The jazz played from a corner speakeasy as Angela Ferrara stood on Fifth Avenue and watched the neon signs blink above her head like stars that had fallen to earth and forgotten their purpose. It was 1925, and New York was a city made of light and lies, and she was an Italian immigrant wife trying to find her husband in a city that had rules for people like them and rules for people like everyone else, and the two sets of rules never touched.

Luca had been arrested at seven in the evening. He and his father had been walking home from a construction site on Forty-second Street when a police car pulled alongside them and men in plain clothes jumped out and grabbed them. No warrant. No explanation beyond the words robbery and bank and Marcano's office, said in a tone that suggested the words themselves were evidence enough.

Angela had been at a hair salon on East Thirty-third, sitting under a dryer with aluminum caps on her head, when a boy knocked on the salon's front door and tapped the glass three times, the way Luca had taught him to tap: three quick strikes, like a heartbeat.

Your mama's boys are in trouble, the boy had said. And then he had run.

She had left the salon without removing the caps. Her hair was still steaming under aluminum while she ran to the bus stop, while she rode downtown through neighborhoods that got richer the further south she went, while she stepped onto Fifth Avenue and looked up at the neon and felt the weight of a city that did not know her name and did not care.

She found Robert Hastings at the Immigration Service office on Chambers Street. Hastings was a man who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had never once considered the possibility that other people's mouths were empty. He sat behind a desk of polished oak and listened to her with the patient boredom of a man who had heard every story in the book and found them all wanting.

"Mrs. Ferrara," he said, "I understand your distress. But the facts are clear. Your husband and his father are accused of robbing a bank. This is a serious charge. Serious charges require serious responses."

"They did not do it."

Hastings sighed. It was a theatrical sigh, the kind a man performed for an audience even when there was no one there. "Mrs. Ferrara, I am not a judge. I do not make decisions about guilt or innocence. My office deals with immigration status and compliance. And let me tell you something about compliance: it is much easier when the accused cooperate."

"What does that mean?"

He leaned forward. His voice dropped to a murmur that was meant to sound confidential but sounded instead like a man counting money in his head. "Mrs. Ferrara, cases have different outcomes depending on the resources available to the defendants. Legal representation. Character witnesses. Community support. Things that cost money. Things that immigrants like your husband do not always have."

Angela felt the words land inside her like stones dropped into a well. She listened to them sink. She waited for the splash. It never came. The well was too deep.

"If we had money," she said slowly, "the case would be different?"

Hastings smiled. It was a smile that had been practiced in mirrors and refined through years of use on people who were exactly like her: desperate, determined, and ultimately powerless. "Mrs. Ferrara, I am telling you that the justice system is not a simple thing. It is a complex machine with many parts. And like any machine, it requires maintenance. Fuel. Resources."

She stood up. Her chair scraped the floor. Hastings did not look up from the paper he was reading.

"Thank you," she said. And she meant it, in the way that thanking a storm for raining is genuine and useless at the same time.

She walked out of the building and onto Chambers Street and into the evening. The city was alive. Jazz poured from doorways. Laughter rose from basement bars. A street performer played a trumpet on the corner, and the notes were bright and desperate and beautiful, the sound of people trying to make something beautiful out of something that wanted to be ugly.

Angela walked north. She walked past department stores with windows full of dresses she would never wear and cars she would never buy and lives she would never live. She walked past libraries with marble columns and men in top hats and women with hats that were themselves works of art. She walked past everything.

At a bar on Broadway, she found Jimmy, the owner. Jimmy was Italian, like Luca. He had come to America twenty years ago with nothing but a suitcase and a dream and had built a bar that was barely profitable and barely legal and barely worth anything at all.

Jimmy listened to her in silence. He poured himself a glass of whiskey. He poured her one too. She drank it in one swallow and did not flinch at the burn.

"There is a meeting tomorrow," Jimmy said. "At the courthouse. Judge Vanderbilt presides. He is—how shall I say this? He is a man of his class. Old money. His family has been here since before your family was a concept."

