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  He left with the issue unresolved, and walked the streets, checking up on a couple more of his operations. At the auto repair yard he found the shot-up cars gone, transferred to a garage he owned nearby, and Danny and Cheech working on a new arrival. He motioned them over.

  “So, what’s the deal?”

  “Those busted vehicles?” Danny said. “We need a body-repair robot for a day, and new glass work all round. Seven, eight thousand bucks.”

  “Okay. Do it. I’ll get the money.” He reached out and tapped Cheech in the chest. “You, you got something for me?”

  “Me?” Cheech said, taking a pace backwards.

  “Yeah you.” KR closed the gap and gave him a push. “I want the silver you been holding out on me.”

  “Come on, KR. I wouldn’t do that.” His expression was wary, but closed-in, as though he knew what was coming.

  “Bullshit,” KR said, giving him another push, moving him deeper into the yard. “I know what you’ve been doing, and you know I know. So I want you to fucking tell me: are you with this crew or not? Are you going to pull your weight or not?”

  “Yeah... sure...”

  KR hit him three times in quick succession, right left right, above the eye and in the soft part of the cheek, not hard, but hard enough to send Cheech sprawling flat on the concrete. He lay there staring at KR, not angry, not accusing, his arms pulled round his chest just in case. A spot of blood appeared over the left eye.

  “Then get me the fucking silver,” KR said in disgust, turning away and not looking at Danny as he left the yard.

  It was late afternoon when he got home. He was feeling less good about himself than ever. He had bruised knuckles to add to the bruises on his body, and his gang’s other activities had mostly been unproductive. He went to the kitchen for coffee, and was glad that his mom was busy somewhere else. Dolly was there, getting something from the fridge. He grunted something and poured his coffee and turned to leave.

  “KR? Can I tell you something?”

  He turned back and gave her a look. She had an anxious expression on her face. He dropped his gaze and looked at his coffee and sat down at the table. She sat down opposite.

  She had trouble finding words. At last she said, “I got a real surprise today... She told me everything. About the break-in, the demand for money, why her husband decided they had to pay...”

  He looked at her sharply. “But she doesn’t think you’re involved in any way? She still believes you’re from the other side of town?”

  “Oh yeah. It makes me kind of awkward. She trusts me. She also told me...” She gave him a worried glance. “...that someone got killed. An old guy with a jewelry business. Gold something, she called him. That wasn’t you, KR, was it?”

  He drew breath and looked away. He’d been a fool to use Dolly. She was too nice for this business. “It was Fatboy,” he said at last. “Doing something weird, making a decision. Not what we planned. So what’d Barnardi say about it? Did she know this guy?”

  “Oh yeah. She was hoping that she and him and some others would get together, put up a fight. She said he was courageous and would never pay.”

  “So maybe Fatboy had its reasons.”

  “KR?” She was looking at him with pleading intensity.

  “What?”

  “She thinks everyone here in the ghetto is a violent criminal, and that the only thing to do is to fight. She says she doesn’t know how she’s going to fight, but she’s going to work it out. So don’t you think...”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you think it’s too risky? Don’t you think you should drop it, this protection thing?”

  He frowned at his coffee, took a sip. “That’s okay for you, little sis. I shouldn’t have got you into this, and if you want to quit going to this place, that’s okay. That’s maybe a good idea. But for me... For me, it’s maybe a little too late.”

  Chapter Nine

  Sara worked on in the store after Dolly left, but she had only one customer during the rest of the afternoon, and her ability to concentrate on routine tasks had been more or less destroyed by the news about Mattie. She was thinking of calling it a day when the street doors said, “Welcome!” and a uniformed patrolman entered and self-importantly made his way over to the counter.

  She gave him her business smile rather than her customer smile. He was overweight and the way he looked at her was a little too familiar, tainted with a lazy sensuality. He had the air of an official who will enjoy the unpleasant duty that he has been chosen to undertake. Had someone gone to the cops about the break-ins?

  “You’re Sara Barnardi?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m with the local PD.” Since that was obvious, she assumed he made the statement to emphasize his status. “Ma’am, I don’t intend to worry you, but does the name Dolly Rawlings mean anything to you?”

  Shit, she thought, this is some kind of an employment check. But why send a cop? She hesitated.

  “See, phone checks tell me she’s been spending some time here lately, though she might not be using her real name.”

  The man’s voice was high-pitched yet curiously arrogant. She found herself already disliking his attitude and his questions, but she sensed that a refusal to cooperate could make things worse.

  “Dolly has been helping out now and then. She’s a bright kid. In fact, I might even offer her a job.”

  “Oh yeah?” He gave a knowing smile. “Customers like her, uh?”

  “What are you saying, Patrolman?”

  “I’m saying you’re selling dresses, and Dolly, well, she dresses up pretty good.”

  “I’m not using her to model dresses. I’m letting her learn about the business.” She allowed some impatience to enter her voice; she was getting the feeling that this guy was a creep.

  “Okay, fine. I’m just helping you out here. Because I wonder if you know who she is, this Dolly Rawlings?”

  “What do you mean, who she is?”

  “Where she comes from. What she’s mixed up in.”

