Finally I returned to my hotel room, hurrying through streets slick with rain. I peeled off my worn sweater and replaced it with the one I’d just bought. I cracked the bottle of whiskey, did a pop, and checked out the cosmetics bag.

It was a good score—Charlotte Tilbury mascara and eyeliner, a shade of frosted lipstick called Poison Pearl, some Touche Éclat concealer, an enameled compact with a mirror and a reservoir for loose face powder. Stuff that would have cost a hundred quid if I’d bought it in Selfridges.

I don’t bother with much makeup—who’s going to believe I’m on the south side of forty, or even fifty? Still, I used the concealer on the star-shaped scar beside my eye, a reminder of a bad time I’d had three months earlier. Wincing, I took on the barely healed gash below it, sustained during my more recent, near-fatal trip to the Icelandic wilderness. When I finished touching up the scars, I made use of the eyeliner and mascara and Poison Pearl. I surveyed myself in the mirror.

I’ve spent the last thirty years looking like my own ghost. There was nothing to be done about my gaunt face and the dead, ice-gray gaze that people would cross the street to avoid. Still, if I was a living ghost, so were most of the people I saw walking the Lower East Side, filing in and out of the boutiques and high-end bars that had replaced CBGB and Brownies. If they weren’t lining up outside burnt-out tenements for a hit, it was because they no longer needed to. Their suppliers had medical degrees. Mine couldn’t afford to finish Bergen Community College.

But it’s impressive what you can do with a good haircut and concealer that costs as much as a decent bottle of cabernet. I got a towel and did what I could to clean my boots. Then I carefully transferred everything from my worn satchel to the leather bag I’d just bought, including the now-empty satchel. Last of all I knocked back another mouthful of whiskey, and put the bottle of Jack Daniel’s where I could reach it easily in the bag. I scanned the room to see if there was anything worth stealing.

Nope. So I left.

It was still cold out, but the rain had stopped. Between the looming construction cranes and half-built skyscrapers, fast-moving clouds streaked a mother-of-pearl sky. I headed for the Regent’s Canal and walked along the towpath, dodging bicyclists and dog walkers, until I found myself momentarily alone in the dark passage beneath a stone arch.

I dug in my bag for the mobile phone I’d taken from a dead woman. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now the mobile was a liability. I glanced around, tossed it into the middle of the canal, and hurried on.