“Keep asking questions, Gilda Carr. Your daddy was the same way. Questions, questions, questions, writing every little detail down on his notepad. It never got him a thing. I know how to bend. That’s the difference between your daddy and me. I know how to bend. He just broke.”

“Who killed him?”

“Who cares?”

I squeezed the rifle until my hands turned white. I held it like a club, high over my head, and Thorne covered his eyes as I brought it down on the roof. I swung it until the stock snapped, and I tossed both halves over the edge.

“Who’s running this insanity?” I said.

“I am! Sure, you think I’m a coward. You think I’m a worthless waste of a badge. But back at that precinct, at Centre Street, at the mayor’s office? I’m a hero. I’m the man who saved the Westside. As soon as our next load of guns comes in, I’ll break Van Alen too. I’ll march the Fourth Precinct across the Borderline, all the way to the goddamned Harlem River, and we’ll have a bullet for any citizen fool enough to get in our way. Every man who ever laughed at me will be dead. If that’s not winning, what is?”

He laughed and covered his mouth with his hand. He did not stop laughing, even when I took the pistol from my bag. My finger rested lightly on the trigger. The barrel pressed against his head.

“Kill me, Gilda! Shoot me dead, right here. You been itching to do it all day, so why not? Come on. Shoot me, shoot me in the face, and choke on my blood. Do it, girl. Do it, you goddamned coward. Your father killed as easy as he breathed. Why can’t you?”

I smacked him across the face with the barrel of the pistol. He laughed at that, laughed a mouthful of blood. When I walked off the roof, he was laughing still.

Thirteen

There was no one on the Borderline. No guards on either side. No bodies. No blood. Even the great fire-stand was gone. Either the cops or the shadows had picked the scene clean, and I didn’t trust the Fourth Precinct to be so thorough.

I crossed into the Upper West, not sure what I would find. For the first few blocks, I saw no one, but gradually, life emerged. People chatted on their stoops. Children played hesitantly in the streets. The gates of the bazaar stood open, but its great hall was deserted. It was an ordinary day in a city under siege, where life goes on, but no one can be sure how long that will last.