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didn’t check with the police?”
    “No. If I go to the police … .” He shrugged. “But she is gone. I don’t know what to do—who to talk to. I told la patrona. She say she look, but nothing. Nowhere—no one. My wife!” The voice caught and stifled itself, embarrassed to show emotion.
    After a moment, I asked, “Was she sick? Enferma? ”
    “ Fué embarazada .” He saw my puzzlement. “ Embarazada .” His hands made a swelling motion in front of his stomach. “ Niño —baby.”
    “Pregnant,” I told Bunch.
    “You keep her barefoot in winter too?” he asked.
    “Cómo?”
    “ Nada ,” I said. “How many months?”
    “ Siete . Seven.”
    “The landlady—did she ask at the hospitals?”
    “ Sí . Everywhere. Nothing.”
    “Ask him if he’s got a photograph of her,” said Bunch.
    He replied before I could speak. “ Fotografía? Sí .” Fumbling quickly in his wallet, he handed us a small tinted school picture. A girl who looked about sixteen smiled widely at the camera, her eyes large and dark with the excitement of being photographed.
    “When was this taken?”
    “Eighteen months ago. Before we start north.”
    “Did you talk to the neighbors around here? Los vecinos? Ask them if they saw anything?”
    La patrona, sí. Yo, no. She don’t like for us to talk to nobody.” The thin shoulders bobbed again. “ La migra. ”
    Bunch sighed, not without satisfaction. “How much you going to charge this guy, Dev?”
    I sighed too. “The same rate Mrs. Gutierrez is paying—call it twofers.”
    We spent a few more minutes getting names and dates clear. He was Felix Frentanes and his wife was Serafina. She had disappeared six weeks ago Thursday, and the last trace anyone had of her was when the woman across the hall in number seven saw her headed for the corner market with an empty shopping bag. Felix had waited for more information, growing distraught as the night passed, until he had taken a chance on his landlady’s displeasure and asked the shop owner if he knew anything. But the owner said no—he didn’t even remember waiting on her the day before.
    “What apartment does the landlady live in?”
    “No here.” His hand flapped vaguely at the surrounding dark. “Somewhere else. She comes Saturdays. To get los paychecks.”
    “The paychecks?”
    “She makes the … cambio .”
    “Cash? She cashes the paychecks?”
    “ Sí .” Another shrug. “Without the identification cards … .” The worried look came back. “You no talk to her, yes? You no tell her I talk to you, please?”
    “Okay by me,” said Bunch. “But we got to talk to the people in the apartment.”
    I explained to him that we couldn’t do much without asking people questions. Then, resigned, he nodded. “Will they tell la patrona we’re asking about your wife?” I added.
    A tilt of the head that meant probably. Most of the people in the apartment wouldn’t tell, he said. But a few—those who got something extra from the woman—acted as her eyes and ears and told on those who disobeyed la patrona ’s rules. She would hear of it sooner or later. But he was more worried about his wife than about any punishment from la patrona . That was why he had dared to talk to us in the first place. Seven—eight months pregnant, now. No English, no money, no relatives, no friends. And, in this alien and frightening city, adrift somewhere. Or worse. And for her, as for him and the others like him, there was no appeal to the law. He was right to be worried.

CHAPTER 3
    T HE TELEPHONE ANSWERING machine’s light was winking red when I arrived at the office in the morning, and the message was a welcome one for a change: “This is Allen Schute with Security Underwriters in New York. I have a job for you if you can handle it. Would you please give me a call before noon your time?”
    I dialed the area code and local numbers Schute had recited—a Murray Hill exchange, meaning midtown Manhattan—and worked my way past a