The Coming

Ybor Lopez

Ybor woke to the chiming and looked at the clock set into the wall, as if it might reveal a surprise: 0700 1 NOV 54, one month after he’d been arrested.

He put his feet on the cold cement floor and rubbed his face. The walls were blue this morning. Powder blue or baby blue. It was better than the pink.

The other inmates were making getting-up noises. He added his bit to the symphony of splashes and flushes. Brushed his teeth; rubbed shaving cream on and rinsed off his stubble. He sat back down.

At least he had a measure of privacy, behind his white-painted bars, since Manny had walked. Manny, who until two days ago had occupied the cell across the way, was a wild-eyed kid from Ohio, come to Florida for the drugs. Wound up in this “pussy prison,” no walls. Just a white line painted on the ground. Cross that line and they send you to a real prison. He’d rather put up with the bullshit, thank you.

So Manny might be in Raiford by now, four in a cell with murderers and rapists. Or he might be back in Dayton. He’d left inside a driverless bread truck. It probably took him exactly as far as the gate.

What to do for the hour before the door unlocked for breakfast? He was allowed to keep two books at a time. Biophysics of Cell Formation and Don Quijote, Segunda Parte. Neither one appealed this early.

He lay back down and tried to remember heaven. He would do his two years and go out and score again, if not José y Maria, then White Cloud or Vista Interminable, the other local sperm-based DDs. The very notion of rehab revealed their ignorance. Like being rehabilitated from being a twin. From being human.

There had been no physical withdrawal. He’d listened to the agonies men went through in the other cells, and felt compassion for them, but not empathy. His loss was deep and spiritual, like losing a parent or a brother. It didn’t make him scream or cry or puke. It made him patient in his grief. If you lost a person, he was gone for good. Ybor could go to a lab and jerk out a few cc’s of himself, and have his powerful brother back the next day.

Meanwhile he would measure out his days here, loneliness and labor, neither intolerable. He put in six office hours a day, working on the prison’s computers, and then two “work” hours in the laundry or kitchen.

He was learning interesting things about the computer system. He couldn’t erase the record of his sentence—that was backed up in too many outside systems—but his record here would be of a model “patient,” who emerged drug-free and eager to face the world.

His life was his own the rest of the time, as long as he stayed inside the white line and returned to his “unit” after dinner. He read a lot in the library and, for a couple of weeks, watched the cube with the other patients. But the cube, which he’d ignored all his adult life, proved dangerously addictive. He’d left it for the others to enjoy.

So he didn’t see the news. He probably knew less about the Coming than any adult in Gainesville. Which suited him. If Whittier hadn’t gotten a hair up her ass about Rory Bell, he wouldn’t be in here.

A metallic chatter broke his reverie. The fat trusty Bobón was rattling his baton on the bars. Behind him, a man who looked vaguely familiar—Gregory Moore, the court-appointed lawyer who had so successfully defended him straight into this bunk.

“What’s with the beard?” Ybor said.

“Makes me look older,” Moore said. It did; it was white, while his hair was salt-and-pepper gray. “I’ve come to take you to an interview.” The trusty unlocked the door, and it slid up into the ceiling.

“Will it get me out of here?”

“Might get your sentence reduced. Your period of treatment.”

“Yeah, treatment. I’m cured, already.” He followed the lawyer out and walked down the corridor between him and Bobón. Carefully. The trusty’s stick was a neurotangler, and he liked using it. It didn’t hurt much, depending on how you fell, but could be embarrassing.

In prison movies, the other prisoners would hoot obscenities and bang their tin cups on the bars. At Alachua Rehabilitation Center, they had Styrofoam cups and a point system, and few serious criminals. Most of them glanced up momentarily from books or games, if they reacted at all to the parade.

“Left here,” the trusty said, and Ybor followed the lawyer through an unmarked door he’d never seen open before. He’d thought it was a storage room. It opened into a narrow damp corridor as long as a cell was deep, ending in another unmarked door. The lawyer held it open for Ybor and closed it behind himself. On the other side, the trusty locked it with a rattling of keys.

The room was white and spotless, starting to brighten with light from a picture window facing the horse pasture to the east. A door to the outside was open, metal screens keeping the bugs out.

Three hard chairs faced a plain white table. He recognized the man behind the table, and was startled. They’d never met face-to-face before, but everybody knew who he was.

“Willy Joe Capra,” he said. “You’re the mob guy.”

“You buy that shit?” He smiled. “There ain’t no such thing as a mob.”

“This is still a funny place to make your acquaintance.” He took the chair directly in front of the man. Moore stood behind him, silent, until Willy Joe pointed to the chair on his left.

“I wouldn’t call this place funny,” Willy Joe said. “I was here, I’d just want out.”

“Sí. It could drive you crazy.” Willy Joe just stared. “Mr. Moore said you might be able to help me.”

“Yeah. You help me, I help you.”

Anything you want, Ybor thought. But he just nodded and waited. Looking at the screen door.

“At your hearing,” the lawyer said, “you testified that you were working on your own. A ‘fishing expedition,’ you called it.”

“The woman was on the news,” he said carefully. “I knew she had lots of money, or her husband did.”

“So you figured you’d find something and squeeze her,” Willy Joe said. “Just like that. Nobody put you up to it.”

“I do it all the time,” he said, which was true. “Usually just for fun.” So far, he hadn’t implicated his boss, figuring that silence would pay off in the long run.

“That’s what you said at the hearing,” Moore said, “and voice analysis indicates you were telling the truth, or some version of the truth. It also says that you lied later, when you said you didn’t find anything interesting—I think ‘useful’ was the word.”

“Yeah, well… you know voice spectrum’s unreliable. Not admissible in court.”

“This ain’t no court,” Willy Joe said. “This is a fishing expedition, too. Look at the bait.” He reached into a jacket pocket and withdrew a hypo popper.

“That can’t be mine,” Ybor said, but he felt sweat suddenly evaporating on his forehead. “Nobody can get in there but me.”

He twirled the cylinder, smiling at it. “I don’t have to get into your private stash. Where do you think this shit comes from?”

“From you?”

“From a friend of mine. Not the guy you buy it from. What he’s called, Blinky?”

“That’s right, Blinky.” He could smell his armpits now, sour.

“Blinky don’t make the stuff. He just collects the juice and the money.” He balanced it upright on the table. “Suppose I could get you this once a week. You spill your guts for that?”

“What… what do you need to know?”

“You been followin’ this alien bullshit?”

Oh, shit. “Not much, no. I got busted the day it all started.”

“But you do know the Bell woman was behind it,” Moore said. “You were going through her files, and that pulled down the wrath of God, or at least the chancellor.”

“So what did you find?” Willy Joe said. “What wasn’t ‘useful’?”

Damn. It wouldn’t be enough. “Look. I’ll tell you all I know. But you got to get me out of here.”

“As if you were in a position to bargain,” the lawyer said.

“I’m worth a lot more to you on the outside. I can get more information where this came from.”

“Sure,” Willy Joe said. “Like you’ll get your old job back and they’ll let you hack their computer.”

“You don’t understand jaquismo,” he said quickly. “I don’t have to be at the same computer.”

“Just you let me know what you got. I’ll decide how much it’s worth.”

“Okay.” What’s the best way to put it? “Dr. Bell and her husband…”

“Dr. Bell and Dr. Bell,” Moore said.

“Yeah. They’re living a lie. Covering up his past.”

“He kill somebody?” Willy Joe straightened slightly.

“Worse than that. He got caught fucking a guy.”

Willy Joe looked at Moore. “I told you he was a fucking mariposa.” To Ybor: “This was after the law.”

“After the state law. Before the federal one.”

Willy Joe nodded. “This ain’t much. I seen him hangin’ around with Nick the Greek. If they ain’t queer I ain’t never met a queer.”

“This wasn’t Nick the Greek.” Ybor paused long enough for Willy Joe to open his mouth. “It was a cop.”

“A cop. Which one?”

Ybor stroked his chin. “Don’t know yet.”

“What is this ‘yet’? You know it was a cop, but you don’t know who?”

“That’s right. I need more time on the computer.”

“What did you find out?” Moore said.

Ybor stroked his chin harder. “You holdin’ out on me,” Willy Joe said quietly, “you don’t get your DD. And I get you transferred to Raiford. You want to meet some fuckin’ queers.”

“All I know is the path of the data link, and the way it was stopped. And when and where he was picked up.”

“Go on,” Moore said.

“It was down at People’s Park, three in the morning. Twelve April 2022.”

“So what were they doin’? Blow job, cornhole?”

“The call-in didn’t say. Just that it was a 547, sodomy. They identified Norman Bell, but the other guy didn’t have an ID.”

“So how you know he’s a cop?” Willy Joe leaned forward. “Make it good.”

“The whole record got erased, all the way back to the call-in. It was an ‘administrative edit,’ and the authorization came from a police-department internal-security unit.”

Willy Joe tapped the DD popper on the desk, in a slow rhythm. “It got erased, but not to you.”

“I saw the hole in the data. It’s complicated. But there was an erased link to Norman Bell, and I followed it up to the hole, so to speak. From there, I just searched unencrypted chat mail for a half hour around that time. Found a guy who monitors police and emergency bands, and he was talking to somebody when the sodomy call came in.”

“I don’t see how the lack of data implicates a policeman,” Moore said. “Sounds more like Norman Bell pulling strings. He has money, or she does.”

“They did pull strings.” Ybor allowed himself a smile. “Mrs. Bell did, anyhow. The cops were glad to take her money, but the erasure was complete a good eight hours before she paid.”

“She didn’t just pay,” Willy Joe said. “Even a professor ain’t that stupid.”

“No… I just looked for a big credit transfer. The guy she paid was the police dispatcher’s father. She bought a new garage door. But no installation fee. Like she put it in herself.”

“That is interesting,” Moore said. “The sodomy charge would ruin him, and she’d go down for buying off the policeman. So your next step would be to confront them?”

“Yeah, if I had a next step. I’d just found the garage-door thing when the cop stepped in and shot me. Son of a bitch.”

“So if you was to walk out this door,” Willy Joe said, “you’d get your shit together and then go hit up the Bells.”

“Well, I guess not,” Ybor said carefully. “Guess you’d want to do that.”

“Smart kid,” Willy Joe said to Moore. He tapped the cylinder with his finger and it rolled almost to the edge of the table. “Here ya go. Have a ball.”

Ybor uncapped it hungrily and turned his back to the men. He almost caught his penis in the zipper, in his haste.

A sharp sting and the first real peace he’d had in a month. He felt the calm power glow through his muscles and organs.

He took a deep breath, and something rattled in his chest. He turned and sat down. A surge of nausea and twisting pain in his stomach. “What…”

Willy Joe

“Y’know, I think you made a mistake there. You’re not supposed to shoot that in your dick.”

“No, he isn’t,” Moore said.

Willy Joe stood up with a bright smile. “That’s supposed to go in your pussy.”

Ybor was doubled up in pain. “Shit. Immune… system.”

“Yeah, little mix-up. Sorry. Some girl musta got yours. No fun for her, either.”

Moore stared at Ybor’s convulsions. “They said it would be sudden and painless.”

“One outta two.” He picked up his cap off the floor.

He set the cap on his head and straightened it, looking at the mirror on the wall. He saluted whoever was behind the mirror, probably Bobón and the warden. “You wanta take it from here?”

Moore didn’t answer at first. He was watching Ybor, who had fallen off the chair, rigid, and was slowly moving his limbs around, his jaw locked open in a silent scream.

“I said you wanna take care of it?”

“Sure,” Moore said, not looking up. “Papers already made out. Bad drug reaction.”

“I’ll say.” Willy Joe wrinkled his nose at the smell. “Think I’m gonna die some other way.” He pushed the screen door open, stepped out, and took a deep breath. The golden pasture smelled wonderful, a mile or more from the early-morning highway fumes. He stepped over the white line painted on the sidewalk, the symbolic wall, and pulled out the antenna on his phone.

“Where you guys at?” he said. “Five minutes, then. Runnin’ behind and we ain’t even started.” There was no anger in his voice, though. He selected a joint from his wallet and lit up, smiling, and walked into the trees to his left, away from the rising sun.

There was still a little mist close to the ground. The woods were dark, but he didn’t need the flashlight he’d used coming in. He followed a path of pine needles, an exercise trail for the staff and a few trusted inmates.

In front of him, the darkness rustled, and he was down on one knee, pistol out. Shit! In the woods without a bodyguard. He hustled sideways, to crouch behind a fat twisted oak.

Silence. Just a squirrel or a bird. If someone was after him, he wouldn’t make no noise, just wait. You never hear the one that gets you. But he strained to see down the dark path, looking for motion.

Too many people knew he was here, alone. Maybe that was not too bright. But you got to trust somebody. Or do you? His knee was getting wet. Noiselessly, he switched to a squatting position, still staring down along the barrel into the darkness. Come on, bright boy.

He heard the high-pitched hum of the car whine down as it approached, and the crunch on gravel when it parked on the shoulder a couple of hundred yards away.

He worried the phone out of its pocket, clumsy with his left hand, punched one number with his thumb, and whispered. “Car… Bobby, we might have a situation here. You and Solo get out of the car, get ready to cover me. It probably ain’t nothin’.”

He winced when the car doors slammed. Maybe that was good, though. He stepped into the open and walked down the trail, at first holding the pistol out. A squirrel scampered across the path, about where the noise had come from. He tracked it, leading just a hair, and then relaxed. He was holding the pistol loosely at his side when he came into the clearing and saw the big Westinghouse. He waved at Bobby the Bad and Solo, and pressed the pistol back into its holster. It clicked into place and he straightened his jacket.

“Problems, boss?” Bobby said. He had the partygun with its big snail clip of buckshot, ready to gun down an angry mob.

“Heard something. Guess it ain’t nothin’. Darker ’n I figured.” He opened the car door. “Let’s get a move on. Fuckin’ ATC.” He was usually in and out of Nick’s before the traffic control switched on.

The Westinghouse scattered gravel in a fishtailing U-turn and surged up the hill. “Get what you’re after, boss?” Bobby said.

“Yeah. Had to pop him, though.”

“What, the lawyer?”

“Fuck, no. The junkie.” He carefully stubbed the joint in the ashtray. “He knew stuff. Can’t trust a junkie.” He studied Solo when he said that; no reaction. Could he really think that Willy Joe didn’t know about him and his ice?

