The Last Judgment

1

I was pedaling toward lunch when my sidekick chirped. I pulled up and straddled the bike with one foot on the curb. There was no visual on the screen but some granny with a raspy voice announced that she was Maude Descano and needed to see me right away. I probably shouldn’t have laughed. The only Maude Descano I’d ever heard of was so connected downtown that the City Mothers took turns mowing her lawn. I do my best for my clients but I’m a realist. Why would the Maude Descano be calling a private detective when she had Deputy Chief Little singing harmony for her? It was a question worth asking, so I did.

Whoever this granny was, she decided to get huffy. “I don’t discuss my affairs over the phone,” she said.

She would have to be a fossil if she remembered phones; their time was over before the devils disappeared all the men. “Fair enough.” I said. “I’m just on my way to lunch, so maybe we can get together this afternoon. Say two o’clock? Where can we meet?”

“Make it now or don’t bother, Ms. Hardaway. 122 Fairview.”

My play then should have been to tell her to get cocked and cut the connection, except that Fairview ran through a neighborhood where even the sewers were lined with gold. Given her manners and that address, maybe she was the Maude Descano. If for no other reason than I might get to swipe an ashtray or spill something on her sofa, I decided not to bite back.

“Do you hear knocking on your front door?” I said. “That’s me. Open up.”

122 Fairview was the kind of Mock Tudor mansion that would have given Henry VIII nightmares. Its steep roof was covered in bright terra cotta and the walls were a hodgepodge of herringbone brickwork and stucco the color of smokers’ teeth. Someone had painted the half timbers blue—probably a bot. I’ve never quite understood why bots love to paint things; they don’t have the color sense that God gave to shrimp. The windows on the first floor had heavy iron casements and diamond-shaped leaded panes. Anyone looking out of them would see a world that was pinched and dark. An accurate view, but depressing as hell. If it were my place, I would’ve busted a chair through those windows to let in some light.

As I chained my bike to the wrought iron fence that surrounded the mansion and its vast lawn, a shadow blocked the sun. A flock of devils, a dozen, maybe twenty, headed downtown. We’d been seeing a lot of them lately. One of the local devils, Eller, had called a meeting to discuss something called the Index of Human Dysfunction. As if they would know; the devils were what was wrong with us. A cobblestone drive wandered toward the portico of the Descano place but was in no hurry to get there. Your average jane walking that drive would have plenty of time to think about the quality she was visiting, maybe get watery knees at the prospect of meeting so much money. I spent the time deciding what a flock of devils should be called. A damnation of devils? A pollution? Too bad that crows already had locked up murder for their group identity. I passed beds of pastel impatiens and a boxwood hedge and then a stand of half a dozen peach trees, branches laden with ripe fruit that nobody seemed to want. There was already a scatter of drops in the grass, some rotting into gray-green fuzz. I stepped off the drive and smooshed one underfoot. It felt like the right thing to do.

A bot opened the one of the grated doors. “Is this one making the acquaintance of Fay Hardaway?”

“Not if I can help it.” I don’t chitchat with strange bots. “I’m here for Maude Descano.”

“Please enter and become comfortable.” He stepped aside and I brushed by him.

The reception hall was opulent and knew it. The floors were polished green marble veined in white, the wainscoting looked to be mahogany and the central staircase was wide enough for a Fourth of July parade. On one wall hung a rose-colored tapestry of a unicorn eyeballing some medieval jane dressed in living room curtains. On the other was an enormous mirror in a gilt frame. Next to it was a mahogany gun cabinet with a glass display. That stopped me.

There had been a lot of gun play immediately after the men disappeared. Suicides, riots, robbery—the Crazy Time. The City Mothers had been melting them down into Peace Statues ever since; even the cops didn’t carry. I’d seen guns in museums but didn’t know much about them. Men’s stuff, cocked. I counted three rifles—or maybe they were shotguns—and maybe half a dozen handguns hanging barrel down off brass mounts.

“Are these legal?”

“Collectors’ items are permitted in the absence of bullets,” said the bot to my back. “It is regrettable that Ms. Descano is making herself available to another person at present. She expresses the fullness of true apology and hopes you will take nutrition while you wait. Would that please Ms. Hardaway?”

“Oh, I get it.” I put a snarl in my voice, although I knew it would bounce off the bot. “Her time is precious and mine is cheap.”

“Your discontent is not unexpected. May this one add personal regret to that of Ms. Descano? You may wish to know that this one is her valet, called Kirby.”

“Does valet outrank butler?”

“There are a diversity of duties which must be often completed.”

I thought about leaving, but I’d come a long way. “You said something about lunch?”

The bot mentioned a handful of cold dishes: a carrot and orange mousse, ostrich liver pate, neartrout sushi rolls and curried asparagus soup. They all sounded better than the 29¢ combo meal I’d been planning to grab at McDonald’s. “Or this one could drizzle hot salmon gel over a spinach salad,” said the bot. “Perhaps a veal chop?”

“Can I eat off the good china?”

“The Spode or the Wedgewood?”

2

The bot left me in the library. Maybe the size of it was intended to intimidate, although I doubted the granny had actually read many of the obsolete books. The room smelled of furniture polish and elderly carpet and paper going foxy at the edges. It was hard to see much in the gray light that squeezed through the two leaded windows, but busy shelves marched out of sight up the walls, accessed by four rolling ladders. The weight of all those dead ideas might have crushed someone who cared about the world before the devils, but that someone wasn’t me. There was one haven in the library from the collection; a walk-in fireplace that was practically a room in itself. It had dark wooden panels sculptured to look like bolts of cloth and benches at either end that faced each other. A dusty pile of birch logs perched on andirons in the firebox.

I sat on one of the benches and waited. The bot had called the walk-in fireplace an inglenook, and I rolled the word round in my mouth, getting the feel of it. I decided I liked it, not that I’d have much use for it. The baby’s bedroom in the apartment where Sharifa and I lived would have fit inside this particular inglenook.

The bot returned, wheeling a tray. On it was bowl of fresh asparagus soup and a couple of sushi rolls. I made short work of them and sat back. I suppose I could have gotten up to inventory Descano’s taste in literature, but that was what I was expected to do. So I lit a cigarette instead, thinking maybe that would make the ashtray I wanted to steal magically appear. When it didn’t, I ashed onto the logs. Maude Descano came through the door just as I was flipping the cigarette butt into the fireplace.

She was a frail old bird, round in the body but with stork legs and a long and saggy neck. The skin of her face had turned the corner on pale and was headed for blue. The mouth and chin had sunk over the years away from the prominent nose and sharp brown eyes had retreated into mascara hollows. Her green kimono was decorated with golden phoenix birds, coils of purple cord, and bands of flowers. She closed the door and doddered toward the inglenook, maybe a step and a half ahead of the undertaker.

“Business not so good, missy?” Her voice was thin as lace. “I just have to call and you come running?”

I let that pass. The only sound in the room was the shuffling of her silk slippers.

“And then you let me keep you waiting,” she said at last. “Made it easy for me to put you in your place.”

“I’ll make a note of that.” I drew a checkmark in the air. “When this granny says hurry, come slow.” I laid my sidekick on the bench next to me but didn’t set it to record. “I came because I wanted to see the arrogant old bitch who they all talk about downtown. But they’ve overestimated you, Maude. Making me snap over here and then keeping me waiting was a weak move—a cliché. You can probably read about it in half the books you’ve got stacked in this funeral parlor. You can’t put me in any damn place, because I don’t give a shit about you. I ate soup and smoked a cigarette and now we’re talking. That’s what’s happened so far.”

“Attitude.” She settled on the bench opposite me.

“Yeah. A bit frayed at the cuffs, but it still fits.” I rested my hand on the sidekick. “I’m going to record now if we’re doing business. If not, thanks for lunch.”

“Cigarettes?” She nodded at me. “I’ll take one.”

I set the sidekick to record, crossed in front of the fireplace and shook a cigarette from the pack. “You know they sell these on every street corner.”

“Kirby doesn’t let me smoke.”

I lit it for her. “You let your bots tell you what to do?”

“Doctors tell me what to do.” She inhaled and held it in. Her eyes got distant for a moment. “Kirby knows who’s in charge.” She sighed and smoke curled from her nostrils. “You’re killing yourself with these things, missy.”

“A lot of people kill themselves—it’s the national pastime, or haven’t you heard? I’m just on the installment plan.” I dropped the pack in her lap. “Keep it.” I settled back onto my bench.

She smoked. I watched her.

“Know anything about art?” she said finally.

“Not much. We were studying it in the fifth grade when my school got burned down.”

She blew smoke at me. “Bad luck to have to grow up back then.” She leaned over and ground the cigarette butt against the hearth. “Were you born before or after?”

“After.”

She scuffed a sandal against the floor. “So all you’ve ever known is craziness.”

“Craziness?” Grannies do love their cock nostalgia; it makes my skin crawl. “I’ve heard that men were pretty much unhinged, Maude. Rape. War. Genocide.”

“There was that.” She made a dismissive gesture. “And they liked to be on top, not that they were any good at it. But we had two hundred thousand years to get used to living with men. Hard to get used to being by ourselves overnight. Or in four decades.”

I hadn’t biked across town for a history lesson. Especially a chapter that the devils had written. I hated the devils. “So what about art?”

“Heard of a painter named Hieronymus Bosch?”

“Sounds like a virus.” I glanced down at my sidekick, which had already completed the search. The screen showed a sketch of old man in a floppy hat. His skin was as wrinkled as bark. “That really his name?”

She shook her head. “Jheronimus or maybe Jeroen. Brits mangled it into Hieronymus, which we’re stuck with. Last name was van Aken but he signed his paintings Bosch after his hometown, ‘s-Hertogenbosch. That’s in Holland. He was born around 1450, died in 1518. Painted on wood, lots of his best work is lost. Only twenty-seven undisputed paintings and nine drawings.”

“So he’s rare. And valuable?”

“Priceless.”

That was one word I had never believed in. Everything has a price; the trick is getting to the negotiation. “And he painted what?”

“Some saints. Sinners mostly. He was religious, saw damnation all around him. Demons and monsters and hellfire. They called him “the maker of devils.”

I crunched that for a moment. Some people claimed that our devils—the aliens who disappeared the men—must have scouted earth before. They said that all those images of biblical devils were based on historical encounters with our all-too-real aliens. Maybe Bosch had just been painting what he’d seen. “Sounds like a man for our times. So what about him?”

“My late husband . . . ”

“Wait.” I said. “You were married? Just how old are you, Maude?”

“Married and had a daughter the old-fashioned way.” She gave me a silent laugh that showed me more than I wanted to see of her gums. “The old sperm and egg trick. What, does that shock you, missy?”

I grimaced. “Better you than me.”

“My husband’s name was Nicky.” Maude Descano licked her lips. “He liked to think of himself as an art collector. Whenever he came into money, he’d head off to one of those flossy auction houses like Southeby’s or Christie’s to buy himself a present. A Diego Rivera and a Bakota helmet mask and then a Richard Lethem. Some minor Dalis. Roman coins. Three Ansel Adams prints of Yosemite. He bought that Ryder over there, except it turned out to be a forgery.” She pointed at a tiny painting that was all dark smudges. “Just five months before Nicky had the heart attack, he found a Bosch. It had been hacked off a lost painting on wood called The Last Judgment. Provenance is a little cloudy. Maybe it only came from Bosch’s workshop. But Nicky liked to tell people it was the real deal.” She paused. “It’s been stolen.”

3

“Last time I saw it was Tuesday.” She heaved herself off the bench. Her slippers whispered across the library floor. She flicked a light switch and an overhead spot lit an empty expanse of wall between bookshelves. “Noticed this yesterday.”

I came up behind her. Two pan head screws stuck out from the wallboard about fifteen centimeters apart; a thread of dust dangled from one of them.

“What kind of security do you have here?”

“Just Kirby.”

I snorted. We lean too much on the damn bots; sometimes I think this is their world now and we’re just renting. “Doesn’t pay to cut corners, Maude.” Brown paint on the wall had faded; there was a dark coffee-colored shadow, maybe thirty centimeters by twenty, where the little painting had been. “It must have been hanging a long time.”

“Fifty-some years.”

I pointed at the bronze bracket the size of a cash card on the floor. “That fell off of what?”

“The Bosch was attached to the wall with Ryman hangers screwed into the frame. It’s called a keeper. Hides the hangers and the screws and secures the mount.”

“I’m guessing there would have been two of them? Where’s the other?”

“You’re the detective.”

I let that pass. “Could be fingerprints on it.”

“Sure.” She was frowning. “But who cares? I know who stole it.”

“Then call the cops,” I said. “You bought them, might as well pull them out of the drawer.”

“If it comes to that, I just might.”

She was pissing me off with her games. I waited for her to go on but she gave me nothing. Maybe she was waiting for me to play twenty questions with her. Maybe she thought it would make her look smart.

“Excuse me, Maude,” I said, “but now that the mystery is solved, is there anything else I can do for you? Mow the laundry? Wash the lawn? Otherwise I should be going.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She sniffed. “As I said, I had a daughter. Her name was Renata. She died two years ago.” Her face was stone. “Killed herself, if you must know. Like you said, the national pastime.”

I didn’t say I was sorry; I don’t think she would have heard me.

“Her daughter’s name is Anne. She’ll have the Bosch, or she’ll know where it is.”

“Your grand-daughter stole it? You know this how?”

“She was here Tuesday, the last time I saw the painting. She said she needed money. When I wouldn’t give it to her, she got angry, called me names and stormed out.”

“What did she want the money for?”

“She wouldn’t say, but I think she wanted to use it to run away from me.” The granny tugged at the belt of her kimono. “Which is why I didn’t give it to her. She’s a troubled girl, very much like her mother.”

“How much was she asking for?”

“Six thousand dollars.”

I could tell she wanted me to think about that, so I did. I considered what six large could buy. A house with a lawn. A college education. Or a dozen PIs like me. “Has she asked for money before?”

“Often.”

“Have you given it to her?”

“Sometimes, but never more than a couple of hundred.”

I pulled my sidekick out and took pictures of the library and the space where the painting had hung. I blew a quickseal onto the bracket and put it in my pocket. I examined the library door. It was paneled and heavy, made of a dark wood, mahogany by the look of it. The brass doorknob had a double cylinder key lock; you needed the key not only to get in but also to get out. If it had been locked, getting into the library would have been a problem for anyone but a pro. Somehow I didn’t think Maude’s grand-daughter was in the business.

“I’ll need a pix of the painting.”

“See Kirby.”

“And what does your bot have to say about all of this?”

“Nothing. He reports no knowledge of what happened here.”

