I walk cautiously through the streets, clockwise round Roundabout, towards my office at the Lucky Thirteen. It's a bit of a hike, but I'm not going to take the subway. Though the rush has ended, teams of pickers still congregate at the mouths of alleyways, sorting of twisted iron, rusted spikes and nails pinging into cans, waiting for when the urbigators arrive. They speak easily to each other. No picker will try to mug or frag anyone on duty picking.

  I'm not a picker though. They still eye me just as much as I eye them. I watch any empty alleyways with suspicion. If an outw attacked someone who wasn't a picker, they'd just watch and pick over my liquidity. A phone booth's door yawns. Inside, piano music and flickering blue light. I smile for the camera, and I try not to act like I'm trying not to be noticed.

  I feel tingly, like someone else is watching me. Like someone who I can't see is dogging my steps. I had passed by the open phone booth, and so I turned, scanning the alleyways. Behind a small handful of pickers, a pair of eyes like copper moons hang ten feet off the ground. I freeze.

  The pair of pickers stare at me. Old men, both wiry thin, one bald and the other with a thick beard. Both with liver spots on their pates. New in the underworld by their unfragmented forms and their deer in the headlights look as I stop and look at them. They have a nice matching pair of grey overalls. They don't seem to hear anything behind them. I step towards them but freeze when every other picker on the street flinches. I look. They're all staring at me. Nobody is looking behind them. The men have a look of horror on their face. What they saw was a skeleton lunge at them.

  I put my hands up, case in one hand. "Hey, I lost something. Recently."

  "Aren't you a gumshoe? Isn't that your job, finding lost things?" A picker wrapped in sackcloth calls.

  I grind my teeth. Everyone thinks they're so clever. "Yes. And now, I'm making inquiries." I slowly walk towards the pickers. I can't tear my eyes from the luminous gleaming spheres in the dark of the alleyway. I try to prevaricate. "I there were some handcuffs. I lost them in an alleyway. I think they might have gotten picked up by someone by mistake."

  This is a dangerous gambit. Half lying about losing something, using my job as a shield, and further, accusing someone of stealing from me. The scene of the crime was miles away, so if I was asking about it so recently, and they did know something, they'd know that I'd know.

  The bearded picker's hand drifts casually to the bck 9mm at his hip, but the the bald picker goes to one of the aluminum cans and starts sorting through. "Stay there, I'll have a look."

  I motion towards the picker with the beard without letting my gaze stray from the pair of eyes. "I have something to show you," I say. "I think you will find it valuable."

  The bearded picker looks at the other people assembled in the alley.

  "Whoever he is, he's in my sights," says a gruff voice from a dozen yards behind me. "Don't try any funny business."

  The bearded picker seems to take comfort in that, and approaches me. "Don't shout, but look at your friend over there."I whisper. I nod towards the bald picker, who's sifting through detritus

  He gasps when he sees them. He puts his hand over his mouth. "What is it?" He whispers.

  The other pickers in the street prickle with tension. Some of them can see it, and their reaction sets everyone else on edge. The bald picker looks out at us, then looks straight above him and says "Jesus Christ."

  The eyes move for the first time since i've seen them. They jerkily float up, and around some unseen bend in the alleyway.

  A hand on my shoulder. Whoever had threatened my back. A broad chested man, auburn beard, a bck 9mm pistol in his mechanical left hand. Cowboy hat. "Thanks, gumshoe. You said you're looking for handcuffs?"

  I swallow and nod. "I am, but I was trying to get a better look at whoever that was." I stare at his big hat

  "You and me both. Don't like mysterious entities creeping around my crew. Could've been an outw or worse." His voice is deep and rumbly

  "You ever see that thing before?" I ask, not taking my gaze off his huge hat.

  He eyes his crew, "We'll have to post sentries." He sighs and shook his head. "You looking for work?"

  "I'm on the case of the missing handcuffs," I say, tearing my eyes away from his big hat. "Sorry."

  "Oh, that wasn't prevarication?"

  I shake my head. "Not at all," I prevaricate.

  "A little lie ain't trouble if you're trying to protect someone else." He reached into his coat. "Well, tell you what. I don't like working in favors, so don't tell me I owe you one. Take this."

  He dispys a bck 9mm pistol, identical to the one he held in his left hand; but for the piece of linen wrapped tightly around the handle. My revolver's best with .357s, and I have a shoebox full of ammo in my desk. The 9mm will have to be a st resort, but I'm grateful for it.

  "Of course. Thank you, I o-"

  "Don't go telling anyone that you owe me spit," he gres, then spit on the ground, ending the conversation. "Back to work," he commands, standing in the middle of the picking site and keeping an eye on each of the alleyways as his crew went back to sorting.

  "There a picker bar around here?" I ask, making sure the safety is on and then tucking the pistol into my waistband.

