And to my left, the oddest sight, the red tilting stacks of what appeared to be a great ocean liner fallen on hard times. The red paint on the funnels was streaked and flaking, the metal was rusting, the lighting was desultory at best, making it seem as if the great ship was sagging in the middle like a tired old horse. It looked as if it had suffered some foul disease and had crawled into the Philadelphia waterfront to die. Well, it had picked the right place.

This visit to Pier 84 was for me the start of the strange case you read about in the papers, the one with the Supreme Court justice and those pictures of the naked woman, the one with the dead client and the kidnapped lawyer and the rotting old ship and the ghost reaching back from the dead to exact his revenge. That one, remember? But for me it wasn’t yet a headline, it was just a call in the night that had sent me scurrying to the water’s edge, and so the strange sight of that rotting old ocean liner was just that, a strange sight, nothing more. A fading remnant of a far brighter past, it sat there, dead in the water, like a warning I couldn’t yet hear.

“Victor Carl,” came a rich voice from within the cordon of the yellow tape. “Why am I not surprised when your name comes floating up in the middle of a god-awful mess? Let him in, Sal.”

The cop with the crossed arms stepped aside.

Detective McDeiss, Homicide Division, was wearing a long black trench coat, a gray suit, a black porkpie hat tipped low. His large hands glowed strangely blue, covered as they were with latex gloves. He was a big man, broad shoulders, thick legs, the cheeks of one who savored his wines and preferred his sweetbreads rare.

“Thanks for coming out, Carl,” he said. “The deceased’s wallet is gone and there’s no quick way to make an identification, but lucky us, he had your card in his back pants pocket.”

“My card?”