Gulliver was good at finding missing things. It was a talent he was born with. He liked to think it was because he was built low to the ground, like a hound. There was some truth in that. He saw the world from a lower vantage point. Not from six feet up. Not even from five feet up. At just over four feet, he had a grown man’s head, a teenager’s wounded heart and a child’s view of the world. Most adults didn’t understand how that made Gulliver special. But it did. Because what Gulliver did best was finding runaways. The younger they were, the better at it he was. He understood them, and they understood him. Explaining it to Mia, he’d said, I look on the outside the way they feel on the inside.
Bella Vespucci was older than many of the kids he’d been hired to find over the years. That didn’t make things harder. Eighteen-year-old girls had a network of friends. They had credit cards and bank accounts. They bought things. They had cell phones, and they used them. All of that made them easier to trace than younger kids. But one thing was true for all kids, whatever their age. When you are on the street, money runs out fast. Faster than you think possible. And it’s when the money runs out that most kids have a choice to make. They can either go back home or find a way to make their way on the street. It was when they chose to stay on the street that things could get ugly—and they often did.
But Gulliver knew better than to make leaps without evidence. He had to start at the beginning and go from there. Tony had left him as much information as he could. Gulliver had all sorts of photos of Bella. He had a list of names of girlfriends and boyfriends. He had a list of addresses and phone numbers. He had bank-account numbers. Credit-card numbers. He had the reports the other private investigators had written up for Joey Vespucci. Gulliver shook his head in sadness. If only the other parents who had hired him to find their kids had cared this much, their kids probably wouldn’t have run away to begin with. And they would have been much easier to find.
After reading through the other private eyes’ reports, Gulliver called Bella’s phone number. It was always the first thing he did if the missing person had a cell phone. Most of the time it didn’t work, but every once in a while the missing kid would answer. Sometimes that was all it took. Sometimes all the kid needed was to hear a kind voice and have a shoulder to cry on. Gulliver’s shoulders weren’t very big, but they had stood up to many tears. Teenagers were like human lie detectors. They could tell when adults were being real with them or putting them on. And they never doubted Gulliver’s honesty. They seemed to sense in his voice that he understood their pain. But this time, Gulliver didn’t even get to hear Bella’s voice-mail message. Her voice-mail box was full. Of course it was. That wasn’t a good sign.
According to Tony, it had been over a month since Joey and Maria had heard from Bella. Bella had been painting since she was a child and was a freshman at the Fashion Institute of Technology on 7th Avenue and West 27th Street in Manhattan.
Joey offered to send her to any art school she wanted to go to, Tony had said. Here or anywhere. She could have gone to any school—in New York or Paris or Boston or London, if that’s what she wanted—but she picked FIT. Can you figure that? A kid of mine as a painter?
A house painter maybe, Gulliver had joked.
Tony had laughed and actually patted Gulliver on the back.
Gulliver didn’t say anything at the time, but where Bella had chosen to go to school might prove helpful. Though FIT was a good school, it was part of the State University of New York. Why would a kid with a rich, powerful dad choose to go to a State University school when she could choose any school she wanted?
New York was full of world-famous art schools. Pratt Institute. Columbia University School of the Arts. Parsons School of Design. School of Visual Arts. Cooper Union. Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Bella had chosen FIT of all those schools. Why? Gulliver thought he might know the answer, but before he went looking for her, there was someone he had to see. He dialed Ahmed Foster’s number.