Israel Ortiz was peeking out the door of his storefront office. Ted was wet, hungry, and in no mood for cryptic conversations. “Who? What the hell are you talking about?”

“The policeman.” Israel waved him in.

Mr. Ortiz, Ted’s landlord, accountant, mail drop, and sometime lawyer—he filed documents that the no-longer-licensed Ted could not—ran his law, real estate, and accountancy office out of the storefront of a two-story taxpayer. He also used the space to sell Bibles; incense; framed images of white, black, and Hispanic Jesuses and Madonnas (separate and together); and Santeria candles. His secretary and bookkeeper—a woman named Phateena whom Ted had never seen wear anything but brightly colored caftans and flip-flops—also did palm and tarot card readings.

Ted shook the rain off his shoulders and rested one hip against Israel’s desk. “A cop was looking for me? What for?”

Israel stood uncomfortably in the middle of the room, thrusting his hands into his pockets and then jerking them out again. “A detective. Big man. Are you in trouble, Mr. Molloy?”

“Did he say why he was looking for me?”

“I can’t have no trouble here. You are good tenant. You pay, no noise, no complaints. But I don’t want no police. I got clients.”

“I understand, Israel. I have no idea why a cop—a detective—would want to talk to me. Did he leave a card? A name?”

“No. He’s got your card. He said he’d call you.”

Ted thought of his breakfast getting cold. “Then we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“But no trouble? Okay?”

The head office of Molloy Partners—Gallagher’s Pub being merely a satellite—was the IKEA kitchen table in Ted’s second-floor apartment. Though the apartment had been advertised as a one bedroom, the kitchen, living room, and bedroom all flowed into a single space. It was all Ted could afford after his stumbling descent from Park Avenue and a brief plateau in a Lexington Avenue sky pad—which should have been a bachelor’s dream but had felt more like a lonely monk’s cell for the recently divorced. But now that he had enough money in the bank to get something better, he realized that he didn’t need to.

He had returned to his roots, though this was a neighborhood he had spent his first twenty years trying to escape. But both he and Queens were much changed. He rarely saw a face he knew from his youth, but he at least recognized himself on these streets.