I meant it, more than I’d ever meant anything, but I don’t think he could have heard. He waved his saber, and his warriors struck up another chorus of “Benjy’s Bloody Stump.” On the rooftops, the local gang doused their lantern and watched their rivals march to glory.

I turned south, feeling safe in the light of the torch, thoroughly embarrassed that after years of good sense and reasonably clean living, I had become afraid of the dark.

Merrill’s was long and narrow, with sawdust on the floor and candles on the walls, most of which had burned down to forlorn wax puddles. The air was toxic, and the deafening Dixieland band barely had the talent to hold their instruments. I could have been at home, scanning old box scores or enduring a jigsaw puzzle with Hellida. I could have been asleep. But instead I was leaning on a dented brass rail, trying to catch the eye of a bartender who was either cross-eyed or blind.

“Hey!” I barked. “You mule—slide the bottle down here, and I’ll pour a drink myself.”

He was resolutely ignoring me when I was rescued by an angel in a fringed purple dress. Bex Red appeared at my elbow, kissed me on the cheek, and snapped her fingers. The bartender came in an instant.

“What’s it tonight, ladies?” he said.

“Two glasses of rye,” said Bex. She took a long look at me. I suspect I looked tired. “Doubles.”

There were only two kinds of bottles behind the bar: brown and clear. Both were marked “Barbarossa’s Special Reserve.” The bartender pushed two large glasses of brown across the liquor-slick bar and waited for us to pay. Before I handed over the money, I had one more question for him.

“What happens when people lose things?” I said.

“That’s a philosophical question. Beyond my ken.”

“At the bar, I mean. Don’t you have a box or something for lost items?”

“What’d you drop?”

“A white leather glove.” I pulled out Mrs. Copeland’s glove. “Like this one.”

The bartender waddled away and returned with a shoebox. He dropped it on the bar and went back to his work. I dug through the box, finding a red beret, hairpins, garters, a switchblade, seventeen cents in loose change, a pocket New Testament, a sheaf of unread flyers from the Westside Temperance League, and no gloves at all. I pushed it back across the bar and sipped my imitation rye.

“Someone’s out past curfew,” said Bex.

“So these are the places people go after dark. I’d always imagined it . . . I don’t know . . . lovelier.”

“It’s bright in here, crowded and loud. That’s lovely enough.”

“And what happens to the people who leave . . . who walk home alone?”

“Most won’t. They’ll stick till morning. It may not look it, but Merrill’s does a respectable breakfast. Are you all right, fair Gilda?”