“Don’t bother trying to intimidate us, Mr. Van Alen,” I said. “I have seen the stills that brewed this horrible stuff. I have been fitted for a corset in Barbarossa’s secret storehouse. I know that Galen Copeland has been bringing you liquor from our city. I watched him die. But before he was blown to pieces on a Westside dock, Copeland made you rich, he made Barbarossa rich, and he kept a little bit for himself. So if I tell you that I know all of this, you will not lie when I ask you if you know where your liquor comes from.”

“A little town I hear they call New York City.”

“Yes, but a very different New York. A broken city, split down the middle and haunted by shadows that creep a little farther every time a shipment crosses the divide.”

“I should have known you were from the other side. That city breeds ’em crazy.”

“You did not cross over to kill Galen Copeland?”

“I’m no killer. I never crossed over at all.”

He laid his hands face up on the table, as if to show me that they were not stained by blood. They were large, but soft, their manicured fingernails unmarked by the Westside Van Alen’s ceaseless toil.

“Those are not a killer’s hands,” I said, “but they have counted money made from the blood of lesser men.”

“She may or may not be your daughter,” he said to Virgil, “but if that little bitch keeps mouthing off, I’ll snap every bone in her hand.”

“Please, Mr. Van Alen. I’m the one with the pistol.”

“It’ll take more than one bullet to bring me down.”

“But it would ruin your mother’s rug.” He laughed. His mother didn’t. “You’re buying liquor with guns?”

“I am.”

“I thought guns didn’t work on your Westside,” said Virgil.

“Those crafted where I come from rust to pieces,” I said. “But these are otherworldly and work just fine, apparently. Where do you get the weapons?”

“Bribe a guard at Governor’s Island,” said Van Alen. “Artillery isn’t quite so scarce in my city as it is in yours. But liquor is harder to get. Or it was. Now, I got crate after crate of bootleg hooch coming in, and the police can’t trace it, because the world it came from doesn’t even exist. As far as I’m concerned, it’s been a happy partnership for all concerned.”

“But yesterday, you failed to make your delivery.”

“You saw that, did you?” He stretched his arms out, and the joints in his elbows cracked like snapping branches.

“Your supply run short?”

“Only a hiccough. Guns are on their way. I don’t welch, you got that?”

“Who’s your buyer?”

“That sniveling detective you got over there. Thorne. A real laugh, seeing a cop so desperate to touch a gun.”

“Who else?”