I do, but I need to clarify. “You never saw Rhys Baldwin?”

“No.”

“And you have no idea where he is?”

“None. But this is my proposal, if you want to hear it.”

I sit back and cross my legs. I gesture for him to proceed.

“You forget me. I forget you. I go back to my life. Except for one thing. I have the sources on the street. I have the contacts. I use them now. In the same way I was able to find Patrick Moore, I use them to find Rhys Baldwin, if he can be found.”

I consider this. It sounds like a fair deal. I tell him this. Relief washes over him. We have a deal. For now.

“One more question,” I say.

He waits.

“You said, ‘if he can be found.’”

His face falls a little.

“I assume,” I continue, “that you asked Patrick Moore about Rhys Baldwin’s whereabouts.”

He squirms just enough. “It didn’t really interest me,” he replies.

“But you asked.”

“I did, yes.”

“What did he say?”

Fat Gandhi looks me square in the eye. “He said that Rhys was dead.”

Chapter 26

The Morningside campus of Columbia University features a startlingly picturesque quad nestled between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue on the west and east and 114th Street and 120th Street south and north. You enter by College Walk on 116th Street, and suddenly, like something out of a wardrobe portal to Narnia, you are transported from the aging city, from the purely urban, from Manhattan at its most citified, to an idyllic campus of green and brick and domes and ivy. You feel protected in here, isolated, and maybe, for the four years you spend here as an undergraduate, that’s how it should be.

Esperanza had found a campus directory that told her Francesca Moore lived in a six-person suite in Ruggles Hall. It was seven A.M. The quad was near silent. You needed a student ID to enter the building, so Myron waited by the door. To blend in, he donned a baseball cap and carried an empty pizza box.

Myron Bolitar, Master of Disguise.

When one kid finally emerged, Myron grabbed the door before it closed. The kid, probably used to deliverymen coming at all hours, didn’t say a word.

Myron Bolitar, Master of Disguise, was inside.

The corridors were eerily quiet. Myron headed to the second floor and found the door to room 217. He’d come this early figuring that Francesca, like any college student, would still be asleep and thus he was sure to find her here and maybe even a little groggy. That might be a good thing. Catch her off guard and all that. Sure, he might disturb her roommates too, but he chalked that up to acceptable collateral damage.

Myron didn’t know what he hoped to find here, but stumbling around blind was a big part of his so-called investigations. You don’t so much painstakingly search for the needle in the haystack as haphazardly leap into various haystacks, barefoot and naked, and then flail wildly and hope that hey, ouch, there’s a needle.