Hawkins knew his mother was dead; he forced the bread down and braced himself against the phone table. Mo said, “Roger, Adam Levy’s dead. . . . He was stabbed. Fifteen, twenty times, Roger. In the gut, the back . . .”

Feelings started to come—he was never going to see Adam or talk to him again, and when he thought that, tears ran out of his eyes and he sobbed. He remembered that there were people in the hall and some might hear him even over the party noises. He pulled out his handkerchief and pushed it against his mouth. “Jacob,” he mumbled, but Ableson didn’t understand.

He waited a second, took the handkerchief away from his face, and said as clearly as he could, “Someone’s got to tell Jacob.”

The chief told him to take the department limousine. It was a gray Cadillac and the chauffeur, Johnny Baer, drove too fast and would do anything to avoid a traffic jam. Tonight he started down Second toward the bridges, but it was tight, so he cut over to the Drive. Hawkins put his head back and tried to think what he was going to say to Jacob Levy. Jacob. Your son is dead. Adam’s dead.

They passed the Houston Street exit. Years ago, a couple of miles west of here, he’d taken Adam to a bar in the West Village to get laid. They found two pretty white girls, students at the New School. The women took them to a run-­down apartment building on Bank Street, almost to the river, and afterward Hawkins and Adam went to a greasy little restaurant on Bleecker. They’d ordered hamburgers and pecan pie. But when the food came, Adam said he felt too guilty to eat. Hawkins had wanted to say something wise to him—that the guilt would pass, that lust and sadness were natural partners—but Adam was twenty-­eight then, only two years younger than Hawkins, and he was sure Adam knew all that, so he kept quiet and ate Adam’s hamburger and pie. On the way home, though, as they crossed the slick humming grid of the Brooklyn Bridge, Hawkins did say, “I used to feel like you.”

“When did you stop?” Adam had asked. His thin, pale face turned to Hawkins in the flashing lights of the other cars.

“When I got married.”

“You’re married?” Adam sounded upset.

“No . . . no. She walked out.” Hawkins had turned and smiled at him. “Ran out,” he said.

“Why?”

“I was too—slow.”

It was a bad explanation, but he couldn’t think of anything better, until he remembered Pierre Bezuhov. “Like Count Bezuhov in War and Peace . . . you remember him?” Adam nodded.

“That was me,” Hawkins said, then added, “is me. Big, and slow. No dash.”