He kept checking his image in windows, which, as he headed toward the river, got smaller and dirtier. He knelt beside an empty barrel standing in a puddle outside a saloon, pretended to tie his shoe, and continued on, his trousers smelling of stale beer. The deeper into the slum he wandered, the more slowly he walked, the lower he stooped—a weary, aimless man lost in the crowds.

A young tough wearing a tight suit and red derby blocked his path. “What do you got for me, Gramps? Come on! Hand it over.”

Isaac Bell resisted the impulse to floor him, dug deep in his coat, and surrendered a nickel.

The tough shoved past.

“Wait!” Bell called.

“What?” The tough spun around. “What? What do want?”

“Do you know a fellow named Billy Collins?”

The tough hung a blank expression on his face. “Who?” He was a kid, Bell realized, barely into his teens. An infant when Tommy Thompson and Billy Collins were running with Eyes O’Shay.

“Billy Collins. Tall, skinny fellow. Ginger hair. Maybe turning gray.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Skin and bones,” Bell said, repeating what Harry Warren and his boys had speculated the opium and morphine addict would look like after all these years. They knew he was still alive, or had been within the week. “Probably missing teeth.”

“Where you from, Gramps?”

“Chicago.”

“Yeah, well there’s a lot of guys around here got no teeth. You’re next.” He raised a bony fist. “Get out of here! Run, old man. Run.”

Bell said, “Billy Collins used to run with Tommy Thompson and Eyes O’Shay when they were kids.”

The thug backed up a step. “You with the Gophers?”

“I’m just looking for Billy Collins.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the only one.” He hurried away, calling over his shoulder, “Everybody’s asking about him.”

They should be, Bell thought. Considering what it was costing the agency. In addition to Harry Warren’s boys and Harry’s informants, he had two hundred railroad cops asking the same question every time they slugged it out with Gophers attempting to rob freight cars. Bell kept asking himself, Where does a hop fiend hide? Where does he sleep? Where does he eat? Where does he get his dope? How come no one saw him in a district where everyone knew everyone?

There had been sightings near Collins’s known dens, several by a coal pocket that replenished locomotive tenders in the 38th Street yards, twice around an abandoned caboose at 60th Street. Picked men were watching both. And Bell had a feeling he himself had actually glimpsed Collins through a wind-spun swirl of locomotive smoke—a rail-thin figure had flitted between freight cars, and Bell had run full tilt after him only to find smoke.