“You could. Your mother—Mary and I. We’d like nothing more than to have you stay. It would . . . to let you go back, if we can even find a way to get you back, it would be like turning our backs on a miracle. If—”

The door opened. Mrs. Van Alen was home. I picked the gun up and pressed it against her husband’s head.

“You sent the message?” I said.

“I told him there were rats in the apartment, that he should come stomp ’em out. He’ll understand.”

My palm sweated, and my arm grew tired. She fidgeted at her table, trying to read the newspaper, interrupting herself every few seconds to glare at the demon who had invaded her home. Finally, the silence defeated her. She stomped to the stove, grabbed the kettle, and filled it with water.

“I trust you can drink tea and hold a gun at the same time?” she said.

“Thank you.”

“I hope it burns straight through your throat. You raise this girl, Clubber? You raise her to behave like this?”

“I didn’t.”

“You should both be ashamed.”

The tea was the same noxious green that Firecracker had served me, just two nights before, in the top of his lighthouse. It didn’t smell any more appealing in this city than it had in mine. I set it on the bookshelf and watched the clock crawl around.

We felt Van Alen coming up the stairs before we heard him. The entire tenement shook, and Mrs. Van Alen closed her eyes in gratitude.

“My son well tear you limb from limb,” she said. “You will not live to see another day.”

The shaking stopped. From the hallway came heavy breathing, like a bull about to charge. The knob turned slowly, and the door crawled open. Glen-Richard Van Alen filled the doorway, a few hundred pounds of rage poured into a straining suit. When he saw Virgil at the table, his face broke into something that might be considered a smile.

“You ugly old son of a bitch,” he said. “The hell are you doing uptown?”

“Step inside,” I said. “Shut the door.”

Van Alen pulled a flask from his coat, emptied Virgil’s teacup, and poured him a drink. From across the room, which felt quite a bit smaller with Van Alen inside, I recognized the gasoline punch of Barbarossa’s special reserve.

“Drink, pixie?” he said, waving the flask at me. “I suppose not.”

“We’ve questions for you, Dick,” said Virgil.

“And who’s the insect? A cousin or something? Gods above, Clubber, she looks just like your Mary, or that girl of yours went under the truck a few years back.”