Most skaters don’t think they’re addicted. Let ’em go a couple of weeks without. Might be a fun experiment with Solo. Lock him up in that cabin in Georgia for about a month. Then come scrape him off the walls and see what he’ll do for an icicle.

Almost twenty years’ dealing and clean as a nun’s butt. Marijuana and booze, that’s nothing. Dropped heroin and cocaine cold turkey at the age of nineteen, when he started dealing for the Franzias.

There was no traffic until the Archer ring. As they went up the ramp they got the ATC warning chime. Solo let go of the wheel and punched in the four-digit code for Nick’s restaurant, then two digits for “drop-off.” Then he unfolded a Miami newspaper and resumed reading in the middle of the entertainment section.

The traffic wasn’t too heavy, but this far out in the country, more than half the cars were gas or LP. The trees nearest the road were spindly and yellowish with pollution. Car owners inside the city limits had to pay an annual “green” tax if their vehicles weren’t electric or pure hydrogen, so on still days the city could become an island of relatively clean air inside a doughnut of haze.

“So how’d you do him?” Bobby said conversationally.

“Did himself, fuckin’ junkie. He gave me what I wanted, so I give him what he wanted. What he thought he wanted.”

“You said he was José y María, right? He didn’t overdose on a DD, did he?”

“Nah. There was some kind of mix-up.” Willy Joe took the ampoule out of his pocket and held it up to the light. “These are his colors, but it wasn’t his DNA. Can’t trust nobody these days.”

“Bet that was pretty.”

Willy Joe shrugged and looked out at the scenery. Maybe it was overkill. No, he was a wild card. Blackmail’s worth shit if you got too many people in on the secret. So now it would be just the three of them, and Moore would be doing most of the dirty work, anyhow.

“Wake me when we get there.” He pulled his cap down and settled back into the cushions, shifting a little to the left so the holster didn’t press into the small of his back.

He replayed the Ybor business in his mind. This might be really good. Maybe put the squeeze on both the queer and his wife? She’s gotta know—hell, she paid off the cops—but maybe they don’t talk about it. Shit like that happens with girlfriends all the time. Wouldn’t hurt to try. Have Moore find out if they got separate bank accounts. Money come from her side or his?

Shouldn’t’ve had that joint. Got to concentrate. Relax, then concentrate. He pulled up the armrest to his right and fished out the crystal Scotch decanter. Poured an ounce into a shot glass, took a sip, then knocked it back.

He closed his eyes and fell into a familiar dream, where he was sitting on a bench in a police station, naked from the waist down, handcuffed. People came and went and took no notice of him. Some of them were people he had killed, including the latest, Ybor, and the first, his father. He woke up as the limo surged left into the parking lot beside the Athens, the ATC guiding it through a hole in traffic just inches wide enough.

He blinked at the traffic gliding by. “What the fuck?”

“We’re here, boss,” Solo said. “Park or cruise?”

“You keep movin’.” He opened the door. “I’ll be on the curb, five or ten minutes.”

“I should call Mario’s?” he said. “Tell him we’ll be a little late?”

“Huh-uh. I mean it, five or ten minutes. We’ll be there on the button.” Smart-ass. It was true he was used to spending some time in Nick’s, have a drink and go through the horse papers, dog papers. But he liked to hit Mario right on time.

Odd to smell garlic instead of pastry, walking into the Athens in the morning. Three tourists at a front table, eating breakfast. Big omelettes with that Greek cheese.

And look who else. “¿Qué pasa, Professor?”

“Same old,” the professor said, and went back to his book. You’re in for an interesting day, old man. Willy Joe waved at Nick, busy behind the bar, and dropped a dollar for the sports page.

He sat down at the bar and took out his notebook. Checked the trifectas first, no action. But there were two long shots that came in, ten across—over a thousand each! Nothing on the dogs.

Nick set down his coffee, pastry, retsina, and five-hundred-dollar bill. Willy Joe looked up. “Hey, Nick. Let me buy you one.”

“What?”

He held up the retsina. “Eye-opener. Just hit two long shots for a grand apiece.”

“Oh, hey. Thanks, Willy Joe.” He poured a small one and went back to unloading the dishwasher.

It didn’t take long to map out the day’s bets. He wrote them down in neat columns and sipped the coffee and wine, ignoring the food. The way the guy died had kind of killed his appetite. He could still smell it.

He watched the limo go by twice—make ’em sweat a little—and then called his bookie with the bets and got up.

The professor gestured at him on the way out. “Buena suerte.”

Yeah, good luck to you, too. You’ll need it, mariposa.

Norman Bell

The little crook never came in except on the first of the month, Norman had noticed. Not an early-morning person; he always looked as if he’d been up all night. This morning he looked especially tense, even though he’d evidently come out ahead on his horses.

What could his world be like? Up all night partying? Hanging out with the other hoods in some pool hall or after-hours bar. He was so macho, maybe he was gay. There were still clubs, Norman knew, though he hadn’t been into one in eight years, not since the federal law got pushed through. It was being tested for constitutionality in a dozen states—but not Florida, which had its own sodomy laws. Norman was not the crusader type, anyhow. And the clubs were for young people, alas. He’d feel like an old pervert.

They’d had a raid on one in downtown Southeast a couple of weeks ago. Norman had studied the coverage to see whether there was anyone he knew, and in fact there had been, but not among the men and boys arrested. One of the cops, Qabil Rabin. The one he’d been with when Rory found out. Though of course she hadn’t been surprised.

Qabil was a strange and beautiful man, just a year or two out of the army when they’d met. He’d been an enemy POW, captured in Desert Wind. But the army found out he’d been pressed into the Iraqi force against his will, going along with it just to protect his family in Kurdistan. When they were liberated, Qabil wound up in the American army, a three-way interpreter.

He came to UF for political science, police-department scholarship, but he minored in music, and Norman met him in a cross-cultural composition workshop. One thing led to another. They’d been together for over a year, when Rory came home unexpectedly and found them—in the kitchen, of all places.

Norman had seen him now and then over the years, and they exchanged careful signals of recognition. He had a wife and at least two children now, and a uniform that probably restricted his sex life. He hoped things were going well with him. There had been something like love between them, despite the differences in age and culture.

Thinking of him brought an interesting melody back to mind, a Middle Eastern thing in a Phrygian mode. He jotted down a pattern of notes on the back page of the mystery he was reading (trying not to read who done it) and went up to pay Nick.

Nick poured a plastic bowl of soup for Rory and sealed the top. “Things quietin’ down over there?”

“Not lately, anyhow. There’s a news special tonight, a one-month update. All the networks, crazy.”

“Yeah. Like a war ain’t enough news for ’em.”

“Not as long as we’re not in it.” Greece was, now.

Nick said something in Greek. “Grace a’ God,” he explained. “You say hi to the professor for me.”

“Sure thing.” Norman carried the soup out and secured it in his front basket, which had an adjustable holder for such things, and pedaled off.

He went a few blocks out of his way, to avoid traffic. Rory wouldn’t be in the office till eight, anyhow. He passed Rabin’s house without looking over at it.

Rory’s car was in its spot at eight-oh-one. Norman locked his bike in the rack by three spots that had “Permanent Press” signs. He was not quite old enough for that to make him think of trousers.

There was nobody in the office. He put the soup container in the fridge with a note—“Albóndigas—no avgolemono today”—and hurried back to his bike. He wasn’t avoiding Rory, but he wanted to get home and work on this Phrygian theme. While he pedaled, he searched his memory for a source besides the Middle East folk tune. Once he’d spent almost a week on a composition, and when he played it for Rory, she pointed out that it was a jingle from a beer commercial.

Home, he splashed some cold water on his face while the coffee reheated. Then he sat with the cello and played the theme in E and G and then settled on D.

He snapped on the Roland and keyboarded it, and worked out a preliminary pattern of chords and dischords. Then he set it to repeat, and played the cello along with it a few times. He turned off the machine and improvised for most of an hour, the coffee growing cold again while he was lost in thought.

He put the coffee back in to reheat again and with two fingers sketched out the elaborated theme, looking back and forth between the screen and the keyboard. He could midi it in straight from the cello, but knew from experience that it saved time to go through the Roland, since a note’s duration was recorded more precisely, and you didn’t have to clean up harmonics.

Sipping coffee, he played the twenty-four bars over and over, using a light pen to isolate four voices. He set the Roland to try different instrumentations, reluctantly admitting that the solo voice couldn’t be a cello. Clarinet or even oboe. He played with the phrasing of the oboe and turned it into a parody of Rimsky-Korsakov, which he saved as “Joke 1.” Then he returned to the original phrasing, dropped the solo an octave, and tried it with bassoon, and then bass clarinet. Odd but good. He saved it as “BC 1” and got up to stretch and walk around.

Tense. He locked himself in his office, undressed, and gave himself an erection. From a locked drawer he took a VR girdle and goggles and gloves, and a highly illegal, because it was homosexual, compact ring. It was called “Scherherazade”; he’d bought it because the boys reminded him of Qabil Rabin.

He set the CR on the stereo spindle and hurriedly fitted the girdle over his genitals, around his waist, and between his legs. He rolled on the gloves and slipped the goggles over his head. Put the earplugs in and said, “Go!”

It was a harem scene, seven young men lounging naked on silken pillows, chatting, sipping coffee from small cups.

There was a random function that determined which boy would show interest; if the customer wanted a different one, he could say “reset.” Norman liked them all.

One of them looked at him and smiled, and said something in Arabic. He set down his coffee and gracefully uncoiled from his supine position, becoming erect as he walked toward Norman.

A part of his mind always marveled at the technology. The boy gently took hold of his penis and cradled his testicles, and drifted to his knees.

Norman stared at the top of the boy’s close-cropped head as he gently fellated him. With a couple of words he could switch to anal sex, active or passive, but this was enough for him. He watched the other boys, having fun with each other while they watched him and his virtual partner. (That part felt fake, or at least too staged, since it was always the same, a kind of moving erotic wallpaper.) After a few minutes, he knew he couldn’t delay any longer, or his body would lose the illusion and melt, so he pushed a couple of times and ejaculated. The boy stood up while the whole scene faded into gray mist.

He walked into the bathroom with his silly-looking garb and carefully unwrapped the girdle, everted, and scrubbed it. Then he patted it dry with a towel, folded everything together, and returned it to his hiding place. He lay down on the couch and asked the room for Rimsky-Korsakov, and closed his eyes for a few minutes.

He only half slept, thinking about the composition. If a bass clarinet was going to take the melody, he wanted another line, a bass viol in a slow pedal. Doubled with one of the violins here and there. A quiet percussion rattle, like a distant woodpecker, signaling the measures where the two came together, two octaves apart. And a metallic tapping, like a muted triangle, doing 5:4 against their 4:4.

He got up and dressed, running through the changes in his mind. He went back to the great room and snapped on the Roland, but then saw that the phone was blinking. The call hadn’t come in while he was napping, thank goodness; he would have lost his train of thought. It had come while he had the earplugs in, getting blown by a ghost. Probably a middle-aged man by now, like Rabin.

He keyed in the bass viol and adjusted the second violin. He couldn’t get quite the percussion he wanted, so he left it off and wrote a note over the staff. He’d call Billy Kaye this evening and have him send something over; he stocked a cube of foreign percussion effects. After he was satisfied that he’d written everything down, he went to the phone.

Two calls. The first was a man he didn’t recognize. Row upon row of paper books behind him, matched leather bindings identifying them as Florida statutes. A rich lawyer, couldn’t be good news.

It was worse than he could have imagined. He smiled politely and nodded. “Professor Bell, I have a client who has something of value to you: silence. About you and a certain policeman. We will be having lunch at the rear table at Alice’s Tea Room at noon today. Noon. If you’re not there, we’ll go to the police.

“You’ve met my client, Guilliame Capra.” That slimeball Willy Joe. “Surprisingly, he has many friends on the police force.”

The man disappeared. Norman played it back and it didn’t improve. He erased it and sat back to think, but nothing came. Nothing but rising panic.

He went to the kitchen and got a wineglass, then opened the wine cabinet and closed it again. Instead, he poured an inch of brandy. He sat at the breakfast table and took one sip. Then he poured it out and rinsed the glass. No answer there.

What a lovely world this was.

Maybe they were only going to threaten to expose him to Rory. Big surprise. It would take some playacting, but they could simulate an outraged wife and penitant husband.

But no. Not in this day and age. They would threaten his career and Rory’s, too.

Could Qabil be behind it? No; he’d lose even more than them. His fellow officers would not be amused.

He’d talk to Rory after work. First find out what the blackmailer wanted. He realized he couldn’t say within a million dollars either way, how much money they had. Better find out before lunch. He checked his watch; two hours.

He went to call the bank and remembered the second message. It was Rory, asking him to call. He punched index-1.

Aurora

Her personal line rang and she punched it. Norman returning her call.

“Company tonight, sweetheart. You remember the Slidells, from Yale?”

He nodded and rubbed his chin. “Vegetarians?”

“You’re amazing. He’s vegan, I think, Lamar. At least he wears an equals sign on a necklace, Church of Reason.”

“Okay.” He seemed distracted. “I was going downtown for lunch. Market’s not open; I’ll see what Publix has.”

“No eggs or cheese?”

“Heavens, no. I wouldn’t enslave our fellow creatures.” He didn’t smile.

“There’s something wrong?”

“Bad morning. Talk about it later.”

“We can talk now. There’s no one here.”

“No… no, I have to check some stuff out…”

“I mean, I’ll have the Slidells with me when I come home.”

“It’s okay. Later.” The screen went blank.

She almost called him right back. Something was really bothering him. But the other phone rang, her public line.

“¿Buenos?” She’d seen the woman before, but couldn’t place her.

“Good morning, Dr. Bell. June Clearwater, mayor’s office.” Of course, the mayor had heard about the anniversary broadcast and wanted some “input.” He wanted to be sure that Rory would mention Gainesville, she assumed. He came on-line.

“Mr. Southeby. ‘Input’?”

He showed a professional number of teeth. “Rory. I just heard about your shooting schedule and wanted—”

“Hold it. You know my schedule and I don’t?”

“The camera crew was just here,” he said, a little defensive. “They were headed for you next.”

