The teeming street life of the day had given way to a sullen world of dark, empty streets. Pools of grayish light gathered beneath the street lamps or hazily illuminated deserted stretches of the small, untended parks. The shops which had been so busy the day before were now closed. Thick metal sheets had been drawn down over their fronts and locked in place, and the graffiti which had been scrawled across them gave the entire area a lost and desolate look. Molly Gold’s building was a low brick tenement off Hester Street. A few squares of yellow light shone from its windows, but the single bulb in the foyer was dim, and because of that Frank had to light a match to find her name: Gold M.—Apt. 1-C. The door of the apartment was scarred and unpainted, and Frank half-expected that there’d be no answer to his knock. He tapped lightly, then a little harder, and a voice, old and faintly irritated, sounded behind the door. “Nothing. I don’t need nothing.” “I’m not selling anything,”