  The site manager with the big hat is studiously avoiding me. The bald man says "Enkidu's Libations. Hang a left. You'll hear the lyres."

  "Don't pickers hate liars?"

  "The..." he makes a gesture with his hand, like he's holding something close and tracing his finger along it. "You know. Little harp thing."

  "Kinda old fashioned, I take it?"

  "Old pce, new building."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  The bearded man shrugged. "That's just what Stephens said."

  The guy with the huge hat gave the bearded man a scowl which sent him back to the alleyway. He'd avoided a name, and so had I.

  "Call me Graves," I announce. To bance out the faux pas.

  Stephens nods.

  "I'm Eric" the bearded man said, giving his first name. Probably the name he was born with too, like a sap. "I've never met a skeleton before,"

  "You've met more than you might think." I nod to Stephens, and he nods back. I go in the direction he'd indicated. We've pyed the game. Eric doesn't seem to know of it's existence. He'll learn. He'd better.

  I hang a left ahead. The pickers aren't watching me so closely. I do hear some stringed instruments echoing ahead. A tower of one story fast food restaurants is ahead. Ramps to the second and third floors start down the street. The third floor has the sign saying "Enkidu's Libations," so I start up the impromptu ramp. It's pretty impressive locally sourced architecture for Our Fair City, but if anyone has the resources or the inclination to make a pce wheelchair accessible, it's a picker bar.

  I need some liquidity in there. I turn my back to the gss windows, tuck the suitcase under my arm and unlock it. I take three pages of paper and fold them small enough to fit in my pocket. I lock the case back up, and let it hang casually from my fingers. I stroll up the ramp, like I'm just curious, looking for something to do on my off shift.

  At the top of the ramp, a dozen bicycles, shopping carts, and wagons sit, empty and chained to the chickenwire fencing. There's so many xmas lights and wildly curved, neon fragments, suggestive of something once beautiful but now a picture unformed. I can only see my reflection in the gss. I look like a businessman, except for the blue and hot pink gumshoes. Everyone within has to be able to see me. I could pass a merchant or something, an interested buyer, if it weren't for these damned pretty shoes.

  I stroll up to the door and push it open. Some of the pickers turn, but most have already clocked me. A man with a falcon's head blinks at me, then tears into a can of tuna fish. A refracted shape of eyes and wings looks at me. A Psychiatrist. A murder of corvids flock above me, silent, peering all around. The lyre pyer sits on stage under a hot light in just his underwear, crooning in a nguage I've only heard in the afterlife. The smoke stings, and would bring tears to my eyes if I had tear ducts.

  The floor is filled with bodies, ughing and drinking, trying to unwind. They have bags full of their prizes from the day. At the center of the bar is the ceramic counter of the fast food restaurant, pstic top repced with surfboards, bound together with heavy rope. The scantily dressed bartender stands in front of the tap for the libation and piles of gsses instead of a kitchen.

  A tall bck woman with piercings above her eyes crosses her arms as she looms above me. She must be 5'10. She squints at me. A metal baseball bat sits casually by her stool "Nice costume, who are you supposed to be?"

  "I dressed up as someone tired after a long shift, desperately in need of a drink."

  "Haven't seen you around here. You a picker?"

  I shake my head and gesture to my shoes as expnation and appology. "Gumshoe. Stephens gave me something. He said he don't owe me nothing."

  "You know Stephens?"

  "Just met him. Helped him out. He doesn't owe me spit, he says."

  She furrows her brow, trying to work out the favor arithmetic of someone saying they aren't owed nothing. I'd been trying to work that out myself since Stephens had spat. "What'd he give you?"

  "It's a weapon. It's at the back of my pants, if I may?"

  She rolls her eyes and picks up her baseball bat, holding it over her head like a chopping axe ready to descend. "Go ahead."

  I take out the gun with the handle wrapped in linen. She reaches out to inspect it, moving the linen to see the bare metal where the polymer grips would be. She repces the linen and nods. "Good enough. Name?"

  "Graves."

  She jerks her head towards the bar. "Don't be dumb. You're not the only person here with a gun like that." She winks and dispys her 9mm with a linnen wrap.

  I just nod, repcing the gun in my pants and head towards the bar. Watching the patrons, I learned that haggling for drinks takes forever, especially when everyone but the bartender is a picker. One picker in army fatigues pced a whisk on the bar, asking for a drink. I saw Polly Torado, the woman I'd haggled with in the rain approach the man, still in her yellow sou'wester hat but with only a white tank top and jeans, tapping the table urgently. She held her hand out to the bartender to forstall the offered drink and spoke urgently with the man in army fatigues, close to his ear so he could hear over the riot and the music. He nodded and handed her the whisk. She grinned gleefully, and reached into her jean pocket for a small handful of buttons. As Torado walked away with her new prize taking a slug of libation, army fatigues dropped two buttons onto the counter proudly. The bartender shook his head and held up four fingers. The man in army fatigues dropped one more onto the table and nodded. The bartender rolled his eyes, scooped up the buttons, and handed over the libation.

