The girl held up her middle finger to him. ‘Bite me,’ she said. Her disparaging gaze moved to Tom and then lingered on Kate. ‘Who you got here?’

‘Kate and Tom. They’re OK. Helped me out.’

Jasmine arched one finely plucked eyebrow. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

‘Lost my cell somewhere in the park,’ Ramone replied.

‘We heard on the radio some shit was happening in Central Park,’ Jasmine went on. ‘Tony’s gang?’

Ramone nodded. ‘Turned hairy on me. No chance of us teaming up with Tony’s crew – howlers, all of them.’

Kate was looking at Jasmine in disbelief. ‘They broadcast about the ’wolves on the radio?’

‘Sure,’ said Jasmine, her pretty face twisting into a sneer, ‘it went out on Hot 97.’

‘We got a police radio out back, 28th Precinct,’ Ramone explained. ‘We like to know what’s going down round here. Who’d they say it was, Jas –kids?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Damn howler could have its teeth round their necks, they’d blame it on kids.’ He took an uncertain step towards Jasmine.

‘You hurt yourself?’

Tom noticed a flicker of concern on Jasmine’s face.

‘I broke my ankle, babe.’

‘Sure you did, asshole. Twisted it maybe.’

‘I’m hurt bad.’

‘Whatever.’ Jasmine folded her arms, turned and, like Polar before her, disappeared through the door into the next room.

‘See?’ Ramone grinned at Tom. ‘She loves me.’

He limped across the ruined kitchen and, with an exchange of nervous glances, Tom and Kate followed.

The kitchen led into a large room painted blood red, with boarded-up windows. It was lit by a collection of mismatched lamps, lined up in a row along the opposite wall. Cigarette smoke clouded the room, and the bulbs seemed to glow fiercer through the haze, like streetlights in fog.

Six or seven people, all Hispanic, were slumped on cushions or on one of the two battered leather couches ranged in front of an enormous widescreen TV showing highlights from a Giants game. One kid, a little smaller than Tom’s kid brother, Joe, was kneeling right in front of it, close enough to count the pixels on the screen. He was shirtless, with grubby-looking bandages wrapped around his shoulder blades. Polar crept up with his camera and photographed the back of the boy’s head.

The doorway beside the row of lamps had been knocked through and expanded into a big ragged archway, that showed an unappealing glimpse of the room beyond. Its walls had been smothered in spray paint by someone with all the enthusiasm of a real graffiti artist but none of the technique. Against one vandalised wall was a big table, heavy with beer bottles and spirits, like this was Party Central or something.