“We should find him,” she said at last. “The killer. You and me. I bet we’d get a reward. They arrested Clyde, the Negro magician—they’ll execute him if we don’t find the guy who really did it.”

Henry shook his head and stuffed the card back into his wallet. He started to breathe loudly through his nose, like he was going to begin shouting again. “They enslaved the Negroes. Now they are making slaves of children. This evil murderer is one of their generals.”

Pin made a face. “How could a general go into Hell Gate without anyone noticing? He’d be in uniform.”

“You don’t need special clothes to be a general. I was a general. Before I was a detective,” he added quickly. “And an evil general would be wearing different clothes.”

“He wasn’t a general!” Pin gestured impatiently at the park below them. “He’s probably down there right now.”

Henry’s eyes widened. “Then we should watch the Infant Incubators! A stake out. When you wait for a criminal.”

“I know what a stake out is.” Pin sighed. “Let’s go. You have grass on your head.”

“Grass, jackass.”

As they trudged down the hill, she asked, “Where do you live?”

“By the hospital, but just a little. St. Joseph’s. I work there.”

She nodded, only half listening. When they reached the Pike, she scanned the ground, looking for loose coins. No luck, but over by the incubators someone had left most of a wienie in a bun on a bench. Pin snatched it up.

Still warm. She took a bite and held it out to Henry, was relieved when he refused to touch it. She finished the wienie, wiped her hands on her knickerbockers, and noticed that Henry had already moved on.

He’d wandered off to stand behind a tree, half hidden so he couldn’t be seen as he stared at the little girls waiting in line for the Infant Incubators. Even from here she could see him quivering, the way that greyhounds did before they were released.

A sick taste filled her mouth. She thought of the man settling into the boat at Hell Gate, the way the girl in the yellow dress had slipped into his lap, how he’d stroked her hair ribbon. Pin watched as Henry leaned forward and his hands moved, not as though he were throwing a ball but like he held something, something he twisted as his mouth silently opened and closed, while a few yards away the children scampered back and forth, laughing in the sunlight.

Chapter 39

Chapter 39

HE WALKED THE few blocks to the nearest L stop and caught a train destined for the Loop. He hopped off at a busy part of Lincoln Park. He’d steeled himself to hear newsboys shouting about the murder, but their singsong was all about the hurricane that had destroyed Galveston and a German ship sunk by an English submarine.