“Not much in the way of security, is he?” I pulled a book off the shelf at random. “Say, is there anything else here worth stealing?” It was The Great Gatsby, bound in leather. “I might take a crack at you myself, Maude. Seems like easy enough work.” I opened it to the title page. Copyright 2011—before the devils. “So she lets herself into your house and this room. She pries a painting on a chunk of wood from the wall, knocks some of the hardware off, and skips out again without either you or the bot hearing a damn thing?” Saying it out loud didn’t improve her story much. “Do you know how much you’re going to have to pay me to believe that?”

“Two hundred now.” She pointed a finger at me. “And another two when you bring it to me.” Her arm shook. “I want that Bosch, missy.”

It was triple my usual fee for what would be a straightforward extraction, if the case were as simple as she said. But it wasn’t, and we both knew it. That was why the pay was so good.

“Why?”

“Why?” She looked puzzled, as if I’d asked her to explain air. “What kind of question is that? Because it’s mine.”

“You like it? Your favorite thing in this antique store?”

She sniffed. “Not particularly.” She watched me judge her, but my good opinion wasn’t part of our deal. “There’s a principle involved here. A principle of ownership.”

“So when I get it for you, what happens to the granddaughter?” I blew the dust off The Great Gatsby and gave it to her. “You throw her to the law?”

“Absolutely not. Anne is all the family I have.” She looked weary, as if she were feeling not only the weight of the book but of her enormous library, as if she were trying to bear up under the burden of the entire mansion and all the money that had built it. “If you bring that painting back, it was never stolen.”

“I don’t know, Maude. I’ve never had much luck changing the past.”

She smiled at me, her teeth long and yellow and fierce against her thin gums. “You’d be surprised at how easy it can be.”

4

I grilled the bot, but he was no help. “This one is regrettably uninformed in that matter.” I didn’t believe him, but I couldn’t see an easy way to knock him off his story. When I discovered whatever it was that Descano was keeping from me, I would shake him until his sensors rattled.

Why don’t I trust bots? Because the devils made them. The grannies were crazy with grief and rage for years after the disappearance. Everything stopped. Lots of it burned. I grew up in that world of pain; I watched girls starve, their moms kill themselves. But giving us bots did not make up for what the devils took away. Still doesn’t. Sure, bots keep the lights on, crops growing, and shelves stocked. They bury us when we die. There wouldn’t be any damn economy without them, even though we’re doing more for ourselves every day. But the devils never gave us the owner’s manual for their bots. Supposedly they can’t lie, but the truths they tell are often impossible to decipher. The bots bow and scrape but everyone knows that they have their own agenda.

Which is doing the devils’ work. I hated the devils.

The bot shot me a pix of the Bosch and a vid of Anne Descano. She’d been living with Maude up until a few months ago. He had a list of recent addresses for her but couldn’t say whether it was complete. Apparently she was skipping, so there was no guarantee she’d be at any of them. He gave me a call for her too, Anne@Idlewood03284, but said it always went to her message and that she never called back. So the fluff was playing hard to find. I suppose if I had to perch on the family tree next to Maude Descano, I would too. I didn’t thank the bot and I didn’t say goodbye; he was blathering something about his truest hopes for timely success when I closed the door behind me.

I paused on the portico to check my sidekick and saw that Maude had already transferred the two hundred dollar retainer. That would make Sharifa happy. I’d been working a lot lately, but mostly for small beer and peanuts. If I could clear this case without having to ransack every skiphouse in the city, I could afford to take some time off. Maybe bring the family down to Williamshead or Salt Bay.

I opened the vid and got my first look at Anne Descano. She wasn’t a fluff at all but a tommy with a brown crewcut and big shoulders and an extra helping of muscle. She was wearing a Will Ill tee shirt, baggy pants and black tanker boots. Either she was binding the hell out of her breasts or had had the double mastectomy. The vid showed her at a picnic that appeared to be in the backyard of the Descano mansion; she was throwing a football to some other tommy while a group of bored janes and grannies watched from a picnic table.

As I biked back to my office, I thought about how I was going to take the painting away from her if she decided not to play nice. I’ve gone up against some rough company, but this tommy looked like she could snap me in two and pick her teeth with the short end. So best be careful, Fay. And smart. It wasn’t a bad plan, except that if I really were interested in being careful and smart, I would have taken up accounting.

I locked the bike to a rack in front of 35 Market Street and climbed the three stories to Hardaway Investigative Services. I share the third floor with Crazy Martha, who is smarter than me and more careful. She is an accountant. My office is just two dull rooms, done in Early Yard Sale style. I’d decorated it so I would have an incentive to spend as little time there as possible. I opened the sidekick, created a new folder on the desktop and shot everything I had on the case into it. I poured myself a drink from the office bottle and made some voice notes about my meeting with Maude Descano.

I thought mapping Anne’s skiphouses might be a good place to start. Maybe I could tease out some kind of pattern. But I couldn’t. She had skipped to eleven different addresses around the city that the bot had known about, and there had no doubt been more. Some she lived at for a day or two, others for weeks. She had crashed in all kinds of unowned buildings in all kinds of neighborhoods: ranches and bungalows, Spanish and craftsman style houses, two apartments and even Unit 32 of the Holiday Inn on Great Randolph Street. The only good news was that she had come back to several of them, which meant that if only I could be in eleven places at once, I might have a chance of catching up with her before Christmas.

I ran the vid again, and then, since I had to get Aissa in half an hour, I played a hunch. I tried the call that the bot had given me. As predicted, I got Anne’s message. She had one of those rumbling, hormone-soaked voices that live in the basement next to the furnace. “Hi, this is Andy. I’m here but I’m avoiding someone I don’t like. Leave me a message and if I don’t call back, it’s you.”

So Anne was an Andy now. It seemed we had attitude in common.

“Andy,” I said, “this is Fay@Market.03284. You don’t know me, but I saw you throwing a football around the other day and I was wondering if you’d be interested in trying out for a flag football team, the Bad Grills? We play in the West Side League. It’s not a big commitment, two evening practices a week and a game every other Sunday during the season. Think about it, okay? We could use a stud like you. That’s Fay@Market.03284. Thanks.”

It was a weak move, but it was the only one I had handy. Maude’s bot was claiming that AndyAnne didn’t pay attention to her messages. Maybe, but it cost money to keep a call live, and the one thing I knew for sure was that Andy Descano was looking for money. Could be that it was just Maude and her bot who were getting the freeze. And if Andy checked, she would find that the Bad Grills were in West Side. Sharifa had been their number three receiver and number one defensive back before she’d had Aissa; we still went to Bad Grill games once in a while.

Then I put the case to bed for the night. Sharifa and I were working moms and it was my turn to pick up the kid at daycare.

Aissa was almost two years old and I was still trying on motherhood to see if it fit. Sharifa was her birth mother. Me, I had gotten scrubbed the first and only time I’d been seeded. Sharifa had wanted us to have my baby; the abortion nearly busted us up. But the thing was, I couldn’t see then how I could be a PI and a parent at the same time. And the idea that the aliens who had done for all the men were planting an embryo in me without my asking . . . well, it filled me with stony rage. No kid needs a mom that angry. When Sharifa got seeded with Aissa, though, things were different. I was different. Maybe I’m a better person now. Or not as good a detective.

I locked my bike onto the rail of our front porch and trotted the three blocks to our local Precious Life Center. The bots had retrofitted several storefronts into a single space with big display windows so that passers-by could peer in and be reassured that womankind still had a future. No expense had been spared; the city always approved the budget of the Department of Youth Protection and Development.

PLCs used to make me itch. They didn’t exist when I was born, three years after the disappearance. When I was a kid, life was not particularly precious. When the devils first made contact, the population of the world was 7.3 billion. On the next Tuesday, it was 3.7. The grannies claimed that the men popped like soap bubbles—no muss, no fuss, no dust to dust. Estimates are that almost a billion women killed themselves or had died in accidents or riots or of starvation in the Crazy Years immediately after the disappearance. Decades later, we are still killing ourselves. Too many of my cases are about women who have decided to check out of this cocked world—often with no warning signs. Whenever I saw a mother and a daughter together in a Precious Life Center, I couldn’t help but worry that the mom was about to fold and maybe take the kid with her.

Even though the staff kept it spotless, our PLC always smelled of curdling milk and baby oil. Peg Skovlar saw me come in and held a finger to her lips. I slipped off my joggers and padded across the toddler room. She pointed at Aissa, who was sitting in a nest of floor pillows with a board book about baby animals on her lap and a stack of others beside her.

“Ducky do quack-ack-ack,” she said and turned the page. “Mee-yow, kitty.” Another page. “Doggie. Doggie do it.” Another. “Monkey. Hoo-hoo-hoo.”

“They don’t usually read to themselves at this age,” Peg whispered. “You’ve got a smart girl there, Fay.”

“Takes after her mother.” I knew what Peg wanted me to feel, but I wasn’t ever going to be that kind of parent. Yes, I would always be there to pick up my little mop-headed miracle whenever she fell, point her in the right direction and teach her everything I knew about the road we were on. But love her? No. When you love someone, you must give them a bit of your truest self, and I had nothing but damage to offer this beautiful little creature. Sharifa could love her. I would protect her.

Although she was only halfway through the book, Aissa shut it abruptly and pushed it impatiently off her lap. “Maybe more book?” she said to herself.

“No more books, Aissa,” I said, “Time to go home.”

“Mommy Fay!” The way her face lit up melted my bones. I dropped to my knees to hug her. “Mommy Fay comes.” She launched herself at me, scattering the books in every direction and I stooped to catch her embrace. “Maybe bye-bye?” Everything was “maybe” with her these days.

“Soon,” I said. “But first we have to pick up the books for Peg. You don’t want to leave a mess.”

“No mess, okay.” She bounced against my hip.

5

“Agin eggy.” Aissa waved her spoon in command.

Most of her supper was on the floor around her high chair, “More egg please,” I said. “Can you say egg?”

“Peas.” She grinned and offered me the spoon. “Maybe eggy agin peas?”

Sharifa said eggy all the time, but if my cop pals ever heard me saying eggy, I’d have to move to Saskatchewan.

Aissa shrieked in delight when Sharifa came home and, as usual, the two of them flew into a hug. I watched from the kitchen pass-through, feeling the distance between me and them stretch. Aissa wriggled as her mother planted kisses on her forehead.

I was damn sure that no one had ever been that glad to see me. It wasn’t that I had a problem with the bond that my wife and our kid shared. I just had to get used to the idea that I had been pushed back to second in line with my lover.

Supper was the arroz con pollo casserole that Sharifa had made on her last day off. She did the cooking because I never really learned. I was mostly schooled on the street and home ec was not part of the curriculum. Sharifa told me about her patients at the ICU. Head trauma, heart attack, kidney failure. The Williams granny came off the ventilator and was moved to the second floor. I described my chat with Maude Descano. Sharifa was more interested in Descano’s house than the new case. She actually moaned when I told her about the asparagus soup. Sharifa loves asparagus, but they’re hideously expensive out of season. I promised I’d buy her a bunch with some of the two hundred dollars I’d got as a retainer. Meanwhile Aissa whirled around the apartment, climbed onto our laps, crawled under the table, ate two bites of chicky, clattered saucepan covers out of the kitchen drawer, drank from her sippy cup, and chattered non-stop in no particular language at all.

My sidekick chirped while Sharifa was giving Aissa her bath. The screen was blank but a jane with a squeaky voice said, “Is this Fay@Market.03284?”

“Speaking.”

“You’re looking for Andy Descano?”

“Sure.”

There was a moment of silence, as if the caller were waiting for me to make the next move. I let her wait. It was her call.

“How did you get this number?” she said.

“Put Andy on.”

“He doesn’t want to play for your football team.”

He? I liked that. “Why not? The uniforms are really cute.”

She sniffed. “Is this about the old lady?”

“Look, Jane, I need to talk to Andy.” My sidekick displayed the list of skiphouses the bot had given me for Anne-now-Andy Descano. “Are you still at the place on Chestnut?” It was the one she-now-he had crashed at the most often. “I can be there in half an hour.”

“He’s not here.”

“What if we wait there together until he comes back? Who is this again?”

“Nobody.” She broke the connection.

I stared at my sidekick for a moment, hoping it would offer me a clue as to what I ought to do. If I went to the skip on Chestnut, there was no guarantee that anyone would be there when I arrived. But it was my first real lead.

The door to the bathroom was ajar and I peeked around it. Sharifa knelt beside the tub where Aissa ruled as queen of the bubble bath. Her subjects—dolphin, duck, whale, starfish, crab, shark, and seahorse—bobbed around her; a crown of suds dribbled down mats of her dark hair. “Mommy Fay, watch!” She scooped a plastic cup into the water then dumped it over her head, sputtering and laughing hysterically. “Rinseys!” She wiped suds from her eyes. “Aissa do rinseys.”

“You’re the brave one, Aissa,” I lifted my voice a half octave so she’d know how pleased I was. “Rinseys all by yourself. Such a big girl.”

While she preened, I caught Sharifa’s attention and twirled my index finger.

“Where?” she said.

“Out. Just got a call.”

“The Descano girl?”

I nodded. “Apparently she’s a he.”

“Do you have to?” She cocked her head to one side and let a smile steal across her face. “I was thinking of putting her to bed soon.”

I knew that smile; it used to keep me up nights.

Aissa was splashing in annoyance. “Maybe not bed! Not soon!”

“We like the water in the tub, Aissa.” I knew who was going to win this one, so I stooped to give Sharifa a kiss goodbye.

Her face was tight with disappointment. “I’ve got a twelve hour shift tomorrow,” she said. “Can’t wait up.”

“Sorry.” I brushed her cheek with my forefinger. “Married to our jobs. Bye, Aissa.” I blew her a kiss.

“Not bed.” Aissa was still negotiating. I left them to it. Sharifa was a doctor, I told myself, and a mommy. I was a PI. Missing each other was part of our deal.

6

Chestnut Avenue ran past Old Courthouse Square, which was busy on a warm July night. The City Mothers were sponsoring a concert: a bunch of grannies bleating oldies from before the disappearance. Music had skipped my generation; we’d been too busy trying to survive to learn the cello. But the sooner we kissed all that cock nostalgia goodbye and started writing tunes of our own, the saner I’d be. The crowd backed all the way to the Peace Statues of Rosalind Franklin and Daniel Ellsberg. I had to walk my bike past the lemonade stand and the carts with ice cream and sushi and hot dogs; the tommies and janes seemed more interested in the free food than the singing. We all looked up when the devil flapped over, streaking toward bot town. I lit a cigarette—Sharifa doesn’t let me smoke at home—and watched for Andy Descano as I passed through the crowd.