“That’s wonderful. They were supposed to call.” On cue, the call-waiting icon strobed in the corner of the screen. “That’s probably them. Talk to you later, Cameron.” She punched control-#, to record.

It was Chancellor Barrett, his face all grim furrows. “Rory. Do you remember a young man named Ybor Lopez?”

“As in Ybor City? Sounds vaguely familiar.”

“He used to work in Deedee’s office.”

“Used to… is he the one who got arrested last month?”

“That’s right; data crime. He was nosing through your files, among others. He hasn’t been in touch with you, then, since his arrest?”

“Not that I recall. He might have tried—I probably have five or ten people call this number for every one that gets through. I could have someone check the log.”

“That would be fine… um… the police might be bothering you about this; they just called me. Lopez died in jail this morning, under suspicious circumstances.”

“Oh, that’s a pity. For a computer crime?”

“I don’t know any details. Just thought I’d give you some advance warning.”

“Thanks.” All we need is a bunch of cops rubbing shoulders with the reporters. “I’ll let you know if anything happens. Buenos días.”

Chancellor Barrett

“Buenos.” She broke the connection. Busy woman, that cube thing coming up tonight.

There was a maddening lack of information here. Before calling Deedee, he did a quick mental review of what had happened a month before:

He’d come back from that damned meeting, having asked Deedee to use Lopez to snoop on Aurora Bell. He was straightening up before lunch and a bright red flag came up on his screen: a security compromise warning. It said that Ybor Lopez was grinding away at the encryptation of personnel files. So he didn’t have as much jaquismo as Deedee had given him credit for.

Although he would have preferred to let Ybor toil away undisturbed, the cat was out of the bag, whatever that actually meant. So he called in a warrant request and said he’d meet the arresting officer down at the physics building.

Then the screwup with the stunning dart. He’d managed to pocket the ejected data crystal. The sergeant saw but shrugged it off.

There was nothing much on the crystal but universes of data about Deedee and Bell. For some reason, Lopez had been pursuing details about a garage door Bell had bought. If they’d come in a few minutes later, there might have been something interesting there. Lopez hadn’t gone off in that odd direction for no reason.

He tried to visualize the Bells’ garage door. Nothing unusual.

Barrett put his anachronistic glasses down and rubbed his eyes. Had he indirectly murdered this young man by asking Deedee to check up on Bell? He’d only talked to Deedee about it once, right after the arrest. Lopez hadn’t had a chance to tell her anything.

His personal line chimed and he swatted the button. It was Deedee, her eyes red and streaming with tears.

Deedee

“My God, Mal. What have we done?”

“The police talked to you, too?”

“No—it’s on the goddamned news. Somebody murdered him.”

“What? The cop said—”

“Drug overdose; that’s what the news said. But you can’t overdose on a DD like José y María, and people who are on it don’t take other drugs. They don’t work…”

“But why would anybody want to kill him? Just a hacker who wasn’t as good as he thought he was.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was hacking for someone besides me, besides us. And he found out something dangerous.”

“Yeah. I doubt it was Rory Bell.”

“The damned drug might have been involved. You don’t buy it at Eckerd’s.” She blotted her eyes with a tissue. “If he had a source in jail, they could have killed him easily by putting poison in his dose.”

“So maybe they were oversimplifying for the press, when they said overdose.”

“Or covering up. If he was getting it in jail, he was probably getting it from the police.”

Malachi winced. “Deedee! Maybe we shouldn’t talk about such matters over the phone. Can I meet you somewhere?”

She looked at the clock. Lecture in ninety minutes, but she could do it in her sleep. “Down at the mercado? The coffee end? As soon as you can get there.”

“I’ll be right over.” His image faded to black. She hung up and turned off the privacy shield and looked around; nobody else in the office. She got the makeup kit out of her purse and worked on her eyes and sharpened up the tattoo. It would take Mal ten minutes to huff and puff his way to the mercado.

Somewhat fixed, she grabbed a sun hat and her lecture notes and went down the hall to the stairs. A little exercise, not using the elevator, and smaller probability of running into someone.

It was already hot and muggy, under a sky like polished metal. She remembered a New York childhood when sometimes it would have snowed in October, at least by Halloween. But New York was hotter now, too. Her parents’ weekend place on Long Island under water for the past decade.

She got an iced coffee from a black kid wearing an Italian peasant outfit, and sat at a picnic table in the shade, pretending to study her notes.

Poor Ybor. She already hated herself for having set him up for jail. And he’d been loyal during the trial, not implicating her. Had he kept that silence in jail? Did the people who killed him know that she was an accomplice?

Accomplice, hell. She was the criminal, and Ybor was just a convenient tool. Or she and Malachi shared the guilt; didn’t he start it?

He sat down heavily across from her, mopping the back of his neck and his various chins.

“No hat, Mal?”

“Forgot it till I was outside. So it couldn’t have been an overdose?”

“No; that’s impossible with bioreflexive DDs. If you shot yourself up ten times, the effect would be the same intensity and duration as one dose. I suppose your penis would hurt more.”

He made a face. “I asked for a copy of the police report. That’s legitimate. We’re still his employer of record. But I doubt it will have anything of interest.”

“Better hope it doesn’t. Anything of interest probably would point back to us. Or at least to me.”

“It might be me as well. During the confusion of the arrest, I picked up the crystal he’d been working on. The policeman saw me do it, or do something, and asked about it later. I sort of bulled my way through it. But if that was on his report, they might come around asking questions.”

“Probably not. A prison drug death, they probably just cleaned out his cell for the next guy, and closed his file. Could you read the crystal?”

Malachi nodded and wiped his face with the damp white handkerchief. “You’re on there as well as Aurora. Did you ask him to do that?”

“No.” That was interesting. “I suppose he was trying to find something on me, for future use. Did he?”

“Oh, I didn’t read through it,” he said slowly. “The file on Aurora is ten times as big; it took me a week of evenings. Nothing there, as far as I can see.”

“You might not be devious enough. Let me see a copy.”

He brought a cube from a side pocket and set it between them. “Take the original. I don’t have any use for it.”

She rolled the crystal between her thumb and forefinger. “I think this is where we vow not to betray one another.”

“I trust you, Deedee.”

“A good thing, too.” She removed her sunglasses and looked straight into his eyes. “I could hang your ass so high…”

“Is the coffee good?”

Deedee turned around, startled. It was that crazy woman who pushed the grocery cart around. “Yes. Yes, it’s good.”

“I’m sorry someone died.” She leaned into the cart and rattled past. “Get my coffee, too.”

Suzy Q.

Funny how you can always tell, somebody died and they both feel guilty. He’s some bigwig, I seen him give speeches. She’s a teacher and real serious about it. Wonder if they killed somebody like I killed Jack. Who would they both not like enough to do that? Maybe they’re in love and it was her husband or his wife, or both. Where would you put the bodies nowadays? With that new mall over the swamp. On top of old Jack, him lying there looking up the little girls’ dresses while they walk over him, and he can’t do a damn thing about it.

That’s a nice thought, him all bones but still can see. And a bone down there but no juice to go with it. He who lives by the bone shall die by the bone, or the frying pan. That was a mess on the rug, good thing we had so many cats.

Maybe he couldn’t see so good, his eyes hanging out like that. I remember when I drag him from the trunk of the Chevy into the swamp, I almost turn him over so he look down into hell, then thought no, make him look up at God and Jesus and Mary. Now he looks up the dresses of little girls. That’s funny. And here comes my favorite little girl, with her coffee and bread for me.

Sara

“Here you go, Suzy Q. Sweet stuff today; a couple of almond rolls left over.”

“You sweet stuff you’self. Thank you kindly.” She carefully lined up the rolls and coffee on the cart’s fold-out shelf.

She was wearing several layers of clothes in the gathering heat, her face red and sweating. “You don’t have to wear all that, do you, Suzy Q.? You look so hot.”

She nodded. “I don’ mind being hot, and it keep the rays out. Came down here to get hot, but that was before the rays. Don’t want the cancer.”

Sara adjusted her hat. “That’s a point.”

“You know,” she went on, “I could leave the extra clothes somewhere, and nobody would take them. I know that, even though the town’s full of murderers, but the problem is, I might not remember where I put them. Come winter I’d get awful cold.”

“It’s already November, Suzy Q. It doesn’t get real cold anymore.”

She laughed, a nasal wheeze. “That’s what they say, all right. You watch out, though.” She took a sip of coffee and pushed on. “Watch out for them murderers.”

Always good advice, Sara thought, watching her rattle away, waiting for her to say it. She stopped and turned. “You know it snowed the day I was born?”

“No kidding!” Suzy Q. nodded slowly and pushed on. Sara went back into the place.

José was cross-slicing onions. “That’s probably enough. It’s too damn hot.” The onion flowers really sold when it cooled off. This year, it looked like the aliens would get here before winter did.

And here comes Senor Alien himself, resident alien, Pepe Parker. “What’ll it be, Pepe?”

“Café con leche, por favor.” He sat down at the bar. “And a date, if you dance.”

“What?”

“New club opening in Alachua tonight. Old stuff—tango, samba. New club, new girl, what do you say?”

She smiled and put a cup of milk in the microwave.

“Pepe, I haven’t danced in years. I had an accident, and I’m still an operation away from the dance floor.” The bell rang and she took the milk out. “Thanks for asking, though.”

“Professor Bell told me about that… horrible thing. They ever catch who did it?”

“No.” She stirred a heaping spoon of Bustelo into the cup and brought it over with the sugar. “I think I know. But I could never prove it.”

“Gracias. Who?”

She looked around. The two customers had left and José was buried in his tabloid. She lowered her voice. “You’re no Boy Scout, are you, Pepe? I mean, you know how the world works.”

“As much as anybody, I suppose.”

“We have to pay protection, to keep the café from getting gang-banged. Is that shocking?”

“No. Sad, but no.”

“There’s a slimeball comes in here at noon today, every first of the month, to pick up his five hundred bucks. He calls himself ‘Mr. Smith,’ but everybody knows he’s Willy Joe Capra.”

“He did it?”

She nodded. “Or at least knows who did it. He’s made that pretty clear.”

“And you can’t go to the police?”

She shook her head wordlessly for a moment, and then knuckled at tears, her mouth in a tight scowl.

Pepe

He handed her the napkin that she’d just handed him. “The bastard.”

She pressed it to her eyes. “I, maybe I should. But what I’m afraid of, I go to the police, they pick him up, he gets off. And a week or a month or a year later, I’ll have another accident. During which, Willy Joe will be in church or talking to the Lions Club or something.”

“The devil never forgets a face. People like him eventually get what they deserve.”

“No.” She balled up the napkin and stuck it in her pocket. “This is the real world, remember?”

Pepe poured sugar into his coffee and stirred it slowly. “Nothing people like you or me could do. Shoot the bastard, we wind up choosing the door.”

“Instead of getting a medal.” She wiped the clean counter in front of him. “You want something to eat with that?”

“No, thanks. Just had breakfast.” He’d skipped it, actually, needing to lose a few pounds. He only had one suitcase of clothes, and wanted them to last another couple of months. The kilt and trousers were getting tight around the waist, and suspenders had gone out of fashion last year.

He drank the coffee fast enough to get a little buzz. It would be nice if he could do something about this Willy Joe character. He allowed himself an adolescent fantasy about Sara’s gratitude. But that sort of thing wasn’t really in his job description.

He put a ten under the saucer and waved adios to Sara and her partner. Not for the first time, he wondered whether they had something going. Their mutual affection was obvious.

Her body would be unusual. But that could be an attraction.

In that erotic frame of mind, he stepped out of the café and stopped dead in his tracks, paralyzed by a woman. She was dressed like any other student, jeans and halter and sun hat. But she had a classic chiseled beauty and perfect carriage, and she radiated sex.

Gabrielle

It barely registered that the handsome Cuban took one look at her and stood like a deer caught in headlights. Whenever she walked through campus she was caressed by eyes. Did any of them ever recognize her from the films? Not likely. She’d only had face parts twice.

She hated physics, but couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to take a chemistry elective next semester, and the only ones she could take required physics.

So they were doing fluid dynamics today. A doctor does need to know about fluids. In her other persona, she knew plenty about them. Semen stings your eyes and makes your eyelashes look as if semen has dried on them. But it was better than the fake stuff Harry sometimes squirted on her. Soap solution and glycerine and some white powder. It stung the eyes even worse, and made you smell like a cheap whorehouse.

That was one of her father’s favorite observations: You smell like a cheap whorehouse. Just before she left home, she was able to make the obvious rejoinder: You would know, Dad, wouldn’t you? Someday she’d have to find a cheap whorehouse and go in for a sniff.

One nice thing about physics was the building, air-conditioned to the max. She went through the door and it was like walking into a refrigerator. She put her books and hat down on a table and patted the sweat from her face and hair with a handkerchief.

A carefully beautiful woman walked in and gave her a familiar look: appraisal, hostility, neutrality. Blue cancer tattoo on her cheek, Dr. Whittier.

Deedee

“Oh, hi. You’re in 101.”

The beautiful girl nodded. “Gabrielle Campins.”

She put the name and the face together. Pre-med, having trouble with the math. “See you there.”

Trying to act normal just after learning you killed a man. Killed him by blackmailing him into illegal activity. Directed against a friend and colleague.

The door to Rory’s office was open. On impulse, she tapped and stepped through the little entryway. Rory looked up from a journal.

“Hi, Rory. You ready for His Holiness?”

Aurora

“His ass-holiness. Ready as I’ll ever be.” They had a meeting with Reverend Kale and some of his minions tomorrow. “I heard about Ybor Lopez. I’m sorry.”

Deedee trembled for a moment and a chill ran down her back. Could there have been something between them? The phone chimed, saved by the bell.

“Gotta teach,” Deedee said, voice quavering. “See you later.”

“Hasta luego.” She picked up the phone.

It was Marya Washington. Could they come by in twenty or thirty minutes? Rory said sure, and put the “Do Not Disturb the Bitch” sign on her office door. How much of an article could she read in twenty minutes?

She actually got through the first page of an Astrophysical Review article by a friend at Texas, who had found a consistent correlation between galactic latitude and duration of one class of short-term gamma-ray bursters. That could imply local origin; at least not extragalactic. Or hopeful mathematics, anyhow.

Security called up and she took the sign off her door, and ushered in the young woman and her “crew,” one man shepherding three cameras. “So welcome to Gainesville, Marya. How’s New York?”

