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insisted there could be no insoluble problems in a city as complex as New York, no matter how unmanageable it might seem. It was simply a matter of finding the right minds, applying the minds to the problem, and implementing the solutions the minds came up with. Which was why, a year after Linc’s heart simply stopped beating on a beach in Jamaica on the first day of the only vacation they’d ever taken, Eve had agreed to run for City Council. Using only her own money and refusing any donation of more than ten dollars, she had easily gotten more votes than all the rest of the candidates combined.
    Ever since, the doors to her office had been open to all the people who had no other access to the power structure of their city. She rarely worked less than sixteen hours a day, and never took a day off. And every day, it seemed as though there were more problems to be addressed, and less time in which to address them.
    The intercom buzzed a second time, and Eve punched the button that would allow her assistant to speak directly to her. “What is it, Tommy?”
    “Channel 4,” Tommy replied. “You’ll want to see it.”
    Barely taking her eyes from the final revision of the speech she was due to give that evening, Eve switched on the television and flipped it to Channel 4. She recognized the face on the television screen—Cindy Allen, who had nearly been murdered in the 110th Street subway station last fall. But it wasn’t Cindy who was speaking—it was her husband. “—might as well have just let him go! How is anyone supposed to feel safe on the streets when—”
    Her eyes still on her speech, Eve Harris switched the TV off and punched the intercom button. “How much time did he get?” she asked with no preamble. After five years as her assistant, Tommy would know exactly what she meant.
    “He’ll be out in seven months, five if he behaves himself.”
    Eve sighed heavily—if Jeff Converse had been black instead of white, he’d have been lucky to get out in fifteen years. And starting tomorrow morning, the families and friends of half her constituents would start calling her office, demanding to know why their sons, lovers, and fathers were sitting in jail for years while the white boy only got a slap on the wrist.
    And Eve knew she would have no answers.
    It was just one more thing that wasn’t fair.
    One more thing she needed to work on.
    Putting the speech aside, she picked up the phone and dialed the D.A.’s office. “What can you tell me about the Converse sentence?” she asked when Perry Randall came on the line. She listened to him speak for nearly five minutes, then shook her head. “What am I supposed to tell my people, Perry?” she asked. “If he was black, they’d have put him away for the rest of his life.” She barely paused, knowing the prosecutor would have no answer. “Oh, I’m not blaming you. It’s not your fault, is it?” She dropped the phone back on the hook, then stared at it, shaking her head. “That’s the bitch of it,” she muttered to herself. “Nothing is ever anybody’s fault.”
    And that, she realized as she went back to work on her speech, was exactly why everything she did was so important.

    B y eight that evening the wind was whipping a cold rain through Foley Square and the park around City Hall, but Eve Harris didn’t even think about hailing a cab, let alone using one of the city cars that was always at her disposal. Instead she headed for the subway station, her head lowered against the wind and rain, and scurried down the stairs along with a smattering of other people whose overload of work had kept them in their offices three hours past the time when everyone else had gone home. Not that looking for a cab or taking a city car would have helped—the cabs had all vanished into the black hole that sucked up every cab in the city within minutes after the first drops of rain began to fall, and taking a car would have made the trip up to the Waldorf-Astoria