I took another taxi to the address the nurse had given me, far downtown, near the Brooklyn Bridge. The driver, a Latino from Central America, was quickly lost in the maze of Lower East Sidestreets. I paid him off and walked several blocks, searching for Aretha’s apartment.

There was no such address. The information was fake. I stopped on a street corner, beginning to feel conspicuous in my business suit where everyone else was wearing jeans, fatigues, tee shirts, even shawls that had once been tablecloths. I wasn’t afraid of being mugged; I suppose I should have been, but I wasn’t. I was concentrating too hard on trying to figure out why Aretha had given the hospital a phony address. I was certain that the nurse had told me the truth; it was Aretha herself who had falsified her address.

Underground. What did she mean by that? Underground. I looked at the time. She had left the hospital nearly an hour ago. In an hour they could have gone anywhere in this vast, teeming city.

“Hey, that’s a nice watch you got, man.”

I felt the prick of a knifepoint against my back as the foul breath of the man who held it warmed my neck.

“I really like that watch, man,” he said, low, trying to sound menacing.

I was in no mood to be mugged on a busy street corner in broad daylight. This fool was standing close behind me, pressing his knife into the small of my back, trying to rip me off without letting anyone walking past know what was happening.

“Just gimme the watch, shitface, and keep your mouth shut.”

I lifted my hands as if to slip the watch off my wrist, then whirled and gave him an elbow in the abdomen and a backhand chop across the bridge of his nose. The knife clattered to the pavement. The blow to his middle had cut off his wind so he couldn’t even yelp. He sank to his feet, nose broken, blood gushing over his ragged clothes and spattering the cement. I grabbed a handful of his filthy hair and jerked his head back. His face was covered with blood.