"Are you English?" the girl asked me. "You have an English accent."
Her voice came shudderingly from behind the sleek black satin mask. I fancied her teeth must be chattering. Eyes that were perhaps blue searched my face from behind the black gauze covering the eyeholes of the mask. I told her she'd guessed right. She stood close to me. "Will you come to my place tonight?" she asked rapidly. "I can't thank you now. And there's something you can help me about."
My arm, still lightly circling her waist, felt her body trembling. I was answering the plea in that as much as in her voice when I said, "Certainly." She gave me an address south of Inferno, an apartment number and a time. She asked me my name and I told her.
"Hey, you!"
I turned obediently to the policeman's shout. He shooed away the small clucking crowd of masked women and barefaced men. Coughing from the smoke that the black coupe had thrown out, he asked for my papers. I handed him the essential ones.
He looked at them and then at me. "British Barter? How long will you be in New York?"
Suppressing the urge to say, "For as short a time as possible," I told him I'd be here for a week or so.
"May need you as a witness," he explained. "Those kids can't use smoke on us. When they do that, we pull them in."
He seemed to think the smoke was the bad thing. "They tried to kill the lady," I pointed out.