“Shut up and keep moving. I’m not going to say it again.”

“All right, all right…But I’m telling you, Jane, I really don’t see this ending well for you. I don’t…”

He trailed off in mid-threat. We’d finally reached the bottom of the stairs.

The basement was lit by strings of hanging bulbs. Its floor had originally been wood, but the planks had been pried up and set aside, exposing bare dirt beneath. Here and there—four places in all—long, narrow holes had been dug in the dirt, filled in again, and sprinkled with lime. In between the water heater and the furnace a fifth hole had been started, but it was only half-finished. The handle of a shovel jutted out of it at an angle; lying facedown in front of it, one hand still reaching for the shovel, was the figure of a man.

“What the hell is this?” Deeds said.

“The greater of two evils,” I told him. “His name was Benjamin Loomis. He was a serial killer. Earlier tonight he had a heart attack. Died in the act—at least, that’s what the cops will think.”

“Died in the act of what?”

“Burying his last victim.”

Deeds turned and lunged for the gun then, but my finger was already tightening on the trigger.

“Bad monkey,” I said.

After, I went back into the park, and found True sitting on a bench near the swings. He wasn’t happy.

“I told you to choose one,” he said.

“One booklet,” I reminded him. “But I didn’t need your help to track Deeds down. He was in the damned phone book. And then when I went to take care of Loomis and found that shotgun in his closet…Well, I figured it was part of the test, to see if I had the initiative to take out both of them.”

“Did you really think that? Or did you kill Deeds because you wanted to?”

I shrugged. “Does it even matter? You said it yourself, they were both evil. The world’s better off.”

“Yes, but now there are discrepancies for the police to wonder about. Such as the fact that Loomis died several hours before Deeds.”

“They won’t be able to tell that, I bet. I mean yeah, if they came right now, while Deeds is still warm…But I don’t hear any sirens, do you? And once his body hits room temperature, it’ll be a lot harder to fix a time of death. That basement was cold as a meat locker.”

“And when they discover that Loomis’s other victims were poisoned, not shot?”

“So? Maybe Deeds wasn’t a normal victim. Maybe he found out what Loomis was doing, and tried to blackmail him, or just walked in on him somehow.”

“Somehow.”

“It’s a Nod problem. The police will believe that Loomis killed Deeds because it’s the simplest explanation. They’ll want to believe it, especially when they find out who Deeds was. Tell me I’m wrong.”

True shook his head. “This is not how we do things.”

“Look, you said you wanted to know what my priorities were. You want to give me grief for bending the rules? You want to blackball me for it? Fine. But we all make the world, right? And if that’s true, I’m not going to settle for just one bad guy when I can get two. I saw my chance and went for it, and I’m not sorry. I’d do it again.” I stopped there, worried about overplaying it, but after a minute had gone by and True hadn’t given me the chop, I went on, in a softer voice: “So do I pass the test? Am I in?”

Another minute. True sighed.

“You’re in.”

white room (iii)

“WHAT’S THE PROBLEM THIS TIME?” she asks. “Did I screw up the body count?”

“No, your description of the scene in Benjamin Loomis’s basement was accurate,” the doctor says. “And there are details in your account, such as the fact that Deeds was shot in the arm, that were never released to the press. So it’s plausible you were there, or at least spoke to someone who was.”

“But…?”

“But, there’s no evidence to support the rest of your story. If Julius Deeds was a vicious gangster, you seem to be the only person who knew about it. There’s no record he was ever indicted for murder; no record of anyone committing an arson-homicide of the kind you say he was charged with; no record, either, of the beating you claim you received at his hands.”

“Back up a second. You’re telling me Deeds didn’t have a rap sheet?”

“He was a criminal, all right, just not a violent one. He had a long history of petty drug offenses, including one early charge for theft of a doctor’s prescription pad. The prescription pad theft happened while he was an intern at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, studying to be an oncologist.”

“No, you’re mixed up. The oncology student, that was—”

“Your dealer friend Ganesh, yes. Of whom there’s also no record. Or none that I could find: I wasn’t sure if Ganesh was a first or last name, or an alias.”

“I’m not sure either,” she says, “but I didn’t just imagine him. Hey, I bought dope from the guy for years.”

“Well if Ganesh is a real person, Jane, can you explain how Julius Deeds ended up with his biography? Or is that another Nod problem?”

“No, it’s not a Nod problem.” She frowns. “It’s Catering.”

“Catering?”

“Organization counterintelligence. They must know I’m talking to you.”

“The organization altered the police records?”

“Somebody did. And I know how this is going to sound, but if it is Catering? You can forget about fact-checking my story anymore.”

“I see. That’s a rather convenient development, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah, it’s very convenient, having you think I’m full of shit…”

“Why ‘Catering’? That’s a strange name for a counterintelligence division.”

“They do a lot of logistics work,” she explains. “One way the organization keeps itself off the radar is by not having a fixed headquarters. Cost-Benefits, the whole bureaucracy, it’s constantly moving around, and Catering are like the movers. They scout new locations, pack and set up equipment, and provide transport for personnel. And as sort of a natural extension of that, they’re also in charge of meetings and special events: scheduling, security, hors d’oeuvres, whatever.”

“So if you needed to arrange a rendezvous with another operative, you’d contact Catering.”

“Right.”

“And how does that work? Is there a number you call?”

“No number. You just pick up a phone and start talking.”

“Operators are standing by?”

“Unless the phone’s in an insecure location. Then you just get a dial tone and look stupid.”

“All right,” says the doctor. “Let’s get back to your story. Once you’d been accepted into the organization, I assume you underwent some sort of training regimen…”

“They call it Probate. Training is part of it, but also they’re still testing you, making sure it wasn’t a mistake to offer you the job. They team you with a senior operative called a Probate officer, and you’re given a Probate assignment, which is like a standard op but more complicated, with more ways to screw up.”

“What was your Probate assignment?”

“A guy named Arlo Dexter.”

“Another serial killer?”

“More like a serial maimer. His thing was explosive booby-traps: he’d take, like, a Scooby-Doo toothpaste dispenser, fill it with black powder, ball bearings, and a motion trigger, and leave it on a store shelf for someone to pick up. He hadn’t actually killed anyone yet, but he was definitely working his way up to it—and then, right before the organization stepped in, he met some people who wanted to leapfrog him straight to mass murder.”

“You stopped him?”

“No.” She frowns again. “I was supposed to, but it went wrong.”

“What happened?”

“He saw me coming.”