Where Flatbush Avenue became Marine Parkway, the bus picked up speed and the standees, twenty of them clinging to bright metal pipes, lurched to the rear. The setting sun poked through the lifting clouds and filled the right side of the bus with orange light—and enough heat to poach the multiracial crowd. Devlin had found a messy copy of this morning’s Times and was systematically letting his eyes pass over every word of page B5, all Liberty Week stories, from the honoring of prominent immigrants to the surplus collected by the Liberty-Ellis Island Committee. Devlin was in Brennan country. This was a Brennan bus, and it had just passed Brennan-backed housing projects on the way out onto the rank, humid mirror of Jamaica Bay. Courting Maryellen Brennan had meant a lot of trips to Rockaway, Devlin’s next destination. In those days, Maryellen had been curious about life’s sleazy side, provided Devlin took responsibility for what they saw and did, and she took control of how they dealt with it later. In New Jersey it was burlesque; in the Village, gay bars; in Rockaway it was going from one Irish dance hall to the next, getting blotto on beer and looking for trouble. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that she had wanted so much to see a brawl that she was capable of trying to get him into one.…

Another hot night: he caught her flirting over his shoulder on a dance floor and walked away to let her contend with the goon alone. Twenty minutes later, she came running up to their car, where he had been waiting, having second thoughts about what he had done. “Do you know what he said to me? Do you have any idea what you put in that man’s mind?” He didn’t believe her, but stayed silent, leaning against the car’s fender, letting her run her course. A guy came along. Devlin wouldn’t have recognized him, but Maryellen pulled close. As he passed, the guy raised his hand to fend Devlin off. “No trouble, brother. I’m just on my way to my hotel.” He kept going, but Maryellen held on. When he was thirty feet away, near the corner, he called, “Get yourself a new girl, fella!”

“Keep your mouth shut!”

The guy rubbed the base of his spine with his index finger. “Nice little starter button she has back here.”

A mole. The guy couldn’t have found it without exploring carefully. Devlin’s stomach churned. Maryellen wrenched free. “He grabbed me!”

He got in the car. She had to tap on the window to get him to open her door. She wanted to fight, and he didn’t. He was thinking about the guy’s advice. The trouble was, the wedding date had been set. The whole world knew they were getting married.

He was becoming a part of the great Brennan saga.