Beyond the square, Chestnut climbed into Foy’s Gardens. In the Crazy Time a series of fires had burned through its row houses and modest storefronts; there had been nobody to put them out. After came scavengers, who gnawed the charred bones of the neighborhood and scared off most of those still living there. For a while the only inhabitants were the few crazies who didn’t understand how everything had changed, but in the last few years it had become part of bot town.

Although depression and suicide continued to squeeze our shattered world, the population had stabilized at just over a billion, even as the number of bots continued to grow. Supposedly there was now one bot for every five women on earth. Most of them propped up our pretend economy, doing jobs we didn’t want to do. Recently they’d swarmed the parts of the city we had abandoned, rehabbing and rebuilding. Never mind that nobody wanted to live in bot town, in part because they’d always had some cocked ideas about architecture. Left to their own, they built nightmares: windows became mirrors, stairs climbed to dead ends. A favorite trick was to divide big spaces into a beehive of narrow closets. Then there were the rooms with stalactite ceilings or delicate glass floors. These had no doors, only portholes through which they could be admired. Bots loved sirens and wainscoting and open plumbing. Above all, they lived to paint: walls, floors, ceilings, doors, concrete, metal, wood, plastic, even trees and rocks. Chestnut Avenue sported zebra stripes in the 1200 block.

Sure, a bot would straighten what was crooked if you asked, but the next bot to come along would fold your floor plans into origami and then get busy. I could see that some human must have taken charge of 1217 Chestnut, which was sandwiched between a burnt out foundation and a rubble strewn lot. The skiphouse was a tasteful brown Victorian with a slate roof and a bay window the size of a buffalo. I could imagine living there with Sharifa and Aissa if it hadn’t been on the wrong side of nowhere with no shopping, no schools and no neighbors but bots and empty lots.

As I climbed the front steps, I could see the door was ajar. There was a newish sneaker in front of it with a dark spatter across white laces.

“Knock, knock,” I called. I slid into the hall, fists curled to stop the tingle in my fingertips. Even a detective who said eggy could smell trouble with this setup. “Who’s there?” I muttered to no one in particular. Rooms to either side were filled with dusk and not much else. To the right, a parlor and a couple of folding chairs aimed at a wall screen. To the left, a table made of a sheet of plywood and two sawhorses. There was a pizza box on it, some dirty paper plates. “Andy Descano?” Ahead, a hallway washed in shadow and a smudge of stairs. And bigger spatters. I was wishing I’d brought the air taser, wishing I’d stayed home with Sharifa, when I heard a door bang at the back of the house. Then I was running. It was dark and then dim as I burst into the kitchen. Something jerked on the other side of the screen door and fell up off the back steps. I tore the door open. The sleek torpedo of a body shot into the air, wings scooping air with a twenty foot span. I know what I saw and I know what I heard. An angry devil makes a sharp grating crow, like gears stripping. I watched the thing wheel overhead and flail for downtown. But I was pretty sure that nobody was going to believe me. We see devils all the time but they don’t come out to play with us very often. It’s about the only thing about them I’m grateful for.

I went back inside and snapped on the light. The kitchen had been just a blur as I raced though, but now I could see that whoever had been staying at the skiphouse had no talent for housekeeping. The sink was filled with mismatched pots, the windows were murky and the counters needed wiping down. The utensil drawer hung open. There were boxes of Cheerios, Ginger Nips, and Fruit Loops on top of the refrigerator. The body was slumped in front of it, head down, knees tucked under the torso, as if she were praying to breakfast. Her feet stuck out; one was bare. I rolled her over to see if she was alive. To see if she was Andy Descano.

She wasn’t.

No corpse is pretty, but this one was particularly hard on the eyes. The kid was slim, twenty-something, dressed like a tommy in camo pants, a chain link belt and a Yankettes tee shirt. There was some bruising on the right arm but it was the head that had gotten most of the killer’s attention. Blood was coming out of one ear; two ribbons of it trickled into the open mouth. The mouth was missing a couple of teeth and one eye had been punched shut. The other had rolled up in its socket, as if the poor girl had been looking to heaven for rescue—or at least relief. Apparently God didn’t deliver in this part of town.

She appeared to have been transitioning into a he. He’d had chest reconstruction; I didn’t check for bottom surgery. From the dark spidery mustache and sideburns, I guessed he was well into the hormone replacement. I didn’t know where to put this information quite yet. On the shelf next to the Descano kid, at least.

I would have to call the cops eventually, but since the dead tommy didn’t seem to be in any hurry, I went through the place turning on lights. The bathroom at the top of the stairs had a shower with no door. The toilet was dry because the supply pipe was just a stub, but there was plastic bucket filled with water beside it. Both bedrooms upstairs had mattresses on the floor. The first was empty. The one he’d been using had a sleeping bag decorated with rocket ships on it and a backpack beside it. I pulled on gloves and unpacked tee shirts, jeans, silky boxers, and white socks. At the bottom was a pair of lace-up military boots, size 7½, same as the lonely sneaker. Shampoo, toothbrush but no toothpaste, and one bent tampon in a side pocket; in the storm flap, a cheap multitool, a flashlight, and a dead sidekick with a cracked bezel. It wasn’t much to leave behind, not that a tommy in a skiphouse would be drawing up a will.

I was repacking the sorry lot of it when I heard a sidekick chirp. It wasn’t mine.

7

I made myself lighter than air as I floated downstairs, listening for a second chirp. There: a little muffled at the front of the house. I found it under the pizza box on the makeshift table, hit answer and said nothing. I was due for a miracle.

“We’re in.” It sounded like the Descano kid. “He’ll do the operation.”

I held the sidekick at arm’s length and dredged up an anonymous grunt to encourage him. “Hm?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

I tried another grunt. No miracle.

“Beetle?”

I let the silence stretch until it broke.

“Who is this?” he said.

“My name is Fay Hardaway, Andy.”

He thought that over. “Put Beetle on.”

“He can’t come to the phone,” I said. “He said I should pick up and take the message if Andy called. So, the operation is on Thursday?”

“What are you doing with my sidekick?”

“It was just where you left it.” I tried to sound amused, as in we do such silly things sometimes, don’t we? “Under the pizza box.”

“Put Beetle on.”

“Can’t. He . . . uh . . . we had a devil here, Andy. Things got kind of cocked.”

“A devil? Did it get the Bosch?”

“How should I know?” Game over. I might have laughed if there hadn’t been a dead tommy down the hall. “Beetle didn’t tell me where it was.”

Andy’s shout made the sidekick quack like one of Aissa’s ducks. “Who the hell are you?”

“Take it easy, Andy.” I said. “I’m a friend.”

“The hell you are.” He broke the connection.

“Be that way then,” I said to the silence. I wanted to feel good. All the stoplights had turned green on Hardaway Street and I was coasting downhill toward an easy two hundred bucks. Time to clear space for me in the Gumshoe Hall of Fame; I’d cracked the case in less than a day. The only problem was that it was covered in blood. That didn’t use to bother me so much. I wondered what being a mommy had cost me.

The hard part wasn’t finding the missing painting, now that I had a pretty good idea that it was on the premises. There aren’t many places to hide something in a skiphouse. It took me all of ten minutes before I found it tucked into a zip lock bag and buried in the box of Fruit Loops. How had the devil missed it? The clue was in a yellow starburst right on the front of box. Free Prize Inside.

I contemplated the hard part as I worked the painted rectangle of wood out of the bag. I knew Maude Descano would expect me to rewrite recent history so that the cops didn’t jam me or drop this killing on her golden doorstep. The Bosch was just a bit bigger than one of Maude’s books. I glanced at the image to make sure I had what Maude wanted. I was no art historian, but it seemed to me that old Jerome had been playing a joke on his patrons. The paint was brighter than in the pix Kirby had sent me, but it still had all the charm of a stain. The devil looked nothing like ours. It was naked and bent way over so that it grinned back at the viewer through its spread legs. Mooning us—no question about it. There was an arrow or something sticking out of its ass. Stupid cock tricks. The wings were outstretched, but they looked more like they belonged on a butterfly than a mass-murdering alien. As I slipped the thing back into the bag, I noticed it wasn’t in very good shape. A few flakes of tea-colored paint had lifted, but were not yet loose. I couldn’t see how this thing was worth getting dead over. Or why a devil might kill for it, if that was what had just happened.

I raced upstairs and finished repacking Beetle’s stuff. Then back to Andy’s sidekick in the pizza room. I brought the record of the last call up and then bumped our sidekicks, using my scrub app to make it go away. Sure any record could be retrieved, but the cops would need some serious data forensics to discover that there was anything missing in the first place. Then I searched Andy’s contact list for doctors. I found three and copied them but I was running out of time. The cops would wonder why I had taken so long to call this murder in. I ran to my bike and pumped like my hair was on fire. One block, two. I remembered a wall in front of the vacant library because some bot had painted the stones tomato red. I muscled a capstone aside, settled the block of wood into the space between it and the next course and pushed the cap back into place.

On the way back, I called Sharifa and tried to tell her as little as I could. Being out of breath helped. I said that I had the Bosch and that we were definitely taking a vacation as soon as she could get off work. I told her that I had found a dead tommy, that I didn’t know who he was and that the cops would be coming any minute. I told her I’d probably spend the night downtown telling my story twenty-seven times to stony faces. I asked if she could get Aissa to daycare. I told her I loved her. I left out the devil and the blood, but that was all right. Leaving stuff out was another part of our deal.

It was forty, maybe forty-five minutes since I had spotted the devil. I looked around the kitchen one last time, but really, what did I have to worry about? Sure I’d moved the body, tampered with evidence and lifted a clue that provided a motive for murder. But I got along with cops. Cops were some of my best friends. Why I was practically a cop myself, except for the badge, the paycheck and the selfless desire to serve and protect.

“I think,” I said to Beetle, “it’s time we had some law.”

He didn’t object. I lit a cigarette and stepped outside to wait.

8

For the next five hours I got passed up the chain of command as the bearer of bad news that nobody wanted to hear. A Detective Timms, whom I’d never met, took my statement at the crime scene then asked her partner, Lisa Agar, who used to walk a beat near my office, to escort me downtown. There I ran into Lieutenant Stevie Smick. She invited me to a tête-à-tête in a cozy windowless, concrete-block room, furnished with a table trimmed with gouges—or maybe teeth marks—three mismatched chairs and a coffee shelf with a half full pot and three mugs stolen from Goodfillers. There was no ashtray, so I dropped the dead butts on the floor. We chatted for a couple of hours. Stevie still blamed me for that riot at the Tin Shark, so we had a lot to catch up on. Later, Deputy Chief C. G. Little joined us, despite the inconvenient hour. She was a bulky woman, subtle as a hammer. Rumpled and up past her bedtime, she reminded me of what would happen to me if my story didn’t hold up.

I knew why I was barbequed and it wasn’t because of the murder of one Behita Berry, sometimes known as Beetle. It was because of the devil.

“Let’s go over this again,” said Stevie Smick. “I checked the weather. Sunset was 8:34. Your call came at 9:21. A lot of unexplained time, Hardaway.”

“Which I already explained. I was hired to find Anne Descano. I was told that she was staying in skiphouses, probably including this one. I decided to check it. I got there after sunset. When I found the body, I thought Descano might be connected, so I searched the house.”

“And went through the dead girl’s things.”

“And went through the dead girl’s things.” I turned both hands palm up on the battered table. “Which I told you. And you didn’t even have to ask.”

“And what about the sidekick?”

“It was dead. I didn’t have time to charge it.”

“Which one?”

“I only found one. I think we’ve rehearsed this part, Lieutenant. Five, no, six times now. My next line is Was there another?”

“You searched the house.” She sneered. “You should know.”

I tilted toward C. G., looking for sympathy. She gave me ice cold nothing. “How long had the girl been dead?” Stevie said

“Like I said, I’m no coroner. You want me to guess? Ten, maybe twenty minutes. How about half an hour?”

“And you arrived when?”

“Again, I wasn’t paying attention exactly. After sunset. Maybe eight forty-five. Eight-fifty.”

“Bullshit.”

C.G. Little stirred. She wasn’t playing good or bad cop, just bleak cop. “You just heard her tell you that sunset was 8:34,” she said. “You say you ID a devil at 8:50. Why don’t we believe you? It would have been dark by then.”

“It’s July 12th, or was when you brought me in, Chief.” I wanted her in the conversation. “Night takes its time in the summer. There was plenty of light.”

“Maybe it was a crow,” said Stevie.

“Yeah and maybe it was Mary Poppins.” I lit a cigarette and realized that I was down to two. I needed to start conserving; Stevie wasn’t about to let me step out to buy another pack. “Look, if I had left the devil out of this, then we’d all be snug in bed by now. Why would I want to spend half the night with you two?”

“What’s your devil’s motive for murder?” C. G. said. “This Behita Berry is nobody.”

I grinned at her. “Don’t know.” It was the first time that either of them had acknowledged that there might have been a devil.

“And why leave the body?” said Stevie. “It could just have disappeared her.”

The thought had occurred to me too. But devils did away with the men forty-some years ago. They don’t flap around disappearing people these days; the bots say it violates their code of wisdom. Apparently it’s okay to disappear a couple of billion men, but not a single inconvenient woman. I did witness a devil disappear someone once, but it was to prevent a murder. My murder, as a matter of fact. “I don’t say the devil killed her,” I said. “For all I know, it just stumbled into this mess. Same way I did.”

“But it ran. At least that’s your story.”

“Maybe it thought I was the killer, coming back.”

“Why?” said Stevie. “It could have just disappeared you if it got worried. Nobody would’ve known. Or cared.”

I’d been able to keep the anger in my pocket until then, but now it swelled up and started ripping seams. “I’ve got a wife and a kid,” I said. “And I’ve got friends. Some of them are even cops. Cops who don’t squeal when a devil pinches them.”

Stevie gave me a lizard look.

“That’s enough, Hardaway,” said C. G..

“No it isn’t, Chief. Maybe Lieutenant Smick slept through the part where the devils wiped three and a half billion people off the planet. And maybe she thinks it’s cute that there’s nothing we can do about that. But real cops don’t roll over for mass murderers.”

“You wouldn’t know a real cop if she sat on your face.”

“Smick, enough,” said C.G. wearily. “What’s next, hair pulling? Swiping her lunch money?”

Stevie squirmed on her chair. I gave the Chief a laugh to show her I was paying attention.

“I hate the devils,” said C.C., “and so does Lieutenant Smick. But that doesn’t make a saint out of you, Hardaway.”

Someone cracked the door open and murmured “Chief?”

“I’ll be right there.” C.G. glared at us. “You two kiss and make up while I’m gone.” She shut the door behind her.

“You got hot there, shamus,” said Stevie. “That’s not like you.”

“You play too rough, girl scout.”

She got up, and poured me a cup of coffee I didn’t want. “What do you expect?” She set it in front of me.

“I expect someone to believe me.”

