When my feet touched dirt I felt a pang of terror. It wasn’t a fear of dying, or the shadows, or the tunnel. It was the realization that I had become so terribly alone. Where was Hellida? Where was Virgil Carr? Where, for the love of the god whom I had never trusted, was Mary Fall? If I died in this tunnel, who would even care? I would care, I decided, and that would have to do.

“Shut up,” I said, “and start walking.”

The tunnel was low, rough-hewn, and cold. It stretched on for longer than seemed possible, but I had plenty of matches, and the shadows did not stir. At the end was a ladder, and a trapdoor that opened into an alleyway just east of Times Square. The air was rancid, and I was alive.

The daytime elevator operator at the Hyperion Hotel had a neck as white and soft as mashed potatoes. He was so surprised to feel my hand around his throat that he did not flinch when I threw him out of his car. He fell into the plush red carpet, moaning in embarrassment, and turned over only when he heard the elevator grate close behind him.

“My car!” he shouted to no one in particular. “That little nut snatched my car!”

I’d never operated an elevator before. It was not as easy as it looked, but it still wasn’t hard. I plunged the lever forward and shot into the darkness, past twenty-some floors, until I reached the penthouse. The elevator was harder to stop than it was to start. It crashed into the roof of the shaft with a sickening crunch, then sagged on its gears, a few inches above the lip of the penthouse floor. I opened the grate and hopped into Brass Aiken’s apartment, where the party was definitely over.

It was barely night, but every light was blazing. The stench of spilled liquor was sickening. The long couches were flipped on their sides. Wind whistled in through a broken pane of glass, joining the faint click of a phonograph needle to make an eerie melody.

“Would you flip that record?” Aiken called. A pile of cushions filled the bandstand, and he perched on the top of the heap, back pressed into the corner, surveying the room. A half dozen lamps leaned on the bottom of the stage, pointing bright enough at his face to obliterate all shadows. His skin was ghostly. His head pressed into the heels of his hands, and his fingers dragged long yellow fingernails across his cheeks.

“Hiding from the shadows?” I said. “What gave you that idea?”

“Clubber. Clubber always knew best.”

“You saw him, didn’t you, the day he died?”

“We had dinner. Sole bonne femme. The sauce was good, but the fish was overcooked, a little dry.”

“I don’t really care about the fish.”