“God, don’t ask. It’s a miracle we got out.” A two-day blizzard had just stopped. “We were able to get an old chopper into JFK this morning. Otherwise we’d still be in traffic. If you can call something ‘traffic’ that doesn’t move.”

The cameraman suggested where to place the cameras and Marya nodded. “I know there aren’t any revelations,” she said, “but do you have anything new? Or that I can pretend is new?”

“Any time now,” the cameraman said. “Just be natural, ma’am; we’ll edit later.”

“Well, Marya… this isn’t new exactly; it’s from last week. But I’m not sure anybody got the whole story.”

“You mean the bounce-back from the thing.”

“Exactly.” How to phrase this diplomatically? “You reported it, and so did others. But it was more important than you gave it credit for being.”

She smiled. “Okay. Words of one syllable?”

“We sent them a message and they sent it back. Can I say ‘message’?”

“So far so good.’

“It came back with absolutely no distortion. We couldn’t do that. Period.”

Marya shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, right. I remember.” She waggled a hand in front of one of the cameras. “Off the record, Rory, we couldn’t really punch that up.”

“They intercepted a signal that was ’way blue-shifted, in a relativistically accelerated frame of reference. They recorded it and re-broadcast it with exactly compensating distortion. The signal we got back was absolutely the same as the one we’d sent.”

Marya laughed and shook her head. “Jesus, Rory. Would you come join the world for a minute? The real world?”

“Okay.” Rory smiled, too. “So you couldn’t ‘punch it up.’”

“Look. It’s worse than that. We have to think of counter story. We run your version and three out of six tabloids are on us like clothes from Kmart. ‘We got exactly the same signal.’ So where do you think they’ll say it came from? Outer space?”

“Of course it came from outer space.”

“No way in hell. It came from you.”

“What?”

“You’re trying to stay in the spotlight. So you generate a story.”

“God, can you hear yourself? That’s so ridiculous.”

“It’s not, Dr. Bell,” the cameraman said. “People want to think conspiracy. Want to be on the inside. You can sell any goddamn thing if it’s against the establishment.”

“I’m the establishment?”

“You’re authority,” Marya said. “Bobby’s right. Best way for you to get that story out would have been to let somebody else announce it and you hotly deny it.”

Rory realized she was standing, and sat down. “It’s so Alice in Wonderland. So what do we do?”

“Just what we’ve done here. We didn’t punch it up, so when we repeat it next week, it’s backstory. It’s routine, so it must be true.”

“That’s when people point out how important it is,” Bobby said. “Do it all the time, in politics.”

“As if I, or we, didn’t understand how important it was at the time.”

“You don’t have to go that far,” Marya said. “Just don’t punch it up for now, and later it’ll look like you’ve been cautious. Conservative.”

“Okay. You’re the boss.”

Marya smiled and nodded to the cameraman. “Good evening. It’s exactly one month since the discovery of the Coming, and so we’ve left the blizzards of New York to revisit Dr. Aurora Bell at the University of Florida…”

Marya

The interview went pretty well, though they had to ask Rory to repeat some things in simpler and simpler terms. They got out by ten, though; only fifteen minutes later than they’d expected.

And about two minutes late on the parking meter. Marya saw the big white tow truck from half a block away, checked her watch, and broke into a run.

It was a heavy-duty floater with a bed big enough to hold a large passenger car. It could park parallel to a car and, using a kind of built-in forklift, pick it straight up and haul it aboard in no time.

Marya got to him just as he was raising the car. He was a young black man. Her intuition weighed charm versus indignation as she ran up to the driver’s-side window. “I’m sorry, mister. I got held up just a minute or two.”

The man looked down at her wearily. “You’re gonna get held up, you oughta park on campus. Park on the street and I get the call soon as your time’s up, automatically. You didn’t know that.”

“No. I’m from New York.”

“Well, enjoy the sunshine. You can pick up your car at the police lot anytime after twelve. Bring four hundred bucks and be prepared to spend a couple hours.”

“Oh.” She smiled. “The press card on the windshield doesn’t…”

He gave a little start of recognition. “No, Miz Washington. Nobody escapes the wrath of the Gainesville Police Department.”

The cameraman had caught up with her. “Couldn’t we just pay the fine here, and be on our way?”

“What, is that the way they do it in New York?”

“No,” he said. “In New York we pay a little extra.”

“Like five instead of four,” Marya said. She folded up a single bill and offered it.

The driver looked up and down the street, and then pushed forward on a big lever between the seats, and the car eased back down to the ground. He took the bill and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

He picked up a wand from the dashboard. “Give me dispatch.”

Rabin

Sergeant Rabin walked up to the dispatcher’s desk. The woman was grinning and shaking her head while she talked. “Yeah, some of those meters. It’s a crime. Hasta luego.” She took off her headset and tossed it on the desk. “Those tow-truck guys make more than the mayor.”

“You know it. Got a gun for me?”

“Down here.” She opened a drawer and lifted out a white box labeled EVIDENCE. “What’s the story?”

He opened the box and took out the pistol. “Murder weapon, probably. Tossed in Lake Alice.” Bright chrome revolver, maybe fifty years old. “Some kids in a biology class saw it in the shallows and fished it out.”

He pointed at the short barrel, a duller metal, slightly rusted. “This is cute. Forensics says it’s a homemade barrel, smooth bore, a little bigger than the .44 Magnum bullet.”

“So you couldn’t trace it?”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t make sense. We find a .44 bullet in somebody that doesn’t show any trace of rifling, we know it came from this gun.”

“Have a body?”

“Not yet. But this thing wasn’t in the water more than a day or two. So we’re looking.”

“Buena suerte.”

“Yeah. Meanwhile, I get to take this around to the local dealers and pawnshops, see if anyone says, ‘Oh, sure, I sold that to John Smith last week.’”

“Sounds like a fun job.”

“I think ‘shit job’ is the technical term. But maybe I can do some Christmas shopping in the pawnshop. Buy the kids a couple of matching pistols.”

“Start ’em out right.” Rabin had four-year-old twin daughters. The phone rang and he waved good-bye.

There were two pawnshops just a few blocks down Sixth, so he decided to leave the squad car and walk. Get lunch down there, too.

It wasn’t the best part of town, but they didn’t put pawnshops in the high-rent district. Or police stations. It amused him to walk along in uniform and watch people’s expressions. Trying to look innocent was a real strain on some of them.

There were two large shops next door to one another. He went to the farther one first; the owner was a likable enough guy.

He stepped into the cold air. They probably kept the airco cranked up to minimize the attic smell, mildew and dust. Gun oil and furniture polish. Rabin was fascinated by the places, but not the weapons counter. All the biographies scattered around. Life stories, death stories. Complete tool sets, well-used musical instruments, fancy camera and cube sets. You got so little on the dollar for them, their owners had to be dead or desperate. Or thieves.

The bell when the door closed brought the owner out of a back room. “Qabil. What can I sell you? Can I buy your gun?”

“Yeah, and my thumb, too.” His weapon was keyed to his thumb-print. “Check this out?” He put the box on the glass case full of handguns.

“Evidence, eh? What happened?”

“Some guy’s going around killing pawnshop owners. What you think?”

He picked it out of the box gingerly and rubbed his thumb along the base of the butt, where the serial number had been ground off. “Cute barrel. Not exactly a sniper weapon.”

He clicked the cylinder around, peering through. “Ruger stopped making these in the teens. I see ’em now and then.”

“Bet you do. That was before they started isotope IDs.”

“Tell me about it. I don’t think this one came through the shop, I mean with the original barrel and number. Don’t see many chrome-plated ones, in any caliber.”

“You think the chrome plating was factory?”

He took out a pair of magnifying glasses and slipped them on, and peered along the weapon’s edges and surfaces. “Yeah. Guarantee it.” He took off the glasses and set the gun back in the box.

“What else?”

“You fished it out of the water, but it hadn’t been in there long. Allow for that, and the gun’s practically new. Probably stolen from some collector. Must have been. That’s where I’d start.”

“What’s it worth?”

“Actually, nothing. Without the barrel, I wouldn’t touch it. Obvious hit weapon. If it had the original barrel, four or five grand. Before its little bath.”

“On the street?”

“Maybe a grand, maybe five hundred. You oughta ask the guy next door about that.”

“Think I will.” Rabin closed the box and tucked it under his arm. “Thanks, Oz. You’ve been a help.”

“Sorry I couldn’t ID it. Buena suerte.”

“Buenas.” When he opened the door the sun was so bright it made his eyes water. He crunched through the gravel parking lot and walked up the unpainted wooden stairs to the next place.

The door opened with a surprise like a slap. Norman Bell!

Norman

His heart stopped and restarted. “Qabil. I… I don’t know what to… buenos días.”

“Uh… buenos. How’ve you been?”

“Fine… just fine.” Could he be in on it? No, he’d never. “I saw your girls a couple of weeks ago. They’re growing fast.”

“They do that.” There was an awkward silence and he held out a box. “Got to see a man about a gun.”

“Oh. Sure.” He held the door open. Rabin stepped through and then stopped.

“What are you doing here? Slumming?”

“I come by every now and then, looking for old guitars and such. Nothing today.”

He nodded. “I see your wife on the cube all the time. She looks good.”

“Oh yeah. She’s fine.” The one time they’d met had been strained. In the kitchen, she with wide eyes and he with mouth full.

“Take care,” he whispered with tenderness, and turned toward the gun rack and counter.

Norman finally shook off his paralysis and walked down the stairs. If Qabil had come in a couple of minutes earlier, he would have interrupted an illegal transaction.

The pawnbroker wouldn’t say anything. He was guiltier than Norman. Selling a pistol without waiting period or ID check.

It had to be a coincidence. Rabin wouldn’t be in on a thing that would cost him his job and family and put him in prison for ten or twenty years. As if a cop would last even one year in prison.

Norman stood at his bicycle and considered waiting for Qabil to come back out. Tell him about the threat and enlist his aid. He couldn’t do anything legally without throwing his life away. But maybe he would do something illegal.

Maybe later. First he’d talk to the lawyer and his gun-toting pal. Maybe they’d have a shoot-out there in front of the lunch crowd, and simplify things for everyone.

He clipped the bag onto his handlebars. It was awkwardly heavy, with the snub-nosed revolver and box of bullets. Had to find someplace private to load it.

He went a couple of blocks uptown and locked his bike outside a pool-hall bar where he’d never been. Just as soon not be recognized. He unclipped the bag and walked into a darkness redolent of marijuana and spilled beer.

There were no other customers yet. He walked past the rows of shabby billiard tables to the small bar at the end.

There were three crude VR games along one wall, at least twenty years old, and a century-old pinball machine, dusty and dark, glass cracked. A sign on the wall said NO FUCKING PROFANITY/¡NO USE PALABRAS VERDES, CARAJO! under a shiny holo cube of the president, all brilliant smile, a helmet of perfect hair guarding both of her brain cells.

The bartender was out of sight, rattling bottles around in a back room. He called out “¡Momentito!” and it actually was just a moment.

He was a big black man with startling blue eyes, obviously Cuban. Bright metal teeth. “What’ll you have?”

“Draft Molly. Use your bathroom?”

“Sure. Ain’t cleaned it yet.”

Norman was prepared for an odoriferous hell, but it wasn’t bad in that respect. The urinal was a metal trough that evidently dispensed a powerful antiseptic. There was blood on the floor, though, and a smeared handprint of dried blood on the stall door.

He opened the door and didn’t find a body, so the previous night’s activity had probably been conflict resolution rather than murder. He locked the stall and sat down and opened the bag.

He’d bought an old-fashioned revolver for reliability. It had been so long since he’d fired a gun; more than thirty years. In 2020 he’d killed a couple of dozen men for the crime, he always said, of wearing the other side’s uniform. Something he’d had in common with Qabil, though their wars were a generation apart, and he was technically the enemy.

In Norman’s mind, there were no enemies in war. Just victims. Victims of historical process.

Heavy blued steel. He riddled with a mechanism on the side and the cylinder swung away. He slid six fat cartridges into their homes and snapped it shut.

He could just put the muzzle in his mouth and, again, simplify everything. Sure. Then Rory would have to identify the rest of his body, and Willy Joe and his pals would just shift their focus to her.

Besides, simplifying was against his nature. He resealed the cartridge box and considered what to do with the nineteen remaining rounds. If it were combat, you’d want them as handy as possible. But he couldn’t imagine a situation where he’d have the opportunity, or necessity, to reload. He knew that Willy Joe carried a weapon; that was part of his swagger. Maybe his lawyer was armed, too, or there would be bodyguards.

He’d survived two bullet wounds, lung and leg, in the war. He might survive another. But the real lesson from the experience was to aim for the head.

They were experimenting with brain transplants. In Willy Joe’s case, anything would be an improvement.

He considered throwing away the nineteen cartridges here, where another patron could make use of them. But with his luck the police would find them instead, and they’d trace them back to him. Assuming he survived lunch.

The rational part of him knew there was little danger; he was useless to them dead. But part of him would always be in the desert, fighting men with guns, and he wasn’t going to face one unarmed.

Besides, Willy Joe didn’t strike him as particularly rational. He put the bullets back in the bag and took out the light plastic holster. He set the revolver on a shelf and read the instructions, then opened his shirt and twisted the holster back and forth rapidly. It warmed in his hands. He carefully positioned it under his left arm and pressed it into place. It stuck like glue, but would supposedly peel away painlessly. He slipped the gun into it, the weight strange but reassuring, then flushed the toilet (a flagrant violation of the law) and returned to the bar.

The bartender had waited for him to come out. He cracked the tap slowly and filled a frosted mug. “Y’know, I got a memory for faces. You ain’t been in here before, but I seen you someplace.”

“That’s not surprising. I’ve lived around Gainesville for forty years.” The beer was a new kind, bland but with a little catnip bite. Ice-cold, though, and welcome. “Good. Norman Bell. I’m a music teacher and musician.”

“Sí, sí. I’ve seen you on the cube with your wife, Professor Bell. What you make of all this stuff?”

“Well, I sort of have to go along with the wife. Preserve domestic tranquillity.”

He laughed. “I hear ya.”

“She makes a good case, though. New Year’s Day is going to be interesting.”

“Little green men on the White House lawn?”

“Probably something even weirder than that. Something we can’t even imagine.”

