confided in her.”

Baros’s wife was at work, despite her cancer treatments, but he promised to consult her and call me.

“You didn’t see who broke in?” I asked.

“We are in bed at ten, so it has taken place after that. After seeing the destruction in Mr. Veriden’s home, I am telling the owners they must put in better security, cameras, alarms, but it is too late to protect Mr. Veriden.”