Jose swung a hand toward the apartment like a carnival barker, winked once, and pimprolled down the hall.

The door cracked opened on the chain. A bleary eye appeared to appraise the situation.

I kicked into the room, the chain snapping like licorice. Maggie gasped, then slid into the apartment behind me.

Hector Alvarez had jumped backwards to avoid the crashing door. He'd spilled a Lipton's Cup-A-Soup all over his chest. Now he stood in the middle of the room, cracked lips working silently, his eyes bulging. He had the look of a man who'd waited all his life for a demon to arrive and make him atone for his sins. And now the horrible thing was here.

"You recognize me," I said.

The man nodded mutely. Noodles hung like maggots on his broth-soaked shirt.

My emotions may have been out of order, but my mind felt extraordinarily nimble. The vague dullness of thought that had plagued me seemed to dissipate with the sight of this man.

"You're the clerk," I said. "The grocery clerk."

The geezer worked his scaly lips soundless.

"What??" Maggie stepped forward, all angles.

"There was no robber at all. The police arrested you."

"Donner, what are you-"

"We walked in, and you shot us from behind the counter. Simple as that. You were waiting for us."

Maggie gaped back and forth from me and Hector like her head was on a spring.

"You're gonna kill me." The man's voice was reedy and trembling.

I pulled the Beretta from my ankle holster.

"Where the hell did you get all these guns?" said Maggie.

I gestured to a couch that was hemorrhaging foam. "Sit."

Hector complied. I surveyed the apartment. The light that stumbled into the room was gray. Considering the barracks-style efficiency of the building, the window was surprisingly large. Its security grate was open. Beyond, I saw a carefully potted garden on the fire escape. A tiny yellow tomato, a couple anemic peppers.

I turned back to Hector. "Someone hired you."

Hector blanched. He stood, turned his back and started removing the cushion of the couch where he'd been sitting. I waved the Beretta. "Whoa whoa!" Hector just kept fishing in the bowels of the couch. My trigger finger tightened. I wanted to complete the motion. It would be so easy.

Hector turned, holding a piece of paper. Frayed and yellow. A newspaper clipping. He handed it over. "No name," said Hector. "Never got one. But one day I saw this in the Times. I couldn't believe it. The face. Right there. That was him, alright."

The photo was of a crowd; some kind of early, anti-Necropolis rally-turned-riot. Maggie came over and nodded. "This was right after New York became the Necropolis. Hundreds of protesters were shot. Our own Tiananmen Square."

Of the thirty people in the medium-angled photograph, one visage was circled in faded ballpoint. It was rock-hard, devoid of emotion; and separate, scanning the crowd, the only one not participating in the frenzy. The blonde hair was short. A scar ran diagonally across his features, like a baker's knife-crease across a loaf of bread.

"Tell me," I said to Hector.

"This guy-the guy in the photo-one day, he comes into the store. Buys a Yoo-hoo. I know he's not there because he has a chocolate jones. When I'm checking him out, he tells me he knows about me doin' Seraphina."

My eyes narrowed. "My half-sister," Hector explained, with a shrug.

I heard a disgusted sound from Maggie. Smarties didn't like incest any better than us.

"Said he knew my rep, too. Said if I'd do this job for him, my homeboys would never find out about Seraphina. And I'd make fifty yards."

"Five thousand dollars," said Maggie. "The price of two human lives."

"Seraphina, man. Puerto Ricans, they don't go for that shit. I'd get cut for sure."

"So you said yes," I said.

Hector blinked bloodshot eyes at me. "The dude gives me money. A picture. You and your lady. Says you'd be together."

Maggie wasn't buying it. "How could anyone know they'd come into your store?"

Hector looked sideways, running his eyes along the wall. "They did, though."

"Yes, we did," I said. "You've got more to say, don't you, old man?"

"You'll kill me."

"Then I'll give you a minute to find your courage." To Maggie: "Watch him. I'm going to toss the place."

The air in the bedroom was thick with ancient cat piss. In the closet, empty hangers dangled over a mound of soiled clothes. The bedside stand held nothing but expired pizza coupons. I pulled the stained mattress from the bed, checked under the frame, went through the pressboard dresser. A couple porno magazines. Nail clippers.

As I searched, my mind wanted to process the nasty implications of what I'd learned, but I stopped it. I'd wait. One step at a time. Figure things out when this was done.

When the old man was dead, I realized with a jolt.

Until that very moment, I hadn't been sure I was going to kill him.

It solved nothing. It didn't matter. I was about to become a murderer. It didn't matter. I was on a track with no turnoffs and void as a destination. A hell-bound train, no stops.

