Sunday, Oct. 20, 4:50 p.m.
Newark

    Having scratched off seven of the nine names on her short list, Melody Marven exited the Garden State Parkway at Exit 144, determined to find out what she could about N.Y. Metro missing person No. 92-M9331: Bernard Thomas LaPlaca of Newark.
     In her rented Ford Taurus she now slowed to toss a dime into the toll basket.  She consulted her map and continued north a few blocks to South Orange Avenue, where the road ended in a T against the sprawling Cemetery of the Holy Sepulchre, and after avoiding the imploring look of a roadside vendor, a Korean woman offering single red roses, Melody turned west, under the Parkway, into Vailsburg, the westernmost outpost of Newark.  She turned right a few blocks later onto Chelsea Avenue, a tree-lined street packed with plain but well kept houses.  She checked a house number and nosed the small beige car into the first parking spot she saw, then got out and referred to a slip of paper.  Twenty yards away an older woman in a turquoise housecoat was sweeping leaves from the sidewalk in front of a neat, two-story bungalow.  The house was clad in burgundy vinyl siding, and its windows and doors sported wrought-iron bars.  On the front porch a fat orange cat sat in a furry ball, observing.  The woman saw Melody, stopped sweeping and started toward her.
     "Are you a friend of Bernard's?" the woman called out.   She stood there, broom in hand, her hair in curlers around a pudgy, expectant face.  "Bernard LaPlaca?"
     "Why, no, but I am looking for him."
     The woman stepped over to Melody.  "I'm his mother.  Rose LaPlaca."  Then she froze, scrutinizing the blonde woman with the navy blue corduroy jacket draped over her shoulders and the black beret.  "Wait a minute, you're Melody Marven from the television!"
     Melody held out her left hand to the woman.  "Yes, how do you do?  Sorry, my other arm's in a sling."  She raised it a bit beneath the coat.
     "Ooh, yeah," said the woman, wide-eyed.  "You was shot this week, for God's sake!  How are you?"
     "Oh, still a little sore, but I'm back to work, as you can see."
     "Good, good.  Keepin' busy's the best thing, I always say.  We watch you on the television all the time, me and Bernard and my daughter Monica.  My husband Mickey died two years ago."
     "I'm sorry."
     "Eh!  Heavy smoker, all his life.  I'm surprised he didn't kill all of us."
     "Mmmm."
     "You know my son Bernard?"
     "Not personally, no."
     "He's a good boy.  So smart.  Graduated from Seton Hall.  He works at a magazine in Secaucus.  He could be at the Star-Ledger, I keep tellin' him, but he likes workin' in Secaucus.  I don't know."
     "Secaucus?"
     "Yes.  Travel Set magazine.  Travel agents read it, and like that."
     "Travel Set, you say?"
     "Yeah, he's an editor there, an associated editor.  For six months now."
     Melody nodded.  "Mrs. LaPlaca, Bernard is why I'm in Newark today.  I understand he's been gone for a few days."
     "Oh Christ, yes, almost a week I haven't seen him.  At work they're so worried, and the detective was here Thursday, and he was no help."
     "You must be worried about him."
     "Yes I am, and when he gets home I'm going to beat his ass with a stick!  He's worried me sick and I had to file a missin' persons on him, and talk with that detective!  And deal with his people at work."
     "The detective didn't help, huh?"
     "He says Bernard's prob'ly just out blowin' off some steam somewhere, ‘cause he's been gone a couple days before, but never a week!"
     "So you saw him Monday morning?"
     "Yeah, he was up early like usual, listenin' to the radio and doin' the crossword puzzle, then he left for work.  He listens to that Howard Stern, but I can't stand him, and as soon as he goes I change the station."
     "I see.  Was he dressed as usual that morning?"
    The woman squinted in recollection.  "Come ta think of it, he did dress different, last Monday."
    "Different?"
    "Yeah, he looked like he was goin' to a funeral.  All in black, he dressed."
    "Hmmm.  Did he ever dress like that for work before?"
    "Nah.  He had that shirt 10 years and never wore it!  Like a cowboy shirt, black, with pearl buttons, it had.  Anyway, he didn't show up at work Monday anyway, so go figure."  She cocked her head.  "Do you think I shoulda told the detective that?"
    "Ah, probably not important" said Melody.  "Was he around last weekend?"
     "He was in and out all weekend, same as every weekend.  He has to go out, or he'll have to spend time with his mother and his sister, God forbid.  Now with his fiancé, it's gonna get even worse, I suppose."
     "His fiancé?"
     "Yeah, she works in the same place.  He talks about her all the time.  Her name is Cassandra."
     "Cassandra?!"
     "Yeah, Cassandra Mendez or Lopez or somethin'.  I keep tellin' him to bring her home." She leaned in closer to Melody and lowered her voice.  "His father hated the Spanish, but I don't mind ‘em, really.  They're better than the coloreds.  Look what they did to this city."
     "It's awful.  You say his fiancé is named Cassandra Lopez, from Travel Set?"
     "Yeah, she lives downtown, in the Colonnades, Bernard says.  That's a classy building."  The woman tilted her head and squinted at Melody.  "So what are you doin' here?  How do you know Bernard?"
     "Well, I'm working on a story about missing persons, and I just wanted to look into a few cases, and your son's case really intrigued me."
     The woman leaned on her broom.  "Whaddaya mean?"
     "Well, usually missing persons are people in desperate circumstances, not bright people like Bernard with a good home and job . . . and a fiancé."
     "He is very bright.  He could be workin' at the Star-Ledger, I keep tellin' him."  Her face brightened.      "Listen, you wanna come in and have a cup of coffee?   We're goin' to Atlantic City for the overnight, me and Anna Marie next door, and we're gonna see a show and everything, but we got an hour before the bus leaves.  It pulls right up on South Orange Avenue."
     Melody's eyes flashed with enterprise.  "I would love to."

