"Nope."
"Where did you drop him off?" Albers asked.
"The north gate," St. Coutras answered. "On Western Avenue. Why, what's he done?"
"We have no idea. But somehow he's the key to a lot of desperately important questions. Would he remember you?"
"Sure."
"Kindly?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Good." Albers took along, contemplative pull on his cigar. "Do you have an apprentice or partner or somebody who could bring the guns in without you?"
"Maybe. Why?"
"I want you to stay here and smoke this blasted monk out of whatever hole he's hiding in. We're pretty sure he hasn't left the city, but the police haven't been able to get any leads on him at all. What we'll do is check with the monastery to find out what his interests and skills are, and then send you places where he's likely to show up. When you see him, grab him. We'll give you as many men as you like to help."
"I'd be working with the police?" St. Coutras asked doubtfully.
"No. As a matter of fact," Albers said, "you will, practically speaking, be working against the police. We don't want Tabasco to get hold of the monk."
"Hmm. This post pays well, of course?"
"Of course. And carries a 5,000-soli—cash!—bonus if you bring him in."
"Well, I'll give it a try," the old man said. "I've done weirder things."
"Good," Albers indulged in his first smile of the day. "We'll have a rider to the Merignac monastery and back by three this afternoon, and you'll be able to start searching before sundown. You'll—"
"I get 1,000 a day to look for him," St. Coutras remarked.
Albers's face turned red, but his smile held its ground. "That's right," he said levelly. "Where are you staying?"
"At a friend's place. Never mind where. I'll come back here at 16:30 hours. See you later, gents." He stood, clamped his pipe in his mouth and left the room.
"I don't like his attitude," Harper complained. "Are you really going to pay him all that money? I think you promised him more than the city owns."
"He'll be paid, all right," Albers rasped. "We'll give him a few dozen of his own bullets, in the head."
Harper grinned, about to speak when a woman poked her head in the doorway. "Police Chief Tabasco is here to see Majordomo Lloyd," she announced at once.
"Send him in," Albers said. "None of you say anything, hear?" he added to his four companions.
Police Chief Tabasco was tall, with fine blond hair cut in bangs over his surprisingly light blue eyes. His face was pink and unlined. When he stepped into the room he made the five men look scrawny and unhealthy by comparison.
"Where is Majordomo Lloyd?" he asked.
"Well," Albers said thoughtfully, "to tell you the truth, he's dead." Harper didn't interrupt, but clearly wanted to. Tabasco raised his golden eyebrows. "You see," Albers continued, "he admitted to us that Mayor Pelias is dead, then immediately regretted betraying that secret and leaped," he waved at the open window, "to his death."
"You're lying," Tabasco observed calmly. "Pelias is alive and Lloyd knew it. He and I looked in on the comatose mayor earlier this morning. You killed Lloyd, correct? Why?"
"Oh, hell," Albers said, sitting down. "Okay, I guess Pelias is alive. No, we didn't kill Lloyd. I threatened him with torture if he wouldn't spill a few secrets, and he dove out the window. Look, Tabasco, if we're going to govern this city, there are several things we've got to know. First, where is—"
"You're not going to govern this city."
"Oh? Who is, then? Pelias? Lloyd? Alvarez? You?"
"Why not me?" Tabasco asked quietly.
Albers leaned forward. "Are you getting delusions of humanity? Listen, the people of this city would rather have a trained dog for mayor than a damned grass-eating, vat-bred android. Don't you know that? You creatures are just barely put up with as policemen. If—"
"Excuse me for interrupting," Tabasco said, a little heatedly. "But I would remind you that I control— absolutely—the only armed force available to Los Angeles; whereas you have nothing, not even—"
"I've got Thomas," Albers said.
"Who?"
"Thomas. The monk from Merignac. I have him."
"You're lying again," Tabasco said, but his eyes were lit with desperate hope.
"Believe that, if you like," said Albers carelessly. "I have him, anyway. And I don't need you."
"I knew you were lying," Tabasco said, the hope leaving his eyes. "If you really had him you'd know how much you do need me. And you'd know better than to sneer at androids. I want all five of you out of the city by sundown tomorrow. I'll instruct my officers to shoot any of you on sight after that. Do you understand?"
"Why you filthy—we're the—you can't tell the city council to—"
"I'll assume you do understand. Goodbye, gentlemen. May we never meet again."
Peter McHugh put down his coffee cup and newspaper and stood to meet the booted feet pounding up the stairs.
"That you, John?" he called, his hand hovering over a .38 calibre revolver lying on the wicker table beside him.
"Yes," gasped John St. Coutras a moment before he burst into the room. "Up and saddle the horses," the old man barked. "If we move quick we can get out of this doomed city with no trouble."
"What? Wait a minute. What happened at city hall? You didn't hit anybody, did you?"
"No. But I got Albers to agree to so many crazy payments that I know he means to kill me. Hell, he even offered me 1,000 solis a day to look for some monk. If we can get outside the city walls within the next hour, we—"
"Hold it. Listen to me. I got another offer for the guns. One hundred and fifty apiece."
St. Coutras halted. "You did? From who?"
"I don't know his name. We've been dealing through an intermediary, a red-haired kid named Spencer. But the offer's genuine, I'm convinced. We'll deliver the crates through the sewers, from north of the wall."
St. Coutras ran his fingers ruminatively through his beard. "This is 150 solis cash we're talking about?" he asked in a more quiet tone.
"Nothing but. The kid wanted to give me 5,000 down, right there. Had it in a knapsack. I told him I'd have to see you before I could take it."
"Well." The old man sank into a chair. "Is there any more of that coffee?"
"Coming up, boss."
Thomas looked critically at the final couplet of his sonnet while he chewed on the end of his pen; after a few rereadings of the poem he decided it would do and slid the paper into the box he'd appropriated for his personal belongings. A bleak mood, brought to a head by nine consecutive cups of black coffee and three stout maduro cigars, had produced the first eight lines the night before, and enough of the mood had carried over to the morning for him to write the last six lines immediately upon waking.
He stood up, stretched and reached down to pull on his pants when a loud crack sounded from the floor above. Splinters and dust whirled down through one of the beams of morning sunlight.
Thomas bounded upstairs to the stage, where he found Gladhand and five villainous-looking men staring at a small, ragged hole in the polished wood of the stage. Smoke still spiralled up from it.
"What the hell," Thomas said, unable to come up with anything better, but feeling that he ought to say something.
"Oh, good morning, Rufus," Gladhand said. "Nothing to be concerned about, that explosion. Just a special-effect device we're testing."
"More special effects?" For four days now Gladhand had been consulting furtive men—"technicians," he called them—and buying dozens of sturdy, heavy wooden boxes that he stored carefully in the basement. In answer to Thomas's questions, he'd explained that the boxes contained the wherewithal for various spectacular special effects he had ordered and intended to use for the appearance of the god Hymen in the play.