“Usually, they go back to being spineless. Spend every night curled up in the bottle, telling themselves the story of the time they stood up to the bigger man.”

“That’s the Thorne I know and love.”

“Your daddy had a good run there, till he went off the rails. Last time I saw him, he was crowing about how he’d made a breakthrough in some case, some insignificant little thing, must have been almost as old as you.”

“Was it Alice Pearl?”

“Now how’d you know that?”

“Fathers are so predictable.”

“He said he’d cracked it, and it was all tied up with . . . how did he put it? With what had poisoned the Westside. That was the word he used. ‘Poison.’”

“Did he say what killed her?”

“He said quite a bit. Man was as drunk as a jockey. Didn’t make a lick of sense.”

“Did any of it stick with you?”

“Blamed Copeland for it. Can you explain that? Galen Copeland, of all the insignificant creatures New York has ever produced. It was gibberish. And Barbarossa too—a thought that made your dad nearly well up with tears. He loved that woman something fierce.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

I dug deeper into Mrs. Van Alen’s scrapbook and found something even more upsetting than the image of Andrea Barbarossa with my father in her arms.

“I hear you,” he muttered. “The way they were together—vile. And him a married man.”

“Shut up.”

“Watch how you talk to me, girl.”

“You goddamned illiterate, I’m trying to read.”

I took the candle and held it up to the page, close enough that wax dripped on the newsprint. A class photo. NYPD cadets, 1878, faces hard and buttons shining. My father in the back, ramrod stiff. Thorne beside him, as always, his face not yet fattened by drink. And up in front, a man with thick lips and a half-inch gap between his two front teeth.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“It’s a cop, isn’t it?”

“Do you know him?”

“Barstow. Victor, Val, something like that. A real pig, he is. A sadist. In the old days, the Tenderloin girls would start running when he came up the block. You didn’t want him with his hands on you. He’d beat a girl raw, then start to cry, clutch her hair to his face, and beg for forgiveness. Only bastard I ever met sad enough to look up to Eddie Thorne. You know him?”

“As a matter of fact, I watched him die.”

“I hope he died badly.”

“In a puff of smoke. What time is it?”

“Just gone eleven.”

“Then get me downtown.”

“When you finish your soup,” said Mrs. Van Alen.

“I can stop this war. I know who stole Barbarossa’s guns.”

“And who was it, then?” said Van Alen.