     After two cups of Chock Full O' Nuts coffee and four Stella D'Oro biscotti, Melody bid the garrulous Mrs. LaPlaca a fond farewell, promised to contact her immediately if she heard anything about Bernard, and got back into the rented Taurus.  She consulted her notes, then a map, and drove north on Oraton Parkway, a road paralleling the Garden State Parkway, until she reached Park Avenue, where she turned east, within a few blocks reaching the old, low steel bridge over the Montclair Branch of the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad. Melody slowed but in the fading daylight opted against getting out and exploring the scene of the vigilante's first appearance.   Farther down Park Avenue she spotted the fire station she'd been to the previous week, and a block or two beyond it she turned north onto N. Fifth Street.
     She drove a couple of blocks on the one-way street before reaching the address in the news reports, a four-story yellow brick building on the west side of the street.  Behind it the vigilante had interrupted an assault by flinging a hubcap in the assailant's face.  Melody looked at the building across the street, a three-story red-brick structure behind which the man in black was reported to have escaped.  A faded sign over one doorway read "Norfifth."  She parked just beyond the buildings, across the street from a large field, at whose far boundary a City Subway car clattered along at street level.  And beyond the tracks, she saw, was Branch Brook Park.  Plenty of opportunities to escape, she thought.  Hell, LaPlaca could have hopped the next subway, unless he had a car nearby. She cursed herself for not asking Mrs. LaPlaca if her son's car was missing, as well.  Maybe it was still parked somewhere nearby.
     Now Melody wondered why LaPlaca had chosen this neighborhood to act out his weird love for Cassandra, if that's what it was.  The streets were mean, the houses boarded up or heavily gated and barred.  She'd seen plenty of that in Vailsburg, where he lived.  Why this place, halfway across town?

     A bob of headlights behind her caught her eye, and she checked her rear- view mirror.  In front of the yellow building, a young black man was getting out of a cab.  He wore a stocking cap and had a bandage on his nose, and greeted another young black man sitting on the front.  As the cab pulled away, the two men lit cigarets and talked; the man who had been sitting on the stoop nodded in the direction of Melody, then started walking toward Park Avenue, and the new arrival took his place.
     In the car Melody lit a cigaret and debated briefly whether to get out and look around.  She'd decided not to when another pair of headlights behind her caught her attention.  A small gray car pulled past hers and stopped, and its driver began to maneuver it into a parking space across the street from her and just behind.  Melody ducked when the car came by hers, and stayed down until she heard a car door shut.  She waited a second, the smoke from the cigaret irritating her eyes, then slowly rose and looked out the side window.  Across the street was now parked a dented little gray Datsun, and now walking briskly toward the Norfifth Apartments, pizza box in hand, was, of all people, Rom Soriano.