So I found it peculiar to find a funny little man waiting on my stoop, asleep underneath a hat so old it had begun to decompose. I was going to prod him with the toe of my boot, but I thought better of it. I scoured the edge of the park for the ugliest tree branch I could find and swatted him across the face instead. He tumbled down my steps and landed on his back, hat in the street. He didn’t know whether to look angry or afraid.

“Hell, woman!” He searched for more words, but couldn’t find them. “Hell!”

He had the thinnest moustache I’d ever seen, a single strand of hair glued to his lip. He was as bald as a bank president, but despite a whiskey bloat to his face, the skin was taut. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.

“Why don’t you put your hat back on?” I said. “The glint off your forehead is blinding.”

“That’s no way to talk to the star reporter of the Sentinel city room. That’s no way to talk to Max Schmittberger.”

“I suppose not. Goodbye.”

“Wait—wait. Hold on, lady. Hold on. Is this yours?”

He handed me a card, scorched around the edges:

G. Carr: Tiny Mysteries Solved

“Where did you find this?” I said.

“I think you know. Just like I figure you know what exploded there, and who got, uh, exploded.”

“You’re writing about the explosion at the docks?”

“Trying to. Gish squirms any time you mention the Westside.”

“Gish?”

“Mr. Gischler! City room chief. Don’t you know nothing?”

“Not if I can help it. Now please stop dancing up and down my steps. You’ll wear out the stone.”

He stopped, or tried to. His feet tapped as he talked, or he bit his lips, or his fingers played up and down his frayed lapel.

“We only cover the Westside because the publisher grew up in the Upper West, back when it was fine, and he thinks a little token reporting keeps him in touch with the old neighborhood. Never mind that the guy lives in the biggest, plushest, brightest penthouse on the stem. So anyway, Gish hears about this blast, right, and he says, ‘Schmittberger! Haul it over to the Westside docks,’ and so I haul. Some of the other boys, they don’t like coming this way, but I’m Max Schmittberger and I don’t scare. And what do I find?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Not much. Police swept the place cleaner than the ladies’ washroom at the Hyperion Hotel. But there was this card stuck half an inch into the dock. Explosion shot it in there like a bullet.”

“Why do you say ‘like a bullet’?”

“Did I? Words just fall out of my mouth, you know. I don’t really pay attention. It’s just an expression. The real question is, G. Carr, who bought it at the docks?”