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It was written in three languages — after all, he often had clients from abroad. Next to the sign was a knocker — a lion’s head with a brass ring in its mouth, which Victor had polished just that morning.

What are they waiting for?he thought, tapping his fingers on the armrest of his chair. “Avanti!” He called out, “Come in!”

The door opened. A man and a woman stepped into Victor’s office, which also doubled as his living room. They looked around warily, taking in the cacti, the beard and mustache collection, the coat stand bursting with Victor’s caps, hats and wigs, the huge street map ofVenice on the wall, and the winged lion that served as a paperweight on Victor’s desk.

“Do you speak English?” asked the woman, although her Italian sounded quite fluent.

“Of course!”Victor answered, gesturing toward the chairs in front of his desk. “English is my mother tongue. What can I do for you?”

They both sat down hesitantly. The man folded his arms and looked rathersullen, the woman stared at Victor’s walrus mustache.

“Oh, that’s just for camouflage,” he explained, pulling the mustache from his lip.”Quite a necessity in my line of work. Well, what can I do for you?Anything lost or stolen, any pet run away?”

Without saying a word, the woman reached into her bag. She had ash-blonde hair and a pointed nose.

Her mouth didn’t look as if smiling was its favorite activity. The man was a giant, at least two full heads taller than Victor. His nose was peeling from sunburn and his eyes were small and dull.Doesn’t look like he can take a joke either, Victor thought, as he committed the two faces to memory. He could never remember a phone number, but he never forgot a face.

“Thisis what we’ve lost,” said the woman as she pushed the photograph across the desk. Her English was even better than her Italian.

Two boys looked out at Victor from the photograph. One was small and blonde, with a broad smile on his face; the other was older, dark-haired and more serious looking. He had his arm around the younger boy’s shoulder, as if he wanted to protect him from all that was evil in the world.

“Children?”Victor looked up in surprise. “I’ve tracked down a lot of things in my time — suitcases, dogs, a couple of escaped lizards, and some husbands — but you are the first clients to come to me because they’ve lost their children, Mr. and Mrs…?” He looked at them inquisitively.

“Hartlieb,” the woman answered.”Esther and Max Hartlieb.”

“And they are not our children,” her husband stated firmly, which immediately earned him an angry look from his pointy-nosed wife.

“Prosper and Bonifaceare my late sister’s sons,” she explained. “She raised the boys on her own.

Prosper has just turned twelve, and Bo is five.”

“Prosper and Boniface,” murmured Victor.”Unusual names. Doesn’t Prosper mean ‘the lucky one’?”

Esther Hartlieb arched her eyebrows. “Does it? Well, one thing’s for sure, they’re very strange names, Page 6

and that’s putting it mildly. My late sister had a fondness for anything peculiar. When she died three months ago, my husband and I applied for custody of Bo since we sadly don’t have any children of our own. But we couldn’t possibly have taken on his older brother as well. Any reasonable person could see that. But Prosper got very upset, acting like a lunatic, accusing us of stealing his brother — although we would have allowed him to visit Bo once a month.” Her pale face grew even paler.

“They ran away more than eight weeks ago,” Max Hartlieb continued, “from their grandfather’s house inHamburg , where they were staying at the time. Prosper’s quite capable of talking his brother into any foolish scheme, and everything we have found out so far indicates that he has brought him here, to Venice.”

“FromHamburg toVenice ?”Victor raised his eyebrows. “That’s a long way for two children to travelon their own . Have you contacted the police here?”

“Of course we have,” hissed Esther Hartlieb.”They were no help at all. Surely it can’t be that hard to find two children, who are all alone —”

But her husband cut her off. “Sadly, I have to return home on urgent business. We would therefore like to put you in charge of the search for the boys, Mr. Getz. The concierge at our hotel recommended you.”

“How nice of him,” Victor mumbled. He fiddled with the false mustache. The thing looked like a dead mouse lying next to the phone. “But what makes you so sure they’ve come toVenice ? Surely they didn’t come just to ride on the gondolas …”

“It’s their mother’s fault!” Mrs. Harltieb pursed her lips and glanced out through Victor’s dirty window.

Outside on the balcony, the wind was ruffling the feathers of a pigeon. “My sister kept telling the boys about this city. She told them stories about winged lions, a golden cathedral, and about angels and dragons perched on top of the buildings. She told them that water nymphs came ashore for walks at night up the little steps on the edges of the canals.” She shook her head angrily. “My sister could talk about these things in a way that she almost made me believe her. It wasVenice this,Venice that, nothing butVenice ! Bo drew winged lions all the time and Prosper simply drank in every word his mother said.

He probably thought that if they could make it toVenice , he and Bo would land right in the middle of fairyland. What an idea!” She wrinkled her nose and cast a contemptuous look through the window at the crumbling plaster of the neighboring houses.

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 madeVenice 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?”