“Kill me,” I said, “and it’s an invasion.”

“Let her invade. I got guards at every intersection, and I got the fire. It’s been a long time since we had a proper war. Be good to douse the sidewalks.”

“Tell that to the people whose blood gets spilled.”

“It’s past ten. I’ve got deliveries, and if you want answers, you’ll carry a sack.”

Through the bag, I felt dozens of short, smooth sticks. They might have been dynamite, enough to blow the tip off Upper Manhattan. I tugged open the drawstring and found a hundred or so candles, still wrapped in the paper they’d been shipped in.

“It’s a new moon,” he growled. “People need ’em. Let’s get to work.”

“Your iron,” said Mrs. Greene, offering me my pistol by the barrel. I took it, and she bent double with laughter.

I threw the bag over my shoulder and fought the hot wave of embarrassment that washed over my back.

Eleven

Van Alen’s subjects waited on tenement stoops. They were not the derelicts Ida Greene tended to downtown. These were families who had once been called middle class and were now just more hungry people who lacked the skills to survive on their own. Van Alen kept them fed, and they thanked him with wide, desperate eyes. Every bundle of candles was received with a sweaty handshake and nauseating praise. Van Alen let no compliment pass without glancing back to make sure I heard it.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he said each time, as unsubtle as the worst Broadway ham. He was chummy with his people, but I noticed how careful he was to keep his toes from crossing the threshold of their homes.

We trudged from house to house, Ugly watching the crowd to be sure no one got too close, Ida Greene checking every name against a list to make sure that no one got more than their share. Between buildings, Van Alen answered my questions. He often sounded like he was telling the truth. He had not killed Galen Copeland, he said, and did not seem particularly interested in finding out who did. Nor had he any idea who killed my father, though he had suspicions that he refused to share. He swore up and down that he had not stolen Barbarossa’s guns and had no idea who had. If she had ever given him a pair of leather gloves, he had lost them long ago. He had not heard Brass Aiken’s song, he did not eat roast beef, and he would never, under any circumstances, send his men across the Borderline.

“That’s what makes it a border, you got it?” he said.

“Last night, one of her gangs was ambushed by men in your uniforms, firing pistols.”