The bartender poured himself a small glass of beer. “Yeah, I was reading… like why don’t they send a picture? They afraid of what we’d do?”

“What my wife says, they have no reason to be afraid of us for anything. They could fry the planet if we made a threatening move.”

“Jesus.”

“But there are any number of innocent explanations. Maybe they don’t send pictures because there’s nobody aboard; it’s just a robot that’s programmed to wander around, listening for radio waves. That’s what Rory thinks. My wife.”

“That was in the article. Also maybe they’re like invisible. Made of energy.”

I’ve had students like that, Norman thought. “I don’t think there’s anything mysterious about it. They know a lot about us, evidently, and don’t want us to know too much about them. That’s what a military operation would do.”

“So we can kiss our ass adios.”

“Not necessarily. We don’t know anything about their psychology. They might be following some kind of a ritual. Or keeping us in suspense as a kind of joke. Who knows?”

“Yeah, I guess.” He wiped the bar slowly. “You do any gettin’ ready for it?”

“You mean emergency preparations?” He shrugged. “Just what we have on hand for hurricanes. Plenty of water and food. I’m more worried about people panicking than aliens.”

“Me, too. You ought to go down to the pawnshop and get a gun.”

Norman jumped. “¿Cómo?”

“What I did. Somethin’ a guy at the bar said. “Ammunition will get you through times of no food, but food won’t get you through times of no ammo.’ The guys with him thought that was muy chistoso. Then one of them whispered something and they looked at me and laughed again. Them’s the kind I went out and got the gun for.”

“Claro. You must have some rough customers here.” Norman nodded toward the bathroom. “Looks like you had a big fight back there last night.”

“Oh, mierda. They bust it up?”

“No, just blood.”

He nodded philosophically and picked up a bucket. “’Scuse me.”

Norman finished his beer and pondered leaving a tip. No; the guy didn’t need any more surprises this morning.

Back in the sunlight, he clipped his bag to the handlebars and looked down, out of the glare: a storm drain. There was nobody in sight, so in a quick motion he pulled out the box of ammo and tossed it into the drain.

It was as if a weight had been lifted from him. Odd. He supposed the act confirmed that the gun’s function was purely defensive.

He checked his watch. Twenty minutes, and the restaurant was ten minutes away at a slow pace. Do you show up early for a blackmail lunch, or late, or on time? He decided on time would be best, and took a detour down by the student ghetto, a part of it that still had trees and shade.

This was where Qabil had lived when they met. He’d gone to his apartment a couple of times, though the house was less risky. Unless your wife came home early.

Alice’s Tea Room probably had its share of clandestine meetings. The only expensive restaurant in a block of student eateries, it had what they used to call a “shotgun” shape, a long rectangle with one row of tables.

They were at the farthest table, and the two nearest them were empty, with “Reserved” signs. Otherwise the restaurant was full.

The maître d’ approached and Norman pointed. “Joining that party.”

The walls were decorated with mediocre-to-okay paintings by local artists. It occurred to Norman that this was an odd choice for a supposedly clandestine meeting. If the bartender at that pool hall had recognized him on sight, what were the chances no one here would?

Pretty good, actually. The bartender was a fluke; besides his students and the Hermanos crowd, there weren’t too many people in town who would know him.

The lawyer, if that’s what he was, and Willy Joe and another man, a small skinny weasel with a sallow complexion, watched him as he walked down the aisle. He sat down wordlessly.

The sallow man thrust out a hand. “The bag.” Norman slid it over. “I smell gun oil.”

Norman tried to keep a neutral expression while the bodyguard, if that’s what he was, zipped open the bike bag and sorted through its contents. “It’s valve oil you smell, genius. I’m a musician. I was cleaning a trumpet.” They might know something about his sex life, but he doubted they knew which instruments he played. Definitely not trumpet.

“It’s okay, Solo,” Willy Joe said. “Professor wouldn’t bring a gun in here.” The man zipped up the bag slowly, staring.

He slid it across slowly. “What outfit you with?”

“What?”

“You’ve killed people, maybe lots.” He was almost whispering. “It’s in the way you walk, the way you’re not afraid. So you were a soldier?”

This man was dangerous, “Hundred and first. Second of the Twenty-third. But that was a long time ago.”

“You killed men, Professor?” Willy Joe said conversationally. “As well as fucking them?”

Interesting that he didn’t know that elementary fact. “As I said, a long time ago, both.”

The lawyer leaned forward, and he did whisper: “There’s no statute of limitations on being a faggot.”

Norman felt heat and a prickling sensation on his palms, the back of his neck, his scalp. Adrenaline, epinephrine. He knew his face was flushed.

If they hadn’t been in a crowded restaurant, at this moment he might find out how many of them he could kill before he died. Certainly one.

“There ain’t no need to be insulting, Greg,” Willy Joe said. “Let’s not use that word.”

“I apologize,” he said. “This is a financial proposition, not a moral judgment.”

Norman sat completely still. “Go on.”

“We know that your wife knows,” the lawyer said. “She paid off the police.” He looked up as a waiter approached.

“My name is Bradley,” he said. “For today’s specials, we—”

“I want the special,” Willy Joe interrupted. “We all want the special.”

“But we have four—”

“We want the first.”

“The grouper?”

“Yeah. What kinda wine goes with that?”

“I would suggest the Bin 24, the—”

“Bring us two bottles of it. Pronto?”

“Yes, sir.” He hurried away.

“You was sayin’, Greg.”

The lawyer paused, staring at Norman. “To be blunt, it’s your wife’s money we’re after. Her inheritance.”

“We have a joint account.”

“We know that, of course. But your wife seems to have enough on her mind right now. So we thought we’d approach you instead.”

“She’d lose her job,” Willy Joe said. “Even if she didn’t go to jail, for buying off the cops. And you and your boyfriend would get Raiford for sodomy. Separate cells, I think.”

“You might live through it,” the lawyer said, “but he wouldn’t. A fag… a homosexual cop in Raiford.”

“They’d use him up real quick,” Willy Joe said.

One chance for the offensive. “I don’t think you’ve thought that through, Willy Joe. Qabil has a lot of friends on the force.” He saw the man’s eyebrows go up and thought, My God, they didn’t know his identity. But he pressed on. “And he’s a family man, cute kids; everybody likes him. You send him off to certain death in prison—yourself not a man well loved by the police—and what do you think his friends are going to do to you?”

“I got friends in the police, too.”

“It just takes one who’s not your friend, but is a friend of Qabil’s. You may have noticed that the police kill criminals all the time, in the course of their duties. If one of them killed you, he wouldn’t go to jail. He’d get a promotion.”

“This isn’t about Qabil,” the lawyer said. “It’s about you and your wife. Your wife’s job and money.”

“Oh, really. You can expose me as a homosexual without naming my partner?”

“This Kabool ain’t the only one you done,” Willy Joe said.

“Oh? Name another.” Norman stared into the little man’s face. “Give me one name and I’ll write you a check.” There were no others, not in this state, this country.

“You’re a piece of work,” the lawyer said. “You take a false premise and build a considerable edifice of conjecture.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Norman said. “That’s your job.”

“You can’t fuckin’ turn this around,” Willy Joe said.

Norman stood up. “Why don’t you discuss the ramifications of this,” he said quietly. “Your life expectancy after you condemn a cop to death.” He picked up his bag.

“Sit down,” Willy Joe said.

“See you here tomorrow, same time.”

“I can have you killed,” he said in a harsh whisper, theatrical.

Norman looked at the sallow man. “You, Solo?”

“Nothin’ personal.” He smiled a genuine smile. “See you soon.”

Norman turned to go and almost ran into the wine steward. He snatched one bottle out of the ice bucket. “This one’s mine, thanks.”

He heard Solo laugh as he walked away. “Balls. You got to admit he got balls.”

Southeby

“Norman!” Odd to see his neighbor at a fancy place like this.

“Mr. Mayor.” Norman saluted with his left hand and strode toward his bike.

“He looks familiar,” his companion, Rose, said.

“Aurora Bell’s husband. We’re neighbors.”

“They let you bring your own bottle to a place like this?”

“I guess.” He held the door open for her. Nothing wrong with the mayor having lunch with his university liaison. He didn’t know that most of his office knew exactly what their relationship was, and thought he was a fatuous old fool. Some of them had an even lower opinion of her, for being able to stand him.

Southeby stiffened when he saw Willy Joe Capra at a far table, along with that slimeball Gregory Moore and some other gangster type. Capra locked eyes with him and gave a small nod.

“Right this way, Mayor,” the maître d’ said, and led them back to a table distressingly close to Capra’s. Southeby took the chair that would put his back to them.

A waiter came with menus and took their drink order. He asked for lemonade, though he could have used something stronger. She ordered E.T. Lager, a new local brew.

“That any good?”

“Probably not. I just want to see the label.” She lowered her voice. “You know those guys?”

“Not to speak to, except the oldest one, Greg Moore. Used to be public defender. Now he works for the little wop, Capra, who’s got Mafia connections. The third one, I don’t want to know.”

He hadn’t noticed that she flinched at the word “wop.” Blond and blue-eyed, three of her four grandparents had come from Tuscany. “He’s the one the petty cash goes to?”

“Jesus, Rosie!” He took a leatherbound notebook out of his jacket pocket and riffled through it.

“Really, I’m curious,” she said, just above a whisper.

“Who told you this?”

“You withdraw it for ‘office supplies.’ That’s a lot of staples, Cam.”

“Okay. It’s a kind of insurance. For the building, not for me.”

“What?” The waiter brought the lemonade and beer. The label was a movie poster from the twentieth century, a goofy-looking alien with a glowing fingertip. He poured the beer. It was pale green, and probably glowed in the dark.

The waiter left. “You didn’t work here four or five years ago. We used to get trashed all the time—graffiti, broken windows. Gang stuff.”

She nodded. “So they could get their jail time.”

“Verdad. A new gang member would confess and get his week in jail. Rite of passage. But it was costing the city a fortune, and the cops were powerless. You catch one in the act, hell, that’s what he wants.

“So Capra moves in. The gangs stay away from any building that has his mark.”

“Or else… what?”

“That’s another thing I don’t want to know. A few days after Capra started marking buildings, the leaders of three gangs disappeared overnight. Never came back, good riddance.”

“He killed them for vandalism?”

“Had them killed, probably. And probably not ‘for’ anything, except to show what he could do if they didn’t cooperate.”

She stared at him in silence for a moment. There was a heated argument going on sotto voce at the gangsters’ table. She shook her head. “God. This town.”

“This town is peaches and cream, honey, compared to—”

The waiter had returned. “May I… are you ready to order? Ma’am?” His voice was a little loud and nervous as he glanced at the other table.

“Jimmy!” Willy Joe shouted. “Cancel them specials. We gotta leave.”

“As you wish, sir,” the waiter said. The three of them shuffled out from behind the table, and left in a little procession: Willy Joe striding in the lead, the pale hoodlum following, and then the lawyer.

Gregory Moore

He stopped to shake the mayor’s hand. “Cam. Long time no see.”

“We seem to travel in different circles now,” he said.

“It’s all circles, isn’t it? ‘What goes around comes around,’ my dad used to say.”

“Your father was a good lawyer.”

“So are you, Cam. Señorita?” She nodded at him with a curious smile, and he followed Solo out the door.

“You’re pals with the mayor?” Solo said, opening the car door.

“Not exactly ‘pals.’ Remind me to wash this hand.”

“He’s a asshole,” Willy Joe said, getting in, “but he’s our asshole.”

The doors slid shut and the air conditioner’s roar abated. Solo, behind the wheel, pushed a button. “Address for Norman Bell.”

“This is lunacy,” Moore said. “Isn’t one murder a day enough?

“He can’t fuck with me that way!”

The car told Solo the address. “Go there.” It pulled away from the curb, hesitated, and slipped into the traffic.

“Plenty of people saw us together. Saw him leave.”

“Shut up, okay? Just gonna check the fuckin’ thing out.”

“Just promise me you won’t—”

“I don’t promise you or nobody a fuckin’ thing,” he said quietly. “But Solo ain’t gonna kill him. Just rough him up a little. Put the fear o’ God into him.”

“Jesus. Listen to yourself.”

Solo turned around to face them. “Boss, I don’t think he’s the kind of guy you just push around…”

“That’s right, you don’t think! You don’t think! You just do what I tell you.”

“What do you mean, Solo?”

“I mean beggin’ your pardon, Boss, but God knows I met all kinds a tough guys and phony tough guys, inside and outside. He’s not phony, and he’s pissed. I think he’d just as soon kill any one of us as look at us.”

“You’ve got a fuckin’ gun. How’s he gonna kill you?”

“You buy that shit about the trumpet oil?” Solo put a finger beside his nose. “Hoppes No. 9, I’ve smelled it all my life. He’s got a gun, all right.”

“So he’s got a gun. He’s a faggot professor twice as old as you.”

“Push the info button for me, Solo,” Moore said. He did. “Public records, military. Norman Bell.”

“I’ll need a service number,” the car said, “or current residence.”

“Gainesville, Florida.”

“Norman Bell volunteered for the draft during Desert Wind, in September 2031. For his service in the 101st Airborne Division, he was awarded the Silver Star with two clusters and the Purple Heart.”

“Silver Star,” Solo said. “Two clusters. Some faggot.”

“So? So you afraid of him?”

Solo didn’t move. “I’ll do what you want.”

“I want.”

Moore kept an eye on the road. There was a bike lane. But Bell probably would take a less direct route, avoiding traffic.

“He probably has a burglar alarm. House full of musical instruments.”

“Solo can take care of a burglar alarm.”

“Yeah, or run like hell.”

Moore shook his head. “You ought to wait until he’s home, if you have to do this. Knock on his door and push your way in.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Lawyer. We already gone over this in the restaurant.”

“It’s an unnecessary—”

“I don’t got a replay button. You clear on that?”

This could get them all into trouble. Too many people in that restaurant saw the four of them together. “It’s going to be an interesting trial. Calling the mayor as a witness.”

“Shut the fuck up. The mayor’s fuckin’ ours. Besides, he came in after the professor left.”

“This is going too fast.”

“Sometimes you gotta live fast. We got a chance for perfect timing here. Get them both, get the money, get the fuck out.”

