He couldn't see any source of running water. Someone, probably Las Vegas city officials, had put up some portable outhouses, but Greg guessed that anyone who wanted a shower had to find one at a shelter, a truck stop, or some similar public place.

In the space of a few hours, Greg had gone from a luxurious estate in one of the city's most expensive neighborhoods to a swath of ground where probably several hundred people lived. Some of the homes appeared to be occupied by individuals and others by families. Here and there, he could see signs of children: a doll in the dirt, a plastic play structure with one of those two-foot slides for toddlers, probably sturdier in a high wind than the blue tarpaulin lean-to it stood in front of. The combined wealth of all of the residents there probably wouldn't buy the land on which the Cameron house stood. From the city's richest to the poorest, Greg thought, in a matter of a few miles. Practically neighbors. With a pang of self-criticism, he realized he had felt more at ease at the Cameron estate than he did at the tent city, even though someone at the estate had just shot a man. As far as he knew, violence in the tent city was nonexistent.

He and Sam didn't have a specific destination in mind, and they couldn't see anything like a central meeting place, a town hall, or any real community organization. It appeared that if someone wanted to move in, all he did was pull up a square of dirt and erect shelter of some sort. There had been that agreement, the rules Greg had found, which were mostly commonsense behavioral issues for people living close together: no loud music after nine p.m., no fighting, no drug dealing, prostitution, or other illegal activity. But that had been from years ago, and for all he knew, whoever had instituted those rules and tried to enforce them had long since found a job and moved away from there.

So they walked from Sam's car up what appeared to be the main road in and out, dirt hard-packed by constant travel. People were out of their homes, sitting in small clutches talking, a couple openly drinking, some just walking without apparent purpose or destination. They spotted Sam and Greg, though, and most of them stared with suspicious frowns or downright hostile gazes.

"Didn't take long for us to be made," Sam said.

"I guess we don't exactly blend in." Even as he said it, though, Greg saw what looked like a middle-class white family, sitting on folding lawn chairs around a Jeep, drinking lemonade. Those people didn't seem to fit, either, but the more closely he observed the residents, the more he saw others who didn't seem as down-and-out as he would have expected. "Looks as if some of the locals don't like the police very much."

"Cops represent the system," Sam said. "Anyone living here, the system has failed."

"I guess that's true."

Sam and Greg approached one resident near the front entrance – entrance being a vague term in a place with no fences around it and little in the way of organizational structure but defined in this case by an open space around the dirt path. The man gave them a frank but not unfriendly gaze. He was an African-American guy, wearing clothes that had seen better days but were at least neat and mended. He had long hair, which years of exposure to the elements had turned mostly gray, and he was sitting in a faded and worn outdoor chaise-longue in front of a tent that appeared to be well cared for, reading a book.

"What's shakin', Officers?" he asked as they neared him. He put the book down gently on the chair and stood up. "Welcome to our home."

"Thanks," Greg said.

"I'd like to ask you a favor, sir," Sam said. He pulled a photograph of the dead man from the Cameron estate out of his pocket and showed it to the guy. "Do you know this man?" he asked.

The man shook his head. "Just 'cause a dude looks homeless don't mean he lives here."

"It's not that," Greg put in. "He had this, like a rental agreement from here. Who would have had him sign it? Is there some sort of hierarchy here? A controlling authority of some kind?"

The man showed a big smile. "You mean, do we got a government? I remember that agreement you're talking about. I signed it, too. That was with the mayor."

"The mayor of Las Vegas?"

"The mayor of the Happy Hunting Ground. That's what he called this place, anyway, but the name never stuck. And he's the one called himself mayor. Nobody else objected, though, so pretty soon everybody called him mayor." He nodded toward one of the tents with a trash pile behind it, flies buzzing around. "'Course, not everybody abided by the rules on that piece of paper, then or now."

"Can we see the mayor?" Sam asked. "Maybe he remembers this man."

"Wish you could," the guy said. "But he died, what, three years ago now. Hit by a city bus, you believe that? He had lived here almost nine years by then. Lived on in the hospital for three days after he was hit, and some folks said it was the cleanest they had ever seen him."

"This city, I believe anything," Sam said. "I'm sorry to hear it, though."

"And there's no new mayor?" Greg asked.

"Plenty of people wish they were the mayor. Some folks like to make others run through hoops, right? Walk some kind of line. But there's nobody like the mayor anymore. Everybody loved him, most folks wanted to make him happy, so they went along with things like that agreement and his rules."

"So if someone wanted to move in here now…"

"They'd find a space and fill it. There are social workers coming around all the time. They try to keep track of who's here, keep some sort of inventory, I guess you'd say. But lately, even they're coming around less. Some of them got fired, I guess, and the ones left got too many cases to follow up on."

"There's a lot of that going around," Sam said.

"Are there any of those social workers here today?" Greg asked. "Someone we might be able to ask about this man? It's important."

"I haven't seen any. Could be some around later, or not. Can't really tell, one day to the next."

"Do you have any other suggestions for us?"

The guy smiled again, shrugging at the same time. "Keep asking around, I guess. Watch out for knives while you do. Some here don't much like the law, but most of us are respectful, decent folks."

"We'll keep that in mind," Sam said. "Thanks for your help."

"Hope you find your man," the guy said.

"Yeah, we're like the Mounties," Greg told him "We won't give up until we do."

Most of the residents they met were less helpful than the first. Some gave them the cold shoulder, ignoring them altogether. Others simply scowled or spat curses at them. A few turned away at their approach, ducking inside a tent, shack, or van with sheepish expressions, as if embarrassed to find themselves reduced to such a lowly standard of living. Greg suspected he would feel the same way, even if, as was no doubt true in many of these cases, it was entirely bad luck that had landed him there and no personal failing on his part. He supposed if it came to that, he would rather live there than on the street, and he would eventually get past the humiliation he felt. But it would take time to reach that point, and it wouldn't be easy. There was, he reasoned, no shame in making do in whatever way one had to. That didn't mean, however, that he wouldn't feel shame anyway.

Some people were willing to be engaged, though, and they were finally directed to a woman called Crazy Marge. "Crazy Marge, she knows, like, everybody," a kid told them. He was probably ten or eleven, slightly built, with sandy blond hair and a coating of grime over almost every inch of him. He should have been in school, but Greg wasn't about to start in on that when the boy was being helpful. "Talk to her."

The kid pointed out Crazy Marge's home, an almost palatial fifth-wheel pop-top tent trailer with guy lines extending from its corners and bits of colored fabric tied to the lines, creating the effect of pennants. A soft breeze blew through the tent city, making the pennants flutter cheerfully. For someone living in meager circumstances, she made the most of things.