She laughed. “What, the gag about not finding Descano’s sidekick? Pretty thin, Hardaway. You’re better than that. Come on, when did you get to the scene? Really?”

I dipped my finger into the coffee and licked it. “How do you drink this sludge?”

“We don’t.” She grinned. “We inflict it on the perps.” Then she lowered her voice and changed into the good cop. “Bot town has gone quiet on this one. At least, the Chestnut neighborhood has.”

“They didn’t see the devil?”

“Not only that, but they never saw Berry, Descano, or you. Usually bots come forward on these things, but I get the feeling that the circus could’ve paraded up Chestnut shooting skyrockets and they wouldn’t have noticed.”

“The bots are covering up? Why?”

“Maybe to protect your devil.” She knocked twice on the tabletop. “That’s about the only part of your story we believe. So why don’t you help me out now and tell me the rest?”

C.G. Little opened the door to the interrogation room. “Let’s go, Hardaway. You have visitors.”

I could tell Stevie didn’t like that. Who had the clout to interrupt a police interrogation?

9

Grete Sams was a large, round woman who had always had trouble buying clothes. She kept trying for swank when she was built for comfort. Her breasts and belly stretched her gray silk blouse, making the placket gap between buttons. Her metallic brocade skirt clung to her hips, betraying the outline of granny panties. She had limp curls the color of steel wool and there was a shadow of sweat on her sallow face, even though the air conditioning in the Chief’s office was blasting enough cold for a penguin convention. But appearance hadn’t kept her from getting elected Mayor three times in the last twenty years; it probably helped. She’d been able to convince voters that brains trumped style.

“I beg your pardon, Chief,” she said amiably, “but we were expecting Ms. Hardaway only. This officer would be . . . ?”

“Smick.” Stevie tried to look tough when she spotted the visitors, but her eyes went round as quarters. “Behita Berry is my homicide.”

“Of course.” The Mayor dismissed her with a wave of her meaty hand. “We have no intention of interfering with your investigation.”

“Then why are they here?” Stevie kept staring at the other two in the room.

“May I call you Fay?” Even though the cops were still with us, it was as if Mayor Sams had closed the door on them. “This is Storrow,” she said, indicated a dull gray bot. “And Seeren.” The devil was perched on the Chief’s crendenza, translucent wings outspread like some nightmare shore bird. It weighed in at maybe eleven or twelve kilos, and was sleek as a torpedo, ugly as rust. It turned and I could see my reflection in its compound eyes. There were a lot of me there and none of us looked happy. “Ms. Hardaway, I understand that you and Seeren are acquainted.”

Acquainted was one word for it. Seeren had hired me to find a certain Christer a couple of years ago, which I did. That made everybody happy except for a tough named Gratiana, who tried to stab me to death in my office. She was the one I’d seen get disappeared. Of course, it was all hushed up and no charges had ever been filed. Otherwise there might have been riots.

“Seeren recalls with bright satisfaction a previous employment,” said the bot. How the devils communicated with the bots was a mystery. All we knew was that the bots did all the talking for them. “Seeren considers that Fay Hardaway has demonstrated true superiority.”

“Does that mean I can use it as a reference?” I said it just to hear if my voice would squeak.

The devil opened its maw and made a sound like sucking the last drops of soda through a straw. The bot did not translate.

“Seeren has asked to meet with you in private, Fay,” said the Mayor. “Do you have any objection?”

“I do.” Stevie actually pushed past the Chief to get Sams’s attention. “She’s a material witness to a homicide. A devil is a person of interest. These two might be a threat to her safety.”

I couldn’t help but grin at that. I had gone up against Stevie many times and I doubt that she had ever lost sleep over my safety. But I let it pass; she was giving me time to think.

“Fay Hardaway has the alternative to leave at any time, should such be her intention,” said the bot. “Violence is to be deplored. It violates wisdom and thus has unwelcome effects.”

That didn’t cheer me up much. The devils were big on wisdom, only we had never figured out what they meant by it, other than it allowed them to kill half the population and rip the hearts out of the other half. But that wasn’t violent, no. Disappearing someone was about as violent as blowing out a candle.

“Chief,” said the Mayor, “I would think it’s up to Fay. Do you agree?”

This had to gall the cops; the devils were the worst criminals in history and they had the Mayor dancing on a stick. “Lieutenant,” said C. G. Little, her voice like sandpaper, “I think we have to take them at their word.” She rested a hand on Stevie’s shoulder.

Everyone but the devil looked at me now. It had turned to the window; I wondered what it could see in the dark. I was tempted to say thanks but no thanks, if only to spite Seeren. That was probably the smart move. But smart and I didn’t always get along.

“Sure,” I said. “I could use a break from Smick here. No offense, Lieutenant.”

As the Mayor closed the door on us, she said. “We’ll be right outside if you need us.”

I wondered which of us she was talking to.

10

I shivered.

Not because of the chill in the office, but because I was remembering when Seeren disappeared Gratiana. She had vanished with a surreal pop. There’d been a rush of air, as if the room had gasped in surprise. She wouldn’t have had time to suffer. Had she been killed or just sent someplace else—maybe the same place all the men had gone?

“Something is regrettable, Fay Hardaway?” said the bot.

“Been a long night.” I told myself then that I was done being scared. I was a PI; I washed my face with battery acid and picked my teeth with ten penny nails. I was mean as cancer. So why did I scuttle around the Chief’s desk and sit in her chair? To hide behind it, sure. Keep an obstacle between me and them. A weak move, but now I felt more like the self I needed to be. C. G. was making a statement with this desk; it was not quite as big as a bus. On it was a ship’s clock, a silver trophy cup filled with pens and pencils and a framed photo of a kid graduating from somewhere in a blue cap and gown. She looked like a travel-sized C. G. Little. I thought of the Chief as a mom changing diapers all those years ago. For some reason, that helped.

“Before you start,” I said, “I have to ask. Was Seeren the devil I saw at the murder scene?”

“No,” said the bot.

That stopped me. I was expecting a denial but bots never gave simple answers when complicated ones would do. They had made torturing English into an art form. “Well then, does Seeren know who that devil was?”

“No.”

“But there was a devil? Seeren admits that?”

“You asked a permission for one question and have now put three. One needs to remark, Fay Hardaway, that you alone were observer of these events. Seeren has no direct awareness of them.”

“But you’re here because of what happened to Behita Berry.”

The bot let that pass.

I took my sidekick out of my pocket, pressed record and placed it on the desk. “What’s this about then?”

“Seeren has intention to task you to make certain inquiries.”

“Lucky me.”

“You have a client, Maude Descano.”

“Look, I’m a private investigator.” I shook my last smoke out of the pack. “That means I like to keep my clients’ identities confidential if I can.” There was no ash tray so I spilled the pencils and pens out of the trophy cup.

“This information has already been disclosed.”

“To the cops maybe.” I lit up. “Not to you.”

“Seeren has a curiosity in the matter of Renata Descano.”

“Renata?” For a moment I thought the bot had misspoke. “You mean Anne.”

“The daughter of Maude Descano was Renata Descano.”

“She’s dead. What’s there to know?”

“There are regrettable inconsistencies in the circumstance of her death.”

“I heard it was suicide.” I tried to picture a woman like Maude having doubts about her daughter’s death, but I didn’t have that good an imagination. “Do you know different?”

“The purpose of your investigation would be to resolve all inconsistency.”

It was easy for bots to stonewall since they had no faces; the devil was busy doing its impression of a brick. “What does this have to do with the Berry murder?”

“This one has knowledge of your previous transaction with Seeren. Are the same terms of employment acceptable?”

I’d earned two thousand dollars the last time I had worked for the devil, which was six month’s income in a good year. That was five times what the old woman was paying. But there was too damned much money fluttering around the Descanos and their problems. My nose twitches when a client tries to perfume a rotten case with the scent of cash.

“What do you need me for anyway?” I blew smoke at them. “You’ve got the mayor sitting on your lap. Have her put the cops on this.”

“Seeren necessitates the true discretion that a Fay Hardaway can provide. Never police and never news.”

I ashed into the silver cup and considered how much freedom two thousand dollars could buy. I thought about a bigger apartment with a playroom, or at least a dishwasher. I thought about babysitters and dinners out and dancing. “I’m not saying no and I’m not saying yes. But if this is really a problem, I need to see some evidence. Or is Seeren playing some kind of hunch?”

My sidekick chirped; that didn’t take long. But I needed a chance to study what Seeren had sent before I made any moves.

“Okay, then.” I stubbed my last cigarette out. “I’ll sleep on it. Can I give my answer to George? Seeren knows him; he’s the bot in my building.”

Seeren flapped its wings as it launched off the credenza, then flapped twice more to regain balance on the landing. I felt the air move and caught a whiff of burning sugar. It wrapped itself in its wings and waddled toward the door. The bot Storrow regenerated its legs and arms and stumped after.

As they let themselves out, the Mayor let herself in. Alone. “You have unusual friends, Fay.” She shut the door behind her.

“They’re not my friends.” I carried the cup over to C. G.’s waste basket and emptied the ashes. “I hate the devils.”

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what Seeren wants?”

I settled behind the desk and started putting pens and pencils back.

“No.” She was thoughtful. “I didn’t think so.” She sat on one of the wing chairs facing the desk. “We can keep this quiet, at least for a while. Not the murder, but what you saw. Would that help?”

“Help what?”

“Whatever it is that you’re trying to do.”

I laughed. “I’m just trying to stay sane in this cocked world. I try to do right if I can figure out what that is and every so often I help someone find something she’s lost.” I aimed a pencil at her. “Right now I’m trying to go home and sleep and see if any of this makes sense in the morning.” I dropped it into the cup. “What time is it?’

She glanced at a fossil wristwatch. “Three-seventeen.” Only grannies wear watches.

“Past my bedtime,” I said. “But try telling that to Lieutenant Smick.”

“C. G. Little claims I can trust you.”

“Nice of her, but she hardly knows me. What does Stevie say?”

“Apparently she has no use for PIs. She thinks you should have been a cop. We could see about that if you’d like.”

“No thanks. The uniform makes me look fat.”

She gave me a politician’s smile, then leaned forward. “Here’s what I’m trying to do, Fay. Word gets out that a devil is a suspect in a homicide—a brutal homicide—and the crazies and the Christers will howl, even though there’s nothing we can do. We can’t arrest a devil for this; it’s like trying to arrest a house fire. Or a tornado. But the old madness is still out there, so I’m trying to stop the riots before we write another damn chapter for Eller’s Index of Human Dysfunction. If that means I have to tell the world that you didn’t see what you saw, I’ll do it.” She pointed a finger at me, her expression grim as a grave. “And if I have to tell the Lieutenant to arrest you for being an accessory to murder, I’ll do that too. Because I don’t always have the luxury of doing what’s right. Do you understand me?”

I chewed on that but didn’t much like the taste. “Sure,” I said. “You’re saying I’m cocked.”

She shook her head. “I hate the devils too, but I doubt their wisdom will allow them to stand back and watch this city burn down. When one of them shows up here at three in the morning, I’m hoping that means they have some kind of plan.” She heaved herself out of the chair and looked like she aged a decade doing it. “Since we want that plan to work, we’re turning you loose. Do what you do, keep your mouth shut about what’s happened and let’s see how smart they really are.”

“How long do I have?”

“How the hell should I know?” She reached across the desk and shook my hand. “Until you smell smoke.”

11

Sharifa groaned and turned to me as I slipped under the sheet. “You okay?”

“Yep,” I lied.

“Time is it?”

I kissed her. “Half past tomorrow.”

“Love you. G’night.”

I expected to spend the rest of the night chasing the Descanos around in my head but the kiss of the pillow was too sweet. The next thing I knew, the bedroom was full of sunlight and July’s steamy breath. It was eight-thirty; Sharifa had managed to pack Aissa off to daycare and herself off to the hospital without waking me. There was half a pot in the coffee maker and cantaloupe in the fridge. I sat down with the file that Storrow had sent me. It contained three police reports, one each from Missing Persons, a Fifth Precinct detective named Alejandra Urrego and the coroner’s office.

Renata Descano would be forty-seven if she had been alive that bright summer morning. Just a few years older than me. She had worked a series of pretend jobs, none of which had stuck: selling toys and shoes and houseplants, grooming pets, waitressing. She had studied graphic design in college, which must have been nice for her. Not many janes our age had the time to go to college. I pegged her as a fluff snoozing through life on a bed of Mom’s money. She’d been seeded with Anne when she was twenty-two, but mothering apparently wasn’t in her skill set either; she and the daughter got along like garlic and oatmeal. Maude and nannies raised the kid—mostly nannies, if I knew Maude. Renata had moved out of the mansion on Fairview after a fight with Maude three months before she died. She took a studio apartment at 9th and Mayflower—quite a tumble from the Descano lifestyle. The upstairs neighbor reported she was quiet and didn’t seem to have visitors. Love life? Unknown. Maude had told Missing Persons that Renata’s last relationship had been with a doctor named Kalil Haddad, but that they had broken up a year before she moved out. That checked out. Renata had been unemployed at the time of her death, and as far as anyone knew, wasn’t looking for work. Nothing to follow up on there. The sheriff in Lincolnville fished her out of the river eleven days after Maude had reported her missing. Lincolnville was some twenty miles downstream. The coroner’s autopsy reported no external wounds although she had five broken ribs, one of which penetrated the aorta. Her liver, spleen and heart were lacerated. All indications were that she had jumped off one of the downtown bridges, most likely the Sanger, some two hundred feet above the river. Jumpers go from seventy miles an hour to zero on impact with the water—not good for the internal organs. Andy—then Anne—Descano had run away from home on the news of her mother’s death, but had returned three days later in time for the funeral. I didn’t see anything of much interest there either. I did see why Detective Urrego had dropped this one into the suicide file. Renata Descano was unemployed, living in a shabby walkup, had no lover or friends and was estranged from her family. There was no note, but that meant nothing. Less than a third of all suicides bother to explain themselves.

She died on June 4 and was the city’s one hundred and eighty-ninth suicide of the year.

I got up and thought about pouring myself another cup of coffee. Instead I went into the bathroom to look in the mirror for the superwoman Seeren and Mayor Sams were counting on to save the city. I couldn’t find her, but I did manage to brush my teeth.

I needed to get on my bike and retrieve the stolen Bosch before somebody found it, not that I thought anyone would. I needed to ask Maude about Renata’s death, not that I thought she’d have anything new to tell me. I needed a drink, but I’d promised Sharifa I would stop, which meant that nine-seventeen in the morning was too early to start. Instead I wandered into the living room and picked up Aissa’s toys.

