"Louis is dead. If you try to do this his way, you'll die, too. You can see the logic in that. Follow his steps and you fall in the same hole. You don't know who he was following that day. You found a link to the suspects. Maybe he found another one. Who knows?"

"The Shadow knows."

"Pardon? We're not talking about the Shadow? The old radio – "

"It was Markowitz's all-time favorite."

"My parents loved that program."

"All right, I'm going back to collecting data. Will you do me a favor?"

"You hardly needed to ask."

"I need you to cozy up to Henry Cathery. He plays chess in the park seven days a week. Get him into a game."

"If you like, but why?"

"Because you play chess and I don't."

"No, I meant why me? I'm hardly cut out for undercover work."

"And that's why you're so perfect. Who would suspect you? Cathery's smart. He'd see through me in a minute. You're smarter."

"How did he make it to the top of your list so suddenly? I thought he was ruled out. The papers said he had an alibi."

"Never believe what you read in the papers. He's not at the top of the list, but he's pretty damn close. He's in the park every day for hours at a time. People are so used to seeing him there, they just don't see him anymore. He's a fixture, like one of the shrubs or the benches. He was probably in the park while his grandmother was being murdered."

"Well, I'm sure my key to the park wouldn't work anymore. You want me to rattle the gates and ask if he'll invite me in? You don't think he might suspect I've come to interview him?"

"Whoa. Back up. What key?"

"I have one of the original keys. It's an antique. I'll show you."

He left the office, and a moment later, she could hear him working his key in the door across the hall. He returned to her with a velvet jeweler's box in one hand. He opened it to display a gleaming golden key nested in black satin.

"The first keys, from the last century, were all made of gold. My cousin Max gave me this one for a birthday present when I was a child."

"How did old cousin Max happen to have a key to Gramercy Park?"

"Oh, there was always at least one Butler in Gramercy Park for a hundred years or so. Max changed his name from Butler to Candle when he left home, or rather when his parents threw him out. After Max became a semi-respectable headliner, he was reinstated in my uncle's will and inherited the house."

"He lived in Gramercy Park?"

"He and Edith only lived there for five years or so. They got a wonderful price for the house, enough to buy this building and make a few investments. It's been thirty years since she lived in Gramercy, but I'm surprised she never mentioned it."

"She's always surprising me," said Mallory. But this neatly explained Edith's ties to two old women in Gramercy Park.

"Well, I'm sure the lock's been changed many times since this key was in use. Sorry."

"Here, you can use my key." She pulled a key from the pocket of her jacket.

"Would I want to know where you got that?" 'Charles, you get more like Markowitz every day. I picked it up in Gaynor's apartment. He'll never miss it. He never goes to the park."

"Did Gaynor notice you picking it up?"

"'Charles, who's the best thief you know?"

"You're the only thief I know."

When Edith Candle leaned back in her chair, alone in the dim window light of a fading day, she could see the whole universe spinning out from her room, stars revolving outward in galactic swirls and spinning in again. She saw how each thing set each other thing in motion. And what was once random, now flowed with the predictability of notes in a string of familiar music. She saw the perfect order.

She took stock of Redwing. "What do you make of her?" Kathy had asked. Edith had responded with a string of words: fearless, arrogant, charming, deceptive, cool under pressure, and wholly alien. But Kathy should have known Redwing best.

She's a lot like you, Kathy.

The old woman closed her eyes and gave herself over to Morpheus, god of dreams, and to the little death that was sleep.

Hours later, she was walking unsteadily down the hall to bed. She was suddenly very tired, passing by the open door to the kitchen and the crude letters on the wall above the stove, paying them no attention, eyes already closing to sleep again before she opened the door on her bedroom and left the red garish message at her back.

Margot sank down at the foot of a stone lion which guarded the entrance to the public library. So many hours had passed since she left the bank, but she could feel the soreness in the bones of her legs from the hard pounding on the sidewalk. She was out of shape. When had she last been to dancing practice? Could she be that far gone in only a few days?

That little bastard of a banker had probably called the cops and told them she had pulled a knife on him. Well, that would prick their ears up. Suppose they went to her apartment and saw all the damn knives?

No, he wouldn't call. He'd been a jerk to jump the alarm. And he wouldn't risk the possibility that she might be who she said she was. Henry would know how to fix this. He'd at least be good for a loan to tide her over. But he hadn't answered the phone in the dozen times she'd called his apartment. Damn Henry who sometimes left his phone off the hook for days at a time. What a miserable twit he was, a bastard, her only friend, her confessor, and sometimes God to her.

She would go back to the apartment in the early morning hours, maybe break a window. Yeah, when there was less chance of being seen. The cops avoided her neighborhood at the dangerous hours. She picked another paper cup up from the sidewalk and jingled her last pennies for the late-working stragglers until the coins swelled into a subway fare.

She rode uptown and down, wondering about the time but having lost the sense of it. She had no idea what hour it might be. She leaned over to read a passenger's watch. Twenty to ten? Could she have been riding that long? The pain in her gut said it was so. How long with no food? She stared into the faces of the other passengers until their eyes met hers and their glances crashed, and then fell away from her eyes, which had gone to a sleep-starved glaze.

Days ago she had believed she would never ride the subway again. She drifted into the light sleep of the longtime subway-rider.

The train slowed to a stop. The bell sounded and another passenger got on. She jerked awake and lifted her head to look at the boarding passenger. She came hideously awake. It was him. Of course it was. It was the same train, the same time of night.

The man was not so tall as she remembered him, nor so broad at the shoulders, but then, he had become almost mythic over the past two years, growing with each nightmare. She had forgotten how very human he was, with his acne scars and his runny, large brown eyes. Was his knife also smaller than she remembered it? The knife, the knife dancing up to her eye, then ripping down her face. Perhaps he had come back for her, to cut her on the other side and make her twisted smile symmetrical.

She drew her legs up to her chest and closed into a ball. The passengers on either side of her got up and moved to the far ends of the car when she began to whimper and rock, face drawn into her chest, hidden behind her knees. Her eyes darted from side to side, watching her abandonment in the ever-increasing circle of alone. You're on your own, said this new seating arrangement.

The train was slowing. She might make it to the door before she was hurt too badly. And then what? Would he catch up to her and drag her by the hair again, ripping handfuls from her head. There would be no cop on the platform. There hadn't been one the first time.