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I didn't find her that night, or any other girl, either I walked the rest of the way to Fifty-seventh Street and stopped at the desk There were no es but Jacob volunteered that I'd had three calls spaced half an hour apart "Could be it was the sae"

I went up to es and the phone rang

I picked it up and a man said, "This Scudder?" I said it was He said, "How much is the reward?"

"What reward?"

"Aren't you theup, but instead I said, "What girl?"

"Her picture's on one side and your na for her?"

"Do you knohere she is?"

"Answer ht be a set rich on"

"Say a number"

"Maybe a couple of hundred dollars"

"Five hundred dollars?"

The price didn't really reed "Five hundred"

"Shit That's not much"

"I know"

There was a pause Then he said, briskly, "All right Here's what you do You know the corner of Broadway and Fifty-third Street, the uptown corner on the side towards Eighth Avenue Meet me there in a half hour And have thethe bread, don't bother coot one of those all-night bank cards? Shit All right, how ive me some now and the rest tomorrow, but you don't want to stand around, ht not be in the sa?"

"More than you know"

"Say what?"

"What's her name?"

"How's that?"

"What's the chick's na for her Don't you know her daht about it "I know the na now," he said It's the stupidest ones that turn crafty "That's probably not the na?"

"Uh-huh That's part of what you be buying with your five hundred dollars"

What I'd be buying would be a forearm across the windpipe, possibly a knife between the ribs The ones who have so about a reward, and they don't want toup on hiain

I said, "Shut up for a irl's recovered You haven't got anything to sell and there's no way you're going to hustle a buck out of me I don't want toun and a set of cuffs and a backup, and then I'd take you somewhere and work on you until I was sure you didn't know anything Then I'd work on you so my time Is that what you want? You want to meet ot that wrong You're theup on him "Asshole," I said aloud, to him or to myself, I'm not sure which Then I took a shower and went to bed

The girl's name was Paula Hoeldtke and I didn't really expect to find her I'd tried to tell her father as much but it's hard to tell people what they aren't prepared to hear

Warren Hoeldtke had a big square jaw and an open face and a lot of wiry carrot-colored hair that was going gray He had a Subaru dealership in Muncie, Indiana, and I could picture hi at the cars, facing into the caet the best possible deal at Hoeldtke Subaru

Paula was the fourth of the Hoeldtkes' six children She'd gone to college at Ball State, right in Muncie "David Letterman went there," Hoeldtke told me "You probably knew that Of course that was before Paula's time"

She had raduation she had come to New York "You can't make a career in the theater in Muncie," he told o to New York or California But I don't know, even if it wasn't that she had the bug to be an actress, I think she would have left She had that urge to get off on her own Her two older sisters, they both of them married boys from out of town, and in both cases the husbands decided to move to Muncie And her older brother, my son Gordon, he's in the car business with irl still in school, so who knows for sure what they're going to do, but uess is they'll stay close But Paula, she had that wanderlust I was just glad she stuck around long enough to finish college"

In New York she took acting classes, waited tables, lived in the West Fifties, and went on auditions She had been in a showcase presentation of Another Part of Town at a storefront theater on Second Avenue and had taken part in a staged reading of Very Good Friends in the West Village He had copies of the playbills and showed theraphies that ran under the heading of "Who's Who in the Cast"

"She didn't get paid for this," he said "You don't, you knohen you're starting out It's so you can perfor people, directors You hear all these salaries, this one getting five million dollars for a picture, but forfor years"