It was still light when we finished, so we walked across the three long blocks of Central Park, past the lake and Bethesda Fountain and something that called itself the Boathouse Café. The café was closed. People were jogging and riding bikes and a couple of kids were flying a model airplane. No one seemed about to do crime, but the mounted police were in high profile. After the sun went down, it might be different. I asked Pike, “Are you afraid?”

He shook his head.

“Would you be afraid at midnight if we were alone?”

He walked a moment. “I have the capacity for great violence.”

I nodded. So did I. But I thought that I might still be afraid.

Pike slipped his hands into the pockets of his parka and we walked past a smaller pond where an older man and a couple of young girls were sailing a model sailboat. A man and a woman decked out in serious biking apparel were standing with a tandem bike, watching them. We stopped and watched them, too, and I wondered how deeply into winter the pond could venture before it would freeze. The brisk fall wind carried the boat well across the pond. Pike said, “Elvis?”

“Yeah?”

“I remember being afraid. I was very young.”

We watched the old man and the girls and the boat, and then we left the park and walked down to the brownstones that used to belong to Sal DeLuca. There were no limos at the curb or thugs hanging around the stoop. There was a black bow on the door.

Joe stayed on the corner at Fifth Avenue and I went up to the door and rang the bell once. In a little bit Freddie opened the door and looked out at me. His face was flat and without expression. “Yeah?”

“You hear about Charlie?”

“We heard.”

“I’m at the Park Lane.”

“Swell. Have a party.”

“Tell Vito. Tell Angie. I’ll be there until this is squared away.”

Freddie gave me the patented tough-guy sneer. “We got no business with you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Tell Vito and Angie. The Park Lane.”