The colossal, dazzlingly white and vanished arch lent a tremor of ghostliness to Madison Square. Colette felt it. She even turned to see if someone might be watching her. But she turned the wrong way. She didn't look across Fifth Avenue, where, beyond the speeding cars and rattling omnibuses, a pair of eyes was in fact fixed upon her.
These belonged to a female figure, solitary, still, her cheeks gaunt and pallid, so skeletal in stature that, to judge by appearance, she couldn't have threatened a child. A kerchief hid most of her dry red hair, and a worn-out dress from the previous century hung to her ankles. It was impossible to tell her age: she might have been an innocent fourteen or a bony fifty-five. There was, however, a peculiarity about her eyes. The irises, of the palest blue, were flecked with brownish- yellow impurities like corpses floating in a tranquil sea.
Among the vehicles blocking this woman's way across Fifth Avenue was an approaching delivery truck, drawn by a horse. She cast her composed gaze on it. The trotting animal saw her out of the corner of an eye. It balked and reared. The truck driver shouted; vehicles swerved, tires screeched. There were no collisions, but a clear path opened up through the traffic. She crossed Fifth Avenue unmolested.
Littlemore led them to a street cart next to the subway steps, proposing that they have 'dogs' for lunch, which required the men to explain to an appalled French girl the ingredients of that recent culinary sensation, the hot dog. 'You'll like it, Miss, I promise,' said Littlemore.
'I will?' she replied dubiously.
Reaching the near side of Fifth Avenue, the kerchiefed woman placed a blue-veined hand on her abdomen. This was evidently a sign or command. Not far away, the park's flowing fountain ceased to spray, and as the last jets of water fell to the basin, another redheaded woman came into view, so like the first as almost to be a reflection, but less pale, less skeletal, her hair flowing unhindered. She too put a hand on her abdomen. In her other hand was a pair of scissors with strong, curving blades. She set off toward Colette.
'Ketchup, Miss?' asked Littlemore. 'Most take mustard, but I say ketchup. There you go.'
Colette accepted the hot dog awkwardly. 'All right, I'll try.'
Using both hands, she took a bite. The two men watched. So did the two red-haired woman, approaching from different directions. And so did a third redheaded figure next to a flagpole near Broadway, who wore, in addition to a kerchief over her head, a gray wool scarf wrapped more than once around her neck.
'But it's good!' said Colette. 'What did you put on yours?'
'Sauerkraut, Miss,' replied Littlemore. 'It's kind of a sour, kraut-y-'
'She knows what sauerkraut is,' said Younger.
'You want some?' asked Littlemore.
'Yes, please.'
The woman under the flagpole licked her lips. Hurrying New Yorkers passed on either side, taking no notice of her – or of her scarf, which the weather didn't justify, and which seemed to bulge out strangely from her throat. She raised a hand to her mouth; emaciated fingertips touched parted lips. She began walking toward the French girl.
'How about downtown?' said Littlemore. 'Would you like to see the Brooklyn Bridge, Miss?'
'Very much,' said Colette.
'Follow me,' said the detective, throwing the vendor two bits for a tip and walking to the top of the subway stairs. He checked his pockets: 'Shoot – we need another nickel.'
The street vendor, overhearing the detective, began to rummage through his change box when he caught sight of three strangely similar figures approaching his cart. The first two had joined together, fingers touching as they walked. The third advanced by herself from the opposite direction, holding her thick wool scarf to her throat. The vendor's long fork slipped from his hand and disappeared into a pot of simmering water. He stopped looking for nickels.
'I have one,' said Younger.
'Let's go,' replied Littlemore. He trotted down the stairs. Colette and Younger followed. They were lucky: a downtown train was entering the station; they just made it. Halfway out of the station, the train lurched to a halt. Its doors creaked ajar, snapped shut, then jerked open again. Evidently some latecomers had induced the conductor to let them on.
In the narrow arteries of lower Manhattan – they had emerged at City Hall – Younger, Colette, and Littlemore were swept up in the capillary crush of humanity. Younger inhaled deeply. He loved the city's teemingness, its purposiveness, its belligerence. He was a confident man; he always had been. By American standards, Younger was very wellborn: a Schermerhorn on his mother's side, a close cousin to the Fishes of New York and, through his father, the Cabots of Boston. This exalted genealogy, a matter of indifference to him now, had disgusted him as a youth. The sense of superiority his class enjoyed struck him as so patently undeserved that he'd resolved to do the opposite of everything expected of him – until the night his father died, when necessity descended, the world became real, and the whole issue of social class ceased to be of interest.
But those days were long past, scoured away by years of unstinting work, accomplishment, and war, and on this New York morning, Younger experienced a feeling almost of invulnerability. This was, however, he reflected, probably only the knowledge that no snipers lay hidden with your head in their sights, no shells were screaming through the air to relieve you of your legs. Unless perhaps it was the opposite: that the pulse of violence was so atmospheric in New York that a man who had fought in the war could breathe here, could be.it home, could flex muscles still pricked by the feral after-charge of uninhibited killing – without making himself a misfit or a monster.
'Shall I tell him?' he asked Colette. To their right rose up incomprehensibly tall skyscrapers. To their left, the Brooklyn Bridge soared over the Hudson.
'No, I will,' said Colette. 'I'm sorry to take so much of your time, Jimmy. I should have told you already.'
'I got all the time in the world, Miss,' said Littlemore.
'Well, it's probably nothing, but last night a girl came to our hotel looking for me. We were out, so she left a note. Here it is.' Colette produced a crumpled scrap of paper from her purse. The paper bore a hand-written message, hastily scrawled:
Please I need to see you. They know you're right. I'll come back tomorrow morning at seven-thirty. Please can you help me.
Amelia
'She never came back,' added Colette.
'You know this Amelia?' asked Littlemore, turning the note over, but finding nothing on its opposite side.
'No.'
'"They know you're right"?' said Littlemore. 'About what?'
'I can't imagine,' said Colette.
'There's something else,' said Younger.
'Yes, it's what she put inside the note that worries us,' said Colette, fishing through her purse. She handed the detective a wad of white cotton.
Littlemore pulled the threads apart. Buried within the cotton ball was a tooth – a small, shiny human molar.
A fusillade of obscenities interrupted them. The cause was a parade on Liberty Street, which had halted traffic. All of the marchers were black. The men wore their Sunday best – a tattered best, their sleeves too short – although it was midweek. Skinny children tripped barefoot among their parents. Most were singing; their hymnal rose above the bystanders' taunts and motorists' ire.
'Hold your horses,' said a uniformed officer, barely more than a boy, to one fulminating driver.
Littlemore, excusing himself, approached the officer. 'What are you doing here, Boyle?'
'Captain Hamilton sent us, sir,' said Boyle, 'because of the nigger parade.'
'Who's patrolling the Exchange?' asked Littlemore.
'Nobody. We're all up here. Shall I break up this march, sir? Looks like there's going to be trouble.'