It didn't matter.

Then there was a loud crash from the living room, and I was vaulting through the door.

Maggie stood in the middle of the room, her face a mask of disbelief. The window was shattered, wind whipping the frayed curtains into a frenzy. Hector was gone. I went to the window. He'd overturned the garden on the way out. Down below, on the pavement, the tomato was splattered next to him, mingling with his pulped head. I turned and stared at Maggie.

"He just-he just-" she stammered.

My mind instinctively worked the scene like a cop. You walk into a room. The window's broken, someone's standing there. Another person has gone out the window to their death.

There were only two explanations.

Jose and his crew were leaning against our pink rental when Maggie and I walked up.

"We was watchin' it for you," said Jose.

I nodded. I'd never felt so tired in my life. The men moved back. I opened the door.

"Guess you didn't need the piece after all," said Jose.

"Guess I didn't," I replied.

25.

DONNER.

"I never saw a man die before," Maggie said on our way back to Manhattan. She shook her head over and over, weeping. "Your bodies. They're so fragile."

I rolled the window down and let the wind batter my face. She quieted eventually, and we rode in silence.

I thought about how I missed old-fashioned cars. EM travel felt mushy. No rubber-meets-the-road contact. I'd seen a few classic rides tooling around the city. But with gasoline at $34 a gallon and a mountain of environmental restrictions in place, the days of the internal combustion engine were pretty much over.

In my youth, I'd owned a Vincent Black Shadow. That Brit motorcycle had been my pride and joy. Maintaining it had taught me about engines. It really hadn't been worth the work-the damned thing was finicky and tough to keep purring, the parts were expensive, and it cost a fortune to store in the city. But it had lines as sweet as a VH1 diva, and the rumble-roaring delight of opening her up on a windy upstate road, leaving the stress and bullshit of the city behind in a burst of smoke-well, it was indescribable.

I sold it when I married Elise. Too dangerous, she said. Not as dangerous as a pack of cigarettes, it turned out.

"Ready to talk?" I asked.

Maggie sniffed and crossed her arms, steeling herself.

"Just walk me through it. He jumped?"

"Sort of."

"What does that mean?"

"He just... flew right through the window."

"Without opening it?"

"Yeah."

I was smoking filter. I lit another, trying to get my mind around what she was saying. "Why would he do that, Maggie?"

"How the hell should I know? Maybe he thought you were going to kill him, and he decided to beat you to the punch."

There was something wrong about her defensiveness. I couldn't put my finger on it. So I moved into the tough stuff. "I have to ask this, Maggie. Can smarties become... well...?"

Her fingers twisted in her lap. "Unbalanced? No. Well, yes. Theoretically. It's rare."

"Rare?"

"Yes, rare, alright? We've got protocols, back-ups... I'm not crazy!"

"Could you have been tampered with? Forced to do something, then had your memory erased?"

"Made to kill Hector, you mean."

"Yes."

"Not... no."

We rode some more in silence. I felt like scratching away my skin. The nicotine was giving me the jitters. I'd started to believe I knew the woman next to me, but now I didn't know what to think. Hector jumping right through a closed window? It was only remotely more plausible than Maggie pushing him.

Snake eyes. Nothing to do but cut my losses. "Let's put what happened to Hector on hold for now and go through what he told us."

She okayed that with visible relief.

"If I've got this straight," I said, "this man in Hector's picture, the man with the scar... somehow he knows I'm gonna be in that bodega that evening. He approaches Hector out of the blue, blackmails him to kill me. Me, specifically."

"Then you show up with your wife, so bad luck, she gets it, too?"

I pushed something black and thorny back into my chest.

"But the cops arrest Hector faster than anticipated," Maggie continued. "So someone-someone with juice-gets him released and covers the whole thing up. Forty years later, you revive, and the cover-up starts again. You interrogate your old partner, and either to shut him up or kill you both, this someone blows up his apartment. Now, you're on the lam from God knows who," she continued, "probably someone in the police or government themselves, and I'm an accessory to a dozen crimes."

I flicked the butt out the window. "Sounds about right."

"Well, fuck me."

I let out a surprised laugh. I'd never heard Maggie swear before.

"That's the craziest thing I ever heard."

"Sorry you helped me?"

"What do you think?"

Even in my funk, I couldn't help noticing the little crease of pique between her eyebrows. She was especially adorable when she was furious. She'd be even more furious if I mentioned it.

"What'll they do to you?" I asked, to banish the thought.

"Don't ask," she said. "If I get connected to any of this, losing my job will be the least of it. The number of smarty-perpetrated crimes in the last forty years is exactly zero."