Although from time to time we retired her playthings to the hall closet to keep from being overrrun, there were still more of them than we had bought. Maybe the devils were seeding them at night while we were asleep, and they were giving birth to the next generation under the couch. Aissa’s favorites were the Littlers, squat, round, non-toxic people exactly too big for her to swallow. She had enough of them to form a polyethylene commune: grannies, mommies, aunties, police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, mailcarriers, sailors, farmers, kids in every color and shape, as well as sheep, cows, horses, pigs, dogs, cats and, for some reason, giraffes and elephants. They lived at the Animal Friends Farm or the Family Fun House and commuted in the Move-o-matic Bus or a fleet of Gogo Cars. She also had a collection of electronic toys that beeped, burped, squawked, sang nursery rhymes and counted to ten in English, Spanish and Mandarin. I dragged a corn popper push toy like one I had as a kid into the corner next to her red wagon and pulled her two ladybug rolling treasure chests out onto the rug and started tossing stuff into them. I was sorting the plastic hammers, screwdrivers and saws of the Handy Ellie Tool Box from the fake stethoscope, blood pressure cuff and otoscope of the Debbie the Doctor Medical Kit, when I remembered that I had copied the names of three doctors from Andy Descano’s contacts the night before. I lunged into the kitchen for my sidekick.

Dr. Nicole Fuchs was a dermatologist.

Dr. Katherine Reed was a psychiatrist.

Dr. Kalil Haddad was an urologist who specialized in phalloplasty and sexual reassignment.

12

If the Mayor had not given her blessing to whatever it was I was supposed to be doing for Seeren, I might have waited a day or two to retrieve the Bosch. But I figured the cops would have orders to give me a good leaving alone. As it was I peddled past the hiding place and locked my bike to a tree in front of Joyce’s Convenience Store just up the street. I didn’t get to meet Joyce, but I did find a bot who sold me an overpriced ice cream sandwich for a nickel. I ate it sitting on the wall where the painting was. Birds sang, the sun shone. No passers-by stopped to chat, no bots pried, no nosy cops cruised past. A capstone just happened to slide out of place and a priceless art object just happened to find its way under my shirt. I folded the ice cream wrapper up, licked my fingers and sauntered casually back to the bike. I slipped the Bosch into the left saddlebag.

I was sweating by the time I reached the Descano mansion. I wondered if maybe I could convince Sharifa to let me spend a hundred of my retainer on a scooter as I rang the bell and waited. The bot Kirby took his time. The midday sun was a punishment. I knocked again. I waited, then pounded on the double doors. I was getting ready to call Maude on my sidekick when I heard fumbling inside.

I suppose I might have been more surprised if President Gliesman or the Christer Pope or Frosty the Snowgirl had opened the door. But as it was I almost fell out of my shoes when Andy Descano stood blinking at me from the gloomy interior of 122 Fairview.

“Hello, Andy,” I said. It’s hard to sound nonchalant when your voice crackles like Rice Krispies.

“D’I know you?” The light hit him so hard that he swayed.

“We chatted last night,” I said, “but you hung up before I could turn on the charm.”

The kid didn’t like that much. He glanced past me as if a SWAT team might be hiding in the marigolds or ninjas slithering across the manicured lawn. Then he grabbed my arm and pulled. Since it was one of the arms I needed, I followed it into the house.

The reception hall was stuffy as a bishop’s closet. The lights were out and it was dark when the doors closed. Just a smudge of afternoon sun oozed through leaded windows at the landing where the grand staircase reversed direction. It looked like something had tripped a circuit. I was just a sepia shadow in the big gilded mirror; Andy’s face a pale smudge.

“Beetle’s dead.” He’d been drinking; I could’ve bottled his breath and sold it in Old Courthouse Square for a nickel a nip.

“I guess he won’t need that operation after all.”

“Operation?” Andy was trying for cagey but looked to be a few working neurons short at the moment. “Don’ know what you talkin’ about.

“You remember. The one Dr. Haddad was going to do tomorrow.”

He folded into himself. “’S cocked.” He was sniffling. “’S all cocked up and my fault.” When he staggered against the wall, I caught him. There was a lot of him to catch.

“That’s okay, girl scout,” I said. “Where did you leave your drink?”

He took a vague swipe in my direction and almost pulled the two of us over. “Not a girl scout.”

“Okay then.” I aimed him down the hall. “Where’s Kirby?”

“You.” He peered at me. “You’re the detective.”

“Sure.” We were moving now, but then so were the tectonic plates.

“Did you find it?”

“I find all kinds of stuff.” I didn’t let him see my scowl. “Just now I’m looking for a bot.”

“Gone.” He flapped both hands and giggled. “Flew away.”

The kitchen was the size of a basketball court, a designer’s folly of stainless steel, teak, and hand-painted tile. There was a six burner gas stove, a microwave with more controls than a starship, and a refrigerator big enough to hide a body in. A wallscreen with the sound off played an old sitcom from before the disappearance, something about wacky aliens who weren’t devils and didn’t keep bots. Sleek chrome barstools with leather seats gathered around a semicircular bump in the quartz countertop. A bottle of Crown Royal waited there for Andy next to a whiskey glass in which ice cubes were dying. A silver inhaler had rolled to the edge of the counter. I loaded Andy onto a stool. He slid down but not off. When he fumbled for the inhaler, I swiped it away.

“What is this?” I said, holding it at arm’s length.

He smirked at me. “Manly drugs for a manly man.”

I sniffed but didn’t squeeze the trigger. “Bliss?” I said. “Sugarpop?”

“You know your toot, sister.” He managed to capture the glass before I slid the whiskey bottle out of reach.

“Don’ be like that.” He rattled the ice. “Pour yourself one too, detective.”

I carried the inhaler and the bottle to the far side of the kitchen, and then started opening cabinets. “Where’s Maude?”

“Don’ know. Napping? Shopping? Dead?”

There were brushed steel canisters with glass tops near the sink; they were filled with flour, sugar, ground coffee and loose tea. I found a French press in the cabinet above them, filled the beaker with water and put it in the microwave. Andy’s slouch deepened; pretty soon he was going to need a seatbelt.

The microwave timer chirped. I twisted the lid off the coffee canister. I scooped four spoonsful of rough grounds into the boiling water. Andy watched me stir it. The room filled with an aroma that was first nutty, then bitter and earthy but finally clean, cleaner than anything else in that unhappy house. I didn’t want to think of the things I might do for coffee like that.

“Why are you here, Andy?”

“I live here.”

“Not according to Maude.”

He let that pass. If it had been Dr. Kalil Haddad who had changed this kid’s sex, he must be a master sculptor of flesh. Andy Descano had been rebuilt for power; he could have found work picking up junk cars with his bare hands and tossing them onto trucks. His tight white tank top made it clear that he had had top surgery. Who knew what was underneath the baggy shorts? His feet were bare, showing toenails painted with purple glitter. His skin was thick and oily and he wore his brown hair short enough to show scalp. Maybe he was good looking or maybe he was just young and confident. It was hard to tell with his expression smeared by drugs and alcohol.

“Maude says you moved out. Hopping in and out of skiphouses.”

He glowered at me, breathing with his mouth open. I could hear the whiskey still rasping in his throat; his snoring would be no fun that night. “’Cause of Beetle,” he said at last.

“You were sweet on each other?”

“Loved him. Sure.”

“Is that why you stole the Bosch?” I poured him a coffee. “To pay for his operation?”

He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “Yesterday was my birthday.”

“Happy birthday to you.” I saluted him with the cup. “Cream. Sugar?”

“Black.”

I passed it over.

“July 12.” When he wrapped his big hands around the cup, it disappeared. “I became a man exactly one year ago.

“Oh, is that what you are?”

He smiled, since obviously I hadn’t a clue.

“Not afraid of the devils?” I said.

“Nah.” He sipped. “They don’t get it. There’s more to being a man than chromosomes.” He eyed me over the rim of the cup. “Stop staring at that bottle and pour yourself a drink. You know you want one.”

I did, but I didn’t like that he could tell. I opened the cabinet where I had found the French press and pushed the whiskey onto the bottom shelf with a collection of pricey serving bowls and trays. Weak move, Fay. I closed the cabinet. This kid had me turned around. I decided that I had probably underestimated him; he was, after all, a Descano.

We heard shuffling upstairs and then a toilet flushed. It took the lady of the house about a week and a half to get downstairs.

13

Maude Descano wore a blue silk brocade kimono with sleeves down to her knees. She didn’t seem surprised to see me, but she didn’t seem pleased either.

“I see you’ve met my granddaughter.” She wriggled a hand out of its preposterous sleeve to open the refrigerator.

“Maude doesn’t understand about gender either,” said Andy. “But then she’s a granny.”

The granny produced a medicine bottle from under her sleeve, read the label and then shook it. “What don’t I understand?”

“Never mind, Nana. I think the detective found your Bosch.”

That didn’t surprise Maude either. “Is this true?” She opened a drawer and picked out a teaspoon.

Andy grinned at me; he was trying to write all my lines. “Sure,” I said. “I have it.”

“With you?” Maude poured something white and gluey onto the spoon.

“In a safe place.”

She dipped the spoon into her mouth and then grimaced. “It was in a safe place before.”

Both Descanos thought this was funny. I was starting to feel lighter than air; if they laughed in my direction I might blow out of the doorway and down into the dark hall. “Anne here made the job easy,” I said. “She told me where she’d hidden it, although it was kind of by accident.”

“Andy.” He let his irritation show. “My name is Andy.”

It was my turn to grin.

“I never hid it,” he said, “and never took it. Was all Beetle, all the time. Should’ve never showed him it. Never brought him to this dam’ house. Never, never, never.”

“Who is this person?” said Maude.

“A poor tommy named Behita Berry,” I said. “Andy’s favorite Beetle. He was in the middle of a sex change and I think they stole the Bosch to pay for it. Only he got dead last night.”

“You’re a damn fool,” The granny turned on the kid. “You and your friends can flay yourself to ribbons and you’ll never be men. There are no men.”

Andy’s fists curled but he said nothing. I wondered what I’d do if he went after Maude. What I could do.

“Do the police know?”

“About Berry, yes. That Andy’s connected, yes. This is a murder so they’ll have to talk to him. About the Bosch, no.” I leaned against the counter feeling like I was back in control. “Maybe I can tidy this up but you’ll have to help. Otherwise you’ll have the law here peeking under your beds and opening your medicine cabinets and there’s nothing your connections will be able to do.”

“Help how?”

“Start by telling me about Renata.”

They goggled at me as if I’d grown another nose.

“You remember Renata,” I said. “Someone’s daughter, someone else’s mom.”

“Leave her out of this.” Andy shot off his stool and seemed about to come across the counter at me.

“Shut up, Anne.” Maude pressed her hands flat against the front of her kimono. “What about Renata?” I could see the outline of her bony thighs.

“You had a fight. She moved out. She was so unhappy that she jumped off a bridge.” I watched both of them for reactions. “Unless someone pushed her.”

“Nobody pushed her.” All the air went out of Andy and he slumped back down, deflated. The suggestion only annoyed Maude.

“What did you fight about?” I said.

“She wanted a great deal of money,” said Maude. “I didn’t give it to her.”

“You seem to get that a lot, don’t you? Was this money for Kalil Haddad, by any chance?”

“How do you know about her?”

“Hire a PI and you’re going to give up secrets. Get used to it So she asked for money for her lover?”

“Renata just thought she was in love with her.”

“Him,” said Andy. “Kalil is a man, Maude.” He was going all dreamy and distant on us, as if he were seaside on another planet, where the ocean was Canadian whiskey and the atmosphere pure Bliss. “I’m a man.”

“She wanted me to set this quack up in practice to take advantage of people like poor Anne here. Confused people. Unhappy people. I told her no. She left me and then Haddad left her.”

“You threatened him,” said Andy. “You broke them up.”

“That’s just what Haddad says.”

“How do you know what he says?” I asked.

“Because my poor confused granddaughter went to Dr. Kalil Haddad and spent money I had given her for other purposes on an extensive program of self-mutilation. We do talk, you know. She’s not always like this.”

“You’ve had both surgeries, Andy?” I still needed him in the conversation.

“What?” He summoned up a sleepy leer. “Want to feel inside my shorts?”

“Why Haddad, Andy? Why chose him for the operation?”

“ ’Cause he’s the best.” He was nodding, but not at me. “Ask anyone. Ask this granny.”

“Maybe a thumb in Maude’s eye too?”

The question didn’t interest him.

“Of course she did it to hurt me.” said Maude.

“I did it to become who I am.” It sounded like something he had heard someone else say once.

“She can’t help herself sometimes,” Maude said. “But she knows I still love her.”

This might have been heartwarming to a family therapist, but I was a PI. “But you didn’t have enough money for Beetle to get cut too, so you stole the Bosch.”

“The operation doesn’t cost that much,” said Andy wearily. “He wanted me to steal it so we’d have enough pay for the procedure and then go away together while he was healing. Go away, he said, and stay away. I said no, be smart, sure, I can get all the money we’ll ever need, but a little at a time. Maude won’t care.” He folded his big arms on the counter and rested his head on them. “Maude loves me,” he muttered.

“You asked her for six thousand dollars. Not so little and all at once.”

“I was going to pay for the operation. He wouldn’t listen.” He spoke with his face turned away. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

She came around the counter and rubbed his shoulders. “You’re tired, baby,” she murmured. “Go upstairs and lie down.” She waited for a response, but big Andy Descano didn’t stir.

“Go.”

He groaned when she pulled him upright, groaned again when he stood, eyelids drooping, face slack. She gave his ass a love pat and off he trundled, like a little girl the size of a post office who had stayed up past her bedtime.

Maude settled on a stool and wheeled around to face me. “She has issues, but no more than the rest of us.”

I thought she was either being too optimistic about the kid or way too hard on womankind. “You believe that about the friend stealing your Bosch?”

“Why not?”

“How was he going to cash in? Who’s the buyer?”

“How would I know?”

“Haddad, maybe?”

She shook her head.

“Andy says your bot is gone. What happened to him?”

Another head shake.

I pulled out my cigarettes. “Look, Maude, either we write our own story or the cops will tell it their way, with you and Andy featured.” I offered her a smoke but she waved me off. “It’s one thing when someone kills herself. That’s just weather to cops, what happens every day. Murder gets their attention. So who took the Bosch and why was Kirby covering it up?”

“Was he?”

“Sure. That’s why he’s gone.” I flicked my lighter and watched the cigarette catch. “Let’s say it was Andy—makes sense that Kirby would shield him, at least for a while. So our story is about loyalty, assuming that bots are capable of it. But if Beetle stole the Bosch . . . ” I watched smoke curl around my fingers. “ . . . well, maybe loyalty still plays. Andy convinces the bot not to say anything when he promises to confront Beetle and get your painting back. But then you hire me and everything gets more complicated.”