  “She lives in Geraldtown.”

  The patrolman gave a thin, satisfied smile. “That what she told you?”

  Sara stepped forward and put her hands on the counter. She gave the cop a hard look. “Maybe you’d better explain what you’re getting at.”

  His smile broadened slightly. “What I’m getting at is that Dolly Rawlings is trouble. You don’t need to listen to me if you don’t want to. I just came by as a favor. And I’m not saying she’s breaking the law or planning to break the law. But I know these people over there in the ghetto.” He gestured behind him with his thumb. “Because that’s where she comes from, Dolly. She’s one of them. And you can’t trust them. She’s already given you a story about coming from Geraldtown. So how else is she fooling you. Huh? No, ma’am, you can’t trust them. I know because I work that neighborhood. You can’t trust them an inch.”

  She stared at the patrolman, her muscles suddenly tight, guilt and anger flaring inside her. Was he lying? No, unpleasant though he was, self-righteous and malicious though he was, he wasn’t lying. The worst thing was that he was saying the things she would say herself. You can’t trust these people. That might in some sense be right, but she felt exposed, all the same, as one of the prejudiced and unfair. God, what had she told Dolly earlier? That the ghetto was a breeding ground of crime and violence. And she’d taken it with scarcely a murmur. Probably because she thought it was true.

  He went on, “So I’m just suggesting you take a little care, what you tell her, things like that. Her brother is a guy called KR Rawlings, and he’s into everything. Drugs, theft, protection, you name it. He’s a gang-leader, one of the biggest. We’ll get him one day, but so far...”

  Suddenly her frustration and anger came pouring out. “So far what? Why can’t you control these people? What’s the problem? You have robots, resources, systems, and yet the ghetto just keeps getting bigger. What’s the problem?”

  The man didn’t s
eem fazed by her outburst. “I understand your frustration,” he said, nodding slowly, “but the problem is people. If people don’t want to change, how you going to make them? Ghetto life is all they understand. Whatever you try, they just bite your hand off. So the game goes on.”

  Even she, Sara thought, didn’t believe that kind of simplistic stuff, but it was close enough to the things her mother might have said to feed her uncomfortable sense of guilt. She was suddenly keen to get rid of her visitor. She perceived a self-satisfied superiority in his remarks: here was someone who was part of the problem; someone who probably enjoyed wielding power amongst the disadvantaged of the ghetto, like poor Dolly; someone whose hand they would indeed be eager to bite.

  She walked around the counter. “Anyway, I appreciate your coming by, Patrolman. I guess it’s up to me to be careful.”

  “You do that, ma’am. Give us a call if you need help.” He gave a lazy wave and strolled out the door.

  She was left with a muddled chaos of emotions: something close to disbelief that Dolly had lied and possibly spied on her business, mixed with a sense that she and others like her, people who saw the ghetto and its denizens as a dangerous, destabilizing threat, made such behavior almost inevitable. Would she have taken Dolly on if she’d said she was from the ghetto? No way. So there you are, Ms. Barnardi, complaining about the ghetto but doing nothing; the typical hypocrite.

  Even stronger than these emotions was a growing fear that whatever she thought of Dolly, the brother was a different quantity: someone she ought to be scared of. Surely there was a strong possibility that he was the guy who had organized this extortion racket; and that he’d sent his pretty, innocent-looking sister to scope out the territory.

  She checked the time: five-twenty. The day was winding down. It would be dark in half an hour. She called her security consultant, Dennis Petersen. “You said you were going to drop by?” Dennis had called after lunch and told her he had some news.

  “Sorry, some things came up. I’m not far away. I could make it in twenty minutes?”

  “I’ll wait. I’ve got something I need to ask you about.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  She called Foster. He was still in his office at the University, working on a paper. She told him she might be late getting home. He said that was okay, he’d be late himself. She wanted badly to tell him the news, but she didn’t want to get into a strategic discussion, and he probably didn’t either, so she fell back on her usual formula: keep her business issues to herself.

  When Dennis arrived a few minutes later, she was more pleased to see him than she cared to show. She adopted her best business-like manner and sat him down behind the counter and ordered coffee off the deli’s menu.

  “Can I ask you my question first?” she said, sitting down herself.

  He looked at her with his faint, knowing smile. “Sure.”

  “You ever heard of a gang-leader called KR Rawlings?”

  “Here? In the ghetto?” He motioned with his head.

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  “It’s been twelve years, Sara, since I was busting heads in there. The way these kids live and die, that could be two or three generations of gang-leader. Isn’t it on the datasphere?”

  “I didn’t check. But I think his record is clean.”

  “So, he’s keeping up with his payments. The usual story.”

  She gave him a surprised look. “You mean he’s paying off the cops?”

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” He was grinning at her.

  “Okay, I may be naïve,” she said, forcing a half-smile, “but I thought maybe... these days...”

  “Nothing changes, Sara. Corruption is always with us. Not that I went that route myself, but sometimes it was tough. It’s one of the reasons I got out. Anyway, I can ask around. What do you want to know about him?”

  “Whether he’s real. And what he’s into.”

  “I get it. You think he might be responsible for your break-in.”

