They cross over the river and cut along the warehouses on Main Street and the East River grain elevators. They move away from the river and follow the railroad tracks until they skirt the old stone bridge that juts out into the river like a Roman ruin, and walk under the Tenth Avenue Bridge. The wind isn’t so strong by the water. The ice runs from the banks toward the center channel like the shoulders of an inhospitable and damaged road out into the night.

Split stumbles as they step over the rail and catches himself on Simon’s shoulder.

“It’s a bitch not having toes,” he says.

He shakes his foot and sets it down carefully as they part the weeds and winter-stripped brush and step on the river’s edge. Beer cans roll like tin chimes and lodge in the lee of angled chunks of ice. Split grabs on to T-Man’s sleeve as they pick their way over the frozen skin of the river.

“Don’t pull so hard,” says T-Man as Split’s weight tips him to one side.

“You sure it’s safe?” asks Simon as they venture out.

“They’ve got a fuckin Ford out there,” he rasps. “If it can hold that, it can hold us.”

Two cars putter up East River Road and onto Fourteenth Avenue.

Ahead the river deepens and the current slows. If not for the sound of the dam upstream and the loosened plates of ice in the center of the channel, they might be walking on a northern field or a mall parking lot.

The shelf of ice runs fifty feet into the center of the river and ahead the bulk of the car rests out in the open, a dark shape against the incandescent snow. Slowly, they angle away from the bank and onto the ice, approaching the car cautiously.

It is an old Fairmont, of course. The windows are broken out and two doors are missing. Inside, they see the upholstery shedding in the winter wind. The whole bulk of the car tilts crazily to one side. Both the hood and trunk lid are missing, like a broken safe. The engine has been ripped out and there are no tires: the rims have melted into the ice and frozen again, buried to the axle.

They hear a boom like a gunshot. Simon and T-Man duck. They hear an echo and low rumble across the water. A shudder runs through the ice.

Split snorts. “They ain’t shootin at us. It’s just the ice. It does that all the time in the spring.”

“It’s just the ice cracking?” asks T-Man.

“Sure.”

“Then what the hell we doin out here?”

Split ignores him and limps directly up to the car.