Galen Copeland cut through a crowded sidewalk like an icebreaker through a frozen sea, and I followed in his wake. His suit was snow white, his beard was steel wool, and he pushed his way through the Eastside chin-first.

For three days now, I’d been following him. It was not hard, it was not thrilling, and—as I’m sure Hellida would have been surprised to learn—it was not dangerous in the least. Every afternoon at 2:40, he marched from his waterfront offices to the Battery and took the elevator to the top of the old merchant’s building, where a leather-choked bar served ale to old sailors with nothing to do but watch river traffic and sigh. Ladies were not allowed in the club, but I argued that point with the doorman long enough to watch Copeland settle into his perch. He sank deep into a leather chair, with a glassy look on his face like he never wanted to rise again.

So he was depressed, and his wife had no idea why. It wasn’t my problem. And yet I kept my vigil, because half a week dragging myself up and down the leather shops of the Eastside had yielded no information about the glove or the brand of the bloody fist. I watched him walk to his club, and I watched him leave a few hours later, flush with drink but still unable to smile.

His routine was tepid and so predictable that on the fourth day I didn’t bother tailing him from his office, but instead waited for him on the stem, where the sluggish crowd spilled off the sidewalks, and even Galen Copeland was forced to walk slow. I leaned on a hot granite wall, sweat sluicing down my back, staring over the fence at the broken spire of Trinity Church. I expected Copeland to turn south, toward the Battery. Instead, he went north, and life became interesting again.

He crossed into the Westside at the Chambers Street gate.

Quite interesting, indeed.

By the time I passed through, he was three blocks ahead of me, nearly at the river. I slunk down a block of brownstones that had sunk halfway below the street. What had been third-floor windows now opened directly onto the sidewalk. I passed bedrooms and libraries and servants’ quarters: some overflowing with vegetation, others as immaculate as an embalmed corpse. In what was once a little girl’s bedroom, a few tramps slept on decaying dresses. The moss muffled my footsteps, and I stayed in the shadows.