"No." Oxygen-rich blood coursed through dilated blood vessels. "Where is Tammy?"

He frowned but his shoulders came down a fraction. "Why do you care?"

My muscles were relaxed and my voice, when I spoke, sounded almost gentle. "I don't care, particularly, but you will tell me-"

"I don't-"

"-where she is and why her name is on your mailbox."

"There's no law against that. Is there?"

"We'll talk about it inside, Mr. Donato." I mounted another step, lightly, easily, walking right at him, and he blinked, then gave in.

The hall smelled of old dishwater and uncleaned toilet and there were boot marks on the paintwork. He led me into the living room, where he hurriedly cleared takeout cartons, and a stack of what appeared to be bad charcoal sketches, from a love seat, looking embarrassed and about seventeen years old. I ignored the couch and stepped back into the hallway, stuck my head in the kitchen, then the filthy bathroom and the mess and disorder of the bedroom. A nice apartment, clearly beyond this boy's apparent means, both economic and psychological. It was also clear that only one person lived here.

"Give me her forwarding address."

"What?"

"Tammy Foster's forwarding address."

"I don't have that!" He sounded genuinely surprised.

"Tell me where you send her mail."

"But I don't."

He began to shift from foot to foot. He wasn't lying. "Explain."

"It's like, you know, an arrangement." I waited. "They pay me. This is Mom's apartment. I mean she pays the rent but I live here. She doesn't pay for, you know, food or clothes because she says if I want to waste my time on-Right, okay. So this dude pays me a few bucks a week to collect their mail, and that's about, you know, it." He shrugged with his thin arms, inarticulately.

"Does Karp or Foster come and get it?"

"No. I just toss it in the garbage."

"You throw their mail in the garbage."

"Well, yeah."

It would be so easy-my right hand on his right wrist, pull and step, left arm across his throat, whirl and spread my arms, like a dance, and he would drop spine-down over my thigh, snap: less than three seconds, start to finish-but a broken boy would help nothing. The adrenaline ebbed.

"Do you have any mail addressed to them that you haven't thrown away yet?"

"Yeah."

"Give it to me." In the absence of adrenaline I felt mounting irritation.

"Uh, isn't opening other people's mail like a federal offense?"

"It's exactly like a federal offense. So is aggravated assault." I reached slowly into my inside pocket, giving him time to register the fact that I wore gloves.

"Whoa! I was just-"

"Bring me the mail." He scuttled off into the kitchen and came back with five envelopes and two catalogues, all obviously junk apart from one white envelope with a familiar blue logo. "Give me the one from American Express." It was addressed to George G. Karp. I opened it. A bill. Not a solicitation, but a regular bill. I scanned the list of charges. It seemed genuine. I put it in my pocket. "What else do they get?"

"Stuff. I don't keep track, you know?"

"Visa? Utility bills?"

"Yeah, like that."

Why would someone go to the trouble of setting up a mail drop and getting bills and other correspondence mailed to it, only to have those bills thrown away? "How much does he pay?"

"It used to be twenty-five a week, but when he added the Foster chick's name, I told him, man, I can't do it for less than forty."

"Cash?"

"Well, duh. Every other Thursday, in the mail. Paid last week."

I reached into my jacket again. Before he had backed up more than two steps I pulled out my wallet. He bobbed his head: a combination of relief and greed. I extracted five crisp twenties. "I want to know everything you know about Karp and Foster."

I put my gloves in my pocket and walked around the Village for a while. Donato had not been able to remember what bills had come or what the cycle was, and he couldn't describe Karp except that he had, you know, maybe sort of blondish hair? He'd only met him, like, once. Tammy he had never seen. I had taken back four of the twenties.

Tammy had to be here. She'd told Dornan this was where she was going after Naples. Her credit card confirmed it. I had followed the money and it led nowhere except back to Tammy's Atlanta apartment and to a mail drop. But if she hadn't lied to Dornan, then she was here with Karp. Find Karp, find Tammy. I knew Karp was somewhere close: his American Express showed dozens of charges to Manhattan restaurants, mainly in midtown, SoHo, and the Village, with a few in Brooklyn.

