Claudia’s old pal Melissa Ardito had already hung up on me that morning. It was reassuring that at least someone in Claudia’s circle was acting in character. I’d found her address via an online directory. It turned out to be in a redbrick four-story building that sat equidistant to the Bronx Psychiatric Center and the St. Raymond’s Cemetery. There was a punchline in there somewhere, but I wasn’t laughing. I didn’t think Melissa was hiding Claudia, but I knew she’d keep tabs on her. They had been rivals for years, jousting over art shows at outer-borough galleries. Melissa would know what Claudia was up to, for spite’s sake at least.

I had to lean on the buzzer for five minutes before Melissa answered. A man who had followed me off the 6 train went down the street, passing by her building without a glance. My imagination was getting the better of me. “What?” Melissa finally yelled.

“Flow-ahs, special deliver-ay,” I called, borrowing Jesse’s hokey-Okie accent.

Upstairs, Melissa answered her door after I knocked a couple of times. Her perfect oval of a face was pinched and sallow, and she dangled a cigarette in her mouth, squinting through the smoke. The honey-blond hair that had been her halo was lank and greasy, and she wore a white T-shirt with yellow sweat stains under the arms. She was twenty-seven, the same age as Claudia, but she’d transformed into the warning poster for why you should just say no to drugs.

“This is the second time you woke me up this morning!” she snapped, but she didn’t protest when I strolled into her apartment. “What do you want, anyway?”

There was no point in lying to her. “Claudia’s missing, and I’m trying to find her,” I said, checking out her arms for track marks. Unlike Claudia, who stayed true to opiates, Melissa did a bit of everything. Claudia referred to her derisively as a chipper, someone who just dabbled in hard drugs for fun. Looking at Melissa’s haggard face, the fun had vanished long ago.

“I’m not using.” She crossed her arms defensively. “I’m in a program.”

“Methadone?”

“Yeah, I get my dose at three.” She looked at the clock on her wall, obviously longing for the hands to fly forward. There was a wide, dark brown splotch under it, prominent even in a place where every surface was coated in a layer of grime. “Shit’s worse than H. You start crawling out of your skin hours before you get it.”

“Claudia told me that. But she also scammed extra doses to get high.”

“Yeah,” Melissa nodded, as if she’d heard about such people, too. “The waiting drives some people crazy.”

“The police know you’re a friend of my sister’s, so they’re going to be calling you soon. I wanted to ask when you last saw Claudia.”