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D IOGENES P ENDERGAST WALKED ALONG Central Park South, slowly swinging a billy club by its leather strap and whistling “She Was Poor but She Was Honest,” a tune that seemed to be on everyone’s lips that season. He had temporarily exchanged his foppish dress for the uniform of the Metropolitan Police—a disguise that both made him forgettable and ensured he could do almost anything without arousing curiosity.

Not that there would be any witnesses: it was two in the morning, and he had only the gas lamps for company.

Ahead and to the right rose a dark outline that, he thought with distaste, resembled the “Big Ciggy”—the grotesque Skidmore, Owings a world nihilo ac malem .

He took a step back as this sudden, unexpected transport of emotion threatened to carry him over the edge. He stood still a moment, letting the strong wave of feeling pass and his breathing return to normal.

Now that everything was in place, he had only to attach fuses to each charge as he descended, each one of a length he’d already calculated. Not for the first time, he wondered why he was going for such overkill: the load beneath the roof was perfectly sufficient. But no: removing this excrescence in its entirety would be his opening gift—his housewarming present, so to speak—to 1881.

He slipped down into the tower, pulled the ceiling cover back into place, and picking up the dark lantern, descended the stairs one last time, uncoiling and attaching the fuses, ensuring that all his handiwork had been properly secreted away, before returning once again to the city.

His city.