I wandered past endless coffeehouses on MacDougal Street. It was only eleven o'clock, not yet lunchtime, but the crowds were growing, the air starting to feel used. A double-decker bus stuffed with tourists rumbled past.

Inside the cafe, there was one spare table and a line at the counter. Most of the people sitting and sipping were talking-half to friends, the other half to their phones. One woman tapped diligently on her tiny keypad and frowned at the display. The web. Of course. You had to have an official billing address for a credit card or utility, but you could pay by phone or online.

Somewhere, Karp would have an e-mail address, maybe even a business website. I didn't have my laptop and my phone screen was tiny, its processing power more suited to instant text than a web search.

A hard-eyed young thing behind the counter asked me what she could get me. I ordered latte, and dropped two ones in the tip jar. "Where's the nearest library?" I asked.

"Library? Public library?"

"Yes. Where is it?"

"Hold on." She called back over her shoulder to the man behind the espresso machine. "Hal, the library's at Sixth and Tenth, right?"

"Around there, yeah."

She turned back to the counter and spoke to the customer behind me. "Get you something?"

The library was an imposing brown-and-white building that looked like a cross between a Gothic cathedral and the Doge's Palace. There were two Macs on the second floor, one, on the right, already taken by a woman in her fifties, who froze when I came into her peripheral vision, and stared rigidly at her screen until I sat.

A Google search brought me eight hundred hits, none of which seemed to be a home page. There was a profile from Talk a year ago, a Business Week cover spread, and literally dozens of features in obscure trade journals, both print and web-based. Interestingly, there was no photo: both the Talk and Business Week articles were accompanied by the cover illustration for his book, Hostage Exchange: Their Money for Your Goods, which had been reprinted in a paperback edition last month.

The woman next to me had relaxed enough to resume her tapping. Every now and again she sighed loudly.

There were several links relating to recent and forthcoming appearances; he was doing a reading and signing at the Citicorp Center Barnes and Noble in four days. I skimmed half a dozen interviews: repeated citations of design awards, recycled plaudits from a variety of retail executives, including a glowing but utterly impersonal quote from the Nordstrom VP of Full Service Stores, some number-dense analyses of retail sales from various stores pre- and post-consultation with Karp, and one snippet in an article written almost five years ago about how Karp worked from his SoHo loft "with a cell phone and a laptop."

The articles shared a sameness that hinted at very, very careful information management by Karp. It wasn't easy to control the editorial content of magazines. I wondered how he had done it. Then I laughed, aloud, which made the sighing woman look at me sharply-funny how tiny infractions made people bold. I gave her a smile with a lot of teeth.

Most magazines rely on advertising revenue; many advertisers are retailers; Karp had great contacts in the retail world. A discreet word here, a favor called in there would bend a few rules. But favors were usually costly in any profession. What did he have to hide?

I went to Switchboard.com and tried Karp, and G. Karp, and George Karp, and Geordie Karp, in the state, then the city. Hundreds of Karps in New York State, too many to trace one by one. No George Karps in the city. One G. Karp in Brooklyn. I wrote down the number and address but knew it wouldn't be him. An initial was a flimsy hiding place. I repeated the exercise for Tammy, and found nothing promising. I tried again on Bigfoot with the same results.

I followed a few more links. Nothing. Why was he so careful? What was he afraid of?

On my way past the woman at the other computer I stopped. Her shoulders hunched but she didn't turn around. "You should always look," I told the back of her head. "Not looking never kept anyone safe."

Outside, I called the Brooklyn number. A machine picked up after four rings. "Hi, this is Gina Karp. Leave a number. You know the drill."

I closed the phone. A loft in SoHo, but five years ago. Not much else. Just the book, and the bookstore signing in four days. If all else failed, I could go to that and follow him home, or go to the restaurants and bars listed most frequently on his statement and hope he showed up. Either alternative meant staying in New York, talking to people, interacting. I didn't think I could stand one more day of concrete and braying voices.

Washington Square Park was crowded with dog walkers, mime artists, skateboarders, street musicians, jugglers, and chess players; tourists seethed so thickly around the fountains that I could only see the top of the water spout and couldn't hear it at all; people sat in ones and twos at the foot of every tree, reading.