  “Well, it’s possible.”

  “How did you hear about him?”

  She hadn’t been sure she was going to tell him that; not, at least, before consulting Foster; but her doubts and anxieties got the better of her, and she felt suddenly that it was time to move forward, take some kind of action.

  The deli’s robot arrived with the coffee. Dennis sipped at his while she told him about Dolly and the cop.

  “Did the cop give you his name?”

  “No. He was self-satisfied, overweight, and had a squeaky voice.”

  “Oh God. The worst. Jerry Brolin. Now there’s a guy taking backhanders. Maybe that’s why he came around stirring up trouble. This Rawlings guy forgot to pay him off.”

  “So can I believe him?”

  “About Rawlings a big ghetto bad guy? I doubt he’d risk making stuff up. Technically he’s out of line just paying you a call and making accusations.”

  She picked up her own coffee and tried to think where this was leading.

  “What were you going to tell me, Dennis?” she said at last.

  “You heard about this poor guy Mattie Goldberg getting killed?”

  She gave him a penetrating look. “I did.”

  “I was talking with a detective I know. Interesting thing she told me. Mattie died from a lightning bolt in the chest.”

  She got the point immediately, but she merely said, “And?”

  “Reminded me of that mannequin of yours.”

  “Did you tell the detective that?”

  Dennis sipped at his coffee, watching her over the top of his cup. “No,” he said at last, putting the cup down. “That information is confidential between you and me. But I’d like to have your permission to mention it.”

  “If you mention it, Dennis, you’ll also have to mention the break-in.”

  “Right,” he said, still watching her placidly but expectantly.

  She dropped her gaze and thought for a moment. “Do the cops know why Mattie was killed?”

  “No. It was a pretty weird incident. The back window in the room where he died was fused, just melted out of the frame. He blasted away at something, but there’s no blood, no sign of an intruder. The cops have tracked down a couple of other people who ordered window repairs recently, but they say they don’t know what broke their window, it just kind of shattered. So it’s a mystery.”

  She took a deep breath. Things seemed to be coming together: Mattie’s death, Foster’s opinion that a robot was responsible. The big question was still why Mattie had died: why they had resorted to such extreme measures. Just because he wouldn’t pay? Or because he’d fought back, threatened them in some way? And were they likely to do the same to her if she offered any resistance?

  “This detective of yours: is she good?”

  “Alice? As a matter of fact, she is.”

  “If I told her everything, she wouldn’t just sit on it. I mean, assuming my story is credible. She’d take action, maybe provide protection?”

  “Protection?”

  “I don’t want to wind up like Mattie Goldberg.”

  “Jesus, are you serious? You’re in that kind of danger?” She was gratified to see that for a brief moment she had managed to wipe the smile off his face.

  “Come on, we both think that whatever attacked my mannequin killed Mattie.”

  “Yeah, but...” He leaned forward, his expression concentrated. “Listen, Alice is a career detective, ambitious, smart, maybe focused on cases rather than people. But she ain’t bent. I’d say she was your best bet.”

  Sara wondered, Is she pretty? but shrugged off the thought before she could dwell on it. She said, “Can you get her round here tonight?”

  “Have you still got the bust mannequin?”

  She nodded.

  Dennis deployed his phone. “She’ll come.”

  Chapter Ten

  KR went back up to store as the light began to fade. The slush was freezing over again, and light flakes of snow were drifti
ng down out of a grey sky. He kicked at the icy deposit on the step as he went into the store and then stamped his boots on the floor-plastic, glad of the heat.

  He said hi to Tank and went down to the basement to try interrogating the drug synthesizer again. At the bottom of the stairs he got a prompt from an incoming call. He grunted a response.

  “Mr. KR, this is Fatboy.”

  “What?” Sol, probably, setting him up.

  “The situation is not secure,” the voice said.

  “What?” he said again. The voice, he realized, had a machine-like quality, but he still couldn’t believe it was from the normally-silent Fatboy.

  “Sir, my operations code says I must report certain developments.”

  “You’re saying you’re Fatboy... my robot... talking to me by phone?”

  “Yes, sir. With encryption.”

  “Okay.” How did you get my number, he wanted to ask, but he realized that Fatboy had access to all kinds of information, from all kinds of sources. “And you think we’ve got a problem?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay.” He shook his head and pursed his lips. “Is Sol with you in the workshop?”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Sol is here.”

  “I’m walking back there now. Bring Sol into this call and talk to us while I walk.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He ran up the stairs, gave Tank a pat on the arm, and went out into the cold. He heard Sol’s surprised voice asking questions. He strode along the slippery sidewalks and listened to Fatboy’s exposition. Half of it was stuff he had to struggle to take in. Fatboy had planted bugs at a number of the sites it had penetrated. Excuse me? Where did those come from? Did Sol know about that? No, Sol didn’t know about that. And these bugs downloaded data every ten minutes or so to a relay drone which toured the sites and made a preliminary analysis and then transmitted important data back to Fatboy at the workshop.

  What?

  Sol was jabbering away in astonishment. Fatboy apologized for any surprises, and explained that this was standard operational procedure, part of the package. All of this equipment had automatically deployed.