"You're lookin‘ for trouble if you go lookin' for Shine. How come you want to find him?"

"It's not him-it's one of the guys the hunters are after."

The last of Sledge's smile faded. "You ain't messin‘ in that, are you?" He glanced around, but even though they seemed to be alone, he still dropped his voice. "Them guys the hunters go after are even worse'n Shine's crowd."

"But one of the guys they're after didn't do nothing," Jinx protested.

Sledge's brows arched. He'd never met anyone in the tunnels who didn't have some kind of hard luck story about how they got there, and not one of them ever admitted it might be their own damned fault. With the young kids, there was probably some truth to their tales, but he figured the rest of them were just making up excuses. "Bet he told you that himself, didn't he?" Jinx shook her head and told him what had happened. "So what happened to this Bobby Gomez guy?" he asked when she was finished.

Jinx spread her hands dismissively. "Gone."

"Well, if I was you, that's what I'd be, too. Gone out of here, gettin‘ myself a job, and gettin' my ass back in school. And I sure wouldn't be messin‘ in nobody's business except my own, especially the hunters'."

"All's I was askin‘ was where Shine-"

"Don't you be pushin‘ me, young lady," Sledge said. "I ain't tellin' you nothin‘ at all, you hear?"

"I was just-" Jinx began again, but before she could say anything else, a new voice called out.

"Hey, Sledge. You hear about Crazy Harry?"

Jinx turned to see two men coming down the tracks. One of them was a Puerto Rican tagger who spent most of his time spraying murals on the walls of the tunnels. She didn't recognize the other man.

"What about him?" Sledge asked as the tagger dropped a bag on one of the chairs and started pulling out groceries.

"Got himself killed last night down under the Circle."

The men kept talking, but Jinx had already stopped listening. The Circle had to be Columbus Circle. All kinds of subways came together around there, which meant there were bound to be a lot of herders. If she was careful and asked the right questions…

As Sledge and the two other guys kept talking, Jinx finished her piece of chicken, left the empty plate on the table, and slipped away. She headed south down the tracks, then made her way through a maze of utility tunnels and passages until she came to a shaft Robby had found that came up behind a utility building in the park. Leaving the park, she headed to Cathedral Parkway and the MTA station.

As she rode south a few minutes later, she glanced around the car, sizing up the crowd for an easy lift. But it was the wrong time of day-rush hour was best, when the cars were so crowded that even if someone felt her trying to pick a wallet out of a pocket or a purse, they wouldn't be quite certain who'd done it. The arrival of a transit cop in the car put an end to her reconnaissance, and she settled onto a seat.

The cop, recognizing Jinx, decided to stay in the car, too.

As the train rattled through the tunnel and pulled into the station at 103rd Street, Jinx waited for the cop to get up and move toward the door.

He didn't.

At Ninety-sixth Street Jinx stood up, and so did the cop.

Neither of them got off.

At Seventy-second Street, Jinx got off the car, then got back on.

So did the cop.

Jinx moved to the next car, the cop following her.

From his own seat a few yards away, Keith Converse-on his way to the memorial mass at St. Patrick's-watched the interplay between the cop and the girl. As far as he could tell, the girl hadn't done anything wrong.

She didn't look like a prostitute, and she didn't look like a juvenile delinquent. She just looked…

Homeless.

Homeless, and vaguely familiar.

Or was it that she looked like so many other girls he'd seen in the city, not only here in the subway, but downtown as well? He must have seen dozens of girls who looked just like this one during the months when he'd visited Jeff in jail. A lot of them had been there for the same reason he was: visiting someone.

Sometimes, rarely, it was a brother or a father.

Far more often it was a boyfriend or a pimp.

The ones who weren't dressed in the miniskirts and tight blouses that were the uniform of the prostitute had usually been wearing the same kind of worn shirt and jeans the girl on the subway wore today. If not for the strange interplay between her and the transit cop, Keith might not have noticed her at all.

At first, he'd assumed that the cop was going to arrest her. But when nothing happened, and the cop simply countered every one of the girl's moves with one of his own, Keith began to suspect that the girl hadn't done anything at all.

That the cop was just hassling her.

Why? Simply because he could?

He began paying more attention, and by the Seventy-second Street stop, he was sure he was right. If the cop had been intending to arrest the girl, he would have done it by now.

When he glanced around the car and saw that no one else was paying any attention to what was going on, he told himself that the other people were right, that it was none of his business, and that he was probably wrong anyway-maybe the girl was a criminal and the cop knew her.

A criminal? he repeated to himself. What am I thinking? She can't be more than fifteen, for God's sake! He took a closer look at her and realized she didn't much resemble the dozens of other down-on-their-luck kids he'd seen. For one thing, her eyes didn't have the glazed look of a junkie, and there was nothing about her to suggest she was a prostitute.

And he was almost certain he'd seen her before.

Then it started to fall into place.

She'd gotten on at 110th Street, where he'd gotten on.

Only a block away from Riverside Park, where Eve Harris had introduced him to the homeless woman on the bench yesterday.

There'd been a girl there. A girl wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, who'd asked Tillie if he and Heather had been messin‘ with her. The homeless woman had given her money and told her to go away.

Preoccupied with Tillie, he hadn't paid attention to the girl. But now, studying her face, he was almost certain this was the same person.

When the girl moved to the next car and the cop immediately followed, Keith moved to the back of his own car so he could watch them through the windows. Though he'd intended to ride the train on down to Fiftieth Street, he got off at Columbus Circle, following the cop and the girl.

He walked toward the stairs, certain that the girl would hurry out of the station, but instead she stayed on the platform, moving across toward the uptown side, peering down the tracks as if looking for a train. The cop lounged against a pillar, his eyes still on the girl.

A few people milled around on the platform, some taking the stairs toward the surface, just as many coming down to the platform.

The girl seemed utterly disinterested in anything except the tracks. A couple of minutes later an uptown train came in. The doors opened and the girl stepped on.

So did the cop.

Keith glanced at his watch. He still had an hour before the mass was supposed to begin, plenty of time to walk over to Fifth and down to St. Patrick's, or even catch the next train down to Fiftieth. But if he headed back uptown…

The mass could happen without him, he decided. Right now it was more important to talk to the girl. He dashed toward the train, but was still a few yards away when the doors started to close. He broke into a sprint and was about to thrust his arm between the closing doors when the girl suddenly slipped back out onto the platform.

The doors finished closing and the train pulled away.

The girl flipped her middle finger at the cop, who was now glaring at her from the departing train and talking into his radio. Then she turned and almost bumped into Keith.