“Of course not. That porcelain goddess never strayed west of Washington Square. Our last member was an unfortunate woman who did not live to see the dawning of this most glorious century.”

“Vivian Pretzker.”

“Myself and Clubber, Galen and Viv, Barbie and Thorne and sweet, mad Firecracker.”

“That’s quite a group.”

“We had fine times.”

He talked, and he whistled, and he talked. Heists and kidnappings, murders and extortion, an endless recollection of impossibly vicious brawls. Through the film of nostalgia—which turned every ragtag street gang into an army, every chipped tooth into a shattered skull—I could see my father as a child. Not posed in a sepia picture or frozen in a memory, but as a gin-swilling boy, chasing every night into the dawn, brawling and screaming and setting fires rather than admit he was afraid of the dark. I saw that boy, tough and scared, and I understood how he would grow into a man, bigger and smarter but no less horrified at the prospect of going into the darkness by himself. Every silent dinner, every night he came home drunk or didn’t come home at all, every morning that Hellida found him passed out in the dirt of Washington Square, he was wrestling with that young boy’s fears. I understood, but I could not yet forgive him for being gone.

“It was Barbie who spoiled it,” Aiken said, after too many drinks, and too many cigarettes, when the fine, sweet music streaming out through the glass had melted into noise. “That awful night at Lasko’s.”

“What reason could she possibly have for killing Vivian?”

“Now, Gilda, we have passed from friendship into the realm of favor. Explaining that tragedy will force me to reveal some unpleasant truths. Instead I will shake your hand and return inside where it is light and gay and loud. Thank you for the conversation.”

To keep him from leaving, I asked the question.

“That tune you’re whistling. That awful tune.”

“Do you know it?” he snapped.

“No, and neither do you. Every time you run through it, it’s a little different. You’ve no idea how it finishes.”

“Or how it begins. But this middle—it’s been running ’round my head for as long as I can remember.”

“Is it a jazz number?”

“I don’t know! It could be a waltz, or a show tune. Maybe a hymn, though god knows when I last heard a hymn. I whistle it for everyone who comes in here. No one can give me the name.”

“I can.” His face softened, and his eyes watered, like those of a dyspeptic being offered a glass of Bromo. “Before the week is out, I’ll have the sheet music on your bandstand. If it’s been recorded, the record will be yours.”

“That would be a minor miracle.”

“Precisely my line of work. Now why did Barbie kill Vivian Pretzker?”