I whistled the melody back to him, and he corrected me, playing it over and over until I had it down. It was not as awful as Brass had made it sound. In the hands of the accordionist, it was almost a lovely tune.

At precisely 11:45, Ugly stepped onto Thirty-First Street with Ida Greene, who scowled at the sun. Ugly deployed a Japanese parasol to protect her, and they walked west to Eighth Avenue, where a fortune in orchids sprouted from the pavement—rosy and rust-colored, bright yellow and pristine white. The street stank of flowers, as oppressive as a funeral home. I stayed half a block behind.

Mrs. Greene walked uptown, Ugly at her side, her gaze swiveling up and down like a general inspecting her guns. At Forty-Second Street, she climbed the steps of a church called Holy Cross, a freshly washed redbrick pile whose priest, I suspected, was more devoted to God than dear Father Lamb. Outside were a half dozen picnic tables, where men in shabby suits played chess, argued baseball, discoursed on the wonders of the female form, or dozed, head in hand. Mrs. Greene had to fight to get through the crowd. Every man she passed wanted to shake her hand or share a joke, and her easy laugh echoed off the stone saints who kept watch over the front door. Not even two blocks east, the fence was locked tight to protect the theaters of Times Square from the pollution of the Westside. I was certain that no one on the stem could be having quite as much fun as Mrs. Greene and her men.

She went on like that up Eighth Avenue, stopping at churches, flophouses, empty theaters, and disused offices. They housed men without families, children without parents, families with nowhere else to go. Ida Greene oversaw soup kitchens, primary schools, kindergartens, revival meetings, dental clinics, a midwifery, and at least a dozen produce stands that operated as satellites for the bazaar. Every person she spoke to smiled at her. Everywhere she went, she was beloved.

She turned around at Fiftieth Street and walked back the way she came. I threw myself into an abandoned Italian restaurant whose walls were decorated with chipped murals of Rome. I dropped below the windowsill, watching the rats doze beneath the Trevi Fountain, and heard Mrs. Greene and Ugly walking by. Peering through cracked glass, I saw them turn off the avenue. I emerged from the restaurant, wiped sweat from the dark circles underneath my eyes, and saw, to my horror, the sign above my head. West Forty-Eighth, backdrop for the disappearance of Alice Pearl.