The man closed the pack, returned it to his pocket, and took out his lighter. Angela cupped her hand around the flame and carefully lit the cigarette. “Thanks,” she said. “Man, what a night.”

The rain had started again. But behind the huge umbrella they were both dry.

“Hey,” she said, “you want to have a little fun…?” She picked up the hem of her dress, pulled it above her knees. She had a purple mark on the inside of one thigh. For the first time, the man stopped smiling. Angela said, “It’s just a bruise.”

“Thank you, no,” the man said.

Angela shrugged. She drew on the cigarette. Pushed her dress down over her legs again.

“It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Angela,” the man said, standing up. “Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah.” She watched him back away. “Thanks for the smoke. Come back if you change your mind.”

The man nodded.

“I don’t have any diseases. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No,” the man said. “I’m not worried about your having diseases.”

Something in his voice put her off. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean it in the best way. You’re a young woman, Angela. You look very healthy. I’m sure you have no diseases.”

Angela smiled, a fixed, frozen smile that was part arrogance, part fear, and no part happiness. “That’s right. I’m so clean you could eat off me.”

“I’m sure,” the man said. “Good night, Angela.”

The headline the story carried in the Daily News was only slightly inaccurate: “Runaway Poisoned Behind Penn Station.” Angela Nicholas had not run away. She had been thrown out of her home. Her mother emphasized that point, stabbing it into her husband’s shoulder with her index finger while the man looked down at his hands in his lap and mumbled apologies to her, to himself, to God.

The detective took notes. There had been a fight. There had been many fights. A boy had been the subject of one of the fights. Other boys had been the subject of other fights, or maybe the same boy had. It wasn’t clear. What was clear was that the father had delivered an ultimatum: That boy doesn’t enter this house again or you don’t enter it again.