The service was in English, but the sermon and eulogies were in Spanish so Hawkins couldn’t understand what they were saying about the dead boys, about death itself. He leaned against a bilious-­yellow stone pillar and looked out over the dark heads of the people. Almost all of them were from San Juan or Ponce, or villages on the coast. They lived within a few blocks of each other, went to the same butchers, vegetable stands, movie houses. They had bright painted plaster statues of the saints at home on false mantels or dressers or windowsills. They had souse for wedding feasts and trumpets for funerals. The trumpet started now, a beautiful moaning sound, and a drum came up under with a slow Caribbean beat. The pallbearers lifted the coffins and came up the aisle toward him, their tight jackets hiked up.

He left the church with the crowd and stood to the side at the top of the stairs as they carried the coffins down the stairs to waiting hearses. Sobbing mothers followed their sons’ coffins, the cameras moved in to catch them coming down, and Hawkins turned and thought he saw Jacob come out of the crowd and head down the street. He didn’t want to attract attention by calling, so he pushed through the crowd and down the stairs to the sidewalk, keeping the mass of people between himself and the cameras. The black-­coated man walked fast toward the subway entrance at the end of the block and Hawkins went after him. He reached the head of the stairs just as the man went through the turnstile and Hawkins ran down the stairs, feeling in his pockets for a token. He didn’t have one and there was no agent on duty to buy one, so he jumped the turnstile and ran into the passage to the westbound trains. The passage was empty. When Hawkins got to the southbound side he saw the man standing at the center of the platform with his back turned. Bare low-watt bulbs shone from the high arched ceiling. Dirty white tile walls caught the light, threw it back, making the air look misty. There were no trains coming, the station was silent and empty except for the two of them, and Hawkins knew as soon as he reached the platform that the man ahead wasn’t Jacob. The man turned slowly, and Isaac Luria faced Hawkins.

“It’s Jacob you want, isn’t it?” Luria asked softly.

Hawkins couldn’t answer.

“You can’t have him,” Luria said, “because he’s leaving you. Right now, he’s saying good-­bye to the shop, to the streets, the people. To you. Say good-­bye back, and I’ll convey the message.”

Tears of desolation filled Hawkins’s eyes behind the flat dark glasses. He saw an empty room with dust balls rolling across a bare floor.