molloy checked his phone.
there were 33,409 guys named eddie in the city.
and 27,905 named frank.
1,896 of them were pals.
but probably only one of them was called full tank frank and had a pal called out of gas eddie.
molloy sincerely hoped such was the case.
he did not really have a great deal of confidence that they had anything to do with the lady in the red dress and the demise of the unfortunate collins.
the frank and eddie in question, if they were still even around, were the smallest of the small time, so small they hardly existed.
and if they were no longer around, and if there was some other frank and eddie involved with the lady in red…
it meant a lot of work for somebody, presumably some cucumber in the i t department, and not molloy…
*
after molloy left him, william wilson continued staring into space.
i had better get moving, he thought morosely.
william wilson was a naturally morose person.
he did not play well with others.
he was not very good at going out and finding business.
collins had been the guy who could do that.
and now collins was gone.
and william was left with only two cases, the one he had told molloy about, involving (maybe) the small timers frank and eddie.
and the other one.
the big one.
the one so big that the customer, whose name could be spoken out loud, had contacted every missing person operation in the world, who were invited to work purely on speculation.
in other words, no money up front and no expenses. just a big payoff if you produced.
and competition from a hundred, or a thousand, other operations.
william wilson felt like giving up.
there was only one reason to go on. well, two, but they were connected.
the woman in red.
and the fact that somebody thought collins was worth eliminating.
nobody was going to eliminate collins because he was looking for frank and eddie.
but if they knocked off collins, why would they not knock off william wilson?
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