Jenna’s safety-deposit box was in the Bank of Boston on Tremont, across from the Boston Common at the Park Street corner. The Common runs back in a mall of cement here, past two squat buildings that serve as the Park Street T-station entrances, past a gaggle of vendors and street musicians and newspaper hawkers and winos. Crowds of businessmen and women and politicians walk briskly up the walkways where the Common turns green again and rises in a slope to the steep steps that climb to Beacon Street, the State House towering overhead, its gold dome looking down on the minions.

It’s impossible to park on Tremont or even idle there for more than thirty seconds. A platoon of meter maids, imported from the female Hitler Youth shortly after the fall of Berlin, roam the street, at least two to a block, pit bull faces on top of fire hydrant bodies, just waiting for someone stupid enough to stall traffic on their street. Say, “Have a nice day,” to one of them and she’ll have your car towed for being a smart-ass. I turned onto Hamilton Place, behind the Orpheum Theater, and parked in a loading zone. We walked the two blocks to the bank. I started to walk in with her, but she stopped me. “An old black lady going into a bank with a big young white boy. What they going to think?”

“I’m your gigolo?”

She shook her head. “They going to think you’re the law, escorting the nigger who got caught doing something. Again.”

I nodded. “All right.”

She said, “I didn’t go through all this just so I could run on you now, Kenzie. I could have climbed out a window last night, that was the case. So, whyn’t you wait across the street?”

Sometimes you got to trust people.

She went in alone, and I crossed Tremont and stood near Park Street Station, in the middle of the mall, the shadow of Park Street Church’s white spire falling on my face.

She wasn’t in there long.

She came out, saw me, and waved. She waited for a break in the traffic then came across the street. Her stride was full, her purse held tightly in her hand as she came across the mall. Her eyes had brightened, brown marble with flames glowing in the center, and she looked much younger than the picture I’d been given.

She came up close to me and said, “What I got here is a little part of it.”

I said, “Jenna ”

“No, no,” she said. “It’s something, believe me. You’ll see.” She glanced up at the State House, then looked back at me. “You prove you’re ready to help me on this, show what side you’re on, and I give you the rest. I give you...” Her eyes lost their fire and filled; her voice stuck like a worn clutch. “I give you... the rest,” she managed. I hadn’t known her for more than twelve hours, but I had the feeling that whatever “the rest” was, it was bad. Tearing her apart from the inside out.