“No, I didn’t.” Mary controlled her temper, remembering what Mrs. Gambone had said about her rebuking Giulia. “I’m not trying to be critical of you. I’m-”

“We’re the ones runnin’ around-me, Yo, and Missy. I was up until three in the mornin’. We went to all the places where they know Trish, askin’ everybody if they seen her, postin’ the flyer on telephone poles around work and the bars she used to like. Everywhere she goes or used ta go.”

“That’s the problem. You need to go where-”

“What’re you doin’ for Trish, Mare? Makin’ with Ant’n’y Rotunno, who, p.s., in case you didn’t know, is friggin’ gay?”

Judy’s eyes widened. He’s gay? she mouthed, but Mary waved her off.

“Giulia, I understand that you’re working hard, but you should think about going after-”

The line went dead. Giulia had hung up. Mary rubbed her forehead. “That went well.”

Judy cocked her head. “He’s gay?”

“No.”

“Then why did she say that?”

“It’s a long story,” Mary answered, sipping her coffee, preoccupied.

“You look worried.”

“I am.”

“You think she’s dead already?” Judy’s expression went grim, and Mary didn’t want her muffin anymore.

“I pray not.” Their eyes met over the desk, and Mary lied, “I guess I have to let it be.”

“You do, you can’t help anymore. You don’t know anything about the boyfriend.”

“No, not really.” Mary kept her mouth shut. She knew a lot about the boyfriend, but this wasn’t the time for a confession. There was no confessional, for one thing.

“It’s for the best. I don’t want to worry about you getting mixed up with the Mob.”

“Me neither.” Mary faked a shudder, which wasn’t difficult. She had a second chance to help Trish and she wasn’t about to blow it. She got up, gathered their muffin trash, and said, “I gotta go.”

“Where?” Judy asked, rising.

Mary tried to think of a lie, grateful she hadn’t told Judy about the cancellations. “A breakfast meeting with a new client.”

“Will you be back for lunch?”

“I doubt it.” Mary tossed her trash into the wastebasket, slid the list of shrinks from the printer tray, and grabbed the manila envelope that held Trish’s diary, to be hand-delivered to Missing Persons.

“Okay, have fun.” Judy handed her her trenchcoat from the hook, and she took it with a smile.

“Thanks,” Mary said, avoiding the trusting eye of her best friend.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

M ary hurried down the street under the gray sky, her trenchcoat billowing behind her, her handbag bumping against her side, and her pumps clacking self-importantly on the filthy pavement. There was no one else on the street this early, especially in this seamier side of South Philly. Trash blew in the gutter, and the rowhouses were badly maintained, the awnings cracked here and there. Plywood boards covered most of the first-floor windows, and she hurried past a noisy auto-body shop where she drew an anachronistic wolf-whistle.

She picked up the pace. His house used to be number 3644. She wasn’t sure if his father still lived here, but nobody moved in South Philly, or if they did, the neighbors would know where they’d gone. It wasn’t the kind of information you got from Google. Mary approached the house, the typical two-story with shutters that needed painting, and she noted with a city-girl’s eye that the brick hadn’t been repainted in years. She walked up the steps, knocked, and waited. There was no answer, so she knocked again, trying not to be nervous.

In the next minute the door opened, and an older man she barely recognized stood stooped in the threshold. He had to be around seventy, but seemed much older. He was bald, and his skin was gray as the stormy sky. Lines etched his face behind greasy black eyeglasses, which sat so heavily on his ears they bent them forward. “Yeah?” he asked, his voice quavering.

“Mr. Po, I don’t know if you remember me. We met a long time ago, when you used to-”

“Pick up my son from your house, from studying. In high school.” The old man smiled shakily, his lips dry, and he pointed at her with a tapered index finger. “I remember you.”

“How nice.”

“Never forget a face. Names, yes. Don’t know your name.”

Mary introduced herself and raised a pastry box she’d brought. “Would you mind if I come in a minute, to talk with you?”

“No, come in. I like a little company.”

“Great, thanks.” Mary stepped in as he opened the door and backed up, admitting her to a living room that had no lights on. It was modestly furnished, with an old-fashioned dark green sofa against the far wall under a rectangular beveled mirror that hung in every rowhouse in Italian-American history. If Mr. Po was in the Mob, maybe crime really didn’t pay.

“Come on inna kitchen.” Mr. Po gestured, and Mary followed him into a dark square of kitchen that was the same dimensions as her parents’, though it smelled of stale cigar smoke. A patterned curtain covered the only window, in the back door, and cabinets refaced with dark fake-walnut ringed the room, matching a brown Formica counter. On the right side of the room sat the sink, stove, and an old brown refrigerator covered with fading photos.

Mary sat down and opened the box of pastry while she stole a glance at the photos, some from as far back as high school. She recognized instantly those light blue eyes and that lopsided grin. He was dressed in a black football uniform, and there were pictures of another boy, bigger and brawnier, and a studious girl with glasses and long, dark hair. Mary didn’t know the boy, but she recognized the girl. Rosaria, his sister, older by a year.

Mr. Po shuffled to the sink in brown moccasins. “You like some coffee? It’s instant. See, I got Folgers.” He held up the red-labeled jar like Exhibit A.

“Thanks. I bought some sfogliatelle.”

“Good girl.”

“Where’s Rosaria these days?”

“Were you in her class?”

“No, but we were in choir together. We’re both altos, so we stuck together. She was nice. How is she?”

“Got a kid.” Mr. Po shook his head, abruptly cranky, which warned Mary off the subject. She looked away, and her gaze found one of the smaller photos on the fridge: a picture of a little brown-haired boy in a green-and-gold baseball uniform. The green cap had a B on it, and the front of the shirt read Brick Titans. Mary made a mental note. “Mr. Po, I came to you because I want to find Trish.”

“Know why you came. The police got here already, yesterday, ahead a you. You’re wonderin’ where Trish and my son went. Tell you what I told the cops. I don’t know where they are. How you take your coffee?”

Mary blinked, surprised. She broke the string on the pastry box, moving aside a Daily News, which lay open on the table near a black magnifying glass. A curvaceous jug of Coffee-mate, a plastic-crystal sugar bowl, and a colorful stack of Happy Birthday napkins sat in the middle of the table.

“Cream and sugar onna table.” Mr. Po spooned some Folgers into a mug he got from the cabinet, and the brown crystals made a tinkling sound. “He always liked you, my son did. Talked about you a lot.”

Mary felt a disturbing thrill. It threw her off. It wasn’t why she’d come. She had to find Trish. Time was slipping away.

“Used to say you were smart. A nice girl, a good girl. Different from the others.”

Mary smiled, in spite of herself.

“Puppy love, I guess.” Mr. Po turned, lifting a sparse gray eyebrow. “You’re the one that got away, eh?”

“Nah,” Mary said, though she wasn’t about to tell him what had happened.

“Too bad. He wasn’t my real son, you know. I’m his uncle. My brother was his father. A drunk.”

Mary hadn’t known the whole story. “But you raised him, right?”

“Me and my wife did. Now she passed, too. We raised him with our son. Him and his sister, we treated ’em like they were ours.”