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off together.
    “That’s so great,” she said. “He’s learning to trust Roger.”
    The Kid did not give his trust easily, but his circle was expanding. It
was
great.
    “Ahhh,” I sighed in a descending coda. “So tell me your news. You heard from the co-op, right?”
    She nodded. “They called. The secretary. What’s-her-name? She didn’t have to. She said there’ll be a letter.”
    The realtor had warned us. We had been denied by the co-op board.For the past two months we had been using every spare hour—and there had been few and those hard-won—to hunt for an apartment that would hold our combined family. The Kid and I shared a large one-bedroom with alcove in the Ansonia, a co-op run like a residential hotel. Skeli lived in a rambling wreck on 110th Street in a building that was owned by her ex-husband. She fully expected an eviction notice to arrive within weeks after the birth. Neither apartment would work. The Kid had to have his own room. We needed a three-bedroom.
    “Did she say why?”
    Skeli didn’t exactly answer the question. “She was nice. She voted for us, but it didn’t matter.”
    It wasn’t financial. I was being paid close to a million a year and I had an ironclad contract. We had references from Wall Street, Broadway, and even a letter from an FBI agent. The fact that Skeli and I were not married—we had both been married before and shared a distrust of the institution—would not have mattered in twenty-first-century Manhattan, nor would it have if we were multiracial, gay, or members of a Satan-worshipping cult. They didn’t know about the Kid’s condition, because I had not considered it to be any of their goddamn business, and it would have been illegal for them to consider it anyway. But the one line on the application that asked
Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
had been inescapable. And damning. In some circles, I was famous. Or infamous.
    “We could look at condos,” she said. “Or check out Queens.”
    “I grew up in Queens,” I said. “I’ve got nothing against it, but I’m not going back.”
    “Or farther out on Long Island.”
    The devil’s choice. The Long Island Rail Road or the Long Island Expressway. I would rather be drowned in Asiago cheese.
    “Or New Jersey,” I said.
    She laughed. “Now you’re being mean. Cut it out. We’ll figure this out.”
    Real estate in Manhattan. The shared obsession that binds us all. Iwondered if people in Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Paris spent as much time as New Yorkers did sharing horror stories of finding, maintaining, losing, or surviving in the quest for the perfect two-bedroom. They probably did, I thought. Paris, for sure.
    “Come on,” I said. “Let’s catch them up. I’ll buy you a frozen yogurt.” I signaled for the check.
    “You sure know how to treat a girl,” she said.

3
    W hen Virgil Becker’s father ran his investment bank over the cliff, I was called upon to help his son pick up the pieces. Virgil now owed me large. The contract said he had to pay me whether I showed up or not, but I was old-school. I showed up.
    “What are you working on?” Virgil asked.
    “Penny stock trading. There’s a broker out in Stony Brook who’s been putting his clients into some microstocks. Compliance cleared it, but I didn’t like the way it smelled. I did some looking into it, and now I think it stinks.”
    “See Aimee when we’re done. She can handle it.” He tapped a few keys on his computer. “I’ve got something else I want you to focus on.” The computer beeped at him—politely. “She’s expecting you.”
    “Listen, Virgil, this thing with the penny stocks could be toxic.”
    He wasn’t convinced. “How much money is involved?”
    Commissions on the trades had run to just over two million dollars. I did some quick math. “Proceeds of around one hundred mil.”
    He could tell that I wasn’t being entirely forthright. “How badly did the account get burned?”
    That was the oddest