I open the phone booth door. My blue lit sillhoette shadows the cobblestones. "Why are you following me, kulia?"

  "Of course I'm going to keep an eye on you. You're the first witness to the murder scene."

  "She's not dead, she's fragmented. Learn the lingo. What does Beelzebub think?"

  "He told me to stop investigating, but-"

  "Going against your handler and your boss at the same time? Are you still employed?"

  "Of course I am."

  "So why are you following me?"

  "Curiosity, mostly."

  "Is your boss here?"

  "No, thank God."

  She isn't speaking English, most people aren't down here, and I'm not speaking Persian. Her words change to Arabic when she says Alhamduhlh. Our spirits meet in the middle so the words don't matter. But I forget how young she is. By her face, she's in her mid forties. Younger than I was when I immigrated to Our Fair City.

  I sit next to her, beneath her. "You don't like them either?"

  She shakes her head but smiles sheepishly.

  "Smoke?"

  "I don't-"

  "'Fraid they'll kill ya?" I say, sincerely and directly. I hold out the box of gaspers.

  "Thanks." She said dryly, turning away from me.

  "I used to do your job, so many x-mases ago."

  "Beelz told me."

  "They tell you how it went down?

  She asked, “Why'd you run, Gavin?” There's a tilt of sympathy in her voice. Curiosity, even.

  "Run when?"

  "Before you went in the phone booth."

  "What? When you started chasing me?"

  "I wouldn't have chased you if you hadn't run! I was just observing you and then you bolted!"

  “You were standing at the mouth of an alley staring at me. Don't like being followed, and it's not illegal to do an errand for a friend.” I lift the briefcase. "I'm just dropping this off."

  "I wasn't- What's the errand?"

  "Delivery," I say standing off and starting to walk away.

  "Mind if I have a look?” She’s just behind me.

  I don't look back. “I do mind, actually.”

  "Contraband? Mistake at the tobacconist? You think I don't know what that's supposed to mean?"

  "What?"

  “Spliff. Juju. Little bit of that Harry Houdini.”

  "I think they're just calling it cannabis."

  "Yeah!" I start walking away. Hassling me over this? She falls in step alongside me, staring ahead. "Well?" She asks after a few moments.

  "Well what?"

  "Well you're about to do a drug deal Graves, I'm taking you in."

  I am completely perplexed. "I have one spliff. Do you want it? Is this a shakedown? Look I can pay you off in a minute just let me get to my office and-"

  "No!" She shoots me a look of annoyance. "Look just come with me-"

  "Are you serious kulia? Weed isn't illegal."

  "I just want to have a conversation," she grabs for my wrist. She's so tall.

  "No?" I pull back and turn at that, walking backwards holding my arms out like I have nothing to hide, continuing to walk towards Lucky 13. “How could anyone have contraband down here? If I found it, it’s mine by rights. Call me at my office hours."

  "I tried that. You haven't been in your office all Night-Shift, Graves.

  "You staked out my office?" I'm completely shocked. "Why?"

  "I don't know that it wasn't you."

  "What even makes you suspect me?"

  She gestured to the case. “Saw you go straight to your handler. You didn't 'just find that case,' did you Graves? Payment. A hit?"

  “My friend found it, and I traded for it, so he traded the finders-keepers to me.”

  “Finders-keepers like like that, had to be worth more than a kiss.” Kulia stops, leaning on her umbrel cockily.

  I turn and keep walking, jabbing my bony finger at her stupid right hand badge. “Word of advice, newbie. If you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, you’re going to lose it.” I turn and keep walking toward the Lucky 13.

  "Had a hunch you were lying. If you were really on the Night-Shift, why were you out at night? The train didn't come till after you'd arrived."

  "What does Beelzebub think?"

  "He told me to drop it, but-"

  "So why are you following me?"

  "You're the first on the scene, and you have a knife."

  "What, this?" I take out the tactical knife from my ankle sheith and consider it. "Yeah, that'd take about a quarter of a shift to saw through a neck. Sounds about right."

