Odessa said, “We can’t cruise in to the crime scene riding in a Rolls-Royce. I don’t know what we can do, to be perfectly honest, but I know we can’t do that. We also can’t go in there with a bunch of roosters. What do you expect we can achieve here?”

Blackwood watched out the window, unusually distracted.

“Well?” she said.

“Solomon never spoke to me like that before,” said Blackwood.

Odessa said, “That’s because his mind is going. The fungal infection that caused the stroke is affecting his brain.”

Blackwood said, “That is why I am worried. It leaves his mind vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable to what?”

The Phantom took a hard corner and then abruptly stopped. A traffic cop standing before a blue NYPD sawhorse was frantically waving cars along, trying to prevent gridlock. The main police barricade was another block down, a bottleneck of safety vehicles with lights flashing.

“Keep going,” Odessa told Mr. Lusk. “Pull over as soon as you can.”

He did, and Odessa sprang to the curb, Blackwood following. She doubled back to the traffic cop, finding another police officer blocking the sidewalk. Odessa showed him her badge and credentials.

The cop waited for Hugo Blackwood to offer identification. “Who’s this?” he asked.

Odessa said, “He’s with me.”

They pushed on through. Odessa hustled ahead toward the staging area the New York Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Team had established. They had a mobile command center truck parked outside the barricade, and a portable video surveillance tower elevated off its mobile stand, a twenty-foot-high vantage point.

Odessa immediately made the FBI contingent on the scene, a knot of four men in suits conferring near an unmarked Ford Fiesta. The Bureau was on scene because it was a federal crime to rob any member bank of the Federal Reserve System. The FBI used to investigate each and every bank robbery in the country, but that changed after 9/11, when resources were redeployed to antiterror investigations and homeland security concerns. Now the Bureau focused its attention on serial offenders, robbers who crossed jurisdictional boundaries, and the most violent bank crimes.

Odessa steered clear for fear of being recognized. She led Blackwood to the edge of the blocked intersection, their best angle on the Santander branch on the opposite corner of the next block. Odessa could see movement inside, the branch manager moving back and forth deep within the bank, but they were too far away to make out anything clearly.

“We have to get closer,” said Blackwood.

“We are not getting any closer,” Odessa said. “They’ve got this block locked off on four sides.” She looked around, noting the level of precaution. “Must be a bomb threat.”

She eyed a pair of NYPD detectives in plainclothes, one talking on his phone, the other, younger one scrolling through his. Odessa approached with her badge in hand.

“Excuse me,” she said, “who can give me an update here?”