“It’s easy now, right? Just check the Internet. Everyone’s on the Internet, but not Tommy Greeley. I called his mother in Brockton. And she told me this. That twenty years ago, Tommy Greeley had been living in Philadelphia, studying to be a lawyer, and then one day he simply vanished. Gone. Disappeared out of thin air.

“I had two choices, forget about it or pursue it. I probably would have forgotten about it, friendships die, that is the nature of things, and so do friends. But I had begun to see the wisdom in the program. If I couldn’t be faithful to the dearest friend I had ever had, how could I be faithful to myself? A promise had been made, an oath had been taken. If something happened to one, the other would chase the wrongdoer to the ends of the earth to see justice done.”

“So you decided to solve the mystery on your own?” said Kimberly.

“It sounds silly, I know.”

“No it doesn’t,” she said, and something in Dean’s immobile face lit with a deep pleasure.

“I had a contact in Los Angeles,” he continued, “a police detective. I am a donor to a number of charities, including one with which he was intimately concerned. A tragedy involving his son. With his eyes welling in gratitude at my generosity, he had told me to call him if I needed help on anything, anything at all. I took him up on the offer. He made a request to the Philadelphia Police Department for any information they had on Tommy Greeley. There was a file. A missing persons file. And in the file was a memo about an offer from a jailhouse snitch. He said he knew why the person was missing. He said that Tommy had been set up, that a valuable suitcase had been stolen, that Tommy had been murdered. He said he would tell who had done the killing for a reduction in his sentence. The memo ended with a notation about the snitch being murdered in a fight in the yard. There was nothing more to be done. But the snitch had given something to the police, a tidbit of what he could offer if given a deal. He had given a name: Cheaps.”

“Joey,” I said.

“It didn’t take much to find him, his nickname is unique enough, or to confirm that Joseph Parma and the jailhouse snitch were incarcerated at the same time in a prison called Graterford. I sent my man Colfax east to rent suitable housing and to hire a staff. When I arrived, Colfax and I paid a visit to Mr. Parma.

“He denied everything. Despite our entreaties, both firm and generous, he denied everything. He never heard of Tommy Greeley. He never was involved in anyone’s disappearance. He never told a thing to the jailhouse snitch. It was all exactly as I expected. But it wasn’t what he would tell me on which I had pinned my hopes, it was on who he would call afterward. My detective in Los Angeles obtained the phone logs. Two calls of interest. And this is where you came in, Victor. One call was to a Derek Manley, and the other was to Joey Parma’s lawyer.”

“So you used me to put pressure on Manley,” I said, “based on information you believed Joey Parma might have disclosed to me.”

“I hired you for that reason, yes. I had hoped my vice president of external affairs would clue you in to what I was after and she didn’t disappoint. I realized from the start that Joseph Parma was at the bottom of a chain. He was nothing more than a tool, and so was the Derek Manley of twenty years ago. My obligation required me to rise up the chain, step by step, to find the person ultimately responsible. Because there was more to Tommy Greeley’s disappearance than a mere accident of crime. The snitch said he had been set up. Someone close to Tommy, for some reason, had wanted to do him harm. Someone close to Tommy was responsible for his disappearance. He is the one I intend to find.”

“And what are you going to do when you find him?” I said. “The same thing you did to Joey?”

He tilted his head at me, the only form of puzzlement his frozen face allowed him to display, and as he did his vertebrae cracked. “We were rougher with Mr. Parma than I would have liked, yes, but it was more for show than anything else. We meant him no real harm, we only wanted him to be afraid enough to take some sort of action.”

“Slicing his throat was just for show?”

“Excuse me? Oh, I see. Victor, no, you have it wrong. I had nothing to do with that. In fact, I had been hoping you would convince Mr. Parma to go to the police with what he knew. What happened to Mr. Parma was a major setback.”

“That still leaves the question of what you are going to do if you find the man responsible,” said Beth.

“Turn over all that I’ve learned to the proper authorities. What else? Victor, do you have the name of a detective who could prove useful?”

“I might indeed,” I said. I glanced down at my hands, and then peered directly at Eddie Dean when I said, “You did know, didn’t you, that Tommy Greeley was one of the leaders of a million-dollar cocaine enterprise?”

Eddie Dean didn’t flinch, his immobile face was unable to perform such gyrations, but he did glance to the side, to where Kimberly was still curled on the chair. My gaze followed his. Kimberly was watching carefully, surprise clear on her face.

“Yes,” he said, finally. “My police detective in Los Angeles informed me of the indictment against him. Never proven in a court of law, of course, so I choose to presume him innocent. Maybe I’m being overly gallant toward my old friend, but my protector from the ravages of Frankie McQuirk deserves at least that from me, don’t you think?”

“Depends on how tough McQuirk really was?”

“Oh he was a beast, believe me,” said Dean. “Four-foot-six, sixty-four pounds, at least. So, that is my story. Have your questions been answered? Are you willing to continue my collection action and learn what you can from Mr. Manley?”

I looked at Beth. She shrugged. It was my case, she was leaving it up to me. I pursed my lips and pretended to be impressed, even though I knew his story to be a total crock.

You might imagine that I was angry at being lied to, that I would storm out of that house in righteous indignation. But, frankly, if I waited for a client I believed one hundred percent I would starve. In no relationship are the lies more blatant, excepting perhaps the marital relationship, than the relationship of a client to his lawyer. Clients lie, it’s what they do, that clients lie to their lawyers is the first of three immutable laws of the legal profession, and so I wasn’t shocked, shocked that Eddie Dean would be lying to me. What surprised me was the forethought of the lie. Eddie Dean had created a marvelous, intricate, Gothic lie, a touching story of childhood friendship and adult remorse and pledges unfulfilled. I was flattered, frankly, that he cared enough to craft such a fine full lie, and puzzled too, that he would think it mattered enough to go to all the trouble, even though something about its ornate nature indicated it wasn’t quite manufactured for me. But a lie still it was. For Edward Dean could not have known that I had seen the missing persons file, but I had, and there was no note from a jailhouse snitch with details of Tommy Greeley’s murder and the name “Cheaps” prominently displayed.

I looked at him for a long moment, his masklike face revealing nothing, and then looked at Kimberly. Eddie Dean’s story was a lie, yes, but it seemed to me just then that it wasn’t told for my benefit, it was told for hers. Why would he care? What did she have to do with anything? I remembered what I had thought when I first saw her in that house, her feet bare, her robe clutched close.

“So, Victor,” said Eddie Dean. “Can I count on you? Are you willing to help me pursue the ends of justice? Are you willing to help me solve the murder of Tommy Greeley?”