Flavio’s mother shrugged her shoulders. Brizio put his hand in his pocket. He pulled out an old receipt, took the pen from the side table, and wrote: “Where is Flavio?” Then he handed the little sheet of paper to the woman, who held it at arm’s length from her face to read it.

“Ah!” And she smiled. “So you want to know where Flavio is?”

Seba practically hugged her.

“No idea. He left three days ago!”

That exchange, carried out at the top of their lungs, had tested the vocal cords of the two friends. Brizio decided not to abandon the new communications strategy he’d just discovered, because at least it seemed to work. He found another scrap of paper and wrote: “Where did he go?”

The woman read that note, too. “No, young man. I don’t know,” she shouted. “Maybe to go see his brother. Or maybe to stay with some friend.”

Brizio wrote: “Did he pack a suitcase?”

“You’ve got me! I didn’t see. He left while I was out shopping for groceries. Do you want an espresso?”

“No, thanks,” Sebastiano shouted.

By now, Brizio had run out of receipts from his wallet. “Seba, give me something to write on.”

His friend pulled a receipt from a mechanic out of his jacket pocket. Brizio wrote, again in front of the old lady’s attentive eyes: “Do you have your son’s cell phone number?”

The woman took a while to read it. “Don’t be silly! I don’t even have a phone in the house! No, no, I don’t talk with those gadgets. Flavio has one, but I wouldn’t even know where to look for the number!”

Exhausted, they gave up the chase. The last message that Brizio wrote was: “Arrivederci, Signora!”

“And if he comes back, who should I say came to see him?”

It was Sebastiano who answered: “Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.”

The woman smiled, nodded in gratitude, and accompanied the two men out to the landing.

“Fuck you very much!” Sebastiano shouted with a smile.

“Thanks. Same to you, and to your family.” And Flavio’s mamma gently shut the door.

“After all, she’s deaf as a doorpost,” the bear muttered. They started down the ramshackle stairs, stained with humidity and mold. “Paoletto didn’t warn him. If he’s been gone three days, then it wasn’t Paoletto who warned him . . .”

“Maybe,” said Brizio. “Or maybe not. What counts is the fact that Rocco and I talked to Paoletto about the pistol last Wednesday. And who knows whether he sounded the alarm and Flavio, to avoid trouble, didn’t just decide to disappear for a while.”

They walked out into the street, greeted by the stench of auto exhaust and the noise of traffic. “Do you want to go pay another call on Paoletto?” Sebastiano shouted, to make himself heard above the roar of the intersection.