“I felt like we were being watched,” I said quietly. “There was someone in one of the upper stories.”

“If that’s true, then there was someone on the ground as well. You think they were coming for this piece of shit in the back?”

“Maybe, but we got to him first.”

“They know about us now.”

“I think they knew about us already. Otherwise, why start tidying up the loose ends?”

Louis checked the rearview mirror, but the nature of the night traffic made it hard to tell if we were being followed. It didn’t matter. We would have to assume that we were and wait to see what developed.

“I think you have more to tell us,” I said to G-Mack.

“My man in blue came to me, paid me, then told me not to ask no questions. That’s all I know about him.”

“How were they going to get to her?”

“He said it wasn’t none of my business.”

“You use a bail bondsman named Eddie Tager for your girls?”

“Hell, no. Most of the time, they just get pink-slipped anyways. They get themselves in some serious shit, I’m gonna have me a talk with them, see if we can work something out. I ain’t no charity, givin it away to no bondsman.”

“I bet you’re real understanding about how they pay it back too.”

“This is a business. Nobody gets nothing for free.”

“So when Alice was arrested, what did you do?”

He didn’t reply. I slapped him once, hard, on his wounded face.

“Answer me.”

“I called the number they gave me.”

“Cell phone?”

“Yeah.”

“You still have the number?”

“I remember it, bitch.”

Blood had dripped onto his lips. He spit it onto the floor of the car, then recited the number by heart. I took out my cell and entered the number, then, just to be safe, wrote it in my notebook. I guessed that it wouldn’t lead to much. If they were smart, they’d have disposed of the phone as soon as they had the girl.

“Where did Alice keep her personal things?” I said.

“I let her leave some stuff at my place, makeup and shit, but she stayed with Sereta most of the time. Sereta had her a room up on Westchester. I wasn’t gonna have no junkie whore in my crib.” When he said the word “whore” he looked at Louis. We had learned all that we would from G-Mack. As for Louis, he did not respond to the pimp’s goads. Instead, he pulled over to drop me at my car, and I followed them to Brooklyn.

Williamsburg, like the Point, was once home to some of the wealthiest men in the country. There were mansions here, and beer gardens, and private clubs. The Whitneys rubbed shoulders with the Vanderbilts, and lavish buildings were erected, all close enough to the sugar refineries and distilleries, the shipyards and the foundries, for the smell to reach the rich if the wind was blowing the right way.

Williamsburg’s status as the playground of the wealthy changed at the beginning of the last century, with the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge. European immigrants-Poles, Russians, Lithuanians, Italians-fled the crowded slums of the Lower East Side, taking up occupancy of the tenements and the brownstones. They were followed by the Jews, in the thirties and forties, who settled mainly in Southside, among them Satmar Hasidim from Hungary and Romania, who still congregated in the section northeast of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Northside was a little different. It was now trendy and bohemian, and the fact that Bedford Avenue was the first stop made by the L train from Manhattan meant that it was an easy commute, so property prices were going up. Nevertheless, the area had some way to go before it achieved true desirability for those with money in their pockets, and it was not about to abandon its old identity without a fight. The Northside Pharmacy on Bedford still took care to call itself additionally a farmacia and an apteka; Edwin’s Fruit and Veg store sold Zywiec beer from Poland, advertised with a small neon sign in the window; and the meat market remained the Polska-Masarna. There were delis and beauty salons, and Mike’s Northstar Hardware continued in business, but there was also a little coffee shop called Reads that sold used books and alternative magazines, and the lampposts were dotted with flyers hawking loft spaces for artists’ studios.

I hung a right on Tenth at Raymund’s Diner, with its wooden Bierkeller sign illustrated by a beer and a joint of meat. One block down, at Berry, stood a warehouse building that still bore the faint traces of its previous existence as a brewery, for this area was once the heart of New York’s brewing industry. The warehouse was five stories tall and badly scarred by graffiti. A fire escape ran down the center of its eastern façade, and a banner had been strung across the top floor. It read: IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW!” Someone had crossed out the word “Home” and spray painted the word “Polish” in its place. Underneath was a telephone number. No lights burned in any of the windows. I watched Louis drive around the block once, then park on Eleventh. I pulled up behind him and walked to his car. He was leaning back in his seat, talking to G-Mack.

“You sure this is the place?” Louis asked him.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“If you’re lying, I’ll hurt you again.”

G-Mack tried to hold Louis’s gaze, but failed.

“I know that.”

Louis turned his attention to Angel and me.

“Get out, keep an eye on the place. I’m gonna dump my boy here.”

There was nothing that I could say. G-Mack looked worried. He had every reason to.

“Hey, I done told you everythin I know,” he protested. His voice broke slightly.

Louis ignored him.

“I’m not gonna kill him,” he said to me.

I nodded.

Angel got out of the car, and we faded into the shadows as Louis drove G-Mack away.

The present is very fragile, and the ground beneath our feet is thin and treacherous. Beneath it lies the maze of the past, a honeycomb network created by the strata of days and years where memories lie buried, waiting for the moment when the thin crust above cracks and what was and what is can become one again. There is life down there in the honeycomb world, and Brightwell was now alerting it to his discovery. Everything had changed for him, and new plans would have to be made. He called the most private of numbers, and saw, as the sleepy voice answered, that white mote flickering in the darkness.

“They were too quick for us,” he said. “They have him, and they’re moving. But something interesting has emerged…”

Louis parked the car in the delivery bay of a Chinese food store, close by the Woodhull Medical Center, on Broadway. He tossed G-Mack the key to the cuffs, watched silently as he freed his hand, then stood back to let him step from the car.

“Lie down on your belly.”

“Please, man-”

“Lie down.”

G-Mack sank to his knees, then stretched flat on the ground.

“Spread your arms and your legs.”

“I’m sorry,” said G-Mack. His face was contorted with fear. “You got to believe me.”

His head was turned to one side so that he could see Louis. He began to cry as the suppressor was mounted on the muzzle of the little.22 that Louis always carried as backup.

“I do believe you’re sorry now. I can hear it in your voice.”

“Please,” said G-Mack. Blood and snot mixed on his lips. “Please.”

“This is your last chance. Have you told us everything?”

“Yeah! I got nothing else. I swear to you, man.”

“You right-handed?”

“What?”

“I said, are you right-handed?”

“Yeah.”

“So I figure you hit the woman with that hand?”

“I don’t-”

Louis took one look around to make sure nobody was near, then fired a single shot into the back of G-Mack’s right hand. G-Mack screamed. Louis took two steps back and fired a second shot into the pimp’s right ankle.