Thorne ran his hand through what remained of his ginger hair. A few strands clung to the passing fingers and bid his scalp goodbye forever.

“A question,” I said, needing a distraction from the man falling apart before me. “Simply to satisfy that natural curiosity of mine. Do you have any idea who might have killed the man?”

“Solving murders—it was your father had the knack for it. I just carried his club.”

And with that, he walked down my steps into the falling dark, as scared and broken a detective as the NYPD had ever produced.

I shut the door and locked every available lock, then lit a few candles and poured myself enough whiskey to fell a giant. I spent the evening with an old newspaper propped on my knees, but I don’t think I turned more than five pages. I stared straight through it, to the shadows on the far side of the room, trying to think of anything but the man I saw die.

“He told me he’d sold the yacht,” said Edith Copeland. “He was petulant, my husband, like a chocolate-stained child who stamps his foot and insists he hasn’t been sneaking sweets.”

Eyes bloodshot, hair smeared across her forehead, she leaned on the iron railing of Battery Park, dropping bread crumbs to the ducks that swirled in the water below. Across the harbor, a boat pulled out from Ellis Island, the passengers a black smudge on the horizon, visible even through the morning haze.

“Have you any idea what he was doing on the Westside?” she said.

“No. You hired me to find a glove.”

“And you haven’t done a very good job with it, have you?” She snapped her head away. “I suspect he was engaged on some foolish new venture. Trying to recall how it felt to be a merchant, to be young. It’s unfair, isn’t it? Women are expected to wither without protest, while men get to spend their whole lives pretending they’re still twenty-five. You’ll understand someday, and soon. I’ve read that women age quickly on the Westside.”

A passing lady nearly clipped my face with her parasol. I ducked, just in time. We were at the foot of Manhattan, where the fence starts, and Broadway empties into the bay.

“He should have died at sea,” said Mrs. Copeland. “To be killed in a freak—what did the police call it? A gas-pocket explosion. Ridiculous. And the detective they sent to deliver that rubbish—absolutely pickled with gin.”

“It wasn’t a gas pocket.”

“Of course not. What happened? Did he blow himself up fiddling with the engine? Did he drop a cigar in a bucket of gasoline and set himself on fire?”

“He was murdered.”