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blankets, some plastic grocery bags filled with what appeared to be empty aluminum cans. I stared into the shadows a moment longer, half hoping I’d find a person there, half hoping I wouldn’t. Maybe it was more of a one-quarter, three-quarters split.
    Then the pile of blankets moved and I saw it wasn’t a pile of blankets at all. It was a man and a woman with a canvas tarp pulled over them. They sat up and blinked at me, the whites of their eyes glittering and wet in the dark. A moment later another set of eyes, smaller than the other two, appeared. The woman pushed the child back down and covered it with a corner of the tarp. I made a mental note to call the Department of Social Services the next morning.
    The man rose much more quickly than I expected and I was sure he’d smash his head on the underside of the stairs, but he stood without hesitation, his head stopping a fraction of an inch below the coarse concrete above him. He took a few steps forward and stopped three feet away from me. I knew immediately he wasn’t the man I’d seen in the subway station. He was older, thinner, and, if it was possible, a little scarier-looking. I’m not a small guy. I’m five-eleven, a hundred eighty pounds, in decent shape. But there was something intimidating about this man. Maybe it was simply the shadows that made me so nervous, and the way they seemed to cling to the man. But more likely it was the guy’s dead eyes.
    I shifted my own eyes to the darkness behind him, looking for others like him, but saw that he and the woman and child were alone. Except for me.
    I swallowed nervously and said, “I’m looking for a man.”
    “Wrong part of town for that,” he said in a phlegmy voice.
    I realized I should have thought about what I’d say if I actually found a homeless person. “No,” I said, “I’m looking for a particular man. He’s a…he lives on the street, I think.”
    He blinked at me.
    “Um,” I said, “maybe you’ve seen him. Or know him.”
    Silence. Staring. Churning in my stomach.
    I continued. “He’s a little taller than you, I’d say. Long hair, long beard. Stoops a little. I’ve seen him a few times down in the subways—the MGH Station, State Street, South Station.” I strained my memory for some other identifying feature. “I think he wears a Harvard sweatshirt of some kind.”
    The man regarded me impassively for a moment, then said, “I’m a BC man myself.”
    I looked down at his tattered Boston College sweatshirt.
    “I really need to find him,” I said.
    The man made a terrible snuffling sound, then spit something thick onto the ground right between us. “You got any money?”
    Why hadn’t I anticipated a moment like this? He’d want money for information, of course. God, I was doing badly here. I fumbled my wallet out of my coat pocket, keeping as tight a grip on it as I could, and extracted a ten-dollar bill. I took half a step forward and held it out. The man reached up and closed dirty fingers around it. Then he turned and walked back into the shadows.
    “Go away,” he said over his shoulder. It echoed under the ramp.
    “Wait a second,” I said. “Do you know the guy or not?”
    He turned back to face me. Then I saw the foot-long length of rusty metal pipe in his hand. “You’re lucky I didn’t take your wallet. Now go away. I won’t tell you again.”
    I looked at the man, his dead eyes, the metal pipe he held, and the woman peering out from behind his legs. I turned away and walked back toward the light across the street.

 
     
     
     
    FIVE
     
    I was having a dream. I knew I was. But still, the dream had terrible power. It disturbed me to my core, even though I knew I’d wake up at any moment and I wouldn’t be standing next to a drainage ditch beside Storrow Drive, looking down at the dead body of a homeless man lying in several inches of brown, brackish water, with slimy leaves the color of mud pasted to his puffy gray neck and cheek, his Harvard