I pushed past him, shoving hard enough to knock the wind from his gut, and the door slammed shut behind me. I did not smell the familiar Westside damp. The air was all wrong. From the north, I saw the smoke. Something was burning on Washington Square.

I was not ready to return to the park. The thought of stepping onto that moss-covered pavement, looking at the arch, and seeing the sun set through the gap where my house used to be—it was simply not possible. But my feet disagreed. I charged up Mercer, turned at Fourth Street, and saw the church on fire.

Flames licked up Judson Memorial’s high yellow tower, and smoke poured from the campanile that Father Lamb called a bar. The wind blew the fire toward me, and the smoke carried the tragic stench of spilled liquor. Broken glass and shattered barrels littered the sidewalk. The remains of Barbarossa’s liquor trickled into the gutter as Koszler and Lavangetto, the worst scoundrels of the Fourth Precinct, practiced their club work on Father Lamb.

“Kneel, old man,” muttered Koszler, spitting the words through the gaps in his teeth. “Kneel, goddamn it, kneel or we’ll break you. Kneel and we’ll leave you be.”

Lamb did his best to stand, whispering some foul obscenity just loud enough to be heard. Koszler swung his club on a long, smooth uppercut that connected squarely with Lamb’s chin and knocked him sprawling across the shattered glass.

“Pick him up,” said Koszler, and Lavangetto shook off his dazed expression long enough to hoist Lamb under the armpits. “Now make him kneel.”

Lavangetto did his best to contort Lamb’s dead weight into a kneeling position. The liquor-soaked glass cut deep into his knees, and Koszler choked out a laugh.

At my feet, half a broken bottle lay caught in the gutter. I wrapped my fingers around it, held it at my hip, and ran. My feet left the ground a yard before I reached Koszler, which meant the bottle sank into his back just a moment before my weight sent him sprawling across the glass. Blood flowed like someone had turned on a faucet, and the park echoed with his screams.

Lavangetto dropped Lamb and scrambled for his pistol. By the time he leveled it to fire, I had vaulted over the toppled oak, dropped softly onto the moss, and picked up a stray cobblestone. I crept farther into the park and looked for a tree to climb.