I saw a cab on the horizon. I flagged it and watched with satisfaction as it weaved through two lanes of traffic to get to me.

“Those guys are going to bring you down with them someday,” said Walter. He wasn’t smiling.

“Maybe I’m dragging them down with me,” I replied. “Thanks for this, Walter. I’ll be in touch.”

I climbed in the cab and left him.

Far away, the Black Angel stirred.

“You made a mistake,” it said. “You were supposed to check her background. You assured me that no one would come after her.”

“She was just a common whore,” said Brightwell. He had returned from Arizona with the weight of Blue’s loss heavy upon him. He would be found again, but time was pressing, and they needed all of the bodies they could muster. Now, with the death of the girls still fresh in his memory, he was being criticized for his carelessness, and he did not like it. He had been alone for so long, without having to answer to anyone, and the exercise of authority chafed upon him in a way that it had not previously done. He also found the atmosphere in the sparsely furnished office oppressive. There was the great desk, ornately carved and topped with green leather, and the expensive antique lamps that shed a dim light on the walls, the wooden floor, and the worn rug upon which he now stood, but there were too many empty spaces waiting to be filled. In a way, it was a metaphor for the existence of the one before whom he now stood.

“No,” said the Black Angel. “She was a most uncommon whore. There are questions being asked about her. A report has been filed.”

Two great blue veins pulsed at each of Brightwell’s temples, extending their reach across either side of his skull, their ambit clearly visible beneath the man’s corona of dark hair. He resented the reprimand, and felt his impatience growing.

“If those you had sent to kill Winston had done their job properly and discreetly, then we would not be having this conversation,” he said. “You should have consulted me.”

“You were not to be found. I have no idea where you go when you disappear into the shadows.”

“That’s none of your concern.”

The Black Angel stood, leaning its hands upon the burnished desk.

“You forget yourself, Mr. Brightwell,” it said.

Brightwell’s eyes glittered with new anger.

“No,” he said. “I have never forgotten myself. I remained true. I searched, and I found. I discovered you, and I reminded you of all that you once were. It was you who forgot. I remembered. I remembered it all.”

Brightwell was right. The Black Angel recalled their first encounter, the revulsion it had felt, then, slowly, the dawning understanding and the final acceptance. The Black Angel retreated from the confrontation and turned instead to the window. Beneath its gaze, people enjoyed the sunshine, and traffic moved slowly along the congested streets.

“Kill the pimp,” said the Black Angel. “Discover all that you can about those who are asking questions.”

“And then?”

The Black Angel cast Brightwell a bone.

“Use your judgment,” it said. There was no point in reminding him of the necessity of attracting no further attention to themselves. They were growing closer to their goal, and furthermore, it realized that Brightwell was moving increasingly beyond its control.

If he had ever truly been under its control.

Brightwell left, but the Black Angel remained lost in remembrance. Strange the forms that we take, it thought. It walked to the gilt mirror upon the wall. Gently, it touched its right hand to its face, examining its reflection as though it were another version of itself. Then, slowly, it removed the contact lens from its right eye. It had been forced to wear the lens for hours that day as there were people to be met and papers to be signed, and now its eye felt as though it were burning. The mark did not react well to concealment.

The Black Angel leaned closer, tugging at the skin beneath its eye. A white sheen lay across the blue of the iris, like the ruined sail of a ship at sea, or a face briefly glimpsed through parting clouds.

That night, G-Mack took to the streets with a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. It was a Hi-Point nine-millimeter, alloy-framed and loaded up with CorBon+P ammunition for maximum stopping power. The gun had cost G-Mack very little-hell, even new the Hi-Point retailed for about 10 percent of what a similar Walther P5 would go for-and he figured that if the cops came around and he had to let it go, then he wouldn’t be out of pocket by too much. He had fired the gun only a couple of times, out in the New Jersey woods, and he knew that the Hi-Point didn’t respond well to the CorBon ammo. It affected the accuracy, and the recoil was just plain nasty, but G-Mack knew that if it came down to it, he’d be using the Hi-Point right up close, and anyone who took one from the gun at that range was going to stay down.

He left the Cutlass Supreme in the garage, and instead drove over to the Point in the Dodge that he used for backup. G-Mack didn’t care if one of the other brothers saw him driving the old-lady car. The ones that mattered knew he had the Cutlass, could take it out anytime he damn well pleased if they needed some reminding, but the Dodge was less likely to attract attention, and it had enough under the hood to get him out of trouble quickly if the need arose. He parked up in an alleyway-the same alleyway in which Jackie O had seen fit to try to confront the occupants of the black van, although G-Mack didn’t know that-then slipped out onto the streets of the Point. He kept his head down, doing the rounds of his whores from the shadows, then retreated back to the Dodge. He had instructed the young bitch, Ellen, to act as an intermediary, bringing the money from the others to him instead of forcing him to return to the streets again.

He was scared, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. He reached beneath the driver’s seat and removed a Glock 23 from its slot. The Hi-Point under his arm would do if he ran into trouble on the street, but the 23 was his baby. He’d been put onto it by a guy who got drummed out of the South Carolina State Police for corruption and now did a thriving business in firearms for the more discerning customer. The Staties down in SC had adopted the 23 sight unseen, and had never had cause to complain. Loaded up with.40 caliber S amp;W cartridges, it was one mean killing machine. G-Mack removed the Hi-Point from his holster and balanced both weapons in his hands. Next to the Glock, it was clear what a piece of shit the Hi-Point really was, but G-Mack wasn’t too concerned. This wasn’t a fashion show. This was life or death, and anyway, two guns were always better than one.

We descended on Hunts Point shortly before midnight.

In the nineteenth century, Hunts Point was home to wealthy landowning families, their numbers gradually swelled by city dwellers envious of the luxurious lifestyles available to the Point’s residents. After World War I, a train line was built along Southern Boulevard, and the mansions gave way to apartments. City businesses began to relocate, attracted by the space available for development and ease of access to the tristate region. The poor and working-class families (nearly sixty thousand residents, or two-thirds of the population in the 1970s alone) were forced out as Hunts Point’s reputation grew in business circles, leading to the opening of the produce market in 1967 and the meat market in 1974. There were recycling stores, warehouses, commercial waste depots, auto glass sellers, scrap dealers-and, of course, the big markets, to and from which the trucks trundled, sometimes providing the hookers with a little business along the way. Nearly ten thousand people still lived in the district, and to their credit they had campaigned for traffic signals, modified truck routes, new trees, and a waterfront park, slowly improving this sliver of the South Bronx to create a better home for themselves and for future generations; but they were living in an area that was a crossroads for all the garbage the city of New York could provide. There were two dozen waste transfer stations on this little peninsula alone, and half of all its putrescible garbage and most of its sewage sludge ended up there. The whole area stank in summer, and asthma was rife. Garbage clung to fences and filled the gutters, and the noise of two million trucks a year provided a sound track of squealing brakes, tooting horns, and beeping reverse signals. Hunts Point was a miniature city of industry, and among the most visible of those industries was prostitution.