I waved goodbye on my office’s crumbling stoop and we went our separate ways, her to the bus stop around the corner and me to Dolores, the pile of rust and sagging rubber that had once been a lemon yellow Chevy Vega. The door wasn’t locked, but I had to fight against the bent hinges and a crust of oxidized metal to get inside. I waited behind the wheel, unconsciously leering at Virginia’s subtle sashay as she turned the corner.

Watching her go was nice enough, but mostly I didn’t want her to see and hear the sad state Dolores was in. The condition of my office hadn’t given her a good first impression. What faith she might have held onto would be lost if she heard how I cursed and kicked to get Dolores started. If finding Ethan came down to a high-spirited car chase, she could kiss the idea of ever seeing him again goodbye.

When she was out of sight and I saw the city bus, runner-up in the Moire Park junker of the year competition, trundle after her, I turned the key. The monster under Dolores’s hood gave a throaty roar. I thought sneaking up on it had worked, but the sound died out in a phlegmy cough. I tried again and got another short-lived sputter.

I smacked my hands on the wheel and growled at the dashboard. The dials weren’t intimidated and all stayed pegged at zero.

Dolores was a compact ride and the money I got for her metal would hardly cover the cost of towing her to the scrapyard. If I had any other option for getting around, I wouldn’t think twice about ditching her. For now, I had to keep her limping along.

I reached menacingly for the door handle, implying I’d chase after the bus if Dolores didn’t shape up. At the same time, I slyly turned the key again, one foot on the clutch, one on the accelerator. The engine sputtered, and I toed the gas pedal. I forced myself to be tender despite my frustration. The engine chunked, turned over, ground like a bolt in a garbage disposal. I expected something to screech and the whole drivetrain to snap loose and drop out onto the street.

I levered my foot forward and back, so subtly I couldn’t be sure I had moved at all, finding the groove, and something caught a second before I threw my hands up in defeat. Dolores rumbled like her wheels straddled the San Andreas fault on a bad day. My vision blurred from the shaking, but the violence ended in a snap and the engine purred.

No, it wasn’t quite a purr. It was more like a whine, but the kind that came from the chest, not the nose.

I slammed down the parking brake, jimmied the gearshift into first, eased off on the clutch, and punched the accelerator. Dolores lurched forward before she knew what I was doing.

I barely slowed for the first corner on the way to I-18. The tires squealed and Dolores rocked like an old ironside as I turned the rudder in a wide arc. Keeping Dolores’s blood up was crucial to avoid a stall-out.

Light traffic meant I could afford to be brash. Plenty of people were out and about, but they were mostly on the sidewalks. Few could afford cars that ran even as well as Dolores.

The ClearLife factory brought as many jobs as it promised, but they hadn’t come all at once. While the waste the fifteen-acre campus pumped out tainted the water and drove out all reasonable businesses from the area, the plant churned through the populace, giving steady—albeit not gainful—employment for a few months.

No one working on the floor lasted any longer than that. The fumes made them sick, and the general pall of joblessness caused by the shuttering of other nearby factories meant there was always someone new willing to put their body on the line for a paycheck. People shambled around the streets, grumbling and trading curses with their fellow ClearLife burnouts in gruff, barely intelligible grunts.

The factory was a campaign promise from Mayor Regis Fellini. A promise kept regardless of the cost. If you ignored the toll it took on the local area—as the higher-ups were wont to do—the factory made huge profits, keeping the fat-cat investors happy. Fellini’s sycophants heard it was successful and bought the headline, hook, line, and sinker, doubling down on their praise for him.

I tried not to concern with things like that. If the election that put Regis in power and elevated the stodgy old Thomas Fosse to police commissioner on his coattails had taught me anything, it was that my vote didn’t mean squat. Idiots had packed the polling places, shattering records for mid-term turnouts, and they’d do it again next Tuesday for the general election. The mayor’s congressional campaign would make sure of it.

As I slalomed up the ramp onto I-18, I saw yet another of the billboards shoving his candidacy in my face. With so many people plastering the backs of their cars with his slogans and walking around Hot Type City with hats and shirts bearing his name, it hardly seemed necessary. The billboards were wasted money, but Regis didn’t care. He got half a chub every time his motorcade drove past one.

