I’D DONE SOME DIGGING OVER my summer in Vermont into the death of Ray’s half brother. Every time I searched online for information on Calvin Teicher, I felt like I was trespassing on a property that did not belong to me. I had to take breaks to pet the dogs or rip at the mint overtaking the garden or make iced tea. I made sure to erase my online history so that my mother didn’t spy on what I was doing.

First, I found the small news report of Calvin’s death. A Boyle Heights hotel. Evidence of sleeping pills in his system. The sink bloody where Calvin’s head had smashed it, his body found fully clothed, prone, in an overflowing tub.

Then I found a picture of Calvin—a small and blurry snapshot for a college publication. He had the same blue eyes as Ray, but they looked out from a sharper face: His chin was pointy, his cheekbones high, his hair thin and cropped short. He wore tiny glasses. More keen argument and wit than absurd humor and tenderness. A brother to Ray, but a different make.

I even called the Boyle Heights hotel where he’d died, pretending I was delivering a pizza, to find out if there was a back entrance where someone might have sneaked in and out without being seen by the front desk. There was.

And I looked up Steve Goetz again, seeking a connection that Ray had hinted at during a conversation I had had with him last spring. But Steve Goetz and Calvin had attended Yates University in different years, and there was no obvious link between them. There was no apparent motivation for anyone to kill Calvin.

All roads led to the conference that Calvin had attended in Los Angeles. He had come to speak on a panel about Britain’s nineties art scene, with a focus on the role of a young artist and dealer named James Compton. In his thesis, Calvin made the case that Compton’s gallery, fueled by his edgy, egalitarian worldview, ultimately changed the map of London, spurring trendy resettlement of once abandoned areas and vast increases in real estate prices. He also wrote, “Compton liked dangerous friends, friends who smuggled ether from Poland for him, friends who sold him explosives. Friends who came looking for him after he died, claiming giant debts.”