Van Alen’s bazaar loomed over Seventh Avenue, the only building in the city that could compete with the Westside trees for stature and respectability. It was less than a decade old, but after the fence went up, it aged quickly. Its floors buckled; its columns tilted and were wreathed in vines; its perfect white surfaces became impossible to maintain. Those grand men who built this building, one of the city’s greatest wonders, were quick to throw it away. The Eastside abandoned Pennsylvania Station, and so we claimed it as our own.

Two of Van Alen’s gaudy, ragged guardsmen stood at the base of every column, and a faded banner stretched across the building’s face, promising “Safety and Bargains” in letters thirty feet high. Safety was a lie, and bargains didn’t impress us. We had come to eat.

The station had no doors, because the bazaar never closed. The temperature dropped as we crossed the threshold, and we smelled the rich odor of rotting vegetation, sweating people, and stalls of food. A few hundred shopped on either side of the long arcade that led in from Seventh Avenue. Where travelers had once bought socks, flowers, tie pins, dime novels, toothbrushes, and handkerchiefs, a few dozen vendors sold the freshest meat and veg in New York. As much as I loathed the Upper West, I had to be impressed by the bazaar, where the produce was so fine that even Eastsiders were jealous. The trains came in every day and unloaded the food that kept the Westside alive—every morsel courtesy of Glen-Richard Van Alen.

“This is civilization,” said Hellida. “This is life.”

“You’d rather live in the Upper West?”

“I’d rather live anywhere than that awful old house.”

“You love our house.”

“No. Just the girl in it. I’m proud of you, you know? It’s a silly thing to say about a daughter who isn’t yours, but I’m so proud of you for finishing this case.”

She reached out to wrap me up in another hug, but I turned away and tried to focus on something manageable.

“Where should we eat?” I said.

“It’s been an awful week, really. I’ve tried not to let on, but my skillet? My coffeepot? And that man, that man with the pistol. I haven’t been able to close my eyes without seeing it.”

“I know.”

“You’ll get rid of the gun now, of course. We can do it together—walk over to the river after breakfast and hurl it in. I feel so fine, I could throw it to New Jersey.”