A truck behind me blasted its horn and flashed its lights as it crept up on Dolores’s ass. I was already in fourth gear with my foot to the floor and the pointer on the tach bouncing around the red zone.

As soon as the left lane opened up, the truck swerved around me and honked again. The beat-faced driver made a rude gesture, but I didn’t engage. He wasted more time trying to get my attention until a few cars were stacked up behind him. When he finally gave up, he revved his smog-spewing six-cylinder and burned a trail of rubber.

From Dolores’s perspective, the pace I set was frantic. She panted and heaved as we cruised, but I had time to think. You needed to go through the heart of the city to get to Adora’s office. Traffic made it a real bitch no matter what time of day you tried.

Adora hadn’t bought her place for its location but for its address. It was well below The Fold, five blocks out from the hub of the entertainment district, but her business card still said Masthead Avenue in big, bold letters. If the prospective client didn’t know better, they might think Adora had nestled herself right in next to the production companies and broadcast studios the street was best known for. That scheme and a hundred others, paired with her unapologetic pushiness, had earned her a decent living.

When I made the exit onto Headline Boulevard, I saw a line of brake lights, redundant stoplights, and intrepid jaywalkers stretching out for miles ahead. It wasn’t often that I missed being part of The Beast, but I sure as hell could have used my old strobe right then. Nothing cleared the street like slamming one of those red and blue flashers on your roof and laying on the horn.

I settled for crossing my arms, grumbling some more, and praying to six different gods I didn’t believe in to keep Dolores from stalling.

Dolores wheezed as I spun her into the eight-car lot Adora’s office shared with a liquor store and a suspiciously active carpet retailer. The engine made an ominous clunk as Dolores settled into the last open spot.

I cranked the parking brake and waited for something to hiss or burst into flames, but the gas-guzzling enigma that powered the heap only pinged and clinked as it cooled. I got out, careful not to disturb anything, and Dolores sagged with exhaustion.

I took a deep breath, getting a taste for the stink. It was foul to be sure, but it was a more active, biological sort of malodor than Moire Park’s stagnation. The carpet store’s flier-papered door opened with a ding, and a young finch in a high-collared coat walked out. He kept his shoulders hunched to his ears and a tight grip on the bag in his feathered fist.

I admit I didn’t have a finger on the pulse of textile technology, but even if it followed the same miniaturization trend we saw with personal computers, the kid wouldn’t be able to cover a whole lot of square feet with what was in the brown paper sack. His eyes flicked around, on the lookout for coppers. When he saw me, the kid did a double take, then made it triple.

People his age had heard me talk about the importance of staying away from drugs a thousand times during their formative years. When they grew up enough to know the scripted aphorisms I spouted were hogshit, they gained a newfound—if ironic—appreciation for me. Once, my snooping brought me to the mall on Benday Court, and I made the mistake of looking in the window of a store geared toward exploiting the nostalgia of these disaffected youths. I saw my younger self staring back from behind my reflected double, printed on tee-shirts, frisbees, and rolling trays.

I could only imagine the conversations that spun endlessly around smoke circles the day they unceremoniously ripped my ads from the air, but I’d caught a few of the rumors. Some said I got busted trafficking heroin, others said it was guns, one especially skeevy supposition said I slept with the producer’s husband. They were all preposterous, except the one said in only the hushest whispers and loudest drunken blusters—that I’d killed someone.

The bird’s feathers rustled, and his hollow bones trembled. I shuffled toward the door of Adora’s office, tucking my chin and raising my own shoulders so my coat’s collar and the brim of my hat blocked my face.

My ear lifted on its own, listening for the dreaded call of recognition. Instead, I heard a relieved sigh as soon as the kid realized there wasn’t an armada of white vans full of drug enforcement agents waiting for him.

I let myself into Adora’s lobby, a small vestibule with only enough room to fit a tiny desk for her assistant and two seats for clients. With my ears still pricked from listening for the kid, the fizz of the fluorescent light squeezed a few ounces of lemon juice onto my brain, which was already soggy with nigh-perpetual hangover.

