Over coffee and some smoked herring I tried to decide how to approach Peter Thayer about his missing girl friend. If his family disapproved of her, he would probably resent his father hiring a private detective to look into her disappearance. I’d have to be someone connected with the university-maybe in one of her classes wanting to borrow some notes? I looked pretty old for an undergraduate-and what if she wasn’t registered for the summer quarter? Maybe I’d be from an underground journal, wanting her to do an article on something. Something on labor unions-Thayer had said she was trying to push Peter into being a union organizer.

I stacked my dishes by the sink and eyed them thoughtfully: one more day and I’d have to wash them. I took the garbage out, though-I’m messy but not a slob. Newspapers had been piling up for some time, so I took a few minutes to carry them out next to the garbage cans. The building super’s son made extra money recycling paper.

I put on jeans and a yellow cotton top and surveyed myself in the mirror with critical approval. I look my best in the summer. I inherited my Italian mother’s olive coloring, and tan beautifully. I grinned at myself. I could hear her saying, “Yes, Vic, you are pretty-but pretty is no good. Any girl can be pretty-but to take care of yourself you must have brains. And you must have a job, a profession. You must work.” She had hoped I would be a singer and had trained me patiently; she certainly wouldn’t have liked my being a detective. Nor would my father. He’d been a policeman himself, Polish in an Irish world. He’d never made it beyond sergeant, due partly to his lack of ambition, but also, I was sure, to his ancestry. But he’d expected great things of me… My grin went a little sour in the mirror and I turned away abruptly.