Maybe Karp's book would tell me something about him.

The Village is full of bookstores. I bought a copy, carried it back to the park, and folded myself onto the grass to read.

Several case studies, complete with photos. A hint of smugness, perhaps, gleaming cold and hard through the personable prose. Again that boast: he needed no office but his cell phone and his laptop. No other scrap of information about where he was born, where he lived, who he was.

A pair of police officers strolled down the bike path, a white man and Hispanic woman, nodding occasionally to passersby, smiling at a toddler being dragged along by his parents. Obviously officers specially trained to be nice to tourists. Their eyes remained watchful.

I turned the book over and over in my hand, front and back, back and forth, feeling its weight, taking its measure, the way an antique dealer might handle a jade carving, or a sculptor her wood. I put it on the grass in front of me, turned my face up to the hazy sun. In North Carolina, the sun would be yellow as an egg yolk on a blue plate, and leaves would be drifting down onto the cabin roof.

I picked the book up again, riffled through the pages from back to front, and there it was, the copyright notice: Koi Productions. Hiding behind his own cleverness.

I had to walk a few yards before my phone got a decent signal. Information gave me the address: Koi Productions, 393 West Broadway. The SoHo loft.

I took three cabs, getting in and out after random intervals, before I found a driver who spoke English and who spent just a second too long looking in the rearview mirror at the roll of money I took from my pocket. His ID said his name was Joe Czerna; he had a red nose and gray hair. Late fifties, maybe. I made my body language younger, more excited. I smiled a lot, as though nervous.

"So, Joe, what's it like driving a cab in New York?"

He shrugged. "It's okay."

"Bet you get some real wackos to deal with sometimes."

"Sometimes."

"You ever see anyone get shot?"

"Maybe."

"Did you call the cops?"

"Nobody shot me. I just drive. I got money to earn."

"You want to earn some money for helping me?"

Pause. "How much?"

"A hundred, plus fare and tip."

"You gonna shoot anybody?"

I laughed. "No, no. No shooting, but some people might be upset. It's my sister, y'know? She's, like, a bit crazy. I'm gonna go get her, from where she's staying with her boyfriend. But she might not want to come, y'know?"

"No drugs, nothing like that? I don't want no throwing up in my car."

"Nothing like that. Just some yelling, maybe. Okay?"

"Your sister?"

"My sister."

"My family shout alla time. Where you want to go?"

"West Broadway."

It didn't take long. I got out, tore a hundred-dollar bill in half, gave one piece to him, and put the other in my pocket. "Wait for me. I shouldn't be longer than half an hour maybe."

He tapped the meter. "Gonna keep this running, too."

"Okay, whatever. But wait."

I was beginning to wake up. I had been too long in the woods. I had forgotten, for a while, to be cautious. Bears and bobcats could be dangerous, but they didn't feel the need to hide, and they weren't smart enough to hide their addresses. If I needed to get Tammy away against her will or anyone else's, I wanted a cabbie with a vested interest in taking what would look like a risky fare. Of course, she might not even be there, in which case I'd just wasted a hundred dollars.

Number 393 was a brick-faced building, a shop front, Anderly Flowers, and six steps with no railing leading up to a metal door, with a keyhole beside it. It took me a moment to recognize it as an elevator door, the kind that goes straight up to a loft. My scalp felt tight. I put my gloves on and pushed the buzzer. No response. I waited a minute, then pushed it again. Nothing. Again. Just like fishing. I had all day.

"Who is it?" A woman's voice. Tammy's, though it was hard to be sure over the hiss of the intercom.

"Mr. Karp?"

"He's not here." Definitely Tammy's.

I made my accent warm and Hispanic. "No, no. I'm from Mr. Karp. I have a delivery."

Silence, then: "I'm not expecting anything." Her voice sounded thick, as though she'd been crying, and with a questioning lilt, oddly hopeful, like a child's.

"Well, I have a special delivery here for someone called Tammy. From Prada. They're paid for. I'm just dropping them off." Silence. "A present maybe, I don't know."

"A present?" Her voice was uncharacteristically tentative. "You could just put everything in the elevator."

"No, no, I have to come up. You have to sign."

"Wait, two minutes."