“Go on.”

“Go on where?” I looked for the ashtray that wasn’t there. “No matter how the story starts, it ends up with Beetle dead. Who killed him? The buyer? Who would buy it?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” said Maude, “ever since it went missing.”

“Turn it around.” I finally flicked ash into the sink. “Who knew that you had it? Or that it even existed?”

“I’ve hated the damn thing ever since Nicky bought it home. I most certainly did not show it off.” She considered. “Anne and Renata, obviously. Kirby. I don’t know who else. Nicky bought it from Sotheby’s, but that’s long gone. I suppose there could be records somewhere.”

“Haddad?”

“Possibly.”

I sucked smoke deep into my lungs and pretended to think. “How about the devils?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Why not?” I felt a twinge that might have been inspiration or maybe just a nicotine tremor. “Know any devils?”

“Know?” She made a lemon face. “I’ve met a couple.”

“Like who?”

“The local group. There’s Pej, that’s the one that Grete Sams meets with, I think Seeren gives the orders. Frems and Kopsie, I don’t know much about them. Eller claims it’s studying us.”

“The mayor told me she hates the devils.”

“She probably does. But she lives in the real world, not like Anne and all her tommy friends. This is their zoo, Hardaway. The devils are the keepers and we’re the specimens. The bots feed us and sweep up our shit.”

If that’s what Maude thought, it was no wonder her family went squirrelly. But then it was something I might have said before Sharifa and I had Aissa. “Have any of them ever been here, maybe seen the painting?”

“I threw a fundraiser last summer for the Hopewell Museum. Tents on the back lawn, catered brunch and the Frost String Quartet. The local devils came for the music and stayed for maybe an hour. Grete said it was a goodwill gesture, but they nearly spoiled the party. I didn’t see them go inside but the doors were open the whole time; people need to use the bathrooms. You see the devils being mixed up in this?”

“I don’t see anything unless it hits me in the face. But this helps, Maude.”

“You really have the Bosch? When will you bring it?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Then leave, I’m tired.” She dismissed me with an abrupt sweep of her hand. “I want this over with, Hardaway.”

“Me too,” I said. “Don’t bother to get up, I’ll let myself out.”

I couldn’t help it; I felt sorry for the Descanos. Anyone could see that Maude was hollowed out by age and disease and still she was spending whatever strength she had trying to protect Andy, who resented her. And what had it been like to grow up and change sexes with sad, absent Renata and steely, arrogant Maude as your two mothers? Mothers and daughters . . . I checked my sidekick and realized that I was going to be late getting Aissa. As I trotted through the house I imagined our daughter at Andy’s age. All grown up. Her chances for happiness would have to be better, assuming I could stay out of her way. I was probably more like Maude than I wanted to admit, but at least Aissa had Sharifa to give her what she needed, even if I couldn’t.

The reception hall was still dark and close. That bothered me; all the lights had been on in the kitchen. I found a triple switch and flipped all three. Nothing. I opened both the front doors wide to let some light and then peered through the glass front of the gun cabinet.

One of the handgun mounts was empty.

14

I pedaled into the heat of the afternoon as I sprinted across town to pick Aissa up. I still needed to get to the office to tell George that I would take the case and lock in Seeren’s retainer. But I also wanted to hear what the bot had to say about loyalty. I wasn’t sure it was something he’d talk about; we didn’t have that kind of relationship. Or any relationship, really. I didn’t hate bots like I hated the devils, but I tried to have as little to do with them as possible. Some people claimed to have bot friends and I’d seen Crazy Martha, the accountant down the hall from me, chatting George up. Then I remembered that I needed to brace Haddad. I pulled over, looked him up on my sidekick then hopped back on the bike.

“SR Services. This one is pleased to accept your call.”

A bot, of course. “Put Haddad on.”

“Regrettably the press of duty makes the doctor unavailable to take unsolicited calls during office hours. It would be a true honor for this one to deliver your message.”

“Okay then, tell him I’m a private investigator and I need to talk to him about Renata Descano’s death. Tell him there’s a problem with his story. Better do it right now, he might decide he’s available.”

“The doctor’s schedule is most eventful today. Indulge this one and I will make the inquiry.”

I was flying down the hill on Cabot Street when Haddad came on. His voice was so thin that it was barely able to stand up on its own.

“Say again?” I stopped on the sidewalk

“This is Haddad. Your name please?”

“It’s Fay Hardaway, but that means nothing to you. But my client’s name will.”

“It’s Maude Descano, isn’t it? What else does she want from me?”

“We need to talk, Doctor Haddad. The sooner the better, and not on a call.”

“I’m very busy.”

“You, me, and the undertaker. On the other hand, your patient Behita Berry isn’t doing anything at all today on account of he’s been murdered.”

Haddad’s voice lost weight. “Murdered?”

“Beaten to death. So cross him off the schedule for tomorrow. The cops will be happy to take his appointment. I’m thinking we should meet before that.”

“That’s terrible news.”

“It is. Does tonight work for you?”

There was a long silence. Maybe he was checking his calendar or maybe he was picking himself up off the floor. “Eight.”

“Where?”

“My office, Ms. Hardaway. As I said, I am very busy.” He broke the connection.

When I unlocked the door to my office, Aissa squirmed her hand out of mine, darted into my little reception room and started pawing through the tired books on the coffee table. She wasn’t interested in The Book of Art Volume 4: German and Spanish Art to 1900, or The Big Book of Famous Women, or Behind the Veil: The Christer Scam, or A Guide to the World’s Greatest Buildings. As soon as she found Heather Has Two Mommies she hurled herself onto the futon with it. “Read me, read me.”

“I told you, sweetie, I have to work first. You can read it to yourself, like at school. Later we can read together.” I went through the connecting door to my office.

George hadn’t been in his room off the lobby when we came in so I put my feet on the desk and called him on my sidekick.

“Hello Fay,” he said. “This one has anticipated your communication. Seeren has mentioned his bright desire to task you to an investigation. Has a decision been reached?”

“It has. Can you come up? I want to discuss something with you.”

“I will arrive forthwith. Do I notice your daughter’s voice?”

In the next room I could hear Aissa piping, “Mommy Jane. Mommy Kate.”

“Yeah, she’s here. Is that a problem?”

“It would give this one true pleasure to offer your child a token of familiarity.”

“Sure, whatever. But we’re only here for a few minutes, okay? I have to get her home for supper.”

I had tucked the Bosch under my shirt; I wasn’t about to leave it in my saddlebag on the street. I wasn’t sure exactly why I hadn’t given it to Maude when I’d had the chance. I suppose because it was my ticket to see her again if I needed to. And because it was a clue to Beetle’s murder that I didn’t understand yet. I unzipped the bag for another peek. This slab of oak hadn’t gotten any less ugly. The mud-colored devil still had an arrow sticking out of its ass. Touching edges only, I turned it sideways and upside down. If I’d gone to detective school, I might have had a microscope to slide it under, or at least a magnifying glass to examine it with, but I was a self-taught and self-appointed shamus. I was pushy and persistent and I made the rent by working cheap and by taking pretty much every case that walked through my door, as long as it didn’t involve Christers. Which meant that the only tool I had at hand was a pocketknife. I unfolded the thin blade, slid it under a paint chip the size of a toenail and lifted. The wood underneath was not blank as I expected. I could just glimpse a herringbone pattern in a smoky blue. I tried a bigger chip, but when I got the knife under it flipped off from the painting with a snick and landed tan side up on the desk. Damn. If this painting was really priceless, it just got discounted. But what I’d uncovered got my blood singing. It looked very much like the corner of a devil’s—one of our devil’s—compound eye. I scooped the chip with my blade, deposited it on the painting and sealed everything back in the plastic bag. I unlocked the middle drawer of my desk and tried to pull it out quietly, but Aissa has ears like a bat. She was through the door in an instant, Heather and her Mommies forgotten. “My yittles,” she said. “Mine.”

I put the bag away and locked the middle drawer. We kept a colony of Littlers in the bottom drawer, next to the office bottle of Johnnie Walker. I let her play with her toys while I opened the bar. She liked to huddle under my desk, I told her it was her cave. I listened to her bossing her collection of mommies and daughters and cows around, then slipped a plastic cup off the stack and poured myself a moment of peace, while I wondered what it meant that someone, maybe Bosch himself, had painted a crude joke over a real devil.

I was considering a refill when George appeared in the connecting door to the reception room. I nodded him in, dropped my hand under the desk and wriggled my fingers to get my daughter’s attention. “Aissa, George is here.”

“Botbot?” she said.

“The bot, yes.”

“Cookie?” she said. “Maybe cookie?”

“No, I don’t think that George has a cookie today. Or do you?”

“Regrettably not, but this one would be pleased to offer the child this,” he said. He extended one of the snaky appendages that served as arms and deposited a figurine on my desk. It was a Littler version of a bot, made of the same gleaming botstuff as George. “My intention is that you will find it appropriate and Aissa Ramirez will find it amusing.”

I picked it up, turned it over, passed it between my fingers. I thought maybe I should have an objection, but none came. Bots were as much a part of Aissa’s world as cows—more so.

“Aissa,” I said. “Look what George brought you.” I handed it down and then bent over to see her reaction.

“Botbot.” She snatched it from me and immediately introduced it to the other actors in her toddler soap opera.

“What do you say?”

“Denk you, Gorge.”

When I straightened up and saw George, I was momentarily disoriented, as if he were not the bot I knew or maybe I was another Fay Hardaway. I had just asked Aissa to thank a bot. If Crazy Martha or Abby the piano teacher had given the gift, I would now express my gratitude as well. But the words stuck to my tongue. “So,” I said instead, “you can tell Seeren that I’m already working the case.”

“Seeren looks forward to a speedy accomplishment.” As he spoke an icon flashed on my desktop and a lonely bank account had a thousand new friends.

I nodded and tapped it shut. “I need to ask you something.”

“My full attention is at your disposal.”

“A bot has gone missing. Name of Kirby, worked for Maude Descano.”

“Yes, such is most unusual.”

“You know about it?”

“This one is a deliberative agent in a distributed intelligence network. While not in continuous communication we are connected, all to all.”

“Any idea where he is?”

“At this time, his location is unavailable to the network. Kirby’s previous masters have been contacted but the query has not provided bright results.”

“Which would be who, exactly?”

“Kirby was most recently tasked to cooperate with Grete Sams. Prior to that he commenced a semiotic inventory of the Hopewell Museum. He was once created to support Eller, who is compiling the Index of All Human Dysfunction.”

I liked that, even though it pointed in three different directions. “Okay then, answer me this: Can a bot do something illegal?”

“Such illegal act is imbued with wisdom?”

That was what I was afraid he’d say. Wisdom. The devils kept preaching wisdom, although their idea of it was seriously cocked. Somehow it involved a potty mix of efficiency, values and having things turn out as planned. Of course, nobody was buying ethics from the devils. “Say I stole something. Would you turn me in?”

“While you are assisting Seeren in these matters, I would not.”

“What if I am not working for Seeren?”

“I would take actions appropriate to the circumstance.”

Which was no help; I knew this would be a mistake. “Suppose I asked you to kill someone? No, say a devil told you to.”

“Which individual am I to consider?”

“Anyone.”

“The statistical individual has no intrinsic value, or rather she has a value that approaches zero. That is, if the value of the human species is one, then the value of a non-specific individual is one divided by the current population.”

“One,” Aissa muttered. “One, two, free, foe.” She usually didn’t listen to bots because of the way they mangled the language.

“Thus, if the master’s request, or yours, did not contravene wisdom, I would perform as asked.”

“Just like that?”

“The wisdom would require complex calculation. For example, certain individuals contribute to the overall health of your species.”

“Really?” I said. “Just how did disappearing half of us contribute to the health of our species? Do we look healthy to you?”

“Poopy,” said Aissa and stuck her head out from under the desk. “Poopy, Mommy.”

She presented herself to be picked up. As I slipped my hands under her arms and boosted her onto the desktop, I could smell it. She stood there, preening for George. She took pride in her poops.

I kept a few emergency diapers and a packet of wipes in the bottom drawer behind the bottle. I laid Aissa down on the desk and unsnapped her onesie.

“That action was taken by the masters,” said George. “This one was not then in existence.”

“What action?” I pulled off the diaper and wiped Aissa down. I had lost track of the conversation.

“The purging to which you refer. We were deployed after it occurred to relieve the unplanned distress of your species.”

“Unplanned?” The back of my neck began to burn and if Aissa hadn’t been there I would have thrown something at George, like maybe my desk. “They didn’t see the Crazy Time coming?”

“The inexpectation was its persistence over many years.”

That’s what I got for trying to talk to bots. “Never mind,” I said. “You bots are just as guilty as devils.” I handed him the wad of diaper and wipe to dispose of. “Unless you disagree with what they did.”

“The available data at the time upheld the wisdom.”

I stared. “Are you saying there’s new data? That maybe this was all a big mistake?”

Trying to read a bot is like trying to read a washing machine. “There is always new data, Fay Hardaway.”

“Wait a minute.” Sharifa had been sweeping up the scatter of peas and macaroni around Aissa’s high chair. Now she turned to me. “You’re talking about Saint Kalil?”

“The Dr. Kalil Haddad who does sex change operations.” I scrubbed hardened cheese sauce out of the saucepan and then dipped it in the dishwater. “Nobody mentioned he’d been canonized.”

“He’s so ancient I thought he must be dead. I mean he had the surgeries to become a man way before the disappearance.”

“You know him?”

“I know of him.” She emptied the dustpan into the garbage. “I never met him myself; he left for private practice right before I did my residency. He worked in the ER at our hospital. They said he was a beast, that nobody human could clock all the hours he did.”

“Okay, so he was a hard worker. How does that make him a saint?”

“He got the name in the Crazy Time, when everything fell apart and the suicides were piling up in the morgue. They said he would spend days at a time at work, pulling women back from the edge. They trusted him because they thought he was a man, the last man. You know, because he looked and acted like one. It gave him a kind of power that the other docs didn’t have.”

“Great. So he’s a holy man who does miracles. He’s still the guy who broke up with Renata Descano.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. He’s got to be in his late eighties, maybe ninety.”

I dried my hands on the dishtowel. “What are you saying?” Sharifa was just within reach so I caught her by the waist. “Old folks don’t need sex?” I nuzzled her ear. “I’ve got news for you.”

“You’re not that old.” She giggled. “And you get your share, shamus.” She kissed me.

It was a good kiss. It had all of Sharifa’s style and some unexpected ambition. A kiss that could’ve gone places, given half a chance. But it was seven-thirty and I had an appointment with a saint at eight.

