“Do you want me to tell you that if you hadn’t done it, somebody else would have? Do you want me to tell you that everyone must die sometime, and they were lucky to die for something they believed in?”

“Thirty-two boys, dead by my hand. Even Roach.”

He looked empty. I felt the same way. A week of agony and exhaustion bore down on my shoulders, threatening to crush me unless I could find some way to cast it off for a second or two. Too much had happened that I could not help, but there was one thing I wanted that I knew I could have.

“That’s the Westside,” I said.

“And I’m sick of it.”

“I am too.”

I brushed my hand against his cheek and kissed him as deeply as I could. It didn’t help anything, but it didn’t hurt either. He pressed me to his chest and dug his fingers into my hair, and I remembered how good it felt to have him in my arms. Unfortunately, eventually I had to breathe. I stopped and leaned back, and he gave me a kind of smile, and I had to look away. He pulled me in again, and I stopped him.

“Wait—where’s the river?” I said.

“Another riddle?”

“No, look. Where did it go?”

“It’s just dark. You can never see the river in the dark.”

“You beautiful moron—look! You can see it uptown, ever so faintly, you can see it downtown, but right in front of this building, it’s absolute black.”

“A blacked-out pier.”

“Give me something I can set on fire.”

With great reluctance, he handed over his handkerchief. I dangled it over a match, letting it twist in the wind until it caught fire, then dropped it over the edge. It tumbled, end over end, burning more and more, until it landed on the sidewalk and cast a faint orange light over the side of the ruined building.

“Do you see it?” he said.

“I do.”

“And you’re not afraid?”

“I’m not even surprised.”

As the handkerchief burned, the darkness on the river slipped back, and a silhouette took shape—the outline of a tramp steamer that filled in as the handkerchief burned. It was like watching a caricaturist sketch a boat. First just the outline, then every detail, from the scarred hull to the single light that burned on the bridge.

“That wasn’t there before,” I said.

“Isn’t it fine that even at our advanced ages, the Westside continues to surprise?”

We tore down the stairs. The ship had not vanished when we got to the sidewalk.

“Get uptown,” I said. “Find Ugly La Rocca or Ida Greene. If they’re quick they can burn Thorne’s ship down to the river before he sails.”

“And just what will you be doing, while I’m running all over the Westside?”