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into the day.
    A lineup would be a new experience for me. I told myself it might be interesting. I was trying not to think about the young girl in the hospital, in a coma, the real reason I was going to a police precinct first thing on a workday.
    As I hurried into the station, the name of the detective contact in my hand, I walked right into a little crowd of an officer with Ms. Talbot and Mr. Wilson from the library. We shook hands politely, like the cordial strangers we were.
    â€œYou remember what I said?” Wilson said. “It’s those guys, the ones at your car. They been following her…”
    â€œSir!” The officer snapped it out. “You remember what I said? We can’t have any talk here. You come on with me now. Yes, you too, miss.”
    Into a small room, cement block, drab and crowded. A woman with a no-nonsense air came in and introduced herself as Sergeant Asher. She explained what we would be doing, reminded us this was an important case, and we were led off again, this time separately. I was glad I had work with me. I am never without it, because I am never caught up, let alone ahead. I would make the most of my waiting time. And then I wouldn’t have to think about where I was and why I was there.
    A few pages into a scholarly source on Brownsville crime in the 1930s, when mob activities were a part of Brownsville life, I asked myself what in the world was I thinking?
    I would have been better off at this moment with almost any other topic. A fashion magazine would have been good. Even a nice serious work on something far removed. Say, the Dutch in old New York. But not this subject, in this place. The building was from a later era, but I could imagine a few ghosts here, Kid Twist Reles and Pep Strauss and Tick Tock Tannenbaum, smiling at the cops, offering them a cigar and swearing to them they were on the other side of Brooklyn when the car was stolen and the body loaded into the backseat.
    ***
    I shook my head and reminded myself I am a scholar, not a science fiction writer or a superstitious dimwit. There are no ghosts. I took out my laptop and started adding some scholarly notes to work I had already done. This fact. That date. Anecdotes, with the note, “Possible urban folklore.” Apocryphal would have been even more scholarly, but it seemed ridiculously high flown in the context, which was Brooklyn tough guys who could not write a threatening note and get the spelling right.
    Ten pages into my source material, twenty-three notes in my database, an officer came to get me. I was led to a dark room with a big internal window and they told me what to do.
    Because four boys had threatened me, we would do this four times. I was calm and cold. I had seen a TV program about mistaken identification by witnesses but I knew I could identify two of them at least, the one who had grabbed my arm, and the one who talked most. The others maybe not.
    So the first four were all the same size and age and color, muscular older teens, variants of a medium complexion. I had a minute of panic. What if I get it wrong? And then I closed my eyes, and thought of a voice saying, “Maybe we got to take her somewhere and search her.” And his hand on my arm.
    And there he was, a smile that only moved his lips. A nose that might have been broken.
    I snapped my eyes open and saw him. “Number three.”
    â€œSure?”
    â€œI’m sure.”
    The second group was harder. It could have been any of them, none of them, all of them. I said so, apologetically, and the voice said, “Don’t worry about it. Are you sure?”
    â€œI’m sure.”
    The whole group walked off. Was one of them the one? I reminded myself that if I did not know I could not say.
    The next one was easier. He was the one who did most of the talking, the one who called me “Little lady.” It was not an endearment, not the way he said it. I had a very good look at him.
    That day he