15

I had never met Renata Descano but I had seen pix and vids. She was about my size, maybe an inch taller and a bit bigger in the hips and bust—a girl who wouldn’t get blown over in a strong wind. But if she had actually enticed Dr. Kalil Haddad into her bed as alleged, she would have had to be very, very careful not to break him.

On tiptoes Haddad would have stood maybe five four and, if he had been naked and soaking wet, the water might have weighed more than he did. His skin was stretched tight and pale over high cheekbones but was wrinkled around the eyes and mouth. He had a full head of flyaway white hair but it was everywhere thin so that I could see his pink scalp. His step was wobbly and uncertain as he walked me from the reception room to his office, as if he wasn’t sure where to find the floor. However his gaze was bright, alert and disapproving as he settled behind his desk. “Tick-tick-tick, Ms. Hardaway. I still have patients waiting.”

I’d been trying to think up a clever line of patter, but I was shooting blanks so I just blurted something out. “I want to know why you’re talking to me. Because the way you caved this afternoon, I’m guessing you have something to hide.”

He was as astonished as I was. “And you want me to just come out and tell you what it is?”

“My wife said that they call you Saint Kalil down at Parkhurst. She’s a doctor there. Intensive care.”

“What’s her name?’

“Sharifa Ramirez.”

He leaned forward, tapped at his desktop and I saw Sharifa’s pix. “So your wife is Dr. Ramirez and she works in my old hospital. I’ve never heard of her.”

“A devil named Seeren hired me to look into Renata Descano’s suicide.”

“Seeren?”

“You know him?”

He leaned forward again and spoke to the desk. “Philip?”

A moment later his bot answered. “This one is listening, Kalil.”

“Send everybody in the waiting room home. Reschedule them; I’ll come in early tomorrow for anyone who can make a six o’clock call.”

“Yes, Kalil, is there any other service this one can accomplish for you?”

“Make sure I’m not disturbed. Thanks, Philip.”

“You are welcome, Kalil.”

Haddad wheeled his chair away from his desk across the floor to an antique sideboard. He opened the marquetry cupboard doors. “Do you know anything about Port, Ms. Hardaway?”

“No, I said, “but I’m willing to learn.”

“I have a very fine 2007 Quinta de Vargellas here.” He removed a dusty bottle and two crystal goblets. “If you would carry these over to the couch.”

“Renata Descano was a smart, wonderful and deeply unhappy woman.”

“Were you lovers?”

Haddad stared into his glass. “We loved each other, yes.” He glanced up and saw something in my expression that amused him. “This interests you?” He laughed. “Feel free to speculate on the prurient details. You won’t be hearing them from me.”

“Fair enough.” I hoped I wasn’t blushing; it would clash with my attitude. “But Maude didn’t approve.”

“Maude didn’t approve of anything that Renata did, which is why she accomplished so little.”

“Andy says she broke you up.”

“That boy has never understood his mother’s suicide.”

“And you do?”

“You ask if I had anything to hide? I do, but nothing illegal, only something I deeply regret. Have you ever heard of a spendthrift trust?”

I shook my head.

“Imagine a wealthy older woman falls ill, say to cancer.”

“We talking Maude here?”

Haddad waved a bony finger for silence. “She wants to leave her affairs in order and provide for the heirs, daughter and a granddaughter in this case, but she has no confidence in them. She creates spendthrift trusts, which disburse specific amounts of money each year, but prevent the heirs from accessing the principal. Usually such trusts are created for minors with the provision that they come into the full amount of money on some birthday, say twenty-first or thirty-fifth.”

“Renata had one of these?”

“Half a million in the trust, with a fifteen thousand dollar annual allowance. Access to the entire trust on her sixtieth birthday.”

I thought about my bicycle chained to a lamppost in front of Haddad’s office. I thought about my shabby four room apartment. “And that didn’t make her happy?” I thought about what money could and couldn’t buy.

“I’m not sure what would have made her happy. I never did.” His hand trembled when he brought the glass to his lips. “But she found a way to take control of her trust. She wrote her own will, left me a huge sum, and ended her life. My guilty secret is that I have spent almost all of her money on new genital reconstruction technology. I’ve developed a biomechanical prosthesis that grows directly to the nervous system. Full sensation—do you realize what that means?” He set the glass on the table in front of us. “But . . . ” He shook his head. “ . . . but had I known what she intended, I would have told her that I would turn the bequest down. I still feel awful when I imagine her on the bridge, thinking of how what she was doing would help me and the work here.”

“Maude says that she asked for money for you.”

“Maude . . . ” His mouth worked as if he were about to spit. “If she did, Renata never mentioned it to me.”

Maude Descano hovered in the room for a few moments and we contemplated her malign presence in silence.

“Then about your work here,” I said at last. “Andy Descano. Behita Berry.”

“My work.” Haddad smiled, thin lips tight against yellow teeth. “What I do is make men,” he said. “The best I can, at least, given the raw materials I have to work with. I try not to feel guilty when they don’t always turn out to be a credit to their gender. Andy, for example. I might not have agreed to metoidioplasty for him for if it had not been for his mother.”

I poured the old man a refill. “Why not?” The port had him talking.

“He was rushing things. He’d been in testosterone therapy for just eight months and had already had his mastectomy, hysterectomy and ovarectomy.” He flicked a finger against his glass and it rang. “I’ve known Andy for years. He’s impulsive, and even when he isn’t, he doesn’t always make the best decisions.”

“And this metoidioplasty involves what exactly?”

“Lifting the clitoral hood and detaching the ligament from the pubic bone. It allows the testosterone-primed tissues to extend. The head of the clitoris resembles an adolescent glans penis, but it’s small and not capable of penetration. That requires phalloplasty with my new prosthesis, which Andy had a few months later.” He raised the glass and toasted himself. “He had two very successful surgeries.”

“And Berry?”

“Him I did not know very well; he was a new patient. He’d been on T for several years and had developed some fine secondary characteristics—facial hair, muscle mass, a lovely larynx. Had the mastectomy and was prepped for bottom surgery.”

“It must be expensive.”

“Not at all.” Haddad looked insulted. “The whole point of my work is to make sex reassignment affordable to anyone who wants it. We have a sliding scale, but the typical charge for these procedures is just over five hundred dollars.”

“Was that what Berry was going to pay?”

“You’d have to ask Philip. I don’t get involved in billing.” He sipped his port and frowned. “I seem to remember something about Andy offering to help Beetle out.”

“All that cutting—you make it sound pretty simple.”

“Straightforward, yes. Most of these are outpatient procedures. Simple, not at all. Sex reassignment is not something to be taken lightly. It’s not a fashion statement and it’s not a way to rebel against the devils. It’s an expression of a man’s true self.”

“But you don’t really make them into men. All the men are dead.”

He stiffened and then set his glass on the table in front of us. “You, of all people, should understand that isn’t true.”

I stared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Given who you are, I just thought you . . . ”

“You don’t know who I am,” I snapped and felt my hands curling into fists. “We just met.” I shoved them into my pants pockets.

A shadow darkened his face but then he surrendered. “All right then. You’re entitled to your opinion; certainly the devils believe there are no more men.” He wrapped his hand around the back of his neck and rubbed. I believed he was about to show me the door, but then thought better of it. “But if theywere really all dead, then I would be too. The devils confused biological sex with gender roles. They saw the Y chromosome as a switch which turns on a set of characteristics they called male. But the fact is that both genders share these characteristics. Maybe biological men were more territorial and aggressive on average. Maybe they did murder more often than women.” As he spoke it seemed to me that he got larger somehow; there was muscle in his voice, fury in his posture. “But that kind of gender essentialism gets us nowhere. Women can be territorial and aggressive and they damn well commit murder. The devils tried to extinguish traits they decided were harmful by disappearing an entire sex.” He shot off the couch and glared down at me. “But look around you and what do you see? They fucked up. Or what do we say these days? It’s cocked. Well excuse me, but that’s fucked up too.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Then start, Ms. Hardaway. Start right now. I need all the help I can get putting this world back together.”

“And you don’t care if the devils find out?”

“The devils know.” He seemed surprised to hear himself shouting. He placed hands against head and stretched the wrinkled skin around his mouth tight. Then he let his arms fall to his sides. “They know what they did and they realize now that they were wrong to do it. Or at least Seeren and his faction have reconnected with wisdom. And even Eller’s foolish Index is only intended to justify themselves to themselves against their doubts. A vain attempt to recast history. Instead all it proves is that they’re aliens who got biological sex, gender identity, and gender roles all mixed up. When they disappeared the men, our species began to generate new men. I’m just helping those people become who they already are.” He leaned over to me. “You’re the detective.” He rested the feather of his hand on my elbow. “My god, why do you think you’re here?”

16

It wasn’t really a party and I didn’t exactly send out invitations, but I arrived at 122 Fairview in style, in a police car chauffeured by Stevie Smick. Seeren might have clout downtown, but he couldn’t keep the cops from getting their fingerprints all over my case. Stevie had agreed to wait outside as long as I kept my sidekick on record so she could monitor me. I could only hope this wasn’t going to be a problem. Standard procedure was to record all interactions with clients—mostly for my own protection. But it would be bad for business to present the law with a gift-wrapped basket of evidence against my own clients. I had George, the bot from my building, in tow as I climbed the front steps and rang the bell of the Descano mansion. This had not pleased Stevie. Cops and bots don’t get along, never have. After talking to Haddad, I was guessing that it might be a territorial thing.

I’d also asked some devils to stop by later.

Maude had promised that Andy would be home, so I was relieved when the double doors swung away and I saw him slouching in the entryway. He was wearing a Rebels’ football jersey, cutoff jeans and running shoes without socks. He had his hair combed, his face washed and he looked sober enough to teach kindergarten.

“What’s this?” He looked past me at the bot, as welcoming as barbed wire.

I brushed past him and noticed that the lights were on in the reception hall.

“Kirby back yet?” I turned my back to the gun cabinet and waved George in.

“No.”

“Found a replacement?”

“No.”

“Well then, let me introduce George. He comes with my top recommendation.”

“It gives this one bright pleasure to greet you, Andy Descano.”

He blocked George from coming any further into the house. “We don’t need a bot.”

“Really?” I said. “Who’ll do the washing up? The laundry? All that beautiful money to dust?”

“Anne, is that Hardaway?” Maude Descano paused at the top of the stairs, like some movie star making an entrance. The granny was wearing a raspberry rose shrug over a cream top and cuffed linen trousers. It was the first time I had seen her dressed. She started down to us, leaning heavily on the curved mahogany banister. We waited. It was a long wait.

“What is this bot doing here?” She glanced from me to Andy.

“I thought you could use some help around the place, Maude. At least until Kirby comes back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t need a bot.”

“That’s what I said.” Andy’s voice was low and rumbling. I think he was trying for brooding menace, but he just sounded sleepy.

“Did you hear that, George? They don’t need a bot. I must have been mistaken.”

“This one offers apologies, Maude Descano.” He took a step back and bowed. “No imposition was intended.”

“Why don’t you wait outside? This won’t be long.” I ushered him through the open doors, closed them and turned back to face the two women. “Shall we do this in the library?” I said.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, missy.” Maude looked suspicious, as if she thought I might have a damnation of devils in my pocket. “But don’t try to be clever with me. That’s not what I’m paying you for.”

“Oh, Maude, why spoil our last few moments together?” I breezed past them toward the library. Andy cursed, and for a moment I was sure that it wasn’t going to work, but then I heard them follow.

I settled in the inglenook and lit a cigarette. The Descanos sat together on the bench facing me.

“Have you got it?” said Maude.

I tapped the briefcase beside me. “You know, things would be so much simpler if Kirby were here.” I drew smoke into my lungs, then talked it at them. “When you hired me, Maude, you claimed Andy stole your painting. Andy’s story was that Beetle took it. Either way, Kirby had to have known. Your grandmother and I have discussed this part already, Andy, but it was after your bedtime. I just wanted to catch you up.”

“Just give us the damn painting, Hardaway. Are you worried about your fee?” Maude fumbled a sidekick from the pocket of her skirt, held it close to her face so she could see the screen and tapped it. “There.” Her sidekick chirped and a second later mine made the happiest sound on earth.

“Thanks,” I said, “but that doesn’t solve the problem of the buyer. I talked to Kalil Haddad and he said that Andy was going to help pay for the operation. It was only five hundred dollars, but I was under the impression that your grandson was hard up for cash.”

Andy was wary but Maude’s face crumpled. “You saw Haddad already?”

“Prompt service is my motto. I thought he might be the buyer, but after I got to know the old gent, I didn’t like him for it. So, not only did Andy know where Beetle and the Bosch were, but he probably knew who the buyer was. Yes?”

His stare was flinty.

“But what he didn’t know was the reason why Kirby had let them steal the Bosch. You thought it was out of loyalty to you, didn’t you, Andy? But it wasn’t; Kirby was playing for another team entirely.” When I flicked the butt of my cigarette into the fireplace, I could see the ones I’d smoked the other day were still there. These people really did need a new bot. “And here’s where having our bot friend around would make this case so much simpler. Because something went wrong. Maybe it was Maude hiring me, maybe it was something Beetle did, but Kirby decided he needed the Bosch. And then bad things happened to Behita Berry.”

My sidekick began to chirp; I talked over it.

“Was Kirby going to give it to the buyer or bring it back here? Do you know, Andy? No? But in any event, Kirby went out to the skiphouse on Chestnut. I don’t think he meant to kill Beetle, he just misjudged how much beating a woman can take. And then a devil showed up—what was that about?” I was losing their attention; I could tell they were distracted by the call on my sidekick. “Excuse me, I have to take this.”

It was George. “This one has accomplished the search. It is as you expected, Fay Hardaway. Exit to the back of the house by the water lily pool. There does not exist the possibility of data retrieval.”

“Thanks, George.” I clicked off and gave them my endgame smile. “So, while we’ve been chatting in here, I asked George do a little gardening.”

And then I was looking at the little gun in Andy Descano’s big hand. It was pointed at my chest. I didn’t like that much. But Andy wasn’t stupid, just young. Nobody here was stupid—I hoped.

“Anne.” Maude was horrorstruck.

“I’ve heard bullets are hard to get.” My voice was calm as an atheist’s Sunday morning. “How many did you buy, Andy?”

“Enough,” he said.

“Enough for me and the buyer too?” I raised both hands high over my head. “Who was it, Andy? The devil I saw that night? Or maybe all of the devils? That would take a lot of bullets, man.”

“You’re the detective.”

“I am.” I let my hands sink to shoulder level. “But Maude didn’t hire me to solve Beetle’s murder. She just wanted her painting back and you protected. I do have an idea about who it is because I know something about why the buyer wanted the Bosch.”

This interested him. “Let’s hear it.”

“Tell you what,” I said and let my hands drop. “That gun can’t weigh very much but I’ve heard that a bullet can be as heavy as a bus. A lot of consequences in a bullet. Why strain yourself? Just lower it for now. You can always shoot me after we chat.”