  "Well, maybe you had a fire axe or something and hid it."

  "You're trying to make the clues fit where they don't. I have pces to be." I walk away briskly. If she's not going to stop me, might as well-

  "Beelzebub told me who she is."

  I stop myself and my stomach sinks. I'd been so careful...

  I shook my head, feigning ignorance. "Who-?"

  "The girl from the alleyway. Beelzebub said you'd be interested."

  "How'd-"

  "Fingerprinting databases. We got lucky, really, that she'd been fingerprinted before digitization lost us all those prints. That's what Beelzebub said after she looked the woman up."

  I take my hat off and scratch my pate. "Well? Who is she?"

  "Jane Steward," the kulia says.

  No, not even Beelzebub would stoop that low, I think. Arm bells are ringing, and the next words the kulia says make me snap.

  "Daughter of Penelope Steward and Gavin St-" When I hear that old name, that name I haven't heard in so long, I'm closing the distance between us. She's lying, or was lied to. Kulia's face fshes with surprise before I grab her wrist. I hook my foot around her knee and pull, twisting her wrist until it snaps audibly and her umbrel ctters to the street. Her scream is immediately swallowed by Our Fair City. The person in the dress watches us from the seventh floor, passive. The public access piano music continues pying from their window.

  I put my knee on her chest and take out my revolver. "I've got-" I pant, adrenaline singing in me. I want to end her. I want do delete that name from her mind. My finger curls around the trigger. I know that pulling the trigger won't end her, just fragment her mind into smaller pieces. Pieces which would each know that name. I shift my aim, and press the barrel against the kulia's kneecap. "I've got some questions."

  "Fuck you Graves."

  I apply pressure to her wrist and she sucks air. Good. "What did Beelzebub tell you." I say it ftly. This isn't a conversation I want to be having with anyone but Gavin, but here I am.

  “They said- They said you knew the victim. That she was your daughter.”

  "Is that what they said?"

  "Yes."

  "Beelzebub said 'Jane Steward is the daughter of Penelope Steward and Gavin Steward, who by the way is Gavin Graves?'"

  She winces. "Not exactly. Are you Gavin Steward?"

  "No." I put more pressure on her wrist for making me answer that question. I'd known the guy topside. Knew him really well. My husband. He'd been a cop his whole life at a cozy seaside town, and he read pulpy mysteries. That'd been how we'd met.

  "Steward didn't have a daughter."

  "Far as you know."

  "Yes. As far as I know." I would have remembered bringing life into the world.

  "But you aren't Gavin Steward."

  "Never was. We're all new people down here, kulia."

  "That's not my name. My name-"

  "I don't want to hear the name you were born with."

  She gres at me and nods.

  "Not who you are. You'll find a better one. Give it time."

  I tear the hand shaped kulia badge from the breast of her coat. I stand with my shoe on her right hand, pressing down. I look at the sharp pin which had held the badge in pce, now with a blue patch of fabric speared through it.

  "Don't follow me. I will fragment you so hard you forget your mother's face." I look around, feeling eyes on me. The person in the silk dress puffs a cigarette, peering down. The street is quiet but for the jazz band pying out people's windows. That same creeping feeling that someone unseen is watching steals over me.

  "Are you alone?"

  She nods, tears in her eyes. I take my foot from her wrist and crouch by her face.

  "You didn't hire anyone to tail me on the street?"

  "I was on the third story when you started running."

  Damn it.

  I step off her hand. "There's someone else here kulia."

  She tenses up. "Who?"

  "They've been following me since the crime scene. I thought it was Beelzebub."

  "They tracked you for sure, but they told me you shook then off."

  "Get up. We're moving."

  "I'm not going anywhere with you," she says.

  "I'm not leaving you out here to be devoured," I say, giving Beelzebub's kulia back her umbrel as she stands. At the word devoured her face changes. A pulse of darkness radiates from her right hand, the fracture bleeding her essence into the world around us.

  She looks up and down the streets. "I don't see anyone."

  "Doesn't mean there's no one out there," I say, as we hurry towards Lucky 13.