After they dropped Solo off, he was going to go confront Aurora Bell. In theory, by the time she called home, her husband would be sufficiently intimidated. They would empty their bank accounts into Willy Joe’s coffers.

Again in theory, the Bells couldn’t call the police. This Qabil Rabin was still on the force, Willy Joe had said. But what if the jealous wife was not exactly fond of her husband’s boyfriend. Or her husband, for that matter. This whole thing could blow up in their faces.

The car turned right and went uphill for a couple of blocks, through a quiet residential neighborhood. Then left and right and they pulled up in front of the Bells’ house, a large rambler with conservative but well-maintained landscaping. There was nobody in sight.

“No burglar-alarm signs,” Willy Joe said. “People who got ’em advertise it.”

“Yeah; like me,” Moore said. “Someone stole my sign.”

“Move it,” Willy Joe said. Solo opened the door and got out.

Solo

He stood for a moment with his hand on the door. “Call you tonight, Boss, or come by?”

“Call.” He shut the door and the car glided away.

Solo stood for a moment, feeling exposed and perhaps betrayed. What the hell was Willy Joe’s game this time? A test? A sacrifice play?

You couldn’t just walk out on him, crazy and vindictive fucker. Solo fought the reasonable impulse to call a cab and go straight to the airport, sighed, and turned on his heel. Shit or get off the pot.

He went up the walk briskly, checking his watch for the sake of unseen neighbors. The place was a perfect design for breaking in; a small atrium hid the front door from the street.

The atrium was cool and smelled of jasmine. He went straight to the door and rang the bell, getting his story ready in case there was a servant or a robot.

No answer. He looked around carefully for security cameras. If there was one, it was pretty well hidden.

The double lock was a Horton magnetic dead bolt and a plain Kayser underneath. He took out a plastic case of tools and threaded a probe into the Horton and pushed a button. It sometimes got the combination right away; sometimes it took a few minutes. With two mechanical picks, he unlocked the Kayser in seconds. Then the Horton gave a solid snap. He pushed the door open.

He stepped into the anteroom and eased the door shut. Books, paper books, from floor to ceiling! This might work after all; these people had real money.

The Horton lock snapped and he looked back at it—hell, it was a keypad on this side. He’d have to find another way out.

He took one step and a voice in every room said, “Hello? Who’s here?”

Shit. The place did have a system. “Professor Bell,” he said, and the system answered “okay”—but of course it was already calling the police.

Quickest way out. He ran into the kitchen. The door to the garage was also a keypad. There was a glass door and a stained-glass window looking out into the atrium. He picked up a heavy bar stool and swung it against the glass door; it bounced back, nearly dislocating his shoulder. He threw it into the stained glass, which crashed in a glittering rainbow shower, and jumped through the hole into the atrium. He rushed to the walk, paused to smooth his jacket and his tie, and started striding toward town, casually but fast.

Hope the dispatcher’s not too swift.

Rabin

“Units seven, nine, and twelve. I have a 217 at 5412 NW Fourteenth Avenue. Who wants to pick it up?”

Allah, Rabin thought, that’s Norm’s house. What’s going on?

“Take it?” his partner said. “That’s like eight blocks.”

“Wait and see if there’s a closer pickup.” Seconds ticked by, and no other unit responded.

“Come on, Qabil. We could use some laughs.”

“Sure. Let’s take it.” Two-seventeen was B&E, usually no big deal. Except when the house being broken into belongs to your fellow sodomite. Sweet Allah!

“Unit nine on the way,” his partner said, and switched to manual. The car surged into the middle of the street, and traffic parted in front of them like the Red Sea for Moses. Qabil checked to make sure his pistol was on “stun.” He was tempted to accidentally switch the dart selector to “lethal.” Whatever this guy might say was unlikely to advance his career.

He allowed himself one long moment of reflection. That had been a turning point in his life—as large as being a soldier; larger than the POW camp. He went straight after the wife caught him with “Normal Norman,” at least straight enough to collect his own wife and kids. Love is love, though, and lust, lust, and a man can’t help being what he is.

“Perp shot,” the radio said, and the monitor showed a picture of a well-dressed man swinging a bar stool at a glass door. The image ratcheted forward and rotated, to give them a full-face portrait of the man.

“We have an ID,” the radio said. “Suspect did six months Raiford in fifty-two, accessory to extortion. Two juvies, B and E and A and B. He has a Georgia license to carry a concealed weapon, supposedly in three states. Dolomé Patroukis, street name Solo. Consider him armed and dangerous.”

“Well, hello,” his partner said. The suspect was loping down the sidewalk toward them, on the other side of the street, hands in pockets. No other pedestrians in sight. “Guy can’t even afford a car.”

He turned on the lights and pulled over to the curb, traffic weaving, and bumped up onto the sidewalk. The man crouched as if to run, and then stood up with his hands over his head.

“I’ll take it.” His partner got out and walked toward the man while Rabin unclipped the detector from the visor, then opened the door and stood behind it, peering through the detector tube.

“David!” he said. “Left armpit!” He and David both had their stunners out in an instant.

Solo stood on his toes, reaching high. “Hey! Hey! I got a ticket! I’m a private investigator!”

“Yeah, sure.” David reached into the man’s jacket and pulled out a light automatic. “You got a Georgia ticket outta some cereal box. You got the right to remain silent anything you say may be held against you this encounter is being recorded and encrypted and will be acceptable as evidence against you.”

“I don’t say nothing until I talk to my lawyer. Not meaning to be disrespectful.”

“Like I say,” David said, “everything you say is evidence. Everything you don’t say, too.”

“You can call your lawyer from the station,” Rabin said. “First we’re going back to the place you were trying to rob.”

“Hey, I didn’t take nothing.”

David took him by the shoulder and steered him toward the car. “Keep talking. You were a Jehovah’s Witness, or what?”

“I got lost, I was confused. Went to this house to ask directions, and then this voice starts up.”

He pushed him down into the backseat. “Put your wrists on the armrests, please.” He did. “Close.” The armrests handcuffed him. “So then you had to break your way out.”

“Man, it locked me in! What would you do?”

“Oh, I’d probably call nine-one-one. But then I’m a cop. I have the number memorized.” He eased the door shut and went around to the driver’s seat.

Rabin had just finished calling it in. He turned around and studied Solo for a moment. “So whose house was it? What were you after?”

“I don’t know. Like I say, just wanted directions.”

“Bullshit. We have you on a previous B and E.”

“What, bacon and eggs?” Rabin just smiled as the car bumped over the curb and eased into traffic. “Look, I was just a kid. The judge said that was goin’ to be erased.”

“Probably on the condition of good behavior. Assault and battery isn’t such good behavior.”

“That was juvenile, too! You never got into a fight?”

“No, as a matter of fact. Not until the war.”

Solo was staring at his name badge. “Oh.”

“That’s right; I was on the other side. And here I am, a towel-head, arresting you. Is this a great country?” They pulled into the driveway at 5412.

David said “release” and helped Solo out of the car. He chinned the microphone on his lapel. “This is Eakins. You got the owners on this B and E?”

“Not yet,” a distant voice said. “One’s at lunch, the other’s in transit.”

“Keep trying.” He inserted a probe like Solo’s into the Horton lock. Both locks snapped open instantly. “After you.” He pushed Solo inside.

“House,” Rabin said, “this is the police.”

“I know,” the house said.

“Did this man take anything or do any physical damage to you?”

“Yes, he broke a stained-glass window. The replacement cost will be six thousand four hundred and fifty dollars.”

David whistled. “Felony property. You should have done a different window. Or even used the door.”

“Like I said. The house locked up.”

“Hello?” someone said from the hall. “Police?”

Norman

A police car in the driveway and the door wide open. The holster with its illegal weapon felt heavy as a stone.

Then he almost turned to stone when he saw Rabin. And then he recognized Solo. His voice almost squeaked. “What’s going on here?”

“I’m Lieutenant David Eakins and this is Sergeant Qabil Rabin. We apprehended this man fleeing after a robbery attempt.”

Solo looked straight at Norman. “I’m tellin’ you I didn’t rob nothin’. It was all a big mistake. I got trapped in here and panicked.”

“Have you ever seen this man before?” David asked.

“I’m not sure,” Norman said. “He looks familiar.”

“I don’t know him from Adam,” Solo said. “It’s like I said—”

“Shut up,” Eakins said. “After he set off the alarm, he couldn’t bust through the plastic doors, so he broke your stained-glass window to escape. The house says it’s worth six thousand four hundred and fifty dollars.”

“More than that,” Norman said slowly. “The artist was a friend, and he’s dead now.”

“Ten grand,” Solo said.

Norman looked at him. “What?”

“Look, I don’t know much about law, but if me and him agrees, can’t we like change venue from a criminal offense to like a civil one? Him bein’ the only aggrieved party.”

“I don’t know,” Eakins said. “House, did you follow that?”

“Searching,” the house said. “Mason versus Holabird, 2022. If both parties agree on the settlement and there is no objection from the state.”

“Fifteen thousand,” Norman said.

“Twelve!” Solo said. “If I even got twelve.” He pulled out his wallet and riffled through the bills, extracting the brick-red ones. “Nine… ten… eleven. I got eleven and some change.”

“That’s a lot of money for an innocent bystander to be carrying around,” Rabin said.

“So my family don’t believe in banks. That a crime now?”

“He was armed,” Eakins began.

“Legal!” Solo said, holding out his wallet. “Look! I got a goddamn permit.”

Eakins waved him down. “You can get those permits in any truck stop in Georgia. What I mean, Professor Bell, is that his intent here might have been to do you harm. I wouldn’t be too quick to let him buy his way out of it.”

“That’s a good point,” Norman said.

“He has a jail record,” Qabil said, “down in Tampa.”

“I was a kid,” Solo said. “Look, let me use the phone. I can make it twenty. Like I say, I’m a private investigator. I can’t take no jail term on my record. Adult jail.”

“This is getting kind of complicated,” Norman said, taking a calculated chance. “I don’t know. Twenty thousand would more than replace the window. But it’s not as if we were poor. Maybe I ought to let you guys have him, for my own safety.”

“What, your safety? I don’t mean you no harm.”

“He doesn’t have another weapon?”

“Not of metal,” Rabin said. “I scanned him outside.”

“Tell you what,” Norman said, taking the phone off his belt and handing it to Solo, “you guarantee me that twenty thousand, and then you and I will have a little talk. Agreed?”

Solo gave him a look he’d seen over many a poker table: What the hell do you have in your hand? “Yeah, sure. I can use your john to make the call?”

“Be my guest.” Solo went down the hall toward a bathroom.

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Eakins said. “This jerk’s a career criminal if I ever saw one. He just hasn’t been caught before as an adult.”

“Or he’s been caught,” Norman said, “and bought his way out of it. Like now.” He looked toward the bathroom. “You’ve got his weapon—I mean, you can keep it?”

“By all means,” Rabin said. “We have to send it to Jacksonville for an FBI check. That’s a federal law, and his change of venue doesn’t mean anything with them.”

“Why do you want to talk to him?” Eakins asked Norman.

“I don’t know. As you say, he probably didn’t walk in off the street. Maybe I can find out what’s going on.”

“We’re paid to do that, sir,” Eakins said. “If you really don’t need the money, let us take him downtown. He’s a felon now, and we can use drugs to make him talk.”

That would be really great. “He’s a felon but he’s a human being. If I decide to change the venue back—”

Solo came back up the hall and handed Norm the telephone. “We done a direct credit exchange,” he said. “Check your amount at the credit union. You’re twenty grand richer.”

“Thought you didn’t believe in banks,” Eakins said.

“Got friends who do.”

Norman took out his wallet and thumbed his bank card. He didn’t actually remember how much had been in his liquid account, but $38,000 did seem like a lot. It was there; he held up the phone to the police. “Any trouble, I’ll call you guys. Thanks.”

“I wish you’d reconsider,” Eakins said, but they both headed for the door.

“What about my gun?” Solo said.

“You’ll get it back eventually,” Rabin said. “Just come by the station next week.” He gave Norman one long look as they left.

When the door clicked, Norman said, “House, we want privacy. Turn yourself off for thirty minutes, or until I push an alarm button.”

“Very well.”

Norman went to a sideboard and poured himself a glass of red wine. “You have a lot to explain. You can start with Sergeant Rabin.”

“Somebody else did that. Or else it was an accident. Surprised me, that’s for sure.”

“I wonder. I saw him earlier today, myself.”

“Small town.”

“Not that small.” He picked up the glass with his left hand and took a sip, staring at the man. “Did Willy Joe send you here to intimidate me?”

“No more questions,” Solo said, and stepped toward him. He froze when Norman pulled out the big revolver.

“Just a few.” He pointed the muzzle to the left. “Out in the garage.”

Solo had his hands up, walking slowly backward. “What’s in the garage?”

“Just easier to clean up. This is loaded with crab rounds, the kind that spin like a drill and pop out tiny claws when they hit. I think they make an awful mess.”

“Jesus! Hold on. What I do to you? I mean, the window, yeah, but—”

“Open the door there.” The garage was large and neat, two bicycles hanging from ceiling hooks, an orderly wall of tools over a workbench.

“It’s not what you did to me, or even what you intended to do to me. Have a seat.”

The only chair was a stool by the workbench. Solo climbed up on it.

“When I was a young man I killed twenty-five other young men, just because they wore a uniform different from mine. Slightly darker skin. Whereas you broke into my house with the intention of terrorizing me, and destroyed a work of art that was dear to me.

“I’m sorry about that. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s hard for me to express how unimportant your feelings are in this matter. I’m just weighing practicalities.”

“It sure as hell wouldn’t be practical for you to kill me.” Sweat was popping out on his face. “You don’t fuck with Willy Joe.”

“You may overestimate your importance to him. You haven’t demonstrated a high degree of competence in this matter.” Norman set down the wine and propped both elbows on the workbench, holding the pistol with two hands, steady on Solo’s heart. “And don’t even bring up the police. They’d thank me.”

“Now that isn’t so. You’d go to trial, and they’d find out about…” Norman pulled the hammer back with a loud click.

“You’re in an unenviable situation right now. You know I’m a homosexual, and could ruin my life with a word. You’re of no value to me, alive. Dead, you would be a powerful warning to Willy Joe.”

“You don’t know him. He’s crazy. He’d come kill you.”

“He might try. I’d still have five crab rounds left.”

