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Debt—plenty of it. Credit cards maxed out, two loans with terms that double the interest every six months, a lien on a car he no longer owns.

A relationship that has ended and restarted three separate times over the last eighteen months.

Gambling—mostly horses, some casino, one bet on a high school basketball game he lost by forty points.

A reputation for borrowing money from people who would rather break fingers than send payment reminders. Two names I recognize. One of them has a history of collecting with a hammer.

Two incidents with police that never resulted in charges.

A mother he speaks to irregularly.

No children.

No employer outside the Greco network who expects him at a desk tomorrow morning.

Good.

Not because any single one of those things gives me a solution, but because collectively they give me noise, and noise is useful.

The more ordinary the explanations for a disappearance, the less anyone looks for an extraordinary one.

Behind me, Quillan hits Paulie again.

I don’t look up, focusing on the info in front of me.

“Does his girlfriend know he works for you?”

“Not officially,” Mathias answers.

“Unofficially?”

“She knows enough to know she shouldn’t ask.”

“Stable relationship?”

Quillan snorts. “No.”

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“Still no.”

Mathias says, “They fight constantly. He disappears for days sometimes.”

Better. I make a note of it.

Paulie wheezes something I can’t understand. It comes out wet and ends in a cough.

Quillan leans closer, ear almost to Paulie’s split mouth. “What was that?”

Paulie says it again, though it’s too quiet and too gargled for me to make out.

Quillan straightens, looking offended. “He called me a spoiled little rich boy.”

“He’s not wrong,” I say.

Quillan places a hand on his chest, looks at me in fake shock, and gasps. “Traitor.” He then punches Paulie again, short and hard, right over the ear.

Mathias sighs. “Quillan.”