Sometime later our pilot took the air: ‘The FAA’s issued a SIGMET.’

‘What the hell is that?’ Marino asked.

‘A warning about turbulence. It’s windy in New York City, twenty-five knots gusting at thirty-seven.’

‘So we can’t land?’ Marino, who hated to fly, sounded slightly panicky.

‘We’re going to be low and the winds are going to be much higher.’

‘What do you mean low? You ever seen how high the buildings are in New York?’

I reached back between my seat and the door and patted Marino’s knee. We were forty nautical miles from Manhattan, and I could just barely make out a light winking on top of the Empire State Building. The moon was swollen, planes moving in and away from La Guardia like floating stars, and from smokestacks steam rose in huge white plumes. Through the chin bubble at my feet I watched twelve lanes of traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, and everywhere lights sparkled like jewels, as if Faberge had crafted the city and its bridges.

We flew behind the Statue of Liberty’s back, then passed Ellis Island, where my grandparents’ first introduction to America was a crowded immigration station on a frigid winter day. They had left Verona, where there had been no future for my grandfather, born the fourth son of a railroad worker.

I came from a hearty, hardworking people who emigrated from Austria and Switzerland in the early eighteen hundreds, thus explaining my blond hair and blue eyes. Despite my mother’s assertion that when Napoleon I ceded Verona to Austria, our ancestors managed to keep the Italian bloodline pure, I believed otherwise. I suspected there was genetic cause for some of my more Teutonic traits.

Macy’s, billboards and the golden arches of McDonald’s appeared, as New York slowly became concrete and parking lots and street sides banked high with snow that looked dirty even from the air. We circled the VIP Heliport on West Thirtieth Street, lighting up and ruffling the Hudson’s murky waters as a bright wind sock stood on end. We swayed into a space near a gleaming Sikorsky S-76 that made all other birds seem common.

‘Watch out for the tail rotor,’ our pilot said.

Inside a small building that was only vaguely warm, we were greeted by a woman in her fifties with dark hair, a wise face and tired eyes. Bundled in a thick wool coat, slacks, lace-up boots and leather gloves, she introduced herself as Commander Frances Penn of the New York Transit Police.

‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she said, offering her hand to each of us. ‘If we’re ready, I have cars waiting.’

‘We’re ready,’ Wesley said.