I showed her the license. “About ten years ago a woman named Karen Shipley Nelsen lived here with a baby. I’m trying to find her. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

She stared at the license, then at me. “How do I know that’s you?”

I took out my driver’s license so she could see the picture. Outside on the street a very tall white man and a short, slender Hispanic man walked past. The white guy was bald and wore a tie-dyed dashiki like people used to wear in 1969. The Hispanic guy combed his hair straight back and traced his hand along the lines of the Corvette as they went past. The woman squinted from the picture to the guys on the street, then to me, and said, “That your car?”

I said it was.

She nodded once, knowing. “You’d better watch after it. That little sonofabitch will steal it.”

I said I would keep an eye out.

She craned around to watch the two guys on the street until she couldn’t see them anymore, then she closed the door and unlatched the chains and opened it wider. “My name is Miriam Dichester. You can come in, but I think we’ll leave this door open.”

“Sure.”

The living room was small and musty, with gray lace drapes and an ancient RCA black-and-white console television and a deep purple wingback couch with crocheted doilies on the arms. A long time ago the doilies had been white. The drapes had probably been white, too. Very old movie magazines sat in neat stacks on either side of the couch, and on the console television were framed photographs of Clark Gable and Walter Brennan and Ward Bond. The picture of Ward Bond was autographed. Ashtrays sprouted from the furniture like mushrooms and an open carton of Kent 100s sat on the coffee table. The air was sour with cigarettes and perspiration and Noxema skin cream.

Miriam Dichester took a single cigarette and a little blue Cricket lighter from her housecoat and fired up. I sat on the couch. She sat on a Morris chair. I hadn’t seen a Morris chair in years. She said, “I watch the street out here and I know. These days, you better watch. That’s why I have my place down here by the front. I can keep an eye on anything that comes up that walk.” She waved the cigarette at the little broken walk that went up alongside the building. “Anything I don’t like goes up there, I know about it. I got a little something to take care of it, too.”

I showed her the 8 × 10. “This is Karen Shipley. Her son’s name was Toby.”

“I know who you’re talking about.”

I put the picture away. “Do you know how I can get in touch with her?”