Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

But one had been crammed in, and because it was so close to my office, I was probably its best customer. Not for the books — for the computers. A computer can be kept in a broom closet; if it’s connected to the right source of information, it’s still the most powerful tool in the world.

I ran all the names I had through the machine. “Lila Dubois” came up blank. “Rachel Dubois” got me a few newspaper articles, including the notice in the Times from when she got married. I hadn’t realized that the Dubois family was as well known or as well-to-do as the article led me to believe. They weren’t Rockefellers, and Rachel had certainly married up when she wed the scion of the Hoeffler clan, but they weren’t exactly hurting for cash, either. Papa Dubois, the Times was careful to note, had been a prime source of funds for the Reagan reelection campaign. Mamma Dubois had the maiden name of Kelter, as in the Kelter Inn chain of hotels.

“Jerome Dubois” produced a long list of publications, including contributions to scholarly journals and books with impenetrable, forty-word-long titles. I dug up a few reviews of his work, one of which started, “If Jerome Dubois would spend more time in the real world and less in his head, he would surely have a different outlook on human psychology.” There was also an article in New York magazine on the city’s psychiatric establishment. The author of that article described Dubois as a “consummate theoretician” and “a zealous proponent of his ideas,” which ideas he called “reactionary and barbaric.”

I went to the stacks to see if I could find any of these reactionary and barbaric books, but that was asking too much. This branch hardly had two books to rub together, and neither was by Jerome Dubois.

Before logging off the computer, I also had it do a search on “Leon Culhane.” None of what it found surprised me. Fourteen arrests. Two convictions. References to him in articles in the Village Voice, the News, and the Post. No books with long titles. No contributions to scholarly journals.

I dialed the number Leon Culhane had given me and left a message for him saying that I wanted to talk to him. I didn’t have anything to tell him that couldn’t have waited, but I wanted him to know what I had done. He called back in about ten minutes.

“Have you found her?”

I hate that question. “Not yet, Mr. Culhane. The search is still young. You get any more fingers?”

“That isn’t funny.”

“It’s not meant to be. I think there’s a good chance you’ll be hearing again from the people who sent you the finger, especially since they didn’t send a note the first time. They didn’t send a note, did they?”

“No, they didn’t. I told you.”

“You did. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t found one since then.”

“No.”

I waited. Nothing came. “Okay, in that case, let me tell you where I’ve been.” I opened my notebook and made sure he could hear the pages turning. “I’ve talked to Jerome and Rachel. They don’t seem to like you very much.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Mickity — they don’t like you either.”

“I’m sure they don’t. But they seem to have a particular dislike for you.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that they think that if something happened to Lila, you’re probably the one behind it. Now, I don’t believe that’s the case. But I want you to know that that’s what they’re saying.”

“I don’t care what they’re saying. All I care about is where Lila is.”

I flipped some more pages. “A friend of mine in the police department took the print from the finger. He’ll run it through the computer and see what comes up.”

“That won’t help,” Culhane said. “Lila never had her fingerprints taken.”

“No, I wouldn’t have thought she had. But maybe the person who lost that finger has. Assuming that it’s not Lila’s.”

“Oh.”

“Right: oh. We should have results on that in a day or two.”

“Fine. What else?”

He didn’t need to know I’d looked up his rap sheet. “That’s it,” I said. “I’ll let you know if anything happens. And you’ll call me if you get any more packages?”

“Yeah, I’ll call you.” He hung up. I took an Excedrin. It stuck in my throat, the way they always do when I’m too lazy to break them up. It took three shots of whisky to get it down.

I went to visit Carmine Stampada down on Mott Street. When I’d found his wife, he’d paid me handsomely and told me his door was always open. Since then, I’d never had a reason to see if that was true. This seemed like as good an occasion as any.

His face didn’t exactly light up when he saw me, but my arrival didn’t obviously make him unhappy, either. He disengaged from the conversation he was having with two slick-haired men who were about as tall and broad-shouldered as Leon Culhane and came over to pump my hand. I looked at the two men and suddenly realized how Leon must fit into this world. It was babysitting, all right — after a fashion.

The two bodyguards followed Carmine as he led me down the block to a trattoria called Intimo. They took a table near the front; we took one in the back.