“How do you know that?”

“Turn the page.”

On the next page—actually a two-page spread, and the last drawing in the notebook—Arlo was on the move again, carrying the black briefcase towards some sort of fenced-in area where a huge crowd of stick-figures was gathered. I could tell it was Arlo carrying the briefcase because he was still wearing his shirt and short pants. But he had a new head on his shoulders: he’d become a monkey too, now.

“I take it you don’t know what his target is, either.”

“No,” said True, “and that’s the most important question of all. If Dexter’s confederates aren’t imaginary, then stopping him may not be enough; there could be other monkeys with briefcases.”

“Have you thought about just asking him who his buddies are? I mean, you guys do do interrogations, right?”

“We do, and it may come to that. But the more effective methods of extracting information tend to be time-consuming, and we don’t believe we have much time. So we’ve decided instead to keep a close watch on Dexter and see what he does. Your job will be to help with the surveillance and perform any other tasks that may come up; and if it looks as though Dexter is about to complete his mission, you’ll see to it that he doesn’t succeed.”

“Cool,” I said. “Where’s my gun?”

“It’ll be delivered to you shortly. For now, go with Annie and do as she says; she’s been fully briefed on the details of the operation.”

“With Annie, right…Listen, True, can I talk to you privately for a second?”

“Later,” True said, getting up. “We’re on a tight schedule, and I have other things to attend to.”

Right. I knew a brush-off when I heard it—and Annie, for her part, knew a vote of no confidence when she heard it. When we got back outside, the first thing she said was: “You’re frightened of me.”

“‘Frightened’ is kind of strong,” I lied. “You do freak me out a little, yeah, but—”

“You don’t need to be frightened.” She flashed me this brittle smile. “I know how I seem, but I’m really very dependable. God keeps me focused.”

“Oh-kay, well that’s good to hear…So what does God want us to do first?”

“How much money do you have?”

“Not a lot. Maybe twenty bucks and change.”

“Give me the twenty.”

Two doors down from the deli was a corner grocery that sold scratch lottery tickets. “Which kind do you like?” Annie asked me. There were fifteen varieties to choose from, most with some type of gambling theme: Lucky Poker, Scratch Roulette, Twenty-One, Three-Card Monte…Then I noticed this one kind called Jungle Cash that had pictures of animals on it, including a baboon that was being stalked by a pair of tigers. “That one,” I said, and Annie nodded approvingly.

Jungle Cash tickets were two bucks each. Annie bought ten, and when we scratched them all off, nine were winners. We left the store with over three hundred dollars.

“Does that always work?” I asked.

“‘There will be water if God wills it,’” Annie replied, and flagged down a taxi.

The cab took us to an address in the Richmond, a Pentecostal church called the Chapel of the Redeemer. It reminded me of the Diazes’ church in Siesta Corta, and, already keyed up by Annie’s God-talk, I got worried that my training curriculum was going to include speaking in tongues. But then I noticed the chains on the front doors, and the sign that said PROPERTY FOR LEASE.

“What is this place?” I asked, thinking maybe Arlo Dexter was using it for a bomb factory.

“Home,” said Annie.

“You live here? You and God?”

“Not inside,” she said. “Around back.”

Around back was a small cemetery. Like the church doors, the cemetery gate was chained and padlocked, but Annie had a key.

Her home was a refrigerator box covered with a waterproof tarp. The open end of the box faced a grave marked WILLIAM DANE. The grave plot had been neatly outlined with stones, and Annie was careful to step around it.

“I’ll just be a minute,” she said, and crawled into the box.

Some questions you don’t ask, especially of a crazy person. So while I was waiting, I decided to treat this situation as one of the organization’s test puzzles, which for all I knew it was. I hadn’t seen a ring on Annie’s fingers, so William Dane probably wasn’t her husband. He could have been her lover, I thought, but then when I took another look at the plot, I noticed the stone outline was too small for an adult-sized coffin.

“All right…” Annie reappeared, wearing a light blue knapsack that clashed with her bag-lady couture. She crouched beside the grave and patted the headstone in a way that dispelled any doubt Billy Dane was her son. Then she looked up at the sky. The rain had stopped but it was still overcast, and I could tell she didn’t like the idea of leaving the kid alone in bad weather; I half expected her to pull the tarp off the refrigerator box and use it as a blanket. But she resisted the impulse, and got back up after giving the headstone one more pat.

“Where to now?” I asked.

“Just follow me. And pay attention.”

We set off on foot in the general direction of downtown. We’d gone maybe a block when Annie started doing the muttering thing again. This time I couldn’t make out a single word. I tried to just ignore it, but I couldn’t do that either—the babble coming out of her mouth had this weird insistent edge to it, like fingernails on a blackboard.

“Annie?” I said. “Snap out of it, Annie,” but all that did was up her volume a couple notches. People on the street were turning to stare at us, and so I started craning my head around, looking up at the clouds, at the buildings we passed, my body language sending out the message: “Just because I’m walking next to this person doesn’t mean I’m with her.”

Then suddenly the mutter cut off, and Annie’s hand caught my wrist. I looked down; my right foot was in midair, about to step down onto the jagged base of a broken wine bottle.

“Pay attention,” Annie said.

So after that I watched where I was walking, while Annie’s mutter wormed its way into my ear and set up shop in my back brain. Next thing I knew we were back in the Haight, in front of a hotel called the Rose & Cross. The doorman nodded to Annie and slipped her a set of keys.

We went up to the second floor, to a room with a single twin-size bed. The bed was just made, the covers turned down invitingly; Annie pushed me towards it and said, “I’m going to take a shower. You sleep.”

“Sleep?” I said. “It’s like eleven o’clock in the morning…” But the truth is I was exhausted; the miles of listening to her babble had worn me out. I kicked off my shoes and climbed under the covers. By the time my head hit the pillow I was elsewhere.

I was in a classroom, sitting at a pupil’s desk, third row center. Up at the blackboard, a younger, saner-looking Annie was sketching out an organizational chart. The boxes in the chart formed a rough pyramid; the one at the very top was marked T.A.S.E. Directly below this, connected to it by a double line, was a box labeled COST-BENEFITS. More lines radiated downwards from there, linking to other divisions and subdivisions, some of which I already knew about (Catering, Random Acts of Kindness), but most of which I didn’t (Scary Clowns?). I was kind of disappointed to see that despite having a direct link to Cost-Benefits, Bad Monkeys was at the bottom of the pyramid.

While Annie finished up the chart, I looked around for a distraction. There were no other students, so note-passing was out, and the classroom windows didn’t offer a view, just this white glow, like the school was floating in a cloud. Then I lifted up my desktop and found a textbook inside, something called Secrets of the Invisible College. It sounded interesting.

It wasn’t. The pages were full of that dense, tiny type that you know is going to be boring even before you try to read it. I started flipping through the book to see if there were any pictures (there weren’t), and somebody kicked the back of my chair.