“White boys shouldn’t ought to play the blues,” murmurs the woman beside her, “always ends up something different when they’re done with it.”

“Now, Mother,” she says, but frowns as she looks to her, much too tall, head and shoulders draped in the hood of some loose, brief jacket of pale gold, or brassy silver, high black boots laced up past her knees, but her dark thighs bare between for anyone to see. “Forgive me,” she says, “I had thought–”

“You keep doing that,” says the woman, not unkindly, moving away through the crowd, leaving her to herself, her long full navy skirt, prim pink sweater, hair neatly tucked in an up-do, folding her arms as the crowd, released, moves about. Up there by the hearth the guitarist speaks quietly with a short man all in black, his beard a whisper of curls to line his jaw.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she mutters, and casts about, the front door there, she sets out toward it, but her first step stumbles, something clatter-thump underfoot, and she kneels, skirt pooling, to take it up, a lone shoe, a loafer with a strap across the softly wrinkled vamp of it, and tucked there the winking copper of a penny.

Lights flick on in here, and there she is, sat on the couch in her charcoal suit, corkscrew curls, dourly patient mien, but he doesn’t seem to see her as he bustles in, grizzled and jowly, doughy in tie-dye, to lean over the big desk, shuffling through an assortment of red- and blue-jacketed files. The second man stays in the doorway, tall and achingly slender in a long pale cardigan, and he does seem to see her, a smile cocked in his lush brown beard, so neatly combed.

“Here we are,” says the grizzled man, manila folder held up, a trophy, “participation,” he says, and then he sees her, too, and his bluster’s whisked away. “Who,” he says, “how, how did you, what are you doing here?”

“Might we have the room, Mr. Stiles?”

“I,” he says, looking to the man in the doorway, who, still smiling, shrugs a slender shoulder.

“A few minutes only,” she says.

“I could just,” he says, pointing, past the man in the doorway, out. “I’ll wait in the car,” he says, stepping back into the front room.

“It is done,” says Agravante, under all that racket.

He’s stood at the head of a folding table, the only furniture as such in that wide room, and set on it before him a napkin folded carelessly, dotted with crumbs, a shaker tipped over, salt spilled from its silver cap, a small brass lamp, snuff of smoke uncoiling from the tip, a little white ceramic dog, ears and tail of it painted black, a tightly curled netsuke rabbit, carved from yellowing wood. “Seems odd,” says the man in the green denim jacket, taking up the last item, a ragged little cloth chimera, body of it striped, legs of iridescent fabric suggesting scales, head of it roughly wooled, with button eyes, and two limp horns. “Doing such a thing without the benefit of her majesty.”

“Yours the hand that gives, Soames Thomas,” says Agravante. “Yours it is, to take away. How,” waiting out a vigorous smash, “how goes the work?”

“New panel’s due from Wilsonville in a matter of hours,” says the man in the green jacket, settling a white cap on his thickly greasy hair, “it will be in place in time for tonight. But, my lord,” pitched low now, so as not to carry much further than themselves, “assurances were made, as to supportment, for our work?”

“You’ll have your portion, my lord,” says Agravante, just as low. “This very night.”

Becker beside him turns to see the woman stood in the archway from parlor to dining room, her baggy T-shirt, hacked-off sweats and fuzzy socks, “right,” he says, as she says “Oz,” and he says, “Oz, this is Oz, meet Pyrocles.”

“Don’t I get an introduction?” calls a heavyset man over the futon, as it’s squeezed through the front door out onto the porch.

“You’ve already met,” mutters Becker, peevishly.

“Context, Arnie,” stepping within as the doorway clears, his enormous cardigan a-sway. “Never open your mouth till you know the shot; what flies in the street’s not fit for a drawing room.” Looking past Becker to Pyrocles. “Whoever told you that you could work with men.”

“Actually, Jimmy,” says Becker, “about the–”

“Nah ah ah,” says Jimmy, lifting an implacable finger, “never quit a job, Arnie, if instead you can get yourself fired.” He produces a plain white envelope, folded once in half.

“Boss! Hey! Hey, boss!”

She looks up, eyes hidden away behind small round sunglasses. Sweetloaf, pompadour a-bob, stumbles toward her over junk-strewn tummocks, holding up a flat black something, “I think I fucking found it! Over there, by the,” looking back, missing a step, “shit!” waving an arm for balance, “that fucking tent, right?” The debris trailed off behind him, cinder blocks and bicycle wheels, boards from broken pallets, an upright shopping cart, that bent torchiere at a drunken angle, all spread from a raggedly irregular mound, edges of it knocked and tossed about in churns of mud and torn-up grass, surmounted by a small dome tent uprooted, tossed aside but still intact, a-wobble beige and orange in the morning breeze. “I mean,” Sweetloaf’s saying, “I don’t fucking know, I can’t turn it on. Not sure if it’s the fucking battery or, you know,” handing it to her, “that.”

“Logan,” he says, “and what’s her name. Hidaka.”

“Fuck,” under her breath. “They done with the fibers and shit? Because I am not putting on a bunny sut.” Her white pullover gone pale magenta in this light, her close-cropped silver hair stained pink, tipped back, she’s looking up, VERN, say those lit-up letters above them, lurid, red.

He holds out a pair of paper booties. “You’re gonna want these.”

Inside, the bar’s a pool of jukebox colors diffusely dim, a woman behind the bar, man on the stool before her, coffee cup in hand, “Bartender,” says the officer, “waitstaff, they didn’t see it go down, but they got good looks at the perp.”

“And have their statements been taken?”

“Of course.”

“Cut ’em loose.” She sets a couple of business cards on the bar, snap. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.” Sends them skating away with a flick of her fingers to fetch up next to the coffee cup. “Get yourselves home. Call if you think of anything. Detective Bauer.”

“We gotta lock up when you’re done,” says the man on the stool.

“Then, as quick as we can. So! Officer…”

“Villaraldo,” he says, tapping the nametag there on his tactical vest, but she’s bent over, tugging a bootie on over a hiking boot. “Corey Villaraldo. We’ve met, like, before.”

“What is this, Officer Villaraldo, number thirty-six for the year?” Yanking the elastic of the other bootie over and around her heel. “And it’s not even June.”

“I thought last night was thirty-six. Out by the airport?”