As it turned out, the waiting time hadn't been necessary. Revenge was the farthest thing from Miranda's mind. The sum of money in question, though large by my standards, had literally been forgotten in the madcap, dizzy fandango that qualified as a life in her circle of friends. I had to remind her that she'd been taken, then keep bringing her attention back from unknown areas as I explained that at last we had a lead in her case and that I, Friday, was the man to run it down. We had learned there really was a dishonest teller at her bank, and that he had been in cahoots with the swindlers all the time. Now we intended to catch him dead to rights, and get him to squeal, to rat out his gang of nefarious hoodlums. All she had to do to help us bring this about was to withdraw X number of shekels from her account so we could... well, by now you should be able to fill in the blanks with a story of your own.

She couldn't have been more delighted to help. Her guileless, canine eyes danced with excitement when I used words like "squeal" and "cahoots," but went a little glassy at "nefarious." So in the end it was her relentless stupidity... sorry, I meant unblemished honesty... that led her into folly again.

And so it was that I found myself walking along beside the equestrian park in the richest neighborhood in Pluto, carrying an unaccustomed amount of money, paced by a lanky conscience, and trailed by a pissed-off poodle-dog. I should have been happy, but my heart was, I admit, a bit heavy. But my wallet was about to become even heavier. These things even out.

If only she hadn't been so goddam honest.

When a felon's not engaged in his employment or maturing his felonious little plans, where do you suppose he goes?

I went to church. You have to fence the loot somewhere.

If any of you in the audience are true-believing members of the First Latitudinarian Church of Celebrity Saints, better known as the Flacks, you might want to skip this next scene. The fact is, wherever you attend services, from Coronaville to Brementon and points beyond, you have found your way into a den of thieves. The chances are excellent that the fellow standing next to you, helping you hold the hymnal and bellowing "Blue Suede Shoes" off-key in a state of exalted presleyan bliss, is not somebody you'd be eager to see marry your brother or sister. He might very well be... well, somebody like me.

A lot of Flackites I've mentioned this to have a hard time believing it. As my father used to say, "Denial is more than a big river in Egypt."

All churches have their share of sinners, of course. You might say that's what they're for. You can't get very far in the redemption business without some genuine sinners. But in other churches they're not organized into a band of brothers. I doubt that most churches often see actual crimes being originated and planned at meetings in the church basement. It would surprise me to learn that stolen goods were actually being fenced on the grounds of, say, the synagogue down the lane. And aside from a little bingo and the occasional bit of buggery, Catholic churches are relatively free of crime. As for Diabolists, don't ask me. It's all veiled in secrecy.

But if it's a spot of larceny you're after, I recommend the Flackites. Every grifter I know shows up there regularly, to find out what's going down, coming off, falling together. It's where I heard about the Mayard-Tate sting, and it's where I went, swag in hand, to dispose of it.

Uncle Roy is choreographer in chief at the Main Planetary Studio, First Latitudinarian Church, Pandemonium, Phlegethon Province, Pluto. As a song-and-dance man he had been only mediocre, and he wasn't exactly setting the planet on fire now that he'd hung up his tap shoes. Busby Berkeley's ghost had nothing to fear from Roy. But he was the guy to see if buying wholesale no longer satisfied you, if what you were seeking was really deep discounts. That is, as long as what you were shopping for didn't require a legal tide, and if you didn't mind that the serial numbers had been filed off, there was no owner's manual, and the merchandise might have a few dents and scratches from falling off the back of a freightlorry.

I found him in the studio itself, sitting in the third row with his hands steepled in front of him, watching with great concentration what looked to be a final dress rehearsal. The stage was jammed with sequined chorus dancers, just a-hoofin' their little hearts out, and dazzling spotlights swept them like the fingers of angels. I paused to drink it in. When the houselights go down and the stage lights brighten, a new world is created, a world where I've spent most of my life. It's a magic trick I never grow tired of.

I recognized the show immediately as Work in Progress, the musical version of Finnegans Wake that had bombed at its opening on the Alameda in King City fifty years ago. I know it bombed, because I was there, in the part of Cromwell. ("Val Tiner turns in his usual competent performance in a production more confusing than its source material."—News Nipple) Since then Work had developed quite a cult following. I myself had revisited it only ten years earlier, this time in the lead role of Humphrey Earwicker/Joyce, ("overwrung. A charmful waterloose prixducktion, dacently gaylaboring the auld meanderthalltale from jayjay's mythink Dyoublong of farago. D'ya dismember what a mnice old mness it all mnakes? But Hark! Hark! Tray chairs fur Muster Casey Valentoon in a roustering vendition of 'Miss Hooligan's Christmas Cake,' the topsiest mnoment of a quarky under-parformance. Stillanall, the shows a way a lone a last a long a little"—Arean Gazette).

The Pluto studio is one of the largest indoor proscenium theaters in the system. It seats twenty thousand, which means the cheap seats are in a different postal zone, and high enough for a nosebleed. I've been in the last row, and from that vantage you might as well be watching A Doll's House performed by a flea circus. From the stage, you can get through most of Hamlet's soliloquy before the echo of your voice reverberates the first "to be" back to your waiting ears. There's a fair chance of a rain delay on account of thunderheads forming in the fly lofts.

But not to worry. The hall is surrounded by several thousand television screens, from a few inches to twenty feet across. The people in back see just about the same show you get from front row center, from a bigger variety of camera angles.

Not my sort of house at all. Give me a three- or four-hundred seater and I'm a happy man. Let it be my own leathery lungs shouting down the rafters, or making them lean forward in dead silence to catch my whispered words.

Uncle Roy glanced over at me as I sat at the end of the row. I nodded, and he smiled briefly, then stood and started pacing rapidly back and forth at the edge of the orchestra pit, pointing at people and shouting things I couldn't hear over the thunder of the music. The conductor frowned at Roy over his shoulder, but by this time he must have learned better than to protest. He hunched his shoulders and continued to saw at the air with his big, glowing baton.

I don't know Uncle Roy's last name, nor why he's universally called uncle. There's probably a story behind it. If you hear it, let me know. I love stories like that. He's a big man who has pegged his apparent age in the late fifties, with a wrinkled face and receding hairline. He has a shock of unkempt silvery hair streaked with black, and eyes of purest newman blue. His lips are thick and rubbery, and he has a habit of chewing on the lower one when he's thinking. When he's not thinking he chews tobaccoid, certainly the least attractive retro fad in the last century, one that's finally showing signs of having outworn its welcome. Forget the occasional brown drool from the corners of one's mouth, or the necessity of carrying around a can sloshing with the vilest stuff imaginable, or the truly disgusting sight of someone spitting into it. The habit kept Roy's teeth stained an abhorrent greenish brown, like fungus growing on a corpse. If the smell of his mouth was any guide, the taste of it must have been unimaginable.