The club smelled of stale beer and cheaper perfume, and Vicky Malone knew every face in it because she'd been pouring drinks for them since she was eighteen. At twenty-three, she had perfected the art of smiling at men who wanted something from her while making it perfectly clear she wanted something from them in return.

Vicky Malone was pretty in the way that Chicago pretty was pretty—not the polished, expensive kind you saw on Madison Avenue posters, but the sharp, dangerous kind that came from growing up on the wrong side of State Street and learning fast that pretty got you noticed but clever kept you alive.

Her nickname was Sweetcheeks. She hated it. She didn't correct people. That was the problem with Chicago—everyone called you something and you just learned to live with it, like the cold or the wind or the smell of the stockyards on a hot day.

David Shaw moved into the apartment above the tailor's shop on Roosevelt Road in October of 1953. He was tall and thin and wore glasses that made him look like a professor, which was ridiculous because he didn't look like a professor—he looked like someone who had escaped from a courtroom and was still looking over his shoulder.

He came to the club that first Friday. Just sat in the corner with a whiskey and a notebook and watched everybody. Vicky watched him watching everybody.

What's he doing? she asked Gertie, who had been pouring drinks in this bar longer than Vicky had been alive.

Gertie looked up from polishing a glass. Looks like a statistician to me. Or a bookkeeper. Or a man running from somebody.

Vicky decided to find out. She walked over with two whiskeys—one for her, one for him—and set them on the counter.

You look like a man who needs company, she said.

David Shaw looked at her. Not at her face, not at her body. At her face, and then past it, the way a man looks at something that doesn't fit the pattern he expected.

I don't need company, he said. But I appreciate the whiskey.

She sat down. This was not how it was supposed to go. Men either hit on her or ignored her. Nobody just appreciated the whiskey.

What are you writing? she asked.

Everything, he said, tapping the notebook.

Everything?

Everyone. The people in this neighborhood. Who owes who. Who controls who. What makes the machine run.

She stared at him. You keep a notebook on everyone in the neighborhood?

It's called research, he said.

It's called being a freak, she said pleasantly.

He smiled. It was the first time she had seen him smile, and it transformed his face in a way that made her heart do something she didn't expect.

Tell me about yourself, he said.

I'm a barmaid, she said. I'm twenty-three, I live above the bakery on Wentworth, and I can calculate a tip in three seconds flat. I'm not interesting.

You're very interesting, he said. And you're lying about not being interesting. Interesting people don't tell you they're not interesting.

Vicky Malone sat very still. Nobody had ever analyzed her like this. Not her employers, not her lovers, not even her mother. David Shaw was looking at her the way a biologist looks at a specimen under a microscope—curious, detached, and somehow devastatingly intimate.

Over the next six weeks, something between them grew. It wasn't romance. Not exactly. It was a trade. She gave him information—the bar was the best intelligence network in the neighborhood, and she knew everything that happened behind every counter. He gave her something she hadn't had in her entire life: someone who treated her like a person.

Not a pretty girl. Not a body. A person with a mind.

What's in the notebook? she asked him one night, when the club was empty and the neon sign outside was flickering through the window like a heartbeat.

He was quiet for a long time. Then he said: A map. Of this neighborhood. Not the streets. The power structure. Who has leverage over who. Who's connected to whom. Who's afraid of whom.

Who wrote it?

Nobody wrote it. It wrote itself. Every conversation, every deal, every whisper in a dark corner. I just organize it.

And what are you going to do with it?

That depends, he said. On who's listening.

She felt a cold finger trace down her spine. Not fear. Not exactly. Something worse than fear—curiosity.

What's on page forty-seven? she asked.

He closed the notebook. You don't want to know.

Try me.

He opened it to page forty-seven and pushed it across the table. It was a list of names. Her name was on it.

Vicky Malone, he read. Age twenty-three. Occupation: bartender. Assets: extensive social network, photographic memory for names and faces, ability to extract information from reluctant sources, no known allegiances. Liabilities: economic insecurity, romantic entanglements with multiple subjects of interest, tendency toward impulsiveness.

He looked at her. Value to the network: approximately 8,500 dollars per year, depending on reliability.

What does that mean? she whispered.

It means, he said carefully, that you are a valuable person in this neighborhood. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on who you ask.

She stood up. The stool creaked beneath her.

You put me in your book like I'm a product, she said.

I put everyone in my book, he said. Including myself.

Page one, she said. What's on page one?

He flipped to the first page and read: David Shaw. Age thirty-one. Occupation: independent researcher. Assets: analytical mind, photographic memory, fluency in three languages. Liabilities: unknown origins, past professional entanglements of questionable legality, tendency toward obsession. Value: incalculable. Depends on who's asking.

Vicky looked at him. Really looked at him, the way he had been looking at her. And she saw something behind his eyes that she recognized. It was the same thing she felt every night when she poured drinks for men she didn't like and smiled at men she couldn't afford and wondered what would happen if she just stopped—stopped pouring, stopped smiling, stopped pretending.

What happens if I tell Big Tony Moretti about this book? she said quietly.

He didn't flinch. He just looked at her.

He'd kill me, he said. And he'd probably kill you too, because you told him.

What happens if I tell Detective Morrison?

He'd confiscate it. You'd be charged with conspiracy. I'd disappear. Same result, different path.

Then what do I do?

He stood up and walked to the window. Chicago was dark outside—the neon from the club reflecting in puddles on Roosevelt Road, the occasional car sliding past like a black beetle.

You have a choice, he said. That's what I want you to understand. You always had a choice. You just never had anyone ask you to make one.

She looked at the notebook. She looked at him. She looked at the whiskey that was still half full on the table.

What's your choice? she said.

His voice was very soft. My choice was to meet you. Everything else was inevitable.

She took the notebook from the table and opened it to a random page. A page about Gertie. A page about Tony Moretti. A page about the police captain who took envelopes every Tuesday and Thursday. A page about the rent boys on Halsted and the bookmakers on Taylor and the politicians who owned all of them.

She closed the notebook and held it against her chest.

I want you to teach me how to read this, she said.

He looked at her. For the first time since he had walked into the club, David Shaw looked afraid.

Vicky, he said, you don't know what you're asking.

I know exactly what I'm asking, she said. I'm asking you to teach me how to read. Same as before. Only this time the book is the whole damn city.

She set the notebook on the table between them like a bet. Like a challenge. Like the first move in a game neither of them had ever played.

Start tomorrow, she said. Six o'clock. And bring more whiskeys.

He nodded slowly. Six o'clock.

She walked home alone through the wet streets of Chicago, the neon flickering above her, and for the first time in her life, Vicky Malone didn't feel like Sweetcheeks the barmaid or the girl nobody took seriously or the girl who was pretty but not smart and smart but not pretty.

She felt like a player. And the board was the whole damn city.