you for a minute.”
There was silence for a moment and Puskis’s neck was beginning to get sore from looking up.
“What did you say your name was again?”
“Puskis. Arthur Puskis. Listen. I won’t take more than ten minutes of your time.”
“Okay. You look harmless enough.” Her head disappeared from the window, and Puskis watched the front door expectantly, waiting for the woman to open it. Instead, he heard her voice from above him.
“Catch.” She dropped a key from the window. Puskis was not able to react in time, and it fell to the stoop by his feet. He bent and picked it up.
“It’s for the front door,” she called down unnecessarily. Puskis tried the key, found it was upside-down, then managed to get it to work. He climbed the stairs, his footsteps muted by a drab, worn carpet. The door at the second-floor landing was ajar. Puskis stepped up to the threshold.
“Madam?”
“In here.”
He walked through a filthy kitchen that smelled of rotting vegetables, then a dimly lit hall and into the dusk of a sitting room. The curtains were pulled shut, and only a golden light emanated from lamps whose bulbs were covered by heavy amber shades. Puskis found it distressingly hot.
“So you’re looking for Mr. DeGraffenreid.” The woman was easily the most obese human being Puskis had ever encountered, the particulars of her body obscured by a huge, formless garment that was nonetheless pushed to its limits by her startling girth. Her head was big and round with hair pulled back away from her face. She did not so much sit as lean backward in her chair.
“Yes. Yes, I am. I was hoping that maybe you might be able to give me some information that would aid me in, well, locating his current whereabouts.”
The woman looked at him as though he were an amusing insect. “His current whereabouts,” she mused.
“Mmmh, yes.” The air was stagnant. Puskis could see dust motes floating in the amber light.
“I can’t tell you too much about that I’m afraid. Like I said, haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for—what?—seven years.”
“Oh. Oh, that’s unfortunate. Hmmm, yes.” This was torture for Puskis, and his desperation to leave this immense woman’s apartment was preventing him from thinking clearly. “Well, maybe you could, in another tack, you could tell me what Mr. DeGraffenreid did for a business.”
The woman gave a quick sputtering sound that sent a wave of flesh down her chin and below the folds of her dress. “Mr. Puskis, in the Hollows you don’t ask people about their business, and if you find out by accident, you sure as hell don’t go talking about it to strangers.”
Puskis coughed once, then found himself consumed by a coughing fit. The woman watched inscrutably as he fought to recover. “How about acquaintances?” he said finally. “People who came by?”
She frowned and turned her head slightly away from him. He understood.
“Well, I thank you for your time, madam. I truly do.” He turned to go, flustered but also relieved to be leaving the apartment. The heat was beginning to make him light-headed. He noticed for the first time—or had it just now formed?—a sheen of perspiration across the woman’s forehead and wondered if her apparent placidity masked an effort made to control great pain. This thought changed her greatly in his mind; not eliciting sympathy, exactly, but a mild relief, at least, of his unease. He remembered the last thing he needed to ask.
“I was wondering, could you take a look at two photographs I have with me?”
She didn’t answer, but inclined her chin, which Puskis took as an assent. He produced photos from the two DeGraffenreid files. First he showed her the one from the earlier file.
“That’s Mr. DeGraffenreid,” she said immediately.
“Are you sure?”
She gave him a stare, so he moved on to the next photo—the one with the unnatural look.
“Never seen him before.”
“Could it be someone who visited DeGraffenreid?” Puskis tried. “An associate or an acquaintance?”
“Could be, but like I said, never seen him.”
Puskis had to walk eight blocks before a cab passed by. The effort was exhausting. He sat in the backseat of the cab with his eyes closed, concentrating. A critical mass of information was needed to perceive order. He had not yet acquired that critical mass. But now, at least, he had a face to place with the name Reif DeGraffenreid. Who was the man in the other photograph who so unsettled Puskis? The name Dersch, referred to in the margin notes in the two