‘He’s run out,’ the boy said. ‘I mean, I ain’t seen him.’

‘Start with the name,’ I said. The boy was nervous.

‘Jo-Jo Olsen,’ the kid said. ‘Joseph Olsen, only we always calls him Jo-Jo. I looked all week-end. No one seen him.’

‘I know you,’ I said. ‘Pete Vitanza, right? Tony’s boy?’

‘Yeh,’ Pete Vitanza said. ‘Jo-Jo, he’s my friend, Mr Fortune.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘He’s missing how long?’

‘Four days.’

I said, ‘For God’s sake, kid, four days isn’t…’

‘The whole week-end,’ Vitanza said. ‘Since maybe early Friday. We had plans like for the whole week-end. Big plans.’

‘Go to the police,’I said.

Missing persons are for the police. They have the tools. Rabbits are people who have found the world too heavy. One way or another they have been pounded too hard for too long. To be a rabbit is to want to run away more than anything else on earth, and I don’t like the role of the hound. That’s for the police.

‘Jo-Jo wouldn’t never stay away right now on his own,’ Pete insisted. ‘He just got a new bike, a beauty. We been workin’ on the motor for months. We was gonna race it Sunday. I mean, yesterday we was to race it out by East Hampton.’

‘He never showed?’

‘Not since Friday. He… was worried like. Some trouble.’

‘Is he married?’ Ninety-nine out of a hundred rabbits are married. Male or female rabbits. It makes you wonder.

‘Hell, no. I mean, he got girls, sure. No real steady, not even the Driscoll piece. Jo-Jo and me we got motors, see? Jo-Jo he studies hard by Automotive Institute. We’re gonna go over’n work for Ferrari someday.’

‘He lives with his family?’