We took a trip around the Statue of Liberty, and then we came back to where we started. The helicopter dropped us off on the pier, where Lexie’s driver was waiting, playing his harmonica. When we were safe in the Lincoln and on our way home, Crawley finally spoke.

“You will never be forgiven for this,” he said. “Neither of you. And you will pay.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence.

18. Larger Than Life, in Your Face, Undeniable Schwa

I had made up my mind to tell the Schwa about the Night Butcher the very next day, but he was nowhere to be found. His father was no help—he suggested that he might be at school, and was once more baffled when I told him it was Sunday.

It was late that afternoon that my dad came to get me in my room. “Hey, Antsy, that kid is here,” he says. “The one who makes your mother nervous.” I knew exactly who he was talking about. We had him over for dinner once, and the Schwa rubbed my mom the wrong way. First because he ate his pasta plain—no sauce, no butter, nothing. That alone made him a suspicious character. Then my mom kept whacking him in the face. Not because she meant to, but he always seemed to be standing right there, where she wasn’t expecting, and she talks with her hands.

“What are you doing right now?” the Schwa asked the second he saw me.

“The usual,” I said.

“Good. I’ve got something to show you.”

Right away I knew this was it. The visibility play.

“How long will it take?” I asked, “because I gotta go walk the sins and virtues . . . and besides, I’ve got something important to talk to you about, too.”

“Not long,” he said. “Go get your bus pass.” And then he added. “You’re going to love this!”

But I wasn’t so sure.

That chilly afternoon, we took a bus past Bensonhurst, past Bay Ridge, past all the civilized sections of Brooklyn, to a place they would have called the Edge of the Earth in the days before Columbus. This was an old part of Brooklyn, where the shore curved back toward Manhattan. It was full of docks that hadn’t been used since before my parents were born, and old warehouses ten stories high, with windows that were all broken, boarded up, or covered with fifty years of New York grime. People pass by this place all the time but never stop, because they’re on the Gowanus Expressway—the elevated highway that cuts right through this dead place. There’s a street that runs right underneath the elevated road. I figured it would be just as abandoned as the rest of the area, but today there was traffic like you couldn’t believe.

“Could you tell me what we’re doing here?” I asked him on the bus ride.