"Can he be changed?" Angela asked. "Can the case be moved to a different judge?"

Jimmy laughed. It was not a funny laugh. It was the laugh of a man who had been asking the same question for twenty years and had never liked the answer. "Mrs. Ferrara, in this city, the rich men decide the cases of the poor men. That is not a theory. That is the way the city works. Every day. Every case. Every person who does not have money walks into a courtroom and knows, before the judge even sits down, what the outcome will be."

"Then what do we do?"

Jimmy looked at her. His eyes were tired. But underneath the tiredness was something else. Something that had kept him running an illegal bar for twenty years despite raids and bribes and threats and the constant possibility that one night, the door would not open in the morning.

"We do what Italians have always done in this country," he said. "We wait. We hope. And when the verdict comes, we go home and we cook supper and we pretend that tomorrow will be different."

He paused. His mouth twisted. "But I will tell you something, Mrs. Ferrara. Tomorrow will not be different. It will never be different. Not for people like your husband. Not for people like us."

Angela stood up. She put the empty whiskey glass on the bar. She walked out into the jazz and the neon and the lies.

The courthouse was a white building on Foley Square, all columns and steps and the kind of architecture designed to make ordinary people feel small. Angela arrived at eight in the morning. The courtroom was not open yet. She stood in the corridor and listened to voices behind closed doors: lawyers conferencing, clerks preparing, the low murmur of a machine waking up.

At nine, the door opened and Judge Vanderbilt entered. He was a tall man with silver hair and a face that had never known hunger. He wore his robe like a crown. He sat on the bench, adjusted his glasses, and looked at the docket.

"Case one," he said. "State versus Luca Ferrara and Antonio Ferrara."

Angela stood at the defendant's table. Luca looked at her. His lip was bleeding. His father sat beside him, small and grey and coughing.

"Mr. Ferrara," Vanderbilt said. His voice was smooth, cultured, the voice of a man who had been educated at Yale and had never once had to shout to be heard. "How do you plead?"

"Not guilty," Luca said. "We did not do it."

Vanderland nodded. He did not look at Luca. He looked at the prosecutor. "The state's position?"

"Your Honour, the evidence is clear. Two witnesses place the defendants at the scene. A sum of money matching the robbed amount was found in the defendants' vehicle. We request a swift conviction."

Swift. The word hung in the air like smoke.

"Mr. Ferrara," Vanderbilt said, turning to Luca for the first time. "Do you have any witnesses?"

Luca looked at Angela. Angela looked at Jimmy, who had come to the courthouse because he could not stay away. Jimmy shook his head slightly: no witnesses.

"No," Luca said.

Vanderbilt nodded. "The court finds the defendants guilty. Sentence: one year at hard labour for Luca Ferrara. Six months for Antonio Ferrara. Bail: three thousand dollars each."

Three thousand dollars. It was a number that existed in a different universe from the one Angela lived in. It might as well have been three billion.

The bailiffs came. They put chains on Luca's wrists. They put chains on his father's wrists. The chains were heavy and cold and made a sound as they walked that Angela would hear in her dreams for the rest of her life: clink, drag, clink, drag.

Luca looked back at her one last time. His mouth formed a word she could not hear over the chains. But she knew what it was. He had always said it when he left for work in the morning. When he kissed her goodbye. When he held their baby.

Mamma.

She stood in the courtroom after they were gone. The judge was already reading the next case. The prosecutor was packing his briefcase. The clerk was stamping papers. The machine was turning.

Angela walked out of the courthouse and onto Foley Square. The morning sun was bright. The city was awake and alive and beautiful and cruel.

She walked north on Broadway. She passed a newsstand selling copies of the daily papers with headlines about stock markets and prohibition and the latest jazz sensation. She passed a department store with a window full of flapper dresses and pearl necklaces and lives that looked like dreams.

Behind her, a speakeasy was playing jazz. The music followed her down the street, bright and desperate and beautiful, the sound of a city trying to make something beautiful out of something that wanted to be ugly.

Angela Ferrara walked into the light and the noise and the lies of Fifth Avenue, and she did not look back.