The acid stung as it sloshed and dripped down my back. I prepared for another pummeling when the flighty doe behind the desk jumped in her seat. She stared at me, frozen in shock. Her mouth fell open and a quiet breath meant to be a greeting escaped her lips. She was shocked by my presence, not my persona. She would have reacted the same no matter who I was.

“Can I help you?” she mewed as I walked across the room to the closed door bearing a brass plate with Adora’s name stamped across it.

There was a time when I might have played into the role of brash detective. I might’ve stopped at the girl’s desk, charmed her with my suavity and stricken her with my rugged good looks. But I wasn’t that man anymore. I was more gray around the muzzle these days, and the girl, who could have been as old as twenty-five, looked like a kid to me.

I heard a husky voice chuckling inside Adora’s office, but didn’t let that stop me. The door wasn’t locked, but it didn’t open easily. Instead of redecorating to keep things fresh, Adora opted for the easy solution of dousing the office in a new color once a year. The built up layers of paint made the door fit snug in its frame.

I leaned into the knob. When it didn’t give, I bumped the door with my shoulder.

Adora was in the middle of her sentence when I busted in, jamming myself into a room already packed full with Adora’s large, dromedary body and the even larger personality she effused as strongly as she shed the smell of stale cigarettes. She stared at me, but her flow of smarm never broke. The gravel in her voice said she still smoked half a carton a day. The black grit between her teeth suggested she ate the other half.

“That’s right. And I’ve got you scheduled for an audition at Blakely on the twelfth. Remember to wear something tight. That Arnie’s got more eyes than ears, if you know what I’m saying. He’s got a couple hands, too, if you really want the part.”

Her flat expression didn’t line up with her braying laughter.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” she said into the handset. “Listen, I’m going to have to let you go. I’ve got a call on the other line. Who knows? Could be a callback for you.”

She set the phone down as the doe from the front desk came up behind me. “I’m sorry, Miss Counsel. I tried to stop him, but he just came right in. Do you want me to call somebody?”

“A bit late for that, don’t you think, Mackenzie?”

“I’m sorry. He just—”

“I know. He’s a mean old bastard. Aren’t you Mr. O’Howell?”

I shrugged.

Adora flipped her fingers like she was shooing a pesky fly. “How about you get back to the desk and try to control the endless flow of talent knocking down my door, okay?”

“Uh—uh. Of course. Sorry.” Mackenzie started away, ducked back to close the door, and accidentally brushed me with it. She apologized again, then once more when the door was shut just to be safe.

Adora spread her hands wide. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the prodigal son. Finally see sense and come crawling back? You lost us both a lot of money, but if you play your cards right, it might not be too late for a comeback tour. Nostalgia is in this season.”

“I didn’t come for that,” I said, shuffling around an oversized ficus to sit in the chair across from her.

“It’s okay. You can admit you were wrong. But if you want my help, you’ll need to get on your hands and knees.”

“I don’t beg. And I don’t want back in. I’m here about the kid.”

“What kid?”

“Don’t play dumb, Adora. I know you’d never lose track of a cash cow.”

“Cow…cow…cow…” Adora said, tapping her shellacked nails on the desk.

“He’s a goat. Ethan Calhoun. You represent him and now he’s missing. Don’t give me that surprised shit. If you didn’t hear it firsthand, your sister called you to bitch about it.”

“So I’ve got an actor running a little late,” she said with a shrug that was all in the face. “What’s it to you?”

“His mom’s worried about him. Now that I work for her, I am too. What do you know?”

Adora gave one more drum roll with her nails. She leaned back, her long neck stretching out to clear up the impression of a double chin and giving her another two inches on me. She gave me a long appraisal.

“He’s a good kid,” she said at last. “Hell of an actor, too. He’s going to be a star one day, just you wait. Kind of reminds me of you.”

“Come on, Addie. If I wanted someone to blow smoke up my ass, I could’ve saved some dignity by going to the backrooms at Club Callout and tipping a few extra bucks. Give me something I can use. This kid, anything about him tell you he’s a flight risk?”

