The City of Comrades

In the slow swirl of Columbus Circle, at the southwest corner of Central Park, two seedy, sinister individuals could hold an exceedingly private conversation without drawing attention to themselves. There were many like them on the scene, in that month of June 1913, cast up from the obscurest depths of New York. They could revolve there for five or ten minutes, in company with other elements of the city's life, to be eliminated by degrees, sucked into other currents, forming new combinations or reacting to the old ones.