FAUSTINO AND THE taxi driver had some difficulty finding the place.

“I don’ get much call to come down here,” the driver said unhappily.

It was close to two o’clock when they pulled up at the bar, and Fidel was standing outside it, scanning the street. It seemed to take him several blank seconds to recognize Faustino when he got out of the cab. Then he managed something that approximated a smile.

“We appreciate you doing this, señor,” he said. “Bush isn’t too good.”

“No,” Faustino said.

“Okay. Well. I’ll get them.” He turned toward the door, then back again. “It’s okay if I come along too?”

“Of course. I’d be grateful for it.”

It was Nina who appeared first. She held the door open, and Felicia led Bush out by the hand. It was hard for Faustino to look at the boy. He was more like a thin old man in disguise, or a victim of some sudden wasting sickness.

“Bush?”

“Maestro,” he said, almost inaudibly, and nodded. And kept nodding, like a doll with a spring for a neck.

Faustino’s breath snagged at the bottom of his throat, and for an awful moment he thought he might moan, or worse. Instead he stepped briskly up to the boy and put his right arm around his shoulders.

“Come on,” he said. Then added stupidly, hopefully, “You’ll be okay.” He held the back door of the cab open and Fidel got in, then Bush, awkwardly.

Felicia said, “I’m comin’ too.”

“Right,” Faustino said. “Good. Thank you.” He got into the front passenger seat.

The driver said, “That everybody?”

Nobody spoke. It was almost unbearable. At the lights on Buendía, the driver jockeyed the cab over into the left-hand lane and said, “You’re that Paul Faustino, right?”

“No,” Faustino said. He’d been wondering if Bush or Felicia had ever been in a car before. He’d been wanting to turn to look at them and been afraid to.

The driver said, “No? Well, you sure look like him. You know the guy I mean?”

The police mortuary did not announce itself. Two of its three stories were underground. Its black glass doors parted automatically. Hilario Nemiso was talking into his cell phone when they opened.

It was difficult to settle upon an order of parade. Bush was the important one, but also the most unreliable. Jittery dread came off him like waves through the conditioned air. So Nemiso led the way down the stairs, with Fidel alongside him. Felicia and Bush followed, then Faustino, who didn’t know if he would block the boy if he tried to flee or run with him up and away from the horror into the hot light of day.

They came down into a corridor that ended at a pair of heavy-looking doors with scratched plastic windows set into them. There was a telephone on the wall, and Nemiso spoke into it. The doors opened, and a woman came out wearing white clothes, a white paper hat, and, appallingly, white rubber boots. She stood clasping her hands in front of her like a weird and solemn usherette.

Nemiso turned to Bush and said gently, “Are you ready?”

The boy gasped, perhaps an attempt at a word, and managed no more than three paces toward the door before his legs gave way. He stumbled sideways and leaned for support on a metal wastebin strapped to the wall. The bin had the words NONCLINICAL WASTE on it. Faustino was the first to reach him. He held the boy awkwardly from behind, his hands under the kid’s arms.

“Oh, man, oh shit, man. I can’ do this. I jus’ can’ do this.” The words were snags in Bush’s shallow breathing.

“Okay, okay,” Faustino murmured. He looked around, dismayed that his peripheral vision was blurry and wet. There was a bench against the wall, and he led the boy to it, supporting him.

Nemiso stood with his hands behind his back and his head lowered. Felicia stepped up to him. “I’ll do it,” she said. “You can put me down as her sister if tha’s what you gotta do.”

“Okay,” Nemiso said after a moment. “Thank you.”

Fidel was standing close to Felicia. She reached out and took his hand. It was the first time she’d ever done that, and although Fidel was startled by it, he held on tight. Nemiso nodded to the woman in white. She held the door open and Felicia and Fidel followed Nemiso through it.

It was a big room, but most of it was closed off by gray curtains hung from rails fixed to the ceiling. The cart was gray, too. The white bundle on it looked too small to be Bianca. The white usherette went to the end of it and pulled down the sheet just as far as the chin.

It was a trick. Bianca was asleep. Apart from the grayish pallor to her skin, she looked just like she always did asleep: serious but untroubled.

Fidel groaned like someone disappointed by a joke and turned away. Felicia stared down silently for several seconds, then nodded, spilling her tears. She reached out and stroked Bianca’s left temple with the backs of her fingers. It was shockingly cold.

“You fool girl,” she whispered. “You fool, fool girl.”

Nemiso did not lead Felicia and Fidel back to the corridor. He took them through a door and into a room lined with numbered metal lockers. On a steel-topped table there were zip-sealed clear plastic bags containing items of clothing.

“I’d like you to look at these,” Nemiso said. “These are the clothes Bianca was wearing when she was found.”

Felicia picked up a bag containing a reversible hoodie, cream on the inside, slate-gray and cream stripes on the outside. Even through the plastic she could feel how soft and new it was. She put it down and took up another bag: a pair of gray canvas sneakers with striped gray-and-cream laces.

She looked at Nemiso blankly. “It ain’ her stuff,” she said. “You got things mixed up somehow.”

“No, I promise you. These are what Bianca was wearing. You don’t recognize them? Do you, Señor Ramirez?”

Fidel gingerly picked up a couple of items. “No. Never seen her wearing anything like this. All this stuff looks, like, brand-new. And kinda expensive.”

“Yes. As far as we can establish, it is all new. There are no stains, marks, rips. It seems likely that Bianca was the first person to wear any of it. It’s also strange that there are no manufacturer’s labels.”

Felicia found herself crying again and fiercely wiped her eyes with her hands. “It don’ make no sense,” she said.

Nemiso waited until the girl had collected herself. “Felicia, I have to ask you this. Did Bianca ever steal things?”

“Like what? She ain’ got nothin’. You think she got a whole buncha nice clothes stashed somewhere I don’ know about? No. No way.” She calmed herself a little. “Anyway, are you sayin’ like she went out that day, stole all this stuff from some high-class place uptown? An’ changed into it all, an’ went walkin’ around in it back down the Triangle? Man, tha’s jus’ stupid. Not even Bianca’s crazy enough to do that. There’s people would kill you for this kinda —”

She stopped.

Nemiso nodded. “Yes. But she wasn’t robbed. And there’s also this.” He took from his pocket another plastic bag, smaller than the others, and put it on the table. There was money in it, green and blue bills, folded.

“A hundred dollars,” he said. “It was inside Bianca’s brassiere. Or, I should say, the bikini top she was wearing.”