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the elements in a scarf and a long mud-spattered overcoat that might have seen duty in the trenches of the First World War. Cain felt a chill just looking at him, as if the old guy had managed to keep winter alive an extra month and carried the remnants around with him. His blinking eyes emanated an air of frailty. Only the stitching of his clothing seemed to be holding him together. Unbutton the coat and he might collapse into a pile of bones.
    “Good God. Is he even alive?”
    “Like I said. We didn’t exactly want to shove him out the door. If he’s a crackpot, call downstairs and I’ll send Maloney up.”
    Maloney. Now there was a fate Cain wouldn’t wish on anyone. A big, bluff patrolman with scabbed knuckles and a face the color of corned beef.
    “I’ll handle it.”
    Romo gently pointed the man toward Cain’s desk. The fellow sprang into motion with surprising agility, and with each successive step seemed to shed another year, so that by the time he reached the desk Cain was almost wondering if he was an actor, practicing for a role.
    “Have a seat.” Cain motioned toward a chair.
    The man pulled off his cap, unleashing a gust of boiled cabbage and wet wool. Up close his eyes were cloudless and blue, not frail at all. If his clothing said December, his irises spoke of mid-June, one of those mornings in early summer with bees buzzing and the sense that the day might last forever. He looked alert, intelligent, and, best of all, lucid. Whatever had brought him, he probably wasn’t a crank.
    “My thanks to you, Detective Cain, for agreeing to see me. I am here to do my duty as a citizen. In fact, I believe that I can assist you in one of your current inquiries.”
    Cain, just beginning to decipher local accents, couldn’t place this one. The man’s sentences had started somewhere in Russia, doubled back toward Germany, and had even seemed to detour briefly through Rome before coming to rest in what sounded like Brooklyn, a shout from a clerk in a deli.
    “First, tell me your name.”
    “Ah, yes.”
    He withdrew a white business card from his overcoat. It was curiously uninformative—raised black lettering on a blank background, with the name DANZIGER on top, all in caps, and the word “Information” underneath. That was all. No address. No phone number.
    Cain turned it over. Blank. He took out his notebook.
    “I need a
full
name. And your place of residence.”
    The man frowned, as if this was more than he’d bargained for.
    “Maximilian Danziger.”
    “Do people call you Max?”
    “They call me Danziger.”
    “Of course. And your address?”
    “Rivington Street. Number one seventy-four.”
    The Lower East Side. He’d come a long way, especially for such an early arrival.
    “You live in the seventh precinct. What business brings you up here?”
    Danziger leaned forward, blue eyes glittering as he turned his cap in his hands.
    “I am here to offer my assistance in the case of the corpse found on the sixth of April, at the docks along the Hudson. It was your first day on duty, if I am not mistaken?”
    There was no hint of smugness, humor, or triumph in the man’s eyes. Just the same solid resolve as before. Cain glanced again at the business card.
    “What’s your line of work, Mr. Danziger? Are you some kind of private dick?”
    “Dick?” Furrowed brow, followed by dawning comprehension. “I see. You mean like in the pictures. A private eye. As with W. C. Fields,
The Bank Dick.
” He smiled appreciatively. “No. Not a dick. But I have a name for you, the name of the man you found in the river. I believe I may also have a few ideas as to why he was killed. Leads, as a dick might say.”
    Cain tried to not get his hopes up. Maybe the fellow was a nut, after all. But for the moment he was Cain’s only chance to put his one murder case back on the duty board before Mulhearn shipped it out at the end of the day.
    “Let’s start with the name.”
    “Werner Hansch.” Danziger spelled