Leo's place beside the mechanic stayed empty, and I had to decide whether to begin without him. It was February 1931. We had spent months getting Frank to permit another inspection of what remained of the truck. Now the mechanic stood stamping his feet outside the garage, holding a folded cloth over his tools. Frank said we should proceed. I took the tools from the man's hand and carried them back to his automobile. Whatever another delay cost, I would not let Leo's absence become his agreement.
I went first to the eating place where Leo bought breakfast. His cup was hanging among the others behind the counter. The woman serving said she had not seen him since Monday. At his room, I knocked until the landlady came upstairs with a basket against her hip. His bed had been made, she said, but he had not slept there. I asked her to let me look. She refused, and I respected the door. There was nothing inside I could lawfully claim.
By afternoon my shoes had taken water. I walked past the loading sheds, a barber's shop, and the corner where Leo sometimes waited for Bruno. Nobody admitted seeing him. Bruno found me there himself, stepping down from a car before it had quite stopped. He caught my coat and pushed me against a fence. 'Where did you send him?' I pulled his hand loose. 'Nowhere.' He searched my face, then shoved past me to question the barber. I followed because leaving would have looked like flight.
For nearly three weeks I kept looking between hauling jobs and occasional escort assignments. Bruno's men searched their own places and told me little. I stopped promising that Leo had merely gone away angry. One evening a young garage worker caught me outside a bakery and asked whether I was still looking. He had seen Leo enter Frank's side passage on the Monday he disappeared. 'Walked in himself,' he said. When I asked whether Leo had walked out, the boy looked toward the street and left.
I went straight to the garage. Paul stood inside the open vehicle entrance, wiping his hands on waste. He saw me looking toward the side passage and moved into it before I could reach him. 'Frank's out.' I told him I wanted Leo. His rag stopped moving. Behind him, an engine coughed into life and drowned the first words of his answer. When it quieted, he said, 'Go home, Nico.' I tried to step around him. He put both palms against my chest.
I backed into the yard rather than fight him beneath the raised automobile. Then I saw that the workroom door beside the coal bin stood crooked in its frame. I crossed before Paul understood, drove my shoulder against the swollen wood, and stumbled inside as it scraped open. There were benches, a vise, and a passage ending at another door. Paul caught my coat from behind. I tore free, leaving a button in his fist, and struck the inner door with my palm.
'Leo.' Nothing answered except Paul's breathing. I struck again. 'It's Nico.' A chair scraped on the other side. Then Leo said my name, plainly enough that neither of us could pretend otherwise. I gripped the knob. It would not turn. Paul seized my wrist, but I kept my face close to the wood. 'Can you stand?' I asked. 'Yes.' His voice sounded dry. I wanted to ask a dozen things. Instead I told him I would come back, making the only promise he could use.
Frank arrived through the yard carrying a length of timber from an unloading wagon. He held it across the passage, not swinging, and drove me backward while Paul pulled at my sleeve. I could have stayed and fought over that narrow strip of floor. Leo would still have been behind the locked door. I let them push me out, then planted my feet beyond the threshold. 'I heard him,' I said. Frank lowered the timber. 'Then stop pretending this is your business.'
I found Bruno at his warehouse and made him hear me before he could hit me again. I told him where Leo was and exactly what I had heard, nothing about motives I could not know. When he reached for his hat, I blocked the office door. An armed rush might leave Leo trapped between them. Bruno pressed his forearm across my throat, then released it. He gave me until the next evening to bring Leo home alive.