“Barbie’s dead,” he said. “Rated half an inch in the afternoon paper. Van Alen will join her soon. Galen, Viv—dear lord, your father. That’s five. Only Eddie and I will still be kicking. Look at me. Do I look strong enough to be the last to die?”

“How about a song?”

Aiken’s face relaxed into a smile. I approached slowly. Beneath one of the couches I spotted a not-quite-empty bottle of the whiskey he had been so proud of two nights before. I walked with it out in front of me, a peace offering that he took eagerly into his hands.

“Now tell me,” I said, “that you know how to play that piano.”

“A bit. Yes, a bit. I mean, I can’t play songs, precisely, but I’m quite expert at getting it to make noise.”

“That won’t be enough.”

“Ah, well. Maybe you can play?”

Two years of lessons, begun the week my mother died. Some demon relative convinced my father it was a good idea—a way to take the poor girl’s mind off her troubles. I’d never taken to the instrument, and I remembered almost nothing. I sat on the stool and arranged my music in front of me. The soft rustling of the pages sounded, as it always has, like recent death. I played the dirge.

“Do you recognize it?” I said.

“I might, if it sounded at all like music. Try playing . . . better.”

I did what I could, picking it out, note by note, with fingers stiff and fearful. Finally, something like a melody emerged.

“That’s the song!” cried Aiken. “That hateful, awful, ugly, wonderful song! Do you have the words?”

“They’re written right here.”

“Then sing with me, you beautiful little woman. Sing!”

We sang. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t meant to be. The song was a warning to those who would cross the Seven Bloody Fists. Its verses named the vanquished enemies of that greatest of Westside gangs, heaping scorn on every boy whose skull was ever broken by Clubber, Eddie, Galen, Barbie, Viv, Brass, or Dick. The song spoke of the Fists like they were titans littering Sixth Avenue with the bones of their enemies, leaving scorched earth and grieving mothers in their wake. It was a gruesome song, and it made Brass smile.

The music salesman was right—the lyrics I’d heard were not quite right. It went, and Brass sang with gusto:

“‘We’ll skin your back, make your bones crack, and scrub your wounds with lye. There’s a blacked-out pier in the river, oh, where old sailors go to die.’”