The hottest time of day. The food vendors, crowds, and the dense traffic raised the temperature and humidity even more, spicing the air with whiffs and reeks of humanity and its works, familiar, intimate, repulsive, enchanting. Cities stank. In Tokyo people wore face masks. Decades ago, New York overwhelmed its citizens with the smells of leather tanning, coffee roasting, fat rendering, and God-knew-what nineteenth-century technology.

As Devlin headed down the subway stairs, he thought again of Levine’s request to stand by: he hadn’t let Levine’s people know his whereabouts since early this morning, when he’d checked out of the Tombs. If John’s information was correct, they weren’t interested in Frank Devlin—which was exactly the kind of story Devlin himself would give out while an investigation was in progress. They were checking everything!

The air underground was even hotter and wetter than the laundry steam sloshing around on the streets above. A train was pulling into the station, brakes shrieking. At the token booth Devlin flashed his shield, moving quickly. The train’s doors were open, people pushing in. Devlin picked up his pace through the moving crowd, easily replicating maneuvers he had learned as a kid. The Subway Samba amazed tourists; hundreds of people rushing in all directions, in a very small space, without ever hitting one another. They knew how to do it. The ones who didn’t probably were pickpockets.

The train’s doors closed, then popped open again, making Devlin hesitate, then move once more. The doors started to close a second time when he was ten feet from the train, near enough for him to get inside if he kept going. Somebody kicked his right ankle as he was bringing his foot forward so that his instep looped around the back of his left leg. Devlin went down and forward hard, on one knee, yelling, plunging headfirst toward the train as the doors locked shut. Devlin had to throw his hands flat onto the concrete platform to brake his momentum. The train began to roll out of the station. Devlin could feel the concrete abrading the skin from his hands, but he dug in, tried to keep from barreling headfirst into the moving train. People were yelling, or was it him alone? If he raised his hands to protect his head, he would hit the train. He grabbed the wooden rub rail at the edge of the platform and held on and pulled his head into his shoulders. Three inches, four at most, between the rub rail and the train, less between the top of his head and the metal plates flashing by.