I walked through the hard fiberstone streets. A wet mist formed in heavy air, caressed by a guitar bending a blues note nearly to the point of breaking. A sharp ache in my stomach reminded me I’d taken a fool’s job, and like a fool I’d neglected to ask for payment up front.

The narrow alleys among the tenements kept me in the city’s gray shadow, but that prickle at the back of my neck persisted like a bad cough. I picked my way down spiral with no real destination in mind. I needed a fast turnaround on this job. A chat with the other handyman, Richard, might shed some light on the subject, but if McCay was right, he was long gone.

By all my best estimates, McCay’s case was dead right from the start. An investigator needed options, and there simply weren’t any good ones. I’d need a look at the schematics for McCay’s building. That vent was big enough for a bot. Maybe a drone as big as half a person if it was built narrow enough. There were machines designed to travel those maintenance tunnels, but Trinity restricted access to them. I could to track down the few locals with access to that kind of gear. Maybe figure out what the other end of that duct looked like.

The blue-red of police converged on a point high above and across the spiral. Closer, the stone buildings caught the noise of men shouting and bounced it back like an angry bark.

Gunshots cracked like broken bones. The angry shouts turned to furious screams.

I pressed my hat down on my head, steeled myself against the cold rain, and soldiered on. The crack of a faraway pistol echoed in the brick canyons like the reverb of a well-amped guitar. Securing my earpieces in place, I shut out the world with a heavy dose of trombone and pity.

Avoid trouble; keep moving. Head down; feet forward. That’s the way to survive Heavy Nicodemia. If someone was following me after McCay’s apartment, then that person couldn’t possibly keep my tail if I moved fast enough through the dark streets. Lights followed other citizens of the city. Trinity made sure that nobody moved in darkness, even in the deepest night. Every time I stepped past someone into their light, I felt like a fish in a bowl. Someone was sizing me up, and the farther I walked the more I was sure of it. I cast a glance behind me as I rounded a corner, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever might be after me—the ghost in the streets.

And I walked right into trouble.

Two groups stood to either side of a toppled hotdog cart. The vendor lay next to his cart bleeding from a hole in his leg. Dark blood spread across water-slick pavement, and the whole mess mixed with a pile of spilled hotdogs. It was a damn shame and enough to spoil my appetite.

I took my earpieces out and let the blues fade away.

A man, clearly the leader of the three men on his side, stepped forward. He stood taller than most and dressed in a white linen shirt and black suspenders that clung to him in the rain. He had a pencil-thin mustache and couldn’t have been much past his mid-twenties. The man was unarmed, but he acted like he had all the power in Nicodemia at his fingertips.

“Tell Jerome this is my turf now,” he said in a quiet voice.

The hotdog vendor quietly wept and clutched at his wounded leg.

On the other side, half a dozen men fought for the chance to not be in charge. One guy finally lost. Sam Wash, an angry lump of a thug if I’ve ever seen one. “Saint Jerome’s not going to settle on that, Lauder.” His hand inched across his chest toward his suit coat pocket. “This block is under his protection.”

“And if your hand moves any closer to that gun of yours, you’re going to lose it,” Lauder said, slick as hell.

Sam tensed. His body language said he was going to go for it, and it didn’t take a genius to see that he wouldn’t walk away if he did.

“Hang on, Sam,” I said, stepping forward and holding an open palm to each man. “No need for this to get rough.”

Sam glanced at me. An empty smile crossed his lips. “Demarco.” I couldn’t tell if he was disgusted at me or relieved. Probably both. “We need to chat once I’m done taking care of the riffraff.”

“Let’s just walk away,” I said, mostly to Lauder. “No need for trouble tonight.”

The vendor started to drag himself away from his cart like a captain abandoning his sinking ship. He left a streak of blood across the slick cobblestones. So much for not needing any trouble.

“Are you one of Jerome’s men?” Lauder asked me.

“I’ve worked for the Saint, but I’m my own man,” I said. It was a perfectly valid position, though there might have been some alternate views on the subject, depending on who was asked. “What you have here is a nice little group, but it’s not going to do you any good once you have the big man’s attention.”

