It was a storeroom. Two shelves of rough, unfinished wood lined the walls. Between them, busy beneath a bare bulb, Fournier wrapped my prewar quality corset. Beside her was a small crate, not unlike the one taken from Copeland’s boat, that bore the bloody fist.

“You were a friend of Galen Copeland,” I called. She set down the wrapping paper and picked up her shears.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“‘O captain, my captain, how I yearn to smell the salt in your beard once again. How I miss the salty funk of your manhood, the oily suction of your kiss, the roughness of your grip’ . . . it goes on like this for quite some time.”

“You bitch,” she said, dropping the half-baked French accent. “One more word of that—just one more word—and I’ll see that you never talk again.”

“He’s dead, you know.”

“How do you mean, dead?”

“You know—not alive.”

“How . . .”

“On the docks, yesterday afternoon. I saw it happen.”

The scissors fell from her hand.

“And just who the hell are you?” she murmured, not looking at me. Not looking at anything at all.

“Gilda Carr. I’m trying to answer a few questions for his wife.”

“You tell her about us?”

“She doesn’t know a thing.”

“How much do you want to keep it quiet? A hundred? Two hundred? Look around. There’s not fifty dollars in this whole damned shop.”

“This isn’t about blackmail.”

“Then you just came to rub it in.”

Why are people so tedious? First Mrs. Copeland’s melodrama, and now this.

I took Madame Fournier’s hand in mine. Her skin was cold and dry. She tried to pull away from my touch, but I did not let go. To calm her down, I told a detective’s favorite lie.

“You can trust me,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t know Galen well, but I knew him enough to see that he was a truly remarkable man.”

“He was a saint.”

“You called him, in the letters—I know I shouldn’t have read them but they were so beautiful, I simply couldn’t help myself—you called him Bunyan. Why?”

“Because he was a giant. When he walked down the street, people got out the way. When he came into a room, you could almost see his head scraping the ceiling. And when he took me in his arms, my god. My god.”

“Did you sell him this glove?” I showed her Mrs. Copeland’s glove, and her face twisted into an acid sneer.

“What are you thinking bringing that in here? That’s his wife’s, right?”

“I’m trying to learn where he bought it.”

“Not here, I can tell you that. It’s cheap. Shoddy. Just what she deserved. The stuff I sell is the best on the Westside.”

“It feels quite fine to me.”