She walked away without looking back. I had no words to stop her.

I stepped to the side of the arcade and leaned on one of the grimy, perfect columns, breathing deeply until I was able to forget how I felt. The roast pork sat greasy on my stomach. I rejoined the crowd.

At the end of the arcade, a mammoth staircase swept down into the main waiting room—a bland name that did no justice to what was still the city’s grandest space. Fifteen stories above my head, the vaulted ceilings looked as distant as the sky, and the room was as large and glorious and cold as any cave beneath the earth. Ticket windows had been replaced by a fishmonger, cheese shop, and butcher; the dining room and luncheonette overtaken by breakfasting young people who had come to watch the crowd. The main floor was filled with pushcarts selling things the Eastside could never dream of. Over a thousand citizens were working, shopping, and eating on the floor of that great, useless hall, and they did so without fear.

Management worked out of what had once been the women’s waiting room, where ladies had come to avoid the leers of traveling salesmen on tall wooden benches that were almost like pews. The benches were gone now, replaced with a few dozen desks, where workers, mostly women, shifted paper, smoked, and yelled. At the room’s north end was a frosted door marked “Mrs. Greene.” It was locked, but not for long.

With the pick hidden in the palm of my hand, I had the door open in a matter of seconds. I eased it shut and attacked the desk. If I was hoping for a folder marked “Guns, Stolen,” I was disappointed. But there was a stack of correspondence signed “G-RVA”—shipping manifests scrawled out in some kind of code. I was halfway through failing to decrypt it when I was interrupted by a woman in a smartly cut sage dress, with graying hair, tortoiseshell spectacles, and dark brown skin.

“Is your name Ida Greene?” she asked.

“Tragically, no.”

“Then get the hell out of my office.” She snatched the paper out of my hand. It tore only a little. “What do you want with my shipping reports? Are you hijacking melons?”

“I’m hoping to arrange a meeting with Mr. Van Alen. It is, and I cringe at the use of this phrase, a matter of life and death.”

“I do not deal with life and death. I sell vegetables, and the ten thirty-four from Elizabeth is running late. That means I have a full contingent of receivers idle on platform three, very large men who carry clubs and chains and other implements too fearful for two ladies to discuss before lunchtime. If you do not leave my sight promptly, they will compel you.”

“How do you manage?”

“I believe deeply in the value of fresh food.”