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to retire on,” Carman said eventually. “And I don’t mean retire down to Florida, get loaded, and drown while trying to dynamite a children’s ride and get blown at the same time. I mean a fucking yacht someplace, and slaves and shit.”
    “And.”
    “And the guy in three A ain’t my problem. They’re going to knock that place down, and if the crazy guy’s still in there when it happens, then it still ain’t my problem, serve him right, and I got mine. That about cover it, Detective?”
    “When do you get paid?”
    “When the building’s empty.”
    “I also asked why are they buying it.”
    “Yeah, well, that wasn’t the right question at the right time. The first day my old dad figured I was bright enough to jerk off and chew gum at the same time, he told me this. He said, The thing about land, son, is that they don’t make it no more. So if you want a big shiny building in the financial district to keep your internets and your gadgets and your fucking gold treasure in, well, the financial district ain’t going to grow more land for you to put it on. So you need to find an old building and knock it the fuck down and build over the hole.”
    “Give me the names of the people you’ve been dealing with at Vivicy.”
    Carman tensed up quickly. “Why?”
    “Because nothing’s getting knocked down until I say it is. Your building’s a major crime scene, and not one damn thing is going to happen to it before I want it to. Give me the names.”

Nine
    IT WAS getting harder and harder to find pay phones in Manhattan, and it was getting harder and harder for the hunter to see them.
    The hunter did not yet wish to resort to prepaid cell phones. If cornered on the subject, he’d be forced to admit that he was not yet completely conversant with the finer points of their operating parameters. Was it easier to pick a cell phone conversation out of the air than to hurriedly put a tap on a random pay phone line?
    Some days, obviously, it all bothered him less. The hunter didn’t realize it, but his opinion of those days changed like the wind. Some days, when he could hear only traffic and machines and the sound of synthetic soles on sidewalk, he wanted nothing more than the condition of living on Lenape Manhattan Island.
    The change for the phone flickered in his upturned palm. One moment coins, the next moment seashells. The hunter set his jaw, clamped down on his perception, and the coins stayed coins long enough for him to force them into the thin mouth of the machine. He summoned from a recess in his memory the telephone number of the first man, and dialed it. The phone made a noise that he supposed meant that the number didn’t work. He went to the next alcove in his mind and pulled the number of the second man.
    The hunter listened to ringing, and then clicking, and then a woman’s voice telling him his call was being transferred. A recording, he decided. The twenty-first century seemed very far from him today. The line rang again, a different sound.
    On the fourth ring, the second man said, “Andrew Machen.”
    “Do you recognize my voice?”
    An ice-pick pause. Then, through a hard swallow, “Yes, I recognize your voice. How did you—I mean, how can I help you?”
    The hunter smiled. They were still afraid of him.
    “Mr. Machen, I have been keeping things at a building on Pearl Street.” The hunter gave Machen the building number and the apartment number. “My things have been found by the police. I have watched them begin the process of carrying them out of the building. These things are mine. And in a way, they are yours too. They are the tools of my trade. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
    Machen’s breathing had been speeding up as the hunter spoke. Now he was fighting to fill his lungs enough to get through a full sentence. “That building. I’m buying it. My company’s buying it. The police killed someone there. Yesterday. Some shut-in lost his shit when the current owner