There was one frosty day late in March ‘99 that started like most of the other days since I had gone to work for Paul Quinn, but went off on an unexpected track before afternoon arrived. I was up at quarter past seven, as usual. Sundara and I showered together, the pretext being conservation of water and energy, but actually we both had this little soap fetish and loved lathering each other until we were slippery as seals. Quick breakfast, out of the house by eight, commuter pod to Manhattan. My first stop was my uptown office, my old Lew Nichols Associates office, which I was maintaining with a skeleton staff during my time on the city payroll. There I handled routine projective analysis of minor administrative hassles — the siting of a new school, the closing of an old hospital, zoning changes to allow a new wipe-out center for brain-injured sniffers in a residential district, all trivia but potentially explosive trivia in a city where every citizen’s nerves are taut beyond hope of slackening and small disappointments quickly start looking like insupportable rebuffs. Then, about noon, I headed downtown to the Municipal Building for conference and lunch with Bob Lombroso.

“Mr. Lombroso has a visitor in his office,” the receptionist told me, “but he’d like you to go on inside anyway.”

Lombroso’s office was a fitting stage for him. He is a tall well-set-up man in his late thirties, somewhat theatrical in appearance, a commanding figure with dark curling hair silvering at the temples, a coarse black close-cropped beard, a flashing smile, and the energetic, intense manner of a successful rug merchant. His office, redecorated from standard Early Bureaucrat at his own expense, was an ornate Levantine den, fragrant and warm, with dark shining leather-paneled walls, dense carpets, heavy brown velvet draperies, dim bronze Spanish lamps perforated in a thousand places, a gleaming desk made of several somber woods inlaid with plaques of tooled morocco, great white urnlike Chinese floor vases, and, in a baroque glass-fronted credenza, his cherished collection of medieval Judaica — silver headpieces, breastplates, and pointers for the scrolls of the Law, embroidered Torah curtains out of the synagogues of Tunisia or Iran, filigreed Sabbath lamps, candlesticks, spice boxes, candelabra. In this musky cloistered sanctuary Lombroso reigned over the municipal revenues like a prince of Zion: woe betide the foolish Gentile who disdained his counsel.

His visitor was a faded-looking little man, fifty-five or sixty years old, a slight, insignificant person with a narrow oval head sparsely thatched with short gray hair. He was dressed so plainly, in a shabby old brown suit out of the Eisenhower era, that he made Lombroso’s nippy-dip sartorialism seem like the most extreme peacock extravagance and even made me feel like a dandy in my five-year-old copper-threaded maroon cape. He sat quietly, slouched, hands interlocked. He looked anonymous and close to invisible, one of nature’s natural-born Smiths, and there was a leaden undertone to his skin, a wintry slackness to the flesh of his cheeks, that spoke of an exhaustion that was as much spiritual as physical. Time had emptied this man of any strength he might once have had.

“I want you to meet Martin Carvajal, Lew,” Lombroso said.

Carvajal rose and clasped my hand. His was cold. “A pleasure at last to encounter you, Mr. Nichols,” he said in a mild, numb voice that came to me from the far side of the universe.

The odd courtly phrasing of his greeting was strange. I wondered what he was doing here. He looked so juiceless, so much like an applicant for some very minor bureaucratic job, or, more plausibly, like some down-at-the-heel uncle of Lombroso’s here to pick up his monthly stipend: but only the powerful were admitted to Finance Administrator Lombroso’s lair.

But Carvajal was not the relict I took him to be. Already, in the moment of our handshake, he appeared to have an improbable access of strength; he stood taller, the lines of his face grew taut, a certain Mediterranean flush brightened his complexion. Only his eyes, bleak and lifeless, still betrayed some vital absence within.

Sententiously Lombroso said, “Mr. Carvajal was one of our most generous contributors to the mayor’s campaign,” giving me a suave Phoenician glance that told me, Treat him kindly, Lew, we want more of his gold.

That this drab, seedy stranger should be a wealthy campaign benefactor, a person to be flattered and curried and admitted to the sanctum of a busy official, shook me profoundly, for rarely had I misread someone so thoroughly. But I managed a bland grin and said, “What business are you in, Mr. Carvajal?”

“Investments.”

“One of the shrewdest and most successful private speculators I’ve ever known,” Lombroso offered.

Carvajal nodded complacently.

“You earn your living entirely from the stock market?” I asked.

“Entirely.”

“I didn’t think anyone actually was able to do that.”

“Oh, yes, yes, it can be done,” Carvajal said. His tone was thin and husky, a murmur out of the tomb. “All it takes is a decent understanding of trends and a little courage. Haven’t you ever been in the market, Mr. Nichols?”

“A little. Just dabbling.”

“Did you do well?”

“Well enough. I have a decent understanding of trends myself. But I don’t feel comfortable when the really wild fluctuations start. Up twenty, down thirty — no, thanks. I like sure things, I suppose.”

“So do I,” Carvajal replied, giving his statement a little propulsive twist, a hint of meaning beyond meaning, that left me baffled and uncomfortable.

Just then a sweet bell tinkled in Lombroso’s inner office, which opened out of a short corridor to the left of his desk. I knew it meant the mayor was calling; the receptionist invariably relayed Quinn’s calls to the back room when Lombroso had strangers out front. Lombroso excused himself and, with quick heavy strides that shook the carpeted floor, went to take the call. Finding myself alone with Carvajal was suddenly overwhelmingly disturbing; my skin tingled and there was pressure at my throat, as though some potent psychic emanation swept irresistibly from him to me the moment the neutral damping presence of Lombroso was removed. I was unable to stay. Excusing myself also, I hastily followed Lombroso to the other room, a narrow elbow-jointed cavern full of books from floor to ceiling, heavy ornate tomes that might have been Talmuds and might have been bound volumes of Moody’s stock and bond manuals, and probably were a mixture of both. Lombroso, surprised and annoyed at my intrusion, angrily jabbed a finger toward his telephone screen, on which I could see the image of Mayor Quinn’s head and shoulders. But instead of leaving I offered a pantomime of apology, a wild barrage of bobs and waves and shrugs and idiotic grimaces, that led Lombroso to ask the mayor to hold the line a moment. The screen went blank.

Lombroso glowered at me. “Well?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t stay in there. Who is he, Bob?”

“Just as I told you. Big money. Strong Quinn backer. We have to make nice for him. Look, I’m on the phone. The mayor has to know—”

“I don’t want to be alone in there with him. He’s like one of the walking dead. He gives me the creepies.”

“What?”

“I’m serious. It’s like some kind of cold deathly force coming from him, Bob. He makes me itch. He gives off scary vibes.”

“Oh, Jesus, Lew.”

“I can’t help it. You know how I pick up things.”

“He’s a harmless little geezer who made a lot of money in the market and likes our man. That’s all. ”

“Why is he here?”

“To meet you,” Lombroso said.

“Just that? Just to meet me?”

“He wanted very much to talk to you. Said it was important for him to get together with you.”