The revolver was ice. Since nine-year-olds didn’t wear suit jackets, I had to carry it in a jury-rigged shoulder holster under my polo shirt, and the cap gun was ice against my chest. The look was that of a kid who had just snitched a mango from a fruit stand and was trying to conceal it. Nonetheless, I managed to maintain a grim, professional demeanor, lest my suspects spot any weakness and get the upper hand. I trailed them among the secret stores and wholesale houses of the neither-here-nor-there neighborhoods of downtown New York. Most of them hung around the Met Life Building, which looked innocuous enough, but clearly was teeming with crime. The businessmen under my surveillance also looked harmless, to anyone but me. I trailed them at short distances—called “rough shadowing” in the trade—making it easy for them to notice me, because if the killer did not know he was being followed, no one else would either. I saw myself as acting simultaneously in real time and in a film noir, so I was both tracking my quarry and watching myself do it.