Solo looked right and left, head jerking, about to flee. Norman’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Solo stared at the tool rack. “Wait. I got a good idea.”

“It’s about time.”

He reached slowly toward the tools. “Con permiso. I take this hatchet and—”

“Stop it!”

“Okay, okay!” He froze in position. “I was gonna say, like I chop off one of my fingers. Tell him you made me do it, at gunpoint.”

“You’d do that?” Of course it could be grown back, for a price.

“I just want to walk outta here, man.”

Norman considered it. “Use the hammer.” He pointed with the pistol. “The iron mallet there. Break your gun hand, the right one.”

“I’m left-handed.”

“Then I’m doing you a favor. Do the right.” He’d reached for the tools with his right hand.

He slowly removed the hammer from the hook and hefted it, not looking at Norman.

“Don’t even think of throwing it at me. Bullet’s a lot faster.” He raised his point of aim to the man’s face. “Now put the mallet in your left hand and put your right hand on the anvil—”

He’d already put his right hand on the table, fingers splayed, and with his eyes closed, chopped down with the mallet. It smashed the knuckles of the first and second finger. The mallet clattered across the table, and for a moment he cradled the broken hand silently. Then he sank to the concrete floor, keening, and rolled into a ball.

Norman cringed, but kept the gun pointed at him. Then an old and remorseless feeling crawled over him. Go on. One round. Simplify your life.

The phone on his belt beeped. He stepped back into the kitchen, closing the door, keeping an eye on Solo through the window.

He clumsily extricated the phone with his left hand. “Buenas.”

“Sweetheart, what’s going on there?” Rory said. “I got back from lunch and there was a message from the police. We were broken into?”

“It’s more complicated than that. The burglar was actually a blackmailer. He knew about Rabin.”

Aurora

“Rabin?” She put two fingers over the speaking end of the wand. “Would you excuse me? This is personal.”

“Of course. I can get back to you later.” The man who’d been waiting for her got up and left. A local politician, she’d thought, or some kind of lawyer, holding a business card.

“It’s not something we should talk about over the phone,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“The situation’s more or less under control.”

“You paid?”

“Not exactly. Check our balance. I’ll explain when you get home. Right now I have to fix a broken window, before the bugs get in.”

“Broken… okay, later. I’m on camera in ten minutes. Adios.”

Pepe was leaning on the door. “Who was that?”

“On the phone? Norman.”

“No, no. The suit who was in that chair and just now left without saying anything.”

“He didn’t say who he was?”

“That’s why I’m asking you, Hawking. He must have walked in while I was in the john.”

She waved it away. “Probably some studio guy. You ready for this?”

“I’m ready, yeah. You could use some makeup, though. You’re bright pink.”

“Just let me get my breath.” She crossed the room and got a cup of ice water, then sat back down and tried to breathe normally. Break-in, blackmail.

“You don’t look too good. Want me to get Marya and reschedule it?”

“No, look… our house was broken into; there was a message from the police. But I talked to Norman and he says things are under control, whatever that means. A broken window, but I think the only breakable windows in the house are the stained glass ones in the living room and kitchen.”

“Hope not,” Pepe said. “They’re beautiful.”

“And irreplaceable, literally. They were by old man Charlie what’s-his-name, died a couple of years ago.” She massaged her temples. “I’ll be all right.”

Pepe checked his watch. “Why don’t we go down early? Get a Coke from the machine.”

“Marya says that’s a bad idea. You might burp.”

“So they edit it out.”

“It’s live, Pepe.” She got up. “I’ll risk it, though.”

He ushered her through the door. “Burping on camera will make you seem more human.”

“Oh, please.” They walked down the corridor to the converted lecture hall. Just outside it, Rory stopped at the machine, slid her credit card, and got them a Coke and a root beer.

Marya was helping a cameraman arrange an improvised drape over a whiteboard, for a backdrop. They exchanged hellos.

“Look,” Pepe said. “You don’t need me here. Why don’t I run over and see whether I can help Norm?”

Rory hesitated. “Help him?” She looked disoriented. She was always a little nervous with the cameras, even with nothing else on her mind.

“The broken window? You know, rain?”

“Oh, sure.” She shook her head. “Sí, por favor.”

Pepe

On his way down the hall, Pepe called for a cab to meet him across the street at Burgerman’s. Before leaving the air conditioning, he buzzed Norm.

It rang ten times before he answered. He was curiously hesitant; but said sure, he could use some help; come on over.

There were two cabs waiting, illegally parked on the grass strip in front of the fast-food palace. He asked them and the second cab said it was his. He gave it the Bells’ address and settled back for the short ride.

This was a complicated business. He knew what role Aurora was supposed to play in the Coming, but Norman was an unknown factor. On the other hand, there was a personal side to it. Norm and Rory were more than just his friends.

Two years before, he had made a real error in judgment, and wound up deeply involved with an undergraduate who turned out to be an extremely competent and calculating bitch.

He had considered himself sophisticated; well schooled in the nuances of American society, but she was more sophisticated, and had set him up and knocked him down.

They’d had sex once, and she had pictures of it. Pictures of them doing something that was technically illegal in the state of Florida. And she just an innocent girl, ten years younger than him.

All she wanted was a passing grade. But she hadn’t done any of the work.

Just an innocent girl with a hidden camera, Rory and Norm pointed out, when he confessed to them over dinner at their place. And forget about the oral sex law; the house did a quick search and found that the law had never been enforced against heterosexuals except in connection with actual child abuse. This child was nineteen, going on forty.

They got a copy of her transcript and made a few very discreet inquiries. It turned out that at least three of her high grades were gifts of love, with the help of a camera. One of the men, who had since left the university for a private firm, was eager to testify against her, before the dean, a jury, a firing squad, whatever.

Rory did some administrative shuffling and made herself the girl’s advisor. Then she called her in for “counseling” and presented the evidence, and told her she could either take an F and leave the university, or go to jail for extortion. She left.

That had not just saved his academic life. Even if the girl’s threats were empty, any kind of adverse publicity could have cost him his blue card. It would be hard to monitor the Coming from Cuba.

As the cab turned onto Fourteenth Avenue, he saw another cab parked in front of the Bells’ house. A man in a suit, with a bandaged hand, got into it. The cab pulled away and Pepe’s U-turned to take its space.

He verified his credit number and went up the walk. When he stepped into the atrium, Norm opened the door and said, “Buenas.”

“So who was the guy with the bandage?”

“That’s a long story”—Norman let him in—“and a short one. The short one is that he’s the man who broke the window.”

“The burglar? Why don’t the cops have him—you just let him go?”

“The cops were here. Turns out you can settle out of court, on the spot. He offered twenty big ones, more than twice the replacement cost.”

“Must be a lot of money in his line of work.”

“Whatever that is. Let’s measure the thing.” Pepe followed Norm into the kitchen, where he rummaged through a couple of drawers and came up with a tape measure. The broken window was 80-by-160 centimeters.

“I’ve got some one-by-two-meter pressboard,” he said. “It’s ugly, but it’ll do.”

They went into Norm’s neat garage. The neatness made Pepe uneasy. His own garage, under the apartment, was a collection of random junk. There was actually room for a car in this one.

Norm went to a rack that was mostly woodite and pressboard, but did have a few actual boards of fragrant pine. He tugged on a big sheet of pressboard. Pepe stepped over and helped him with it.

The house chimed and said the privacy period was almost up. Norman asked for another thirty minutes. He worked silently for a few minutes, using the tape and a T square to measure out a rectangle on the pressboard. They carried the board over to the table saw.

On the workbench next to it, an iron mallet and a splatter of blood. Norman saw Pepe staring at it. “That’s part of the story, the long story.”

“You want to tell it?”

“Not really, no.” They wiggled the board and the table saw’s guide until it was exact, the saw blade’s kerf on the waste side of the drawn line. They cut off an eighty-by-two hundred rectangle, and then cut that to size.

“You don’t have to answer this,” Norman said suddenly, “but we were talking a couple of years ago, after Rory went to bed. Talking about sex, homosex.”

“I sort of remember that. We’d had a bit to drink.”

“A lot.” He stamped the board on the table twice; then went over the cut edges with a rag. “You’d done it, you said.”

“Well, it’s not a big deal in my culture,” he said, trying to separate Cuba from the place where he actually grew up. “Older men think it’s scandalous, effeminate. But they probably did the same thing when they were boys.”

“Boys,” Norman said, rubbing the board with the rag.

“It’s just play,” Pepe said. “You nortes are still Puritans.”

“Some.” Norman smiled into space. “Some of us are still boys.”

“¿Cómo?” Pepe said. “Still boys?”

“I’ve been homosexual since before you were born. Rory accepts it.”

Pieces falling into place. “And that’s what the man was here about?” He looked at the blood spatter and trail. “The man with the bandage.”

“Blackmail. You can imagine how long I’d have my job if it came out.”

“Rory, too,” Pepe said. “The way things are.”

“Exactly.” He put the board under his arm and Pepe followed him into the kitchen.

“So the blood? The guy’s hand?”

The board fit the space exactly. “Hold this in place?” Pepe held it while Norman went through drawers, and finally found a thick roll of white tape.

“You know a guy named Willy Joe Capra?” He pulled out tape to match the top and tore it. It had an unexpected smell, raspberry.

“No, never heard of him.” Not until this morning, from Sara.

“You’re lucky. He’s our friendly local Mafia connection.”

Pepe went all over cold. “Jesus, Norman. What did you do to his hand?”

“Oh, that wasn’t Willy Joe. That was his bodyguard, or something.” He pulled out long strips for the vertical sides. “His name’s ‘Solo’; I guess that’s why they sent him after a musician.”

“And what did you do to him?”

“He did it to himself. I suggested he take a hammer and apply it to his gun hand.”

“Madre de Dios.” Pepe lowered himself to sit on the windowsill, a foot off the floor. “And where was his gun?”

“The police took it from him.”

“The police who were just here?”

Norm nodded. “They have some sort of scanning device.”

“I’ve seen it on the cube.”

“They didn’t use it on me. When this fellow threatened physical violence, I pulled out my own gun.”

“You carry a gun?”

“Not under normal circumstances, Pepe; haven’t since the army. But I knew who I was dealing with.”

“Let me get this straight. You pulled a gun and said, “Let’s go out to the workshop and smash your hand.’”

“No, that was his idea. He offered to take a hatchet and chop off a finger.”

“But you, you decided to be nice to him?”

“Well, he could have a new finger in a week. Actually, I think he wanted to use the hatchet on me.”

“And lose all that blackmail money?”

“I don’t think their brains work that way.” Norman went to the refrigerator. “I don’t understand them any better than you do. Want a Coke or something?”

“Something stronger. Early as it is.”

“Me, too. White plonk?” Norman pulled out a ball of white wine and squeezed them two tumblersful. “Look, we’d had a meeting. Willy Joe and some lawyer and this bodyguard. A lunch meeting. They told me what they knew, and it was correct.”

“So how much did they want?”

“Well, I don’t know. I got up and walked out.”

Pepe kneaded his face. “You have a death wish, Norman?”

“Sometimes I think I do. Or at least place a low value on survival. Con permiso.” He picked up the buzzing phone. “Buenas—oh, it’s you.” He pushed a red “record” button on the side.

“That’s not possible. We’re having company over for dinner tonight, and I—

“I suppose you might.” He listened, shaking his head. “Just you and Capra. And we talk outside the house, on the sidewalk, not inside.” He pushed the “end” button and looked at the phone.

“That was the bodyguard?”

“No, the lawyer.” He drank half the glass of wine and replayed the conversation.

Capra congratulated Norman on being cute (“qué guapo”) and gave the phone to the lawyer. He said the rules were different now, Norman having upped the ante by using violence. They had one more thing to show him, and if they couldn’t do business then, they would reveal his secret in time for the evening news, and just be done with it.

Come to Capra’s house, 211 SW Third Avenue, at five, prepared to make a million-dollar credit transfer. Otherwise, they’d come join him and his company for dinner, and make it a really interesting party.

“Southwest Third. Wonderful neighborhood,” Pepe said.

“If you’re in the market for dope or prostitutes,” Norman said. “I never have one without the other, myself.” He drank some wine. “Showdown, I guess.”

“You sound like you’re looking forward to it.”

He smiled. “An end to it, possibly. Don’t tell Rory anything. I’ll go ahead and fix dinner, and leave her a note.”

“What, “Go ahead and enjoy dinner; I’ll be back after I shoot some blackmailers’?”

“It won’t come to that. Don’t worry.”

“You want me to come along with you?”

“Thanks, but no. I’ll probably just give them the million.”

And then they’ll just leave you alone, Pepe thought. “Of course I’ll keep your secret. But I think you’re making a mistake.” A mistake that could derail everything.

“I have a few hours to think on it. Maybe I’ll come up with something.”

Pepe had a few hours, too. He finished his glass of wine. “Well, I’ve got to run. Fill me in on it tomorrow?”

“Sure,” he said. “Mañana. Hasta.”

“Mañana.” Pepe left through the front door, trying not to hurry. Another piece had fallen into place, something in the back of his mind ever since Sara had mentioned Willy Joe Capra’s name.

Norman

Norman watched him leave. Fill you in on it if I’m still alive.

Well, he could distract himself for a while preparing dinner. He hadn’t gone to Publix after lunch, as promised. What could he conjure up out of the pantry for a couple of cheeseless, eggless, milk-free vegetarians? He turned the house back on and asked for random Vivaldi, music for vegetarianism.

He studied the orderly array of boxes, cans, and jars on the pantry shelves, and perhaps was inspired by the music: Italian bean pie—a layered terrine of bean purees; red, white, and green. When you sliced it, it looked like the Italian flag.

Taking the three cans from the pantry, he asked the house for the recipe, and it appeared on the screen above the range. “Larger,” he said, not wanting to use his glasses.

He peeled and sliced potatoes and put them on to simmer, and then worked on the three colors of beans, sautéing them variously with onions, garlic, and shallots, and then setting them aside to cool. By then the potatoes were done; he tossed them with herbs Provence, olive oil, and white wine from the grocery-store ball.

He started to pour himself a glass, but then realized this might be the last wine he would taste in this world. He went to the top of the rack and pulled down a ’22 St. Emilion, maybe a week’s salary in a bottle. He pulled the cork and poured a third of the bottle into their largest balloon glass, then carefully preserved the rest of the bottle with nitrogen and knocked the cork back in. The Slidells were pleasant, but they weren’t close enough or important enough for a ’22 Bordeaux.