“Hell no.” Adora looked offended on his behalf. “He wanted to get away from Hot Type City, but he knew this job was the way to do it.”

“They always do,” I said. “So what about this driver you sent?”

“What about him?”

“You trust him? Think he would want to do anything with or to our kid.”

“Not a chance. I know what you’re getting at, but Al wasn’t like that. He was solid. Ex-military or police or some shit before he went freelance.”

“Doesn’t sound like you knew him all too well. He vetted?”

“He came highly recommended. I’ve been using guys like him for years. I know who I can trust and who I can’t. I could trust him.”

“Fine, but I want his contact information so I can check him out myself. I bet there’s more there than you want to believe.”

“You’re incorrigible, Howl,” Adora said, shaking her head so her neck wattle swayed back and forth. “You come marching in here, asking—no, demanding—all sorts of shit like you’re still a cop. If the police come, I’ll have to hand over whatever I’ve got, but I bet they’ll at least have the manners to ask nicely. Maybe they’ll even bother to knock.”

“I’m not here for small talk or to relitigate our history. I’m just here for the kid, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure he’s safe.”

Adora’s head bounced from side to side until she made up her mind. When she did, she pulled herself together, took a deep breath, and dipped back down to dig around in her desk. By the sounds of rustling, clunking and sloshing, I guessed her drawers hid an equal amount of junk as what I let pile up on the desktop and at least as much squirreled away hooch.

“I get it, Howl, I do. I want to help him, too, it’s just—” She stopped talking for a second when she found something. I leaned in to see what it was and heard the chink of a lighter flipping open and the scratch of a flint wheel. She took a drag to get the cigarette started, closed the lighter, and threw it down on her desk. She went on talking with the smoldering cigarette between her lips as she searched deeper. “It’s just I’ve got a responsibility to be discrete, you know. A good agent doesn’t put their clients’ or contractors’ personal business out there for just anyone to have a sniff.”

She grunted as she reached one drawer lower. A ghostly thin finger of smoke trailed up from below as she puffed and searched.

She found a folder like the ones I used for any cases that required more paperwork than an invoice’s carbon copy. I sensed she was about to spill and got my notepad out.

“You know, for months after you left your contacts at the ad agency out to dry, I told them you were on sabbatical.” She dropped the folder on the table and flipped it open to riffle through the pages. “When they stopped buying that, I told them you left because of creative differences. Figured the truth was none of their business.”

“Gee. I sure am grateful.”

“They got most of their advance back in the end, but I always knew that would happen. Now let’s see…” Her finger tracked down a list of names and numbers, all part of some esoteric indexing system she had cooked up. “Al McCarthy… Al McCarthy… McCarthy… Aha!”

She flipped over to another sheaf of papers in the same folder and started shuffling. I heard a tinny ringing over the rasp of paper against paper, too muffled for Adora’s dulled camel ears to pick up. Mackenzie gasped and the cup of pens on her desks rattled as she went for the phone.

Three seconds after the assistant answered, the phone on Adora’s desk rang. Deftly, without stopping her search, Adora picked up the handset and pinned it to her ear.

“Adora Counsel Talent Agency, you’ve got Adora.”

The chipper shift her voice underwent belied unbridled excitement at the prospect of a new client. That joviality failed, and her face fell when she heard the serious voice on the other end.

“This is Senior Detective Morris with the HTPD. Do you have time to answer a few questions?”

Adora’s fingers stopped crawling through the papers. “What is it, Detective? You find Ethan?”

She grabbed the phone with her hand and turned away, reaching for some privacy by putting her body between me and the speaker. I leaned in to hear better.

“No kid with him, but we did find Al McCarthy. Is it true he was working for you?”

“Yes…” she said, coaxing out more.

“I’m sorry to tell you, ma’am, but you had better start looking for a new driver.”

“What?” Adora coughed, turning further away and lowering her voice.

“Some bum stumbled across your guy’s body out in the sticks, toward the airport. He was knocked down near the loading dock of an abandoned paper warehouse on Beckminster Street, if that means anything to you.”

“How did he…”

“We’re not sure of all the details just yet. But by the looks of it, I’d have to guess he’d been murdered.”