On May 15, 1903, Alice Pearl made the mistake of walking home alone. It was just after eight p.m. when poor Alice, a secretary to a Times Square theatrical agent, turned off Broadway onto West Forty-Eighth Street. The shows had started, and the sidewalk was empty. An usher, sweeping the lobby of the Longacre Theatre, saw her pass. He later described her as a middle-aged redhead who gathered her scarf around her face to protect herself from the cold. As far as the police could tell, she never reached the end of the block. Alice Pearl was not seen again, in life or in death, but the usher thought—he wasn’t sure, he simply thought—that a few seconds after she passed his lobby, he heard a woman scream.

In this long-forgotten case, Virgil saw the first sign of what would become a Westside signature: a lonely person vanished in the night. He walked endlessly up and down Forty-Eighth Street, plotting angles to and from the Longacre lobby, scouring the sidewalk for some sign of the woman who had disappeared more than a decade before. He interviewed and reinterviewed Alice Pearl’s family, her employers, her few friends. He pestered the beat cops of Times Square until he was barred from the precinct, until he had no one to discuss the case with but me. Night after night, he presented his theories. I listened politely, my answer always the same: “People don’t just disappear.”

How pleasant it was to be such a fool.

Now I would tempt madness and dig into his case files, to find out if his work had ever turned up examples of leaping shadows, of people dragged into the night, of a city where light was dark and demons killed with hands of smoke. That line of inquiry, Hellida would not understand.

So I said, “He knew every bootlegger in the city. If Copeland was moving liquor . . .”

“Then it isn’t your concern.”

“I have a case—”

“You have nothing but me.” She pulled me close enough to see the lines of worry cut deep beside her bloodshot eyes. “You won’t, Gilda. Please. Tell me you’ll let this go.”

“I will, of course I will. But first, I must have a look at his files.”

The answer broke her heart, and I looked away.

My front door swung open as if it had been pressurized. Inside, the air was heavy. It caught in my throat like a rancid oyster.

“Do you feel that?” I said.

“Is someone here?”

“I certainly hope not. I’ve had enough someones for the night.”