Packy ended the discussion with a pronouncement. ‘A cop hater. Some alley-crawler psycho with a grudge on cops.’

After that the regular customers kicked it around for a time. They did not really care about Stettin, any more than the millions who would read about Stettin in the newspapers would care, but a man has to talk about something while he drinks himself peaceful.

For a few more days it was good for a lot of talk around Chelsea and the Village. Then the talk faded. People are strange. Cops are killed in the world somewhere almost every day. A cop does not get mugged in broad daylight very often. Yet a cop killing is headlines for months, and a mugging, hot news at first, fades fast. People are more interested in death.

I might have forgotten Stettin myself in a week. I had my own troubles. Marty was getting a big play from a well-heeled customer at her club; three subpoena victims were playing a hard hide-and-seek with me; and it was too hot in the city. There was no reason to connect the second robbery and the two killings to Stettin. We get forty burglaries a day on the West Side and as many assorted crimes of violence. After a time you hardly notice the small crimes. No, a man worries about the troubles he has on hand; anything else is insanity.

So Patrolman Stettin was no more to me than good gossip.

Until the kid walked into my office.

Chapter 2

‘He’s in trouble, Mr Fortune. I know it,’ the kid said.

It was a Monday five days after Stettin was mugged. My office is one room on Twenty-Eighth Street. I have one window with a view of a brick wall that has turned black with the grime of the city. The window itself is dirty, so I don’t have to look at the wall outside unless it is too hot. It was too hot, so I had been studying the shades of black on that wall while I waited until it was safe to call Marty and suggest a drink in a cool tavern. Since it was only eleven o’clock in the morning, Marty would not be up for breakfast for at least an hour. Marty snarls when you wake her up early. So I let the boy sit down.