“Whatever you choose. Don’t pretend you’re above it. You were ready to railroad Van Alen, weren’t you? In this city or any other, no cop ever faked evidence quite as well as Virgil Carr.”

“And if he pleads innocence?”

“Let him. The first guard who hears his story will clap him off to Bellevue without a second thought, and Lieutenant Thorne, dictator of the Lower West, will live out his reign as a guest of the asylum.”

“Gilda, please,” said Thorne, with his old thirsty look. “It’s not fair.”

“Not hardly,” I said. I nodded at Virgil, and he kicked Thorne in the jaw, hard enough to send him sprawling into unconsciousness. He would wake in chains.

Juliette was gone, Thorne broken, and the ship was nearly burned down to the waterline. We collected the rifles and pistols left behind by Thorne’s routed Fourth Precinct and tossed them into the Hudson one by one, savoring each tiny, peaceful splash. Every gun went to the bottom of the river, to rust down to nothing, as Westside guns should.

Well, nearly every gun.

When we were finished, Virgil ran his hand through his thick gray whiskers and shook his head. He wanted to say something, but we didn’t have the time for him to find the words.

“Thank you for passing me the pistol,” I said. “Even if I’ll never be a crack shot.”

“Is that such an awful thing?”

“I’m just glad you’re, well, I’m glad that tonight Mary Fall will get to welcome you home.”

“I don’t have to go alone.”

I was about to answer him when, for the second time that day, I heard Juliette Copeland scream. This time, she did so without fear. It was a squeal, really, the way a girl might squeal on coming face-to-face with a newborn kitten. By the light of the burning ship, she saw a woman who looked very much like the mother she had lost two years before.

She ran to wrap her in a hug tight enough to knock the wind out of the poor old woman.

“What’s gotten into you, child?” asked Mrs. Copeland. “Set me down. Please!”

But Juliette would not set her down, and when Mrs. Copeland saw Galen at the end of the dock, she understood why—or thought she did, anyway. They all burst into tears, an impossible family brought back from the dead, crying too hard to speak.

I nodded at Ugly La Rocca, who had fetched my client from the Eastside. He bowed low, threw his blood-flecked ax over his shoulder, and walked north into the shadows, which were behaving themselves at last.

Mrs. Copeland swept me up in a dizzying hug of her own and set me down again, laughing harder than I ever thought she could.

“How did you do it, Miss Carr? How did you bring him back from the dead?”