“Do you think it has to do with my time as an Integrator?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I said. “I don’t get the feeling you’re in a rush to tell me about those days, which tells me something really fucked up probably happened way back when. But either you’ll tell me when you want to, or you won’t. The same with whatever the hell is going on between you and Trinh, because clearly she’s got a bug up her ass about you.”

“That’s an interesting way to put it,” Vann said.

“Here’s the only thing Trinh said that I worry about,” I said. “She thinks you’re going to fall apart on me, and that when you fall apart, you’re going to end up taking me with you.”

“And what do you think about that?”

“Ask me after the march is done,” I said. “Maybe I’ll have an answer for you then.”

Vann smiled again.

“Look, Vann,” I said. “If you promise me that you’re not going to fall apart on me, I’m going to believe you. But don’t promise me that if you’re not going to be able to follow through. If you can’t promise, that’s fine. But it’s something I want to know up front.”

Vann paused for a moment, looking at me. “Tell you what,” Vann said, finally. “When this weekend is done you and I will sit down somewhere, and I’ll have a beer and you’ll do whatever, and I’ll tell you why I stopped being an Integrator, and why my last partner shot herself in the gut, and why that asshole Trinh has it in for me.”

“Can’t wait,” I said.

“In the meantime: I’m not going to fall apart on you, Shane. I promise.”

“I believe you,” I said.

“Well, good,” Vann said, and took out her phone to look at the time. “That’s settled, then. Now come on. We have two more district houses to hit.”

“I thought I was going to California,” I said.

“No one’s going to be around until nine A.M. out there,” Vann said. “That’s still a couple hours away. Let’s see if we can punt a bunch more troublemakers back home before then. One of the threeps in the first district holding cell is there on a drunk and disorderly. I want to hear how that happened.”

Chapter Fifteen

I LOOKED AROUND and I was in an evidence room in the FBI offices in Los Angeles. An FBI agent was looking at me. “Agent Shane?” she asked.

“That’s me,” I said, and started to get up. Which is when I encountered a small problem. “I can’t move,” I said, after a minute.

“Yeah, about that,” the agent said. “Our actual spare threep is being used by one of our local agents. Her regular one is in for some maintenance. The only threep we had available for you was this one. It’s been in storage for a while.”

“How long is a while?” I asked. I found the diagnostic settings and started running them.

“I think maybe four years,” the agent said. “Maybe five? Could be five.”

“You’re letting me use a threep that’s evidence for a crime?” I asked. “Isn’t that, I don’t know, tainting the chain of possession?”

“Oh, that case is over,” the agent said. “The owner of that threep died in our detention center.”

“How did that happen?”

“He got shivved.”

“Someone shivved a Haden?” I said. “That’s pretty cold.”

“He was a bad man,” said the agent.

“Look, uh—” I realized I had not gotten the agent’s name.

“Agent Isabel Ibanez,” she said.

“Look, Agent Ibanez,” I said. “I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but I just ran a diagnostic on this threep, and its legs don’t work at all. There appears to be significant damage to them.”

“It’s probably because the threep got hit with a shotgun blast,” Ibanez said.

“A shotgun blast,” I repeated.

“During a firefight with FBI agents, yes,” Ibanez said.

“The owner really must have been a bad man.”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“You understand that having a threep that can’t move its legs is going to be a hindrance to the work I need to do today,” I said.

Ibanez stepped to the side and then motioned to the wheelchair she had previously been standing in front of.

“A wheelchair,” I said.

“Yes,” Ibanez said.

“A threep in a wheelchair.”

“Yes,” Ibanez repeated.

“You understand the irony, right?”

“This office is ADA compliant,” Ibanez said. “And as I understand it you are going to a post office, which are also required by law to be ADA compliant. This should be sufficient.”

“You’re actually serious about this,” I said.

“It’s what we have available at the moment,” Ibanez said. “We could rent you a threep, but that would require approvals and paperwork. You’d be here all day.”

“Right,” I said. “Would you excuse me a moment, Agent Ibanez?” I disconnected from the wounded threep before she had a chance to say anything else.

Twenty minutes later I stepped out of an Avis office in Pasadena with a shiny new maroon Kamen Zephyr threep I had rented out of my own pocket, got into the equally maroon Ford I had also rented, and headed toward the Duarte post office. Take that, paperwork.

The Duarte post office was an unassuming box of beige bricks, with arches at the windows to give it a vaguely Spanish air. I went in, stood in line politely while three separate old ladies got stamps and mailed packages, and when I got to the front of the line displayed my badge on my threep’s chest monitor to the postal clerk and asked to see the postmaster.

A small, older man came to the front. “I’m Roberto Juarez,” he said. “I’m the postmaster here.”

“Hi,” I said. “Agent Chris Shane.”

“That’s funny,” Juarez said. “You have the same name as that famous kid.”

“Huh,” I said. “I suppose I do.”

“Was one of you, too,” he said. “A Haden, I mean.”

“I remember that.”

“Must be annoying for you sometimes,” Juarez said.

“It can be,” I said. “Mr. Juarez, about a week ago a man came into your post office to get a money order. I was hoping to talk to you about him.”

“Well, we get a lot of people asking for money orders,” Juarez said. “We have a lot of immigrants in the area, and they send remittances back home. Was this an international or domestic money order?”

“Domestic,” I said.

“Well, that will narrow it down a little,” Juarez said. “We do less of those. Do you have a picture?”

“Do you have a tablet I could borrow for a second?” I asked. I could display the picture on my chest screen but it turns out people feel uncomfortable staring into your chest. The postal clerk, whose name tag listed her as Maria Willis, gave me hers to use. I signed in and accessed the picture of Sani—cleaned up, eyes closed—and showed it to them. “It’s not the best picture,” I said.

Juarez looked at the picture blankly. Willis, on the other hand, put her hand up to her mouth in surprise.

“Oh my God,” she said. “That’s Ollie Green.”

“Ollie Green?” I repeated the name. “As in Oliver Green, and like the color.”

Willis nodded and looked at the picture again. “He’s dead, isn’t he,” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Sorry. You knew him?”

“He would come in every week or so to get a money order, an envelope, and a stamp,” Willis said. “He was nice. You could tell he was a little slow”—she looked at me to see if I understood the implication—“but a nice man. Would make small talk if you let him and there wasn’t a line.”

“What would he talk about?” I asked.

“The usual things,” Willis said. “The weather. Whatever movie or TV show he’d seen recently. Sometimes he’d talk about the squirrels he saw on the walk here. He really enjoyed them. He once said he’d like to get a little dog who could chase them. I told him that if he did that, the squirrel and the dog would end up getting run over.”

“He lived nearby, then,” I said. “If he was walking over to the post office.”

“I think he said he lived at the Bradbury Park apartments,” Willis said. “Bradbury Park, Bradbury Villa. Something like that.”

I immediately did a search and found Bradbury Park Apartment Homes about half a mile away. Next stop, then. “Did he ever talk about his work?” I asked.