“Do it, Andy,” said Maude. I wondered if that was the first time she had ever used his new name. “Let’s hear what she has to say.” She was paler than ever; but she seemed to be gathering herself for whatever was coming.

Andy held the gun on his lap with the barrel pointed at the floor between my legs. “So?”

“So,” I said, “the painting that hung over there all these years was not painted on a blank slab of wood. Underneath it is another painting of another devil. One of the interstellar variety.”

“How do you know that?” said Maude.

I waved my hand carelessly and gave myself an alibi for vandalizing her artwork. “Beetle must have been in a hurry; he shoved it into a plastic bag and wasn’t very careful how he did it. When I checked to see what I had, some paint chips were loose. One fell off. You can see a devil’s eye staring through the gap in the surface painting. It’s one of ours.”

“Okay,” said Andy. “So?”

“So I say that points toward a devil or devils as being interested in ownership of this unique historical artifact. Then consider how Kirby came to work here.”

“He used to work in the Mayor’s office,” said Maude. “She sent him to us.”

“Why?”

She considered. “She claimed he was an improvement over the general run of bots. Better socialized. More discreet.”

“Just so. And before her, where did he work?”

Maude shrugged.

I shook a finger at her. “Important to get references before you hire in help, Maude.” Then I realized a mistake I had made at the very beginning of this case. “Wait a minute, what references did you check for me? How did you get my name?”

“I didn’t need references, she said. “Grete Sams recommended you.”

I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that at all.

“Go on,” said Andy. “Who did Kirby work for?”

Grete Sams had no reason to know who I was, much less to recommend me for a case like this. “The Hopewell Museum,” I said absently.

“And why should I care about that?” he said. The little gun stirred itself and looked around.

“Maybe you don’t.” There is nothing like mortal danger to focus the attention. “But the Mayor was right; Kirby was special. He wasn’t built to serve us like most bots. He was created by Eller to assist in compiling the Index of Human Dysfunction.”

The gun jumped at the mention of Eller and I knew that I had played Andy Descano once again for the information I needed. “So we agree on the buyer?” I said.

Andy nodded, his eyes bright with rage.

“A bullet isn’t the way to bring that devil bastard down. I have a feeling that some of his own kind might do the job for you. And come to think of it, you really don’t want to shoot me, either. For one thing, there’s a cop around the block monitoring us on my sidekick. For another, you really aren’t in that much trouble. With Maude’s connections, you’ll probably get off with just a fine for the bullets. Shooting the bot was destruction of property; I doubt the devils will bring charges, given the circumstances. Why don’t you put that gun up and we can all stroll out back and see how things look in the light of day?”

Andy Descano had bought a lot of bullets. Maybe he thought they would make him more of a man. I don’t know. I never got the chance to ask him.

The Decanos and I stood at the edge of the shallow grave, looking down at the bullet-riddled remains of the bot, Kirby, that the bot, George had uncovered. He had taken quite a few shots to the head. Stevie Smick was the first to join us; she relieved Andy of his gun but did not immediately arrest him. Seeren and Eller arrived soon after.

Stevie and I bracketed Andy as the devils approached the ruined bot. I could feel the kid’s muscles go hard as he coiled to launch himself at Eller.

“Don’t,” said Stevie. “Just don’t.”

“He did it.” Andy’s whisper seethed like water boiling. “It’s his fault.”

“The bot did it,” I said. “You got your revenge, kid. Don’t cock it up now.”

Eller’s wings twitched as it took in the mess it had made. Neither devil made any noises that we could hear and whatever passed between them, if anything, George didn’t translate. Then Eller launched itself with a whoosh that tore at our clothes and stirred the dirt next to Kirby’s grave. Andy wrenched himself out of our grip and lunged at the devil. Too late. He staggered around in impotent fury beneath Eller, screaming curses. It circled above us—just out of reach—as if unsure of where it wanted to go.

I paid no attention to either of them. I was watching Seeren. Because I had seen the devil disappear a woman once, I was hoping now that it would disappear Eller. I wanted to believe that the devils’ idea of wisdom was within shouting distance of our idea of justice. I wanted a finish to this case that I could take home and put on a shelf in my waiting room for everyone to see. But Seeren gave us nothing and finally Eller banked and climbed to the west, away from downtown.

Then, because he was stupid with grief and rage, or maybe just stupid, Andy turned and punched Seeren in the maw.

The devil was about the size of kindergartener, just over a meter tall, and Andy Descano could have arm-wrestled a backhoe. The blow flung Seeren off its spindly legs, spinning it backwards. Its wings churned and its bullet body twisted as it toppled into a bed of marigolds. It lay there, unmoving.

We froze, all of us, still life with shock. I don’t know about the others but there was a roaring in my ears, as if the earth had cracked or the sky had fallen. Had anyone ever killed a devil? Were they even alive? All I could think of was that Eller was missing a chance to add a chapter to the Index of Human Dysfunction. Then one of Seeren’s wings shivered and the bot George was helping the devil stand and I realized that even though Andy Descano was a headstrong fool, he had acted on an impulse that I and every woman alive shared. He was probably doomed for what he had just done, but he was also a hero. He seemed to realize this at the same moment I did, because he straightened, let his arms fall to his side and faced Seeren.

A crazy grin spread across his face; Maude was crying. “Been a while since you’ve seen a man?” he said.

I was certain that Seeren would disappear him on the spot. Only it didn’t happen. Instead a lawn sprinkler started up next door and the moment passed and we all remembered how to breathe. George steered the wobbly devil toward Stevie. “Seeren mentions the brightest of requests for transport, Lieutenant Stephanie Smick” he said. “It regrets lacking capacity to fly to any destination at this moment.”

Stevie was doubtful. “What about the kid?” She looked past the two of them to Andy Descano. “I should take him in, no?”

“Wisdom dictates that there is no history here,” said the bot. “Seeren tasks that person to continue in life.”

Andy looked vaguely disappointed, although he had no right to be. The devil might claim that nothing had just happened, but Andy had a story he could tell for the rest of his life. Maude clutched at his arm and turned him toward the house. Stevie and George and Seeren were already headed for the police car.

If they were letting it go, then I was too. These were aliens, after all, and we didn’t understand them any better than they understood us. I’d earned my fee, it was another hot afternoon in July and soon it would be time to pick my daughter up at the Precious Life Center. And there was the interest on Sharifa’s kiss that I meant to collect. And the rest of my life to live. But I had one last bit of business to take care of.

“Here.” I trotted after Maude and thrust the briefcase with the Bosch at her. “This is yours.”

17

I took Sharifa and Aissa to Salt Bay for a week. I built sand castles for Aissa to knock down and taught her how to put her head underwater and blow bubbles. She stayed up too late and ate too many popsicles and was as happy as any two-year-old had ever been, before or after the men disappeared. It was almost enough to make me forget about the Descanos and the devils and the Index of Human Dysfunction. Sharifa bought a new bathing suit and read a novel about a queen who married a dragon. We had asparagus twice that week and made love every afternoon while Aissa napped. I held myself to one lonely drink a night. Whenever Sharifa took Aissa to the playground I would spread my blanket on the beach and think.

Late in the week I told Sharifa about how Haddad had maybe implied that maybe I was really a man. She listened and then laughed and said that she’d love me no matter what equipment I came with. It didn’t matter to her. I knew she was only trying to be playful and make me lighten up, but it mattered to me too much. I thought if I was supposed to be a different gender, then did I have to rewrite the life I had been living all these years? I didn’t feel like a man, didn’t want to feel like one. I felt like me. But deep into the night as I spooned beside my beautiful wife, a snake inside my head twisted and tried to swallow its own tail. Maybe I was the way I was because I was really somebody else. If Haddad was right, then I was in denial. That meant that I couldn’t even trust my own thoughts.

Business was slow when I got back to the city. I briefly had a missing teen case, only she wasn’t very missing; she showed up the day after the mom hired me. I was sitting on a cushion of Seeren’s money, so I didn’t charge her. But I told Sharifa I was working the case so I could hide out in the office and keep Johnnie Walker company. I spent the time reading everything I could find about Hieronymus Bosch and studying his devils. None were ours. Bosch had painted at least three versions of The Last Judgment. One was in Vienna, another in Bruges. The third had been lost. A large fragment of this last piece had once been in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, but the museum had been burned during the Crazy Time. A smaller fragment now hung in Maude Descano’s library. All the The Last Judgments showed Jesus sorting the damned from the saved at the end of the world. Maybe being a P. I. was getting to me, but I had to agree with Bosch’s count: he painted twice as many sinners as saints. It was pretty to think that on Judgment Day we would find out if we’d lived right or wrong, but I was no Christer. All those stories about hell were just wind to me.

By then I’d wasted several days trying to drink something Maude Descano had said off my mind, so I finally gave up and called City Hall. I left my name with the Mayor’s appointments secretary on a Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, I lost eighty-seven cents to myself playing solitaire. On Thursday I got a call from some jane who thought her girlfriend might be cheating on her. I biked all the way across town to talk to this person, only to find her screaming at the girlfriend, who was in the process of packing up and moving out. I decided that going back to the office to watch dust settle might give me a drinking problem so I was headed home when my sidekick chirped. Greta Sams had a cancellation at three-forty-five. She could give me fifteen minutes. Did I still want them?

A centerpiece of Mayor Grete Sams’s administration was the rehabilitation of City Hall. Built in 1872 in the French Second Empire style, it had once been on the National Register of Historic Places. It had been long abandoned and its three hundred and something rooms had been trashed by squatters and vagrants and women who were just plain angry. The Mayor had resisted calls to tear it down and instead had diverted scarce funds to save it. Although there must have been bots on the job, she made sure that the only workers that visitors saw were women. A trio of electricians lifted a tinkling chandelier into place in the lobby and the elevator was out of service because a carpenter was replacing the mirror built into the ceiling. The stairs to the Mayor’s office on the fifth floor smelled of sawdust and fresh paint and hope.

I arrived a few minutes before my appointment, expecting to be told that she was running behind and that I would have to wait. But the secretary greeted me as if I were the Queen of Arkansas and ushered me into the presence immediately.

“Fay Hardaway.” Grete Sams came around her desk and surprised me with a hug. “So glad you called. You’ve done wonders, I can’t thank you enough. And now we can visit.” She propelled me toward a seating area arranged in front of floor to ceiling windows. “What can I get you? Coffee?”

“No, thanks.” I settled into a leather chair that was as deep as the Grand Canyon.

“It’s after three.” On the coffee table in front of us was a tray laden with tumblers and crystal decanters. “Late enough for a taste?”

“I’m trying to cut back.”

She nodded as if she thought this was a good idea and settled on the couch opposite me.

I stared at her in silence and let the moment stretch. Sometimes that gets people talking. She just watched and waited me out.

“What do you know about me?” I said finally

“Let’s see.” She glanced up, as if reading my resume off the ceiling. “You’re a P. I. I’ve heard that you’re very good at what you do. I know . . . ”

“You heard that where?”

“I know . . . ” She waved the question off. “ . . . that you’re married to Dr. Sharifa Ramirez, who works in the Intensive Care Unit at Parkhurst. I know that you have a daughter, Alissa.”

“Aissa. Why did you give my name to Maude Descano?”

She sighed. “Because Seeren asked me to. Or his bot did.”

“Why?”

“Do I know why the devils do anything they do?” She shook her head, answering her own question. “Maybe it has plans for you. I understand you’ve met my friend Kalil Haddad?”

I leaned back into the depths of my chair. “Yeah.”

“You probably heard his theory that there are factions among the devils. That one of them now questions the wisdom of disappearing our men.” She stared at the decanter as if debating whether to pour herself a drink. “He also claims that there is debate about the way forward.” She decided in favor.

“Seeren and Eller.”

“Didn’t get along.” A decanter clinked against a glass; the pour filled the room with the fragrance of Scotch. “Did Seeren find out that Eller was after the painting? Maybe.” She took the smallest sip in history and set the glass on the table. Watching it wait there for her was exquisite torture. “Eller has removed to Germany by the way,” she said. “The devils in Stuttgart share his views, although I understand he has abandoned the Index of Human Dysfunction.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Why do you suppose the devil was interested in that painting?”

I told her what I had found underneath. “But what does it mean?”

“No idea. I’m sure Haddad would have a theory.” She was gazing out her windows. “Sometimes I think he has too many theories.”

“You called him your friend.”

“An ally, at any rate. He does good, but helping people one at a time doesn’t solve the real problem.”

“The real problem?”

“The devils and the bots stole the future.” She heaved herself off the couch and went to the near window. “Come see this view.” She stood with her back to me.

I humored her. We were looking east, toward the river and the three bridges, the Memorial, the 14th Street, and the Sanger, where Renata Decano had killed herself. Across the river was the snaggle-toothed skyline of the financial district. Two of the tallest towers were mostly empty, and the burnt out shell of the Wetherall was being torn down—another Sams project—but most of the others were occupied. I’d done insurance work for Prudential and Home Court. And beyond the towers was Fisher Park. Home.

“Your daughter, Aissa.” Grete Sams gazed down at her city. “How old?”

“Almost two.”

“Yours?”

“Hers.” Then I corrected myself. “Ours.”

“Of course. You’re forty-what?”

“Two.”

“You must have been seeded.”

“And got scraped.” The words were stones in my mouth.

“Same as me.” She shook her head. “Same.” We contemplated our childlessness for a moment. “We’re trapped, aren’t we? We want children, but not that way. Sometimes I think that’s the worst of what they’ve done. But it’s all bad. And it has to stop.” She looked at her watch and I wondered just how old she was. Only grannies wear watches. “Listen dear, I’ve got a four o’clock, so I’m kicking you out now. Just remember, this is going to be a great city again. Your kid is going to be proud of it someday. So take care of your family and I’ll take care of this as best I can . . . ” She gestured at the view. “ . . . and we’ll see what happens, okay?”

I was thinking about what Greta Sams had said as I stepped into the tumult of the Precious Life Center that afternoon. A whirlwind of toddlers was chasing around the center of the playroom, screaming with laughter. Some older kids were off in a corner flying dogs and princesses and cars around a plastic castle. A girl in a cat mask was dancing with one of the teachers to the tune of Push Pull Stand Still. If this cocked world that I was born into had to stop, who was going to stop it? Not me. Not Sharifa. Not Greta Sams or Stevie Smick or Kalil Haddad, no matter how hard he tried. We couldn’t do it—at least not by ourselves.

We would need these kids.

“Mommy Fay, Mommy Fay.” Aissa trundled up and hugged me around the legs so hard that I almost lost my balance. “Maybe bye-bye home peas?”

“Sure, sweetie,” I said. “Let’s go home.