Everything had to cool for a while, so he turned off the music and carried the wine into his studio. He tuned the cello and ran through the latest partita he’d been developing for The Coming, but he was too distracted to work on it. He turned on a new book of old European folk dances and sight-read his way through Spain and Portugal, sipping wine between pieces.

The house reminded him when it was 1600. He carefully spooned the layers of the terrine into a loaf pan, then drained the wine and oil from the potatoes and tossed them with a grind of pepper, a sprinkle of vinegar, and a little more herbs Provence. He put it all in the refrigerator and left Rory a note saying he was out; if he was late for dinner, make their traditional lettuce-and-tomato salad, minus the goat cheese, God forbid we should exploit goats.

He put on a jacket against the afternoon cool and locked up, went into the garage, slid the heavy gun into its holster, and pedaled away.

Plenty of time. He dawdled at the park’s exercise trail, watching young and old run and jump and heave and stretch. He should get back into that. Maybe tomorrow, if there is one.

He pedaled slowly along the mile-long green belt, and then picked up speed as the traffic alongside him slowed, grinding into downtown. Contemplating a new life rule: “Never be late for a gunfight.” Noting that Willy Joe and the lawyer would assume he was armed, so would be protected by armored clothing. Get close enough to shoot for the head. Get Willy Joe and then the lawyer, if you live long enough. Was this the wine speaking? Or just the war. Both, probably.

But the gun still felt like a burden. Not a partner, as it had in the desert. You might just pay them off, and save the killing for later, if they came back for more. When. They would be sure of themselves, then, and more vulnerable.

A few blocks from the house, a fire truck screamed by him, then an ambulance, and then another fire truck. There was a wisp of black smoke ahead of him, and then a column.

He stopped at Fourth Avenue, a block from Capra’s house, which was now burning like a bonfire. He took from his bike bag the monocular he used for birds, to verify the address.

Medics and police were moving a small knot of onlookers away, off the sidewalk, to make way for the ambulance gurney. Lying in front of the house, there was a man in a chair, evidently tied up, covered with firefighting foam. They finished cutting him loose, and he stood, shakily, and they eased him onto the gurney.

It was Qabil. They rolled him toward the ambulance.

No meeting tonight, no shoot-out. Norman reversed his bicycle on the sidewalk and sped home.

He got there just minutes before Rory pulled up with her guests. He reluctantly turned off the cube—no news bulletin yet—and met them at the door.

Lamar and Dove Slidell were both astronomers, out in New Mexico now, classmates and pals with Rory from graduate school. Evidently they’d already said all there was to be said about the Coming, and knew that Rory would just as soon talk about anything else. So it was mainly gossip about mutual friends, and job comparisons. The Slidells worked on a mountaintop where you could actually see the stars. In Gainesville, the night sky was bright gray soup.

Norman tried to appear interested, and accepted the compliments for his cooking, and drank somewhat more wine than the others. Finally, his phone rang, and he excused himself to take the call in the kitchen.

It wasn’t the blackmailers. It was Qabil.

“Look, I know you’ve got company. I shouldn’t be recorded coming into your house anyhow. But we have to talk before I go to work in the morning.”

“Where are you?”

“Down on the corner, where the street splits. Blue Westinghouse with silvered windows.”

“I’ll be there in a minute.” He pushed “end” and thought for a moment, and then rushed back into the dining room.

“I have to run out for a bit, student emergency. Kid’s got an audition tomorrow, broke an A string. Sounds like he might need some serious hand-holding, too.”

“Which student?” Rory asked.

“Qabil. Just down the street.” She nodded, wordlessly, and forced a smile.

Norman got a string from his study and said “back in a minute,” and went out the door and down the street.

The passenger door opened as he approached. He slid in and closed it.

One side of Qabil’s face was blistered, covered with a transparent gel. His right hand was bandaged.

“What happened?” Norman said.

“I’ll get to that. First would you tell me what the fuck is going on?”

“The basics… Willy Joe Capra was going to blackmail me. About you and me.”

“That much I know. He told me in some detail, after he kidnapped me from my own goddamned driveway. Then that Tampa thug Solo, you broke his hand?”

“In a way, yes.” Crickets loud in the darkness. “I held a gun on him and he did it himself.”

“A gun. You’ve been leading an interesting life, since we parted.”

Parted. Norman tried to keep emotion out of his voice. “What did those bastards do to you?”

“Do to me? What the hell did you do to them?”

“Me? Nothing. Just the hand.”

“Norm, you can tell me. If you can trust anybody in the world with this, it’s me.”

“I was supposed to meet them at five. I talked to the lawyer, Moore; he said they had something to show me.”

“Yours truly, Exhibit A. So what the hell did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. I got to about a block away and saw that the place was burning to the ground. I saw the medics cut you loose from the chair, saw you could walk, and got away as fast as I could.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I got you into this. I don’t suppose there’s any way to cover it up now.”

“Wait. Before we talk about covering up. You didn’t kill those shits?”

“I didn’t kill anybody. I was ready to, but… the fire. I saw you and figured it was a police thing.”

“No… whatever that thing was, the police don’t have it. I’m getting debriefed tomorrow, and I’m not sure what to say. You didn’t do it?”

“What was it? Some kind of firebomb?”

Qabil touched his face gingerly. “The three guys just blew up. I saw it happen. I haven’t said anything to anybody, just that there was a fire. But I saw it all.”

“They blew up?”

“A window broke, a window behind me. The Tampa scumbag, Solo, raised his gun—it was already in his left hand—and started to stand. Then he just burst into flames.”

“Jesus. Like a flamethrower?” Norman had seen them in use, and he still had dreams about it.

“No—it was like he exploded from the inside out. Not his clothes, his flesh. Then the other two. One, two, three. Staggering around like something out of a movie. Then their clothes started to burn. Capra had a gun in a holster in the small of his back, and the rounds cooked off.

“He fell into the drapes, and they went up like tinder. Some of the furniture was smoldering. Then fire running out of their bodies like burning oil. I was able to half stand up, tied to the chair, and had to kick my way through the front door, fell down the steps, and knocked myself silly. Some civilian sprayed me with a fire extinguisher, maybe saved my life.”

“What the hell could do that? Make people burst into flame like that?”

“I was hoping you could straighten that out. Some new military weapon or something.”

“Come on, Qabil. I haven’t held a military weapon in thirty years.”

Qabil nodded and then had a coughing spasm that ended with a stifled retch. “The smell was disgusting. You know I’m forbidden pork. When human flesh—”

“I remember, Qabil.” He shook his head hard. “It must have been a Mafia thing. Or a gang thing.”

“Well, the gangs…” He cleared his throat. “The gangs don’t have any reason to love him. But they run more to baseball bats and knives. If they had burst-into-flames ray guns, we’d all be in real trouble.

“I thought about the Mafia. But why would a hit man kill three hoods and leave a live policeman as a witness?”

“Maybe he didn’t know you were a—”

“I was still in uniform. But maybe, maybe that was the point. Maybe they want us to know they have this ungodly weapon. Willy Joe was not some godfather type they had to assassinate in a dramatic way. Just a bagman with delusions of grandeur.”

They listened to the crickets for a minute. “What can make a body burn up?” Norman asked. “We’re mostly water, aren’t we?”

“Yeah. Crematoriums need a really hot fire to get things going. But we’ve both seen what napalm does.”

“That’s adding fuel. You said these guys just started to burn from the inside out.”

“I saw that clearly. Their clothes weren’t even on fire, not initially. Then everything was on fire.”

“There’ve been cases of spontaneous human combustion.”

Qabil laughed one “hum” and touched his cheek. “That always turns out to be nothing. Some old person or drunk, or drunk old person, falls asleep smoking. They die without noticing they’ve died. After they’ve smoldered awhile, fat starts to drip out. They burn like a candle then. Like an oil lamp.”

“What about the water, then?”

“I guess it’s like the water in a green stick of wood. If it’s hot enough, the wood burns anyhow.” He scratched his head. “But this was nothing like that. They didn’t smolder or anything. They just ignited, like they were made out of gunpowder.”

Norman sat straight up. “Oh, hell. It’s obvious.”

“Enlighten me.”

“It’s a police weapon. They knew you were—”

“No, hold it. We don’t have anything remotely like that.”

“Not that you know of. But let me finish. If the whole story came out, if any one of those three lived, there would be hell to pay. A homosexual policeman, a faggot’s wife bribing a cop, the Mafia involved—hell, they’d use atomic weapons to keep that under wraps.”

“But nobody knows. It’s buried so deep—”

“Willy Joe found out.”

Qabil shook his head hard. “If the department knew, I’d have been eased out a long time ago. Believe me; I’ve seen it happen. We use administrative procedures long before we resort to supernatural weapons.”

“You once told me there was no such thing as ‘supernatural.’ If something happened, it was part of Allah’s design, and therefore natural.”

“Touché. And mystery is part of that design.” He shook his head, smiling at the thought. “So think of this as a murder mystery. Weapon, motive, opportunity.

“The weapon, table that. Except to note that the person using it probably knew he was in no danger from his targets, once he pulled the trigger.

“The motive. Well, Capra probably has more people in this town willing to kill him than anyone else but the mayor. Right now you’re the prime suspect, but I’m the only one who knows that, and if you say you didn’t do it, that’s enough for me. Who else? Did Rory know you were headed for a meeting with Capra?”

“No; I didn’t want to involve her.” Jesus! It was Pepe! “Besides, she was on camera all afternoon. Perfect alibi.”

“And nobody else knew.”

“No, of course not,” he lied. Could Pepe’s research have some kind of weapons application? Something developed from those gamma-ray bursters? Norman didn’t know much about it. Maybe a burst of gamma rays could catch someone on fire.

“So what about opportunity? Usually linked to motive and weapon. If this is just a criminals-killing-criminals thing, the timing of it has to be explained.”

“Because it’s so propitious?”

He nodded. “And risky. In broad daylight, in a neighborhood full of criminal activity, someone sneaks around behind a house, breaks a window and kills three people inside, setting the house on fire, and walks away.”

“There will have been witnesses.”

“Most likely, but not models of good citizenship. And they probably don’t want to get on the wrong side of whoever did this. Would you?”

“But wait. There’s going to be a record of your having come to my house and catching this guy, Solo, Willy Joe’s right-hand man. Then you wind up in a house with both of them dead.”

“True. Except, as far as I know, there’s nothing in police records linking the two. That would have been a real red flag. He was ID’ed as an out-of-towner.” He breathed out, a loud puff. “We may get lucky. That fire was so intense it probably didn’t leave anything useful, DNA or skeletal remains.”

“Which might in itself be suspicious.”

“It happens. They had all kinds of weapons in the war that made it impossible to identify remains. Usually intense heat and chemical action.” He tapped his lower teeth with a thumbnail. “It’s an angle. A possible angle.”

“That someone in the military wanted to get rid of Capra?”

“Or someone with access to sophisticated weapons. I mean, suppose I just tell the truth, the part of it having to do with the weapon. Make the military connection, if no one else does.”

“But then what puts you there, watching it all? Tied to a chair? Why did he kidnap you?”

“I’ve already got that part worked out. Fortunately, my partner and I are part of an observation team tracking drug distribution, designer drugs, inside the city limits. Capra was in it up to his elbows.

“I already told the patrolman at the hospital that’s what happened: they’d followed me home and snatched me, and once it was dark they planned to kill me in a dramatic way. That much is true. But it wasn’t for being on the drug task force.”

“Yeah.” Norman touched his hand. “Sorry I got you into all of this.”

He said something in Arabic. “What will be will be. This is not something either of us had any say in. And the evil are punished, for a change.”

“Funny attitude for a cop.”

He smiled and nodded. “You better get back. I’ll be in touch if anything happens.”

Norman couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t a variant of “I hope I don’t hear from you,” so he just shook hands and headed back toward the house.

Should he confront Pepe with what he knew? Or just leave well enough alone. Curiosity versus gratitude, with a sprinkling of fear.

When he came back into the dining room, they were clearing away dessert.

“He didn’t need the string?” Dove Slidell asked.

“What?” Norman was still holding his prop. “Oh, no—he’d found one by the time I got there. We just tuned up and went through a few difficult passages.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Rory asked, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice.

“He’ll be fine. I think he can go the rest of the way alone.”

She nodded slowly, her eyes on his. “We’re going to pick up some coffee at Nick’s and go check the observatory. I won’t even ask. You need your beauty sleep.”

“Actually, I have to work for a bit. Started a new direction on the second partita.”

“Well… party away.” They said their good-byes.

Aurora

She told the car to go to Nick’s place. “He’ll probably be sawing away at the cello if I get home at three.”

“Hard to live with an artiste?” Dove said.

“Hard to live with somebody who doesn’t keep regular hours. As if I did!” She turned around in the driver’s seat. “But Norm’s really odd. He never sleeps more than a few hours at a time. Naps now and then, no particular schedule.”

“Like Edison,” Lamar said.

“No lightbulbs or phonograph. But he’s a heck of a good cook.”

They murmured assent. “You’ll be glad when this thing’s over?” Dove said. “Get back to doing actual research.”

“Not as much of that as I’d like. “This ‘thing’ has kindled a new interest in astronomy in the young. I’ve bowed to pressure and agreed to take on two sections of elementary.”

“That’s a lot of kids.”

“Fifty apiece. But I get two new grad assistants, so I just have to lecture.”

“The rest of your load stays the same?” Lamar asked.

“Yeah, but it’s not bad. A graduate seminar and a small class on nonthermal sources. And I’m getting a good bonus for the two extra sections.

“I’ve always enjoyed elementary. I just don’t look forward to being spontaneous with the same lecture, three days a week.”

Dove nodded. “I had to do two sections a couple of years back, when that boy genius from Princeton jumped ship. It’s a strange sensation.”

The car pulled up in front of Nick’s, and the three went in for their coffee: burned, sweet, and rich.

Nick waved at Rory. “Just a second, Professor.” She’d phoned in the order, not sure how late he stayed open.

She said hello to the only other customer, not certain whether she knew him. She’d seen him before, writing by hand in a bound journal.

The historian

He nodded back at Professor Bell. She would be in the last chapter.

He returned his attention to the book, up to the 1990s now.