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“I have a daughter,” I said in answer to the confused frown on the Blood Sister’s face. “I love her more than this life or the next.”

“We could do somethin’ else if you want.”

“How about telling me how to get to Billy Makepeace.”

31.

“Mr. Makepeace,” I said when he answered the phone.

I was seated in the last row of the bus in a solitary seat across the aisle from the toilet.

“Who is this?” a man said. “How did you get this number?”

“Lana wondered if you had gone to see Cecilia.”

“Who is this?” William Makepeace demanded.

“A friend of A Free Man.”

I imagined that in the barrier of silence Billy was wondering if he should just hang up.

“Tell me who this is.”

“I want to know if you’re willing to testify against two dead men, set the mother of your child free, and maybe keep an innocent man from getting executed.”

Another spate of silence.

“Whoever you are,” he said, “I am an officer of the law and your threats constitute a crime.”

“Not if you know about a private graveyard maintained by Officers Valence and Pratt. Not if there’s even a shred of a suspicion that you knew what they were up to.”

“Who is this?”

“Like I said, a friend of Manny’s.”

“What about Lana?”

“She asked me to ask you about your daughter when I said I wanted to know why she wasn’t dead like the rest of her friends.”

“I don’t know anything about what you’re saying,” he said flatly. Then he hung up.

I pulled up the window and threw the phone onto the highway.

There’s a liquor store five blocks from the underground bunker on Seventy-Third Street where I was hiding. There I bought a liter of Hennessy, extra old, and then I made my way into the sleeping crypt.

On a shelf in the studio I found a turquoise plastic drinking glass that held maybe three ounces. I filled it with cognac, drained it, then filled it again.

After four drinks, my lips and fingertips were tingling. I stumbled up the stairs and out of the hideaway into the street.

I walked, almost without a misstep, down to the Theater District, where I found an electronics store that sold disposable phones. I bought three of these.

At a popular coffee shop chain store I ordered a huge cup of dark-roast coffee, which I had no intention of drinking. I jiggered one of the temporary phones to life and started making my late-night calls.

“Hello?” Aja-Denise Oliver said in a tremulous, sleepy tone.

“It’s me.”

“Daddy.”