“Fisher!” he bellowed, and the figure on the bed jerked awake, jarring loose his hat and in the next minute dumping himself unceremoniously onto the floor. Howls of laughter rose up around them, and Frank tossed Roscoe his dime.

Fisher looked around desperately, until he finally noticed Frank. He needed only another moment to discern the danger he was in, and he was on his feet in a minute and out from between the bunks, ready to bolt.

Frank was one second quicker, however, and he grabbed the boy in a choke hold with one arm, twisting his arm behind his back with his other one. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Fisher,” Frank said, half-walking, half-dragging him along the aisle back toward the door.

“I don’t know nothing,” he gasped, trying to struggle but failing. Frank had him too far off balance and in too much pain.

“You’re being too modest, Mr. Fisher. I’ll bet you know lots of things. How do you know I’m not going to be asking you something you do know? But then,” he added as he dragged Fisher out into the street, “maybe you know perfectly well what I’m here to find out and that’s why you’re so set on running.”

An alley yawned nearby, and Frank hustled him into it, slamming him up against the brick wall and bracing him there with a forearm against his throat. “Now, then, let’s set a few rules. First of all, don’t lie to me, or I’ll have to show you what I know about giving the third degree.”

Fisher made a gurgling sound that might have been a protest, but Frank didn’t really care if it was or not.

“First question: Why were you following Alicia VanDamm?”

Fisher shook his head violently in denial, but Frank merely increased the pressure on Fisher’s throat slightly, until his eyes started bulging in his head. Judging that he’d gone far enough, he released the pressure enough for Fisher to draw a desperate breath.

“We can go down to Police Headquarters if you’d rather,” Frank suggested. “We’ve got rooms there where we can question our prisoners in comfort. Our comfort, you understand, not yours. And I’ve got a cell I can lock you in until I remember to come back to get you. That might be a few days. I’m pretty busy, so you’d do better to answer me now and save yourself some time in the hole. What do you say?”

He could see Fisher was thinking it over, weighing his options. Plainly, he was afraid to cooperate with Frank, but he was also afraid to refuse. Frank decided that whatever he feared Mattingly would do, Frank’s threat had the advantage of being the most immediate. That surely gave him an advantage.

He tried another question, an easier one this time. “Who hired you to follow Alicia VanDamm?”

Whatever loyalty he’d had, evaporated. “Sylvester Mattingly,” he gasped.

This wasn’t news, but at least he’d gotten the boy to tell the truth.

“Why did he want to find the girl?”

“I don’t know. It ain’t my place to ask. I just do like I’m told.”

This was also probably true. “All right, then, if you were supposed to find her, why didn’t you just tell Mattingly where she was? Why did you move into the boardinghouse with her for a week?”

His eyes rolled as he looked around desperately for some escape, but he found none.

“It’s late, and I’m tired, Mr. Fisher,” Frank said. “If you make me exert myself, I’m going to be in a very bad mood.”

“She had something,” he reluctantly admitted.

“Something you were supposed to steal? Her jewelry, maybe?” Would the VanDamms have hired someone just to get the jewels back and the hell with their daughter?

“I never stole nothing! Not no jewelry, anyways,” he added quickly when Frank started to press on his throat again.

“What then?”

“A… a book.”

This made no sense. “What book?”

“It was a diary, they told me. She wrote in it all the time. I was to find it and make sure I brought it back before they went to fetch her.”

Frank recognized the irony of this. Hadn’t he hoped to find just such a book when he’d searched Alicia’s room last week?

“And did you find it?” he asked.

Fisher rolled his eyes again. Even in the shadows of the alley, Frank could see his fear. And smell it, too. Fisher reeked of it. “I don’t know,” he tried, but Frank was having none of it. He leaned in, bearing down with his forearm again until Fisher was writhing.

After a few moments, Frank released him. “I’m only going to ask you once more, Mr. Fisher,” he said while the boy gasped for breath. “Did you find the diary?”

“I found it, but…”

“But what?” Frank demanded.

“He said it was the wrong one.”

“Who said?”

“Mr. Mattingly. He said it wasn’t the right book. He said there was another one, and that was the one he wanted, but she hardly ever left her room, so I never had much time to look for it. I didn’t find another one, though, even though I tried. It just wasn’t there.”

This made no sense to Frank. “The girl kept two diaries?”

“The one he wanted was the old one. The one she’d had for years. What I found was just from when she’d left home. The old one wasn’t in her room.”

“So you killed her and ran away,” Frank guessed.

“No!” he cried, his body fairly trembling with fear. “I never touched her! She was alive when I left the house!”

“You’re pretty sure of that, which probably means you killed her.”

“No, no, I swear! I saw her let somebody into her room, and then I got my stuff and left. She was alive then.”

“Who did you let into the house that night? If what you say is true, maybe he was the one who killed her.”

Fisher was quaking now, like a man possessed. Surely, he knew that betraying Mattingly wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done. “It wasn’t just a man. He had a woman with him, too.”

“And you know who they are, don’t you?”

“I don’t! I swear!”

“Stop swearing and tell me the truth. Who was the man?”

“I don’t know. Some swell. I never saw him before. Mattingly sent me word he’d be coming that night, and I should let him in. That’s all I know!”

“What did he look like?”

“I told you, a swell. Expensive clothes. Skinny little mustache.”

“Blond or dark?”

“Blond. Talked through his nose, like they all do. Walked like he had a stick up his ass.”

“How old was he?”

“How should I know? Maybe your age. I don’t know for sure. He didn’t really let me get a good look at him, and I sure as hell didn’t care.”

“What about the woman? Did she call him by name?”

“She called him ‘sir.’ That’s all. That’s all I know. Now let me go!”

Frank was pretty sure he knew more. “Just one more thing, Fisher. What are you doing in the Brass Lantern?”

Frank caught a glimpse of the sass that must have been the boy’s stock and trade. “I was trying to get some sleep when you rousted me out.”

Frank gave him a slap. Just a friendly one, nothing serious, just to remind the boy who was in charge and that he knew Fisher was responsible for Alicia VanDamm being dead. “You know what I mean. Mattingly must pay you well enough so you don’t have to sleep in a flophouse. And look at you.” He took in the boy’s dirty clothes and week’s growth of beard with a disdainful glance. “A swell like Mattingly would demand a little more flash from his hired help.”

“I… I don’t work for him no more,” he insisted.

“And why not? He fire you after Miss VanDamm turned up dead?”

“No, I…”

“You what?” Frank demanded, raising his hand to strike the boy again. But he didn’t have to.

“I quit!”

“Why?”

“I… They didn’t say they was gonna kill her! She was a nice girl. They didn’t have no call to kill her!”

Frank didn’t quite believe the boy’s sense of honor had been so badly offended. “And you figured they’d try to pin it on you, didn’t you? That’s why you ran. That’s why you’re living here instead of at your flat.”