Lauder’s smile managed to pull his thin lips away from his teeth for half of a long second. “You think I don’t want that fucker’s attention?”

“I think you’ll regret it once you do.”

He shook his head slowly. “You don’t want to be part of this, Mr. Demarco.”

“That’s true of most situations, but here I am.”

Lauder held my gaze long enough for me to grow a shadow of a beard. At last, he dipped his chin almost imperceptibly and the men behind him relaxed. He took two long strides to me and stuck out a hand.

I looked at it like it was day-old fish.

“You should work for me,” he said, not withdrawing the proffered hand. “The wind’s are changing around here.”

“Winds always change, far as I can tell. But no matter where they blow, it always seems to stink.”

A quick smile spread across his face. He reached up and plucked my hat from my head. “You don’t see too many of these around.”

“Keeps the rain off my head.”

Lauder tried the hat on. He turned to his men and modeled it for them, then turned to Sam and his boys. When he didn’t get a smile from any of them, he put on a pout and handed back my hat. “Seems the boys prefer a naked head.” He slicked his wet hair back. “And the precipitation’s good for my look.”

The rain smelled like chlorine now, and started falling in fat drops. “Seems these streets are in need of a good cleaning,” I said. “You’d best get indoors.”

Lauder held my gaze again for a long breath. He was sizing me up, and I wondered what he saw. A man past his prime? An investigator too big for his own ego? A potential rival?

He made an open-handed gesture of “whatever” and backed away. Soon I was left with Sam’s boys and a wounded hotdog vendor.

“Saint Jerome wants to talk, Demarco,” Sam said.

“He knows where my office is.”

Sam grimaced. “I’m taking you to him right now.”

“I’m on a job.”

Sam grabbed a handful of my shirt. “The Saint has a job for you. Everything else can wait.” He gave me a tug, but he must have forgotten how big I was. Even a solidly built Heavy like him couldn’t drag me wherever he wanted.

I took hold of his fist and peeled off his grip. With a shove, I sent him stumbling away. “I’ll visit the Saint, Sam. On my own time.”

Sam scowled at me, but waved his boys back. “I’ll be in Dockside.”

“Don’t wait up.”

Sam backed away, fixing me with a glare like a kicked puppy. He wanted to drag me back to his boss like a prize, but he knew I wouldn’t go quietly. Sam was the kind of guy who avoided conflict when he could. If they were all like that, maybe there wouldn’t be so much need for me.

But they weren’t, and there was.

“What’s your name,” I asked the vendor once Sam and his boys were gone. I helped him to the shelter of an overhang to get him out of the rain.

“Those assholes,” he said. “Those fucking assholes.”

“Seems a protection fee doesn’t buy what it used to, huh?”

“You should have let them shoot each other.”

“No need for that. Not today.” Once he was out of the rain I took a look at his leg. “Clean wound,” I said, as if that made it hurt less. “You’ll want stitches, but I can give it a quick seal for now.”

“You medical tech or something?”

“It’s complicated.” I took out a couple of skin patches and slapped one on the entry wound, the other on the exit. “Those will hold for a couple hours.”

He stood gingerly. It must have hurt like hell, but he limped to his cart. I helped him stand it up, and he was able to roll it a short distance. Without looking back at me, he said, “Thank you.”

It was more than I usually get for my efforts.

Music back in, I let the city dissolve into a bluesy haze. The song had continued without me, and when I put the earpieces back in, I was shunted directly into the end of a long trombone solo. It was a somber piece, but one tinged with a sharp optimism. It made my heart ache.

The vendor took another step forward and his whole body shuddered with the effort. I felt his pain right down to the marrow of my bones. Cold, wet, bloody—all that was nothing compared to what he felt at that moment. His shudder was the sensation men get when they’re faced with the fact that their world is full of snakes. It’s the heavy, gut-wrenching sense of betrayal in that moment when the slick underbelly of the world reveals itself.

My song ended, so I stopped the rig and took out both earpieces.

“Come on,” I said, taking the cart from him. “I know a place you can get off your feet for a few.”