It was getting dark earlier, fall coming. I was back in Manhattan, heading uptown on the highway, driving too fast. The water was on my right, the Pepsi Cola sign winked red at me from Queens. Overhead, when I passed 59th Street, the little suburban tram shunted people to Roosevelt Island. All the years I’d been in New York I had never been to Roosevelt Island. The city was spread out across the islands, not just Manhattan or Staten Island, or Roosevelt or Randall’s in the East River, but specks of empty land which meant you could land illegal material or people or drugs in a thousand places. I was tired and I tried to keep focused on the files, on the nukes Jack said had been coming into the ports, on whether he made it all up, working my phone, still trying to get through to the airlines, to Moscow, I was distracted by the water turning dark, the lights coming on. Tolya had the clout, he could track down Jack Santiago if he was in Moscow, but Tolya, tight-lipped on the phone, just gave me an address in the Bronx and hung up.
