Una passed a sleepless night in her cell. Every time she closed her eyes, she had visions of the steamboat that would ferry her away to an abysmal life on Blackwell’s Island. She remembered the icy perspiration that slickened the workhouse walls when she’d landed there at sixteen thanks to that phony disorderly conduct charge. She remembered the bathwater, thick and lively with other prisoners’ filth, that she’d been forced to bathe in. Remembered the flea-infested straw that covered the ground of her overcrowded cell. The hours spent weaving rag carpet with bone-chilled hands. The windowless “dark cell” she’d been confined in for sassing the watchman.

Two women had died during her short sentence there—one from dysentery, the other from the dank cold. Rounders, those who wound up in the workhouse every few months, told her things were just as bad in summer when the sun baked the building, and cockroaches overran the place. The penitentiary on the far end of the Island, where more hardened criminals like those convicted of murder were sent, was rumored to be worse still.

But Marm Blei would intervene before she ever got there, Una reminded herself, rolling from one side to the other atop the hard, narrow bench. Even if that traitorous Deidre didn’t tell her of Una’s lot, Marm Blei would know by morning. She’d arrive first thing with her gaggle of expensive, uptown lawyers in tow. They’d make easy work of the charges against her. After all, she hadn’t actually committed any crime.

But dawn came, a pale trickle of light through the iron bars of her high- up window, and Marm Blei didn’t arrive. It was still the Sabbath, Una reminded herself. The jail keeper waddled by to collect her sour-smelling chamber bucket and later with a ladle of water for breakfast. Una paced her cell, pausing every time she heard the door to the main hall above open. She watched the light outside her windows shift and brighten, the delicate crystals of ice that had gathered on the glass overnight melt away.

At last, long after sundown, Marm Blei did arrive. Alone. Perhaps her lawyers were on their way. Or upstairs already negotiating with the sergeant. Una rushed to her cell door.

“Sheifale,” Marm Blei said, with a slow wag of her head. “Klug, klug, un fort a nar.”

“Did Deidre tell—”

Marm Blei held up her hand. “I heard about everything.” “They’re charging me with murder.”

“I know.”

“But you’ll get me out, right? On bail, at least, until the charges are dropped. You know I’m good for it.”

“I can, sheifale. But I won’t.”

Una rattled her head. Had she heard right?

“Deidre told me you were meeting Traveling Mike to fence some goods.

A pair of ruby cuff links, I think she said.” “That’s not—”

“Shveig!” she said in her cut-through-stone voice. Una fell silent. After a moment, Marm Blei wagged her head again and continued more softly. “Of all the girls, Una, you were my favorite. Such promise, you had. But no patience, I see. And no loyalty.”

“It was nothing. I just wanted to see what Traveling Mike would offer. I wasn’t going to—”

“One rotten apple spoils the rest.” She started for the stairs. “Good-bye, Una.”

“You’re going to leave me here to stand trial for murder over a lousy pair of cuff links?” Una called after her.

Marm Blei did not turn around but said over her shoulder, “You’re a smart girl, Una. Too smart sometimes for your own good. You’ll figure something out.”

Una’s stomach dropped. She rattled her cell door so fiercely the rusty hinges cried out in protest. For years she’d given Marm Blei everything she had. Every silk purse and gold watch and silver bracelet she lifted. And in return, she got peanuts. Meanwhile Marm Blei dined on fine china plates (stolen of course, but still), enjoying the protection of her thugs and fancy lawyers. That protection was supposed to extend to Una as well. That was the deal.

The jail keeper hollered from the top of the stairs for Una to quit her racket or else. Or else what? Una was already facing murder charges. But she released the bars and stepped back from her door. Rule number four: Don’t draw attention to yourself. Besides, she needed to think. To figure a way out of this goddamn mess. Easier to do that here than in the back of the Black Maria on her way to the Tombs.

But corralling her thoughts proved impossible. Marm Blei’s words had struck her like a horse hoof to the gut. Una still hadn’t recovered her breath. This was why she didn’t trust people. Why she worked alone. Why she’d gone to see Traveling Mike in the first place. Marm Blei felt threatened by her. By her potential. Well, Una would show her. When she got out of here, she’d double down on her efforts, perfect her con, move beyond the town- toddlers to bigger, richer prey. Make Marm Blei green with envy over all the goods she was turning.

Una brought her hands to her face and gave her cheeks a sharp pat. Riches and revenge would have to wait. First she had to free herself. She walked in slow circles around the cell. What were her assets? Brass knuckles, a matchbook, enough magazine pages for a hundred trips to the privy, and Barney’s damned pin. Nothing of much use. What she really needed was money. Enough to bribe the guards or pay for a half-decent skinner. But even if she had that kind of brass—which she didn’t, not even in her secret tin—how would she get her hands on it from behind cell bars? No, she’d have to find a chance to flee and figure the rest out in hiding.

