JOHNNY COOPER WAS STANLEY LAGER.

Suddenly it made sense—his changing identities, his violence, his immoral motives. Whether it was Quelman or Clown, who else would stalk someone so greedily over trivial things? How he’d trailed me, I didn’t know. But if there were patches left in the picture, it was more complete than it had ever been.

Now all I had to do was find him. Then I could see the film and clear Katie. Was that the order of importance? I couldn’t say.

“Where are you going?” Katie asked.

“I can’t explain now. Please just do what I ask you.…”

I warned Katie again about going out. I told her not to answer the door, not even for the cops. I told her where the spaghetti was. I said I’d be back as soon as possible. Then I took money from her for transportation. We kissed, sloppily, before I could pull away.

I didn’t say I was going a hundred miles from there, to the privileged upstate enclave where Stanley Lager hid. Jeff Losson had told me in his comic book store—could it only have been weeks ago?

Then, before I left, I removed the gun from my underwear drawer.

—

Three hours later, I was in Millwood, New York, standing on line at a bakery. There was a middle-aged man ahead of me, endlessly grilling the teenage clerk about the filling of croissants.

“Is there cherry? No cherry? That’s too bad, I really like cherry. What else do I like …? How about almond? No almond?”

Tension was causing a tremor in my eyelid. I tried to be inconspicuous among the well-heeled Dutchess County clientele, shopping for weekend brunch. But I could sense their uneasy glances at the grungy interloper in their midst. Who else had come to town by bus?

I was in Nature’s Meal, the flagship store of the boutique bakery that had brought its goods to the Farmer’s Market in Manhattan. It was the only place I knew in the community, where the answers to so many questions now might lie.

My turn finally came. Though the challah looked good, I was about to walk away.

“You need another job?”

It could have been no one else. I turned and, big, blond, sunburned, and contemptuous, there was the person I was seeking: Annabelle the farmer.

“No,” I said. “I need something else.”

—

We sat at a table in the back of the crowded store. Annabelle had agreed to “two seconds” of conversation, since she was “actually working here.”

I didn’t know where to begin. So much had changed since I held my balloon in Union Square. Yet to her I seemed the same rootless loser, not a determined detective on the brink of a breakthrough.

“Jerry Lewis’s what?” she said.

I sensed this was the wrong way to begin. Annabelle the farmer probably hadn’t seen a movie in fifteen years.

“He’s a comedian, and this was his famous, unreleased serious—”

“Look, subway boy, I’m not a farmer, you know. I manage a bakery. I own a VCR and I actually get cable. I have a husband and two kids. I just never heard of this particular goddamn Jerry Lewis movie.”

I took an uneasy sip of my coffee—Kona blend, and not on the house. I had thought she was an actual farmer.

“Not everyone has heard of it,” I said, quietly. “It’s a special kind of … this really doesn’t matter. What matters is, there’s a guy who …”

I soon stopped. If Annabelle didn’t get The Day the Clown Cried, she’d never get Stanley Lager. So I skipped right to the most accessible matter at hand.

“Look, I need to find a mansion. It’s around here. I think FDR lived in it. Now they have tours. But it’s run-down. And somebody rents out one of its rooms, like … Rapunzel, or something.”

Annabelle’s voice, which had been irritated, now became exasperated. “For God’s sake …”

“You have no idea what I’m talking about?” I’d get Jeff Losson for this. What did he know, anyway? He spent his life in comic books.

“FDR didn’t live there. His cousin did. Take the West Side Highway occasionally, why don’t you?”

Slowly, I felt a buzz of hope mix with the caffeine.

ANNABELLE GAVE ME A RIDE.

I sat in the back of her truck, crushed between bags of rolls and doughnuts. I arrived, smelling of pastry, just in time for the last tour at Steilerman, the mansion. She said nothing as I got out, but placed a cruller, wrapped in plastic, in my back pants pocket.

“I need your help in the city,” she said. “So don’t get killed.”

Annabelle actually cared, sort of, in her own way. Seeing her little crinkly smile, I got out.

Soon I was taking the tour of the huge old house. Sweating, I walked behind noisy tourists, dressed in unbecoming shorts, and their stultified teenage children, who made lewd remarks and punched each other. Our tour guide was a retired volunteer, a man of seventy, who knew way too much about the home’s former inhabitants.

“FDR’s fifth cousin, Mr. Steilerman was a volunteer fireman and a voracious reader. This chair, bought in 1906 and stuffed with duck feathers and horsehair, was where he spent many an evening. He would often place both his feet on this ottoman.…”

If this was trivia, it interested a very tiny crowd. The Gilded Age joint was in blatant disrepair and, for every preserved piece of furniture, one stood fraying or collapsed. Entire rooms were roped off, as were staircases. Signs requested donations and desperately promised perks for members, like summer parties or bonnets for kids. I saw bowls overflowing with the fake dimes.

“Excuse me?” I said, interrupting our guide. “What’s up those stairs? The ones cordoned off?”

The old guy stopped, in mid-description of the ottoman. Then, sighing, he just went on. “In those days, dinners often featured a glaze of mint jelly. They were served in the next room, if you’ll follow me …”

“Is it true that someone lives in the—”

Now I was totally ignored by my host and shot contemptuous glances by my fellow guests. The little band proceeded into a dining room, where a long table had been set, with ceramic replicas of glazed jellies.

I made sure to stay behind.

I moved toward a staircase and sneaked silently over its velvet rope. The steps were soft and unstable; I crept up, giving them only the slightest pressure. I remembered that Kate Reid had replaced Kim Stanley in the film of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance.

The staircase was a narrow funnel that probably led to an unpresentable past. I had a flash of Gratey McBride, and I instinctively raised a hand, as protection. But I made it safely to the second floor.

It was obviously decrepit, and undergoing an overhaul. Rooms were filled with ladders and drop cloths; walls were half-painted and plaster half-restored. I tiptoed past workmen, who gave me not a second glance.

Then I saw the security guard.

He was no spring chicken. He only had a flashlight; I at least had a fake gun. Still, I picked up my pace, and tried to walk inconspicuously by.

“Excuse me?”