Mr. Hartlieb adjusted his tie. "It has cost us a lot of money to trace the boys this far, Mr. Getz," he said, "and I can assure you that they are here. Somewhere ..."
"...in this filth!" Mrs. Hartlieb finished her husband's sentence for him.
"Well, at least there aren't any cars here to run them over," Victor said under his breath. He looked up at the street map on his wall and stared at the maze of lanes and canals that made Venice so unique. Then turning back to look at his desk, deep in thought, he started scratching doodles onto its surface with his letter opener.
Mr. Hartlieb cleared his throat. "Mr. Getz...will you take the case on?"
Victor looked once more at the photograph of the two very different faces -- the tall, serious boy and the carefree smile of the younger one. And then he nodded. "Yes, I'll take it," he said. "I will find them. They look a little too young to be coping on their own. Tell me, did you ever run away as children?"
"For heaven's sake, of course I didn't!" Esther Hartlieb looked flabbergasted. Her husband just shook his head as if it was the strangest thing he'd ever heard.
"Well, I did." Victor wedged the photograph under the winged lion. "But I was by myself. I didn't have a brother, big or small, to look after me...Well, leave me your address and telephone number, and let's talk about my fee."
As the Hartliebs struggled back down the narrow staircase, Victor stepped on to the balcony. A cold wind whipped at his face, bearing the salty tang of the nearby sea. Shivering, he leaned against the balustrade and watched the Hartliebs step onto a bridge a few houses further down the canal. It was a pretty bridge, but the couple seemed not to take any notice of it. They rushed across it sullenly, without even a glance at the scrawny dog barking at them from a passing barge. And -- of course -- they didn't spit into the canal, like Victor always did.
"Well, who says you have to like your clients," the detective muttered to himself. He leaned over a cardboard box on the floor of the balcony, out of which the heads of two tortoises were peeking. "Parents like that are still better than no parents at all, right? What do you think? Don't tortoises have parents?"
Victor looked through the balustrade at the canal below, and at the houses, whose stony feet were washed by the water day in, day out. He had lived in Venice for more than fifteen years and he still didn't know all the city's nooks and crannies -- but then again no one did. The job wouldn't be easy, particularly if the boys didn't want to be found. There were so many hiding places, and so many narrow alleys with names no one could remember -- some of them with no names at all. Boarded-up churches, deserted houses...the whole city was one huge invitation to play hide-and-seek.
Well, I've always liked playing hide-and-seek, thought Victor, and so far I've found everyone I've ever looked for. The two boys had already been coping alone for eight weeks. Eight weeks! When he had run away from home he had only managed to cope with his freedom for one afternoon. At dusk, he had slunk back home, feeling sad and sorry for himself.
The tortoises nibbled at the lettuce leaf Victor was holding out to them. "I think I'd better take you inside tonight," he said. "This wind tastes of winter."
Lando and Paula looked at him through their lashless eyes. He sometimes got them mixed up but they didn't seem to mind. He had found them one day at the fish market, where he had gone in search of a client's Persian cat. Once Victor had managed to fish the pedigreed cat out of a barrel full of stinking sardines and stowed her in a scratch-safe box, he had discovered the two tortoises. They had been meandering between all the human feet, completely oblivious to the world. When Victor picked them up they quickly retreated into their shells.
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