* * *

Night passed into morning, and she still didn’t have a solid plan. Officer Simms lumbered down the stairs and collected her for transport. As he locked a pair of cold, metal handcuffs around her wrists, an idea sparked in Una’s mind. Barney’s pin was too fragile to pick the lock of her cell door or the Black Maria’s fat iron padlock. But it might work on the handcuffs. And Officer Simms, lug that he was, had done her the great favor of cuffing her hands in the front instead of behind her back where she wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing.

Now all Una needed was a sliver of time—thirty seconds would be enough—when she wasn’t guarded or locked behind a door.

But Officers Simms didn’t let go or even loosen his grip about her arm as he dragged her from the cell, up the stairs, and outside to the awaiting transport. Now she’d have twin bruises, one on each arm, thanks to his mean sausage fingers. She’d hoped a melee in the hall or some disturbance out on the street would provide her the opportunity to run. But none of the drunks or tramps or madmen she’d been counting on appeared. The street vendors crowded along the sidewalk weren’t bickering. The horses weren’t biting or whinnying. Not even the newsboys, who were always up to mischief, drew Simms’s gaze.

“Looking forward to seeing you at the trial,” he said, hoisting her into the back of the Black Maria like she were a sack of rotten onions. “Always makes my day to watch you crooks squirm beneath them bright lights.”

Una landed in the wagon on her hands and knees. If she didn’t escape now, there was little chance of doing so at the Tombs, where twice as many coppers milled about. So much for waiting for a distraction. She’d have to cause one herself. She hauled herself up onto one of the splintery bench seats and reached into her pocket. Just as Officer Simms was closing the door, she dropped her brass knuckles onto the floor and wedged them with the toe of her boot into the jamb. The heavy door shuddered, unable to close fully. Officer Simms tried again. This time the entire wagon rattled with the force of his effort. But the knuckles remained, now partially embedded in the wood of the jamb.

He cussed and swung the door open, glaring at Una. When he looked down to see what the trouble was, she kicked him in the face. Officer Simms staggered back, blood spurting from his nose. Una leaped from the back of the wagon and ran. She didn’t look back. Nor did she slow to get her bearings.

Churchgoers crowded the sidewalks in their Sunday best. Carts and buggies lumbered down the streets. The snow had begun to melt, leaving the ground muddy and slick. Una darted, slipped, and skidded around the obstacles. Her handcuffed wrists made it all the more difficult to pick up speed.

Several minutes on and her side ached sharply. Her wheezing breath tasted of blood. Shouts and whistles sounded behind her.

She turned down one street and up another. For a moment, the clamor of her pursuers faded, only to redouble a few moments later. Soon they’d be coming for her from all directions.

She needed a place to hide and quick. But her air-starved brain lagged behind her feet, noticing an open window or overgrown bush only after she raced past them. Alleyways overhung with laundry branched off from the streets, but she didn’t dare go down them. Not without a better idea of where she was. Otherwise she risked trapping herself at a dead end.

Her leg muscle cramped, forcing Una to slow. The distance she’d managed to put between her and the coppers would narrow to nothing if she couldn’t work the cramp out soon. She stopped long enough to give her leg a quick rub and gulp down a breath. The air smelled sour here, like a rotting egg. The Gas House District!

Una hobbled onward, but this time with purpose. A scrim of gray smog belched from the nearby gasworks, blotting out the sky. The fumes clung to everything here—the dilapidated tenements, the streetlamps and telegraph poles, the storefronts and their dingy awnings. It wasn’t a place one lingered by choice, and Una hoped that would play to her favor.

She hurried up a broad avenue, then down an intersecting street toward the river. Even without the aid of street signs, she knew where she was. At Avenue A she hesitated. Across the street lay Tompkins Square. With its many trees and bushes, it would be the perfect place to hide. But instead of crossing the street and escaping into the park’s wilderness, Una turned left and then made a quick left again. If Una thought Tompkins Square the perfect place to hide, the coppers would think so too, and in a matter of minutes, the park would be crawling with them.

Instead, she slipped through a break in the rusted fence along Eleventh Street and into the old Catholic cemetery. New burials had been banned in Manhattan for decades, and the cemetery had become a run-down, desolate place. Cracked tombstones listed in the ground. Others had fallen over completely. Bits of trash and dead leaves crunched beneath Una’s feet. She crossed herself, then hurried along. Between the smog from the gasworks and shadows cast by the surrounding tenements and saloons, it felt like dusk had fallen though it couldn’t be much past noon.

When Una was a child, her father had filled her head with stories and warnings about the dead. Beware the spirit of the last corpse buried in a cemetery, for it watches over the dead, waiting its turn to ascend to heaven. If you stumbled over a grave and fell, you’d be dead within a year. To whistle in a cemetery was to invite the devil. She knew these were just old-

world superstitions, but the skin on her arms prickled nonetheless, and she trod with extra care to avoid falling.

She’d take angry spirits over coppers any day. At the far corner of the cemetery, Una found a tombstone large enough to conceal her from view should anyone from the street peer inside. She hunched down behind it and retrieved Barney’s pin.