  It's too loud in here. Hard to ask questions. Maybe that's by design. I take one of the folded pieces of paper from my pocket and catch the bartenders eye. I hold it up so that only he can see it. His eyes go wide, then start looking around to see if anyone has clocked me. He pulls out a pitcher and fills it with libation, putting it down on the table so the dark liquor sloshes on the surfboards.

  I pick up a gss from the side of the counter and pour myself a small cup. I take a sip. I've had worse. Tastes like a mix of white wine, fireball whiskey and hard lemonade. Not quite a coherent fvor, but I've had worse.

  Whenever someone "Pours one out for the homies," or whatever they say these days, it ends up in the libation. Cheapest drink in our Fair City. Good value too. I pull up a chair to the table Torado is sitting at.

  Before I sit, I ask, "Feel like talking?" She eyes my pitcher and tilts her head.

  "What are we talking about Gavin? Business..?"

  "Gotta be business." I fill her cup then sit, putting the briefcase on my p. "What hapened after I left?"

  "I told you." She holds up a finger and slowly finishes her drink. "I'm not messing with Cops, not messing with Outws. Ain't worth it." She takes a drink and barely winces.

  "I'm not a cop."

  "Are you an outw?"

  "No but-"

  "Then you're a Cop. But." She smirks and leans back, tapping her wooden leg against the floor. "You could ask any bum in this joint and they'd tell you what happened at Eidolon Station in Roundabout. Department came in, real quicklike. Messed with some folks selling, tried to mess with some folks picking but you know how that goes. Pushed 'em back, took back our streets. Made them take the subway out."

  I nodded. "Did they take anyone else out with them?"

  "Detained 'em? Couple. Idas and Eddie, Marrisa-"

  "No I mean. Did you see anyone in spandex?"

  "What do you mean? That girl you were looking for?" She shook her head. "Nah. You didn't find her? Ya gotta be quicker on the take."

  "It's not like missing people just show up in piles."

  "Well, they do."

  I take out my cigarettes. Pull the scraggly half a menthol. "You know what I mean Torado." I'm fumbling my pockets for a match. I must be out. "Got a light?"

  "'Course. Got a smoke?" she asks.

  I pull a cigarillo from my box. Penultimate gasper. She lights up. Reaches for my dangling cig and lights that too.

  "You followin' me, Graves?"

  "Not specifically. Following clues, you just happen to be around. Makes me wonder if you know a little more than you're letting on. Maybe I can help."

  "That so?"

  "You find stuff when it arrives, I have to sort out the mess after it's here."

  She shrugs."So what do you want to know?"

  "Description of the victim. Need to know who I'm looking for."

  She shakes her head. "Sandals, the painting of the sea on her toenails, cutoff-"

  I gesture for her to stop. "I know exactly what she was wearing. I didn't see her face."

  Torado puts her fist on her cheek. "What kind of case is this?"

  I take a folded square of printer paper from my pocket. "This kind of case. In advance."

  Her eyes widen. "Who is she? She one of the higher ups? Get lost on the ground floor?"

  "Still working on that. Are you interested?"

  She takes the folded piece of paper, considers it, and looks at me. "You got any of the good stuff?"

  I take out the third piece of paper and unfold it. "I've got the good stuff. If we get a workable sketch of her face, I'll give you an unfolded piece."

  "You can't do that?"

  "What?"

  "Can't sketch her face. You don't have her right in front of you."

  I take out my knife and sharpen the pencil, just a little bit. I remember she's a couple hundred years dead. I remember the paintings from medieval history, the pinched faces . "You'd be fascinated by the sort of things people can learn to do these days."

  "Two pieces."

  "Done."

  She tells me about the woman's face. Short, boyish dark hair. Round face. Running mascara ringing dark brown eyes. The shape of the ears, the nose. The piercing right above the lip. Suddenly where i was looking at parts, I am looking at a person.

  I take a deep drag of smoke, and fold the paper back into my pocket. "That's good. Do you have a folder for them?" She moves to stand, and I refill her gss before she swaggers away to the coatroom.

  I listen to the lyre, so it's easy to hear a tapping of many prosthetics behind me as a grackle nds on my table."Whatcha got there sport?" He asks in a refined British accent. He flutters his wings.

  Since I haven't put the pitcher down, I pour myself a gss. "Just a pitcher of libation, have you tried it today?"

  "What right," an elderly woman's voice crackles behind me, "Do you have to show up here and fsh clean paper like that?" It's rhetorical.

