"And he saw it?" Eve asked.

Atkinson shook his head. "In the end, he decided he didn't have to. He talked to the officers who caught the call."

"Then that's it?" Eve asked.

"That's it," Arch Cranston assured her. "If Converse actually comes back to you, you can tell him there was no mistake-his son died in the fire." He shook his head with the exaggerated sadness that comes so naturally to politicians. "A terrible thing-no matter what the boy did, I wouldn't wish that kind of death on him."

Eve Harris raised her brow but said nothing about Arch Cranston's transparent insincerity. Instead, she returned to the subject, and the name Keith Converse had mentioned.

"There was also a man called Scratch. According to Keith Converse, this Scratch led his son into the subway." She pinned Atkinson to his chair with her dark eyes. "It would seem to me that if he exists, someone at least ought to talk to him. Do I need to talk to Wilkerson about that myself?"

Atkinson sighed heavily. "No, Eve. I'll have someone call the Fifth in the morning-hell, maybe I'll even do it tonight. But if this guy lives in the tunnels, don't count on my men finding him."

This time Eve made no attempt to keep the mocking gleam from showing in her eyes. "Oh, heavens no, Carey. I certainly wouldn't expect New York's Finest to risk their lives down in those terrible tunnels. After all, they might get beaten up by a gang of rampaging homeless single mothers, wielding their fatherless babies! Wouldn't want New York's Finest to have to risk their lives against that, would we?"

Carey Atkinson chose to ignore her words, but Arch Cranston, his eyes flicking around the room in order to gauge the number of people who might have heard Eve's outburst, did not.

"Come on, Eve," he said, loudly enough for the woman listening from the next table to hear it as clearly as she'd heard Eve Harris. "Give Carey a break. You know what kind of people live in the tunnels. Hell, you probably know better than any of us. And you know what it's like down there."

Eve's lips smiled, but her eyes did not. "We all know what it's like down there," she said. "And we all know what goes on. But sometimes I think I'm the only one in this whole city who actually wants to do something about it. The rest of you just want to-" She cut herself short, knowing she was starting to sound like a broken record. Besides, each person at the table knew perfectly well what the others wanted.

They also knew that people in their positions never discussed their true desires in public.

The truth, always, was reserved for intimate conversations in the most private of settings.

And that was a rule that even Eve Harris believed in keeping.

CHAPTER 17

Heather Randall stood at the window of Jeff's apartment, where Keith had been standing when she arrived half an hour ago. On the corner below, kitty-corner from the drugstore, she saw Jeff's favorite Chinese restaurant, where she had often found him sitting in the front booth, shoulders hunched in concentration as he pored over a textbook. Now she forced that memory away and turned from the window.

The room was exactly as it had been the night of Jeff's arrest. The last project he'd been working on-a design for a small office-cum-guest house for one of her father's neighbors in the Hamptons-was still pinned to the drafting board that covered the small room's only table. Her finger absently traced one of the graceful lines of the unfinished drawing-a line that managed to echo the architecture of the main house without imitating it.

The drawing, like the room itself, felt suspended in time, waiting for Jeff to come back.

But that was absurd-Jeff wasn't coming back, despite the strange story his father had just told her. Yet even as she tried once more to reject Keith Converse's fantasy, she imagined Jeff saying, We'll know when we get there.

Her eyes wandered over the room. Every object in it, from the posters on the walls that depicted Jeff's favorite buildings to the shelves of books ranging from architecture through poetry to zoology, were as familiar to her as the things in her own bedroom on Fifth Avenue. More familiar, in a way, for despite the cramped dimensions and worn-out furnishings of the tiny room, she had always felt more at home here than in the cavernous apartment in which she'd grown up. "I love this place," she said, almost as much to herself as to Keith. He was straddling a battered wooden chair she and Jeff had found at a flea market on one of their Sunday walks. At five dollars, it had been too good a bargain to pass up. Jeff had just begun re-finishing it when he was arrested. Now his father's arms rested on its sanded oak back, and he watched her in a way that reminded her of Jeff. "How long are you going to keep it?" she asked, her eyes sweeping the room once more.

"It's not mine to keep or give up," Keith replied. "It's Jeff's. All I'm doing is paying the rent till he comes back."

Heather moved back to the window, hugging herself in unconscious defense against the chill that suddenly wrapped itself around her. "You're so sure he's coming back?"

"If he was dead, I'd know it. He's my son. If something happened to him, I'd feel it. And I don't feel it." Though she still had her back to him, she could feel his eyes boring into her. "You don't feel it, either," he went on. "That's why you came here tonight."

Heather spun around, her eyes glistening. "I don't know why I came here tonight," she began. "I just-I was-" But then the truth of his words hit her, and her tears dried up. "You're right," she said, her voice steady now. "I don't feel like he's dead. So what do we do?"

"We find out what happened," Keith replied. "And we find him."

Heather dropped onto the chair opposite Keith. "Do you have any idea what you're saying?" she asked.

Keith's eyes narrowed and she saw his jaw set exactly the same way Jeff's did when he'd made up his mind about something. "What is it with all you people?" he demanded. "How come everyone in this city thinks they know every goddamn thing there is to know, and the rest of us don't know jack shit? Pardon my French, but if all you're gonna do is patronize me-"

"Patronize you!" Heather cut in. "When have I ever patronized you or anybody else?"

"All you people-"

"All ‘us people'? What's this got to do with ‘us people'? This is about Jeff, remember? And I'm not trying to act like I know everything about anything! All I know is that you don't just go out and find someone in New York City. Especially if they don't want to be found."

A flicker of uncertainty tempered the anger in Keith's expression. "What do you mean, not want to be found? Why wouldn't he-"

Heather was back on her feet. "He was going to prison, remember? So even if you're right, and he got out of that van, where was he going to go? The police? All they'd do is send him back to jail."

"But he didn't do anything, goddamn it!"

Now Heather's eyes were blazing as angrily as Keith's. "And who cares about that, except you and me? No one. So tell me-even if we can find Jeff, what are we going to do?" She turned back to the window and gazed into the night. At the corner, a shabbily dressed woman was maneuvering a small wire shopping cart down the stairs to one of the entrances to the 110th Street station. She did it with as much care as if it contained boxes packed with crystal and china instead of a jumbled mass of filthy clothes and blankets. The old woman paused, turned around, and looked up, almost as if she felt Heather watching her. She seemed to look right at the window for a moment, just as Heather had looked up at Keith a little while ago. Then the woman turned away and continued down into the subway.

As Heather's eyes remained fastened on the subway entrance, something flickered at the edge of her mind- something Keith had said earlier, as he was telling her what happened that morning. As she continued to stare at the subway entrance, it came to her.