I went back to the car and looked up the addresses of the houses on the street. I looked at when they were bought and sold, who bought them and how much they paid for them. I’d only made it through a few when someone came back home down the street. I went and knocked and knocked and no one came to the door for a long time. I’d just seen them go in and now here they were ignoring the door. Finally, the man came and opened the door just far enough to get a look at me. I could see his shirt was freshly untucked and he wasn’t wearing shoes.

“I’m hoping you can help me with a murder that happened down the block,” I told him.

“What murder?”

“A man was murdered around the corner, or his body was found there anyway. I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”

“I don’t know the slightest thing about it. You tell me.”

I told him when it happened and showed him a photograph of Frank. “They found him just around the corner,” I told him.

The man shook his head. “I don’t know anything about it. I wish I did.”

That was the response of almost everyone who talked to me. I kept knocking up and down the block. A character straight out of Chandler answered the door a couple of houses down from the target house. His eyes had crawled back into his skull and weren’t sure they wanted to come back out. I knew his story even before I saw the cooker and syringe on the coffee table behind him.

I hadn’t expected to find that, not on this street. I stood and explained myself and he stood and sort of listened. He wouldn’t know anything, not for a while, I thought.

“I don’t want to bother anyone,” he said.

“You might want to bother somebody,” I said, looking past him. “I’ve been right where you are, believe me.”

He took my arm and brought me inside and closed the door. “I’m thinking about quitting,” he said.

I didn’t know what to do. Frank did this sort of stuff but not me. “It takes about three years,” I said, “sometimes five.” I regretted saying it.

“I quit before. Then had some surgery and they put me back on.”

“When was that?”

“I was clean for almost nine months.”

“It’s all part of it,” I said. “Relapse is still recovery.”

He nodded. “I’ve been told that before.”

“It’s still true. You want me to call someone? Take you somewhere?”

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “Tell me about your friend again.”