  I slide on the seat to see who has approached so close. Someone suspended between whirring metal limbs, the arms they were born with having been removed, The remnants of their body wrapped in bck leather, only the wrinkled eyes visible through the motorcycle helmet. She's like a big metal spider

  "I'm just doing my job, Ma'am," I say, putting my hand on the knife.

  The grackle hops, staring between me and the woman. "It'd only be fair. If you gave us a piece of paper as well.

  The woman's arachnoid prosthetics clink onto the table and she sobs, "Please, please!" Heads turning to look at me.

  "She's being very reasonable," the grackle announces to everyone, as the lyre pyer stops and people turn to wonder what totally reasonable request is being denied. She looms closer and closer until-

  "Wanda! Tanli!," Torado shouts, stomping over to us. "Give me my case Graves." I pause. She nods to me. The room is holding its breath. I extend the case, and she snatches it from me. "I told Gavin to keep an eye on it. Do you really want to pick from me?"

  "Why do you have it?" Tanli squalks.

  "Because I'm good at my job," Torado gres at the bird. "C'mon Graves. Upstairs."

  I nod, and slide under Wanda's prosthetic legs. I grab the pitcher and my gss.

  "You cannot fsh that kind of liquidity around Graves," she says as we head towards a back hallway. The lyre pyer starts up again, but folks are still watching.

  "I have to get it to a safe pce, yeah."

  She begins leading me through a tiny maze of back rooms and defunct freezers. "How are you going to spend it? Gonna drive people crazy to see printer paper."

  I shake my head. "Invest in local businesses."

  "Ha ha, Gavin." She raises her eyebrow as she pauses in a doorframe. She tries to open the case, and holds out her hand. "Key?"

  I withdraw the key from my pocket. "Case?"

  "I'm going to take my cut."

  "Two pages is a cut now?"

  "You owe me."

  "I do. Not going to deny it."

  "What, you don't trust me?"

  "Of course I don't. Why would I trust you?"

  "Alright, you hang on to the key and open it up. I'll just take what's mine."

  "How much were you thinking?"

  "Just whatever felt fair."

  "Name the number before you see how much I have."

  Torado bites her lip and looks around. "Ten."

  "Done." She flinches at my immediate compliance. I open the case and count out ten pieces of paper and hand them to her, then shut the case. She's frozen. That's more printer paper than she's seen in her life.

  "Put them in your folder," I prompt, pulling the case from her grip.

  "Yeah, of course."

  "Are you still on for the market next dayshift?"

  She looks stunned as she pulls the folder from her backpack and pces the paper inside. There are pages from old illuminated bibles, pictures of rabbits fighting snails. Her treasures. I look away while she stares at the pictured fondly.

  I push open the fire exit. A nearby fire escape slithers to our skyscraper and coils around, going still so I could step out.

  Before I can leave Torado asks, "When do you sleep Graves?"

  "Caught half a wink just after I saw you. Is there an exit at the back?"

  "You have to sleep. More than that. You're slow."

  I take a big drink of Libation and sigh. "Working on it."

  "Be gd for that libation. Do you ever think about who pours it out up there?"

  "Not particurly. Probably younguns trying to seem cool more than anyone who'd have to clean their floor afterwards."

  "Ugh. Younguns these days, eh?"

  I nod. "You keep up with the topside?"

  "Nah. After 200 years dead, can't find much interest in what happens up there. Why, you waiting for someone Gavin?"

  "My ex, I suppose."

  She snorts and touches her nose. "Till death, right? Yeah good luck with that. Bitch probably remarried, she'll end up in some other part of Our Fair City altogether anyway."

  "It's not like that. No."

  "What's it like then?"

  "I'm worried."

  She squints at me, then nods pats me on the back, leading me to a back exit. a metal fire door bar and a ramp. "You think you're gonna make it ok like this?" She pulls on my shade, the murky darkness which has begun to shroud me. I wince at her intrusion into my life force. I need some sleep. Maybe that apple too.

  "Couple miles. Not too bad

  "Where do you live? Want me to rent you a pedicab?"

  I wave her off. "You've been very helpful."

  "Where do you live?"

  I tilt my head. How drunk does she think I am? "Not heading there. My office is at Lucky 13, if you have business to discuss. Ask Olly at the front desk."

  I push open the bar door and step out onto the fire escape. It shudders and creaks beneath me. I'm forty feet above the ground and the city is covered with mist after rain. I can hear the neon more than I can see it, buzzing and dimly lighting the dark fog.

  I feel Torado staring at me. I don't look to her as I move to walk down the steps. "You said you'd be at the square market at dayshift?"

  I hear her yellow hat shift and crinkle as if she were nodding, then she says "Yes."

  I turn when I reach the end of that flight of metal steps. "I'll see you there." This time I manage to pull off the dramatic exit as i cng down the creaky fire escape.