“Is that really you? It’s not like I’d show up there and then find a surprise?”

“Sweetheart. You’re talking to a professional!” She playfully acted stern. “It’s me, a hundred percent. The only thing you can’t see is the face. But that’s reserved strictly for someone who . . . I think you know what I mean, right?”

“Of course, I know what you mean. So can I have the address?”

“Do you have a pen?”

“Right in my hot little hand . . .”

“All right then, come on up to Arpuilles . . . on the regional road . . . As soon as you’re in the village, third house on the left. It’s a red house. But you have to tell me when you’re coming. Are you in town?”

“Yes. As long as it takes me to get in the car . . . shall we say in fifteen minutes?”

“All right, then, I’ll be expecting you . . .” Then the voice turned cold and professional, like an announcer at the end of an advertisement for a pharmaceutical product. Speaking rapidly, she said: “I accept only cash, no credit cards, no debit cards, no checks, payment must be complete before services will be provided.”

“Do you offer student discounts?”

Click. Call ended.

SEBASTIANO AND BRIZIO HAD GONE LOOKING FOR FLAVIO Buglioni, who lived in the Ostiense quarter, but they’d only found his mother. A woman eighty-five years old who couldn’t even hear the cars honking downstairs at the traffic light.

“Signo’!” Brizio shouted as the woman listened to him with a foolish smile on her face. “We’re here to see Flavio! Flavio, understood?”

“Flavio is my son!” the mother proudly announced. “Do you want an espresso?”

“No, we don’t want an espresso. We want Flavio!”

“Flavio is my son!”

“Christ on a crutch!” Sebastiano broke in. “We get it, we know that Flavio is your son, but where is he?”

The woman signaled in dumb show that she hadn’t understood. Sebastiano repeated the words, using his right hand to accompany every word with an act of mimicry. “Flavio”—and here he pointed to the photo on the marble-topped side table by the front door—“your son”—and he pointed his index finger at the little old woman—“now”—and he indicated his watch—“where is he?” he asked, bunching all the fingertips of his hand together and shaking his hand up and down.

“I don’t know what time it is. You have a watch on your wrist, young man.” Sebastiano shut his eyes.

Brizio weighed in again: “Signora, do you know how to read?” And he pointed to her eyes. “I mean, can you see okay?”