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The snow that settled on the ground was beaten into a dirty grey slush by pedestrian and vehicle traffic. It was a clear, cold night. A poster on the wall of the just-awakening nightclub read 'The Synthetic Songdog sings here, Nov 14 20XX'.

The news from yesterday mentioned a string of high-profile murders. None of my business. I hardly recognized the names. Businessmen dying in luxury in their expensive high rise suites didn't concern me. As far as I knew, they deserved it. I was mostly browsing the site on my phone to see if anything had been printed about the incident at the chop shop, which had been about a week and a half ago. It had only gotten a brief mention a day or so later. Local news didn't seem to make much print these days. It figured. I was still sore as hell, and was just getting back into gear after taking some time off, and I didn't even get to see a fuzzy security camera version of me with a bright halo around my head from the LED cap. It was lucky that Miss Songdog hadn't called on me in the meantime.

Tonight, though, she wanted me to meet her at her work. The Synthetic Songdog sings tonight, sure. I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen her perform before. I doubted it. Since Maggie's death I'd lived in Chicago working with investigations and consulting there. This was a new act, a new club, and I didn't know what to expect.

All the other clubs I'd been in were the kind I'd expected. Loud, young people yelling, doing drugs, basically dry-humping on the dance floor and eating each other alive in the booths. This place was classier, for the most part. People were dressed well, the thin, leggy doe bartender wore a shiny silk tie folded and neatly tucked into her shirt. The patrons were jovial and relaxed, mature, no doubt drinking top shelf. The dance floor was full of round tables with beige tablecloths. There was a stage with an old, heavy curtain drawn across it, perpendicular to the bar.

I ordered a middle-shelf bourbon, neat. I was in that kind of mood. The glass was small and well-shaped.

Someone sat next to me at the bar and just ordered a water. It was Miss Songdog's pet bear in a charcoal grey suit with a red shirt and a black-and-red pinstriped tie. I was underdressed.

"Mister Van Grantze," he said. I nodded.

"Verne." I raised my glass, then took a sip.

"Relax. Owned clubs like this are neutral ground."

I chewed my lip. I'd sure made some noise in the last one I was at. "Right."

"You look like shit."

I couldn't help but laugh at that one. The way he said it was just too straightforward. It wasn't untrue, and I felt like it, too. Things were catching up, things that weren't just old age. I'd been using more and more just to stay at a baseline. I'd been taking over-the-counter sleeping pills and they weren't working. My nights were spent staring at the wall, stringing imaginary yarn between photos and snippets of memories, trying to make sense of Jeff, Cheri, Maggie, Vincy, and now this fuck, who I'd dutifully stayed away from as much as possible over my employment.

I didn't like his type. He was the kind of guy who'd been opposite me when I wore a badge. He was civil, polite even, but I knew the kind of work his closeness with Maggie, with Miss Songdog, entailed. She said jump, and he didn't even ask how high, he just jumped. She said kill a man, and he not only killed the man, he personally saw to the disposal.

"I look how I feel, then."

"You'll perk up when you hear Miss Songdog sing. It's a real pleasure."

A moment passed. I finished my drink and asked for another.

"Now that, ah, Mister Getavo's resigned, you and I might be working a little closer."

I screwed my eyes shut. "I, er, look forward to it."

"Good. And here's a new business phone. I suggest you take the old one and put it under someone's car."

I took the sleek black screen and tucked it into my chest pocket, opposite my smokes. "Will do."

A minute passed in silence before the lights began to dim and the curtains drew back. Sparkling on the stage, Miss Songdog, and a pianist rabbit in a sharp tux, center. Spotlights. Red velvet.

She was in a short, canted dress I'd never seen before with a slit down one side that exposed her leg. Her hair was done up in curls, brushed to one side, her eyes twinkled.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she began. Her voice was amplified through the sound system, which made it a little grainier. "Thanks for attending the show.'

Her sharp sounds hung and I turned away from the bar to watch her, glass in hand. She walked up the stage and down, crooning the intro to her show. The piano walked its way up behind her as she worked up into a rhythm with a higher-pitched accent, as her somehow husky voice wound up a song despite her mechanical lilt, and perhaps because of her enunciation. The lyrics wove a story I didn't quite follow, but time started to slip away. By the second song she'd began to sway. She looked real up there, farther away from me than I could hope to reach, much like the Maggie I remembered.

The stage lights gave her a soft coppery countenance that I yearned for, that made her look like some kind of golden specter of the woman I knew, and my heart, I could feel it beating out of my chest. The rest of the club fell away and it was just she and I. The song she sang reverberated in the air for a second.

The chorus paused where it should've continued, and I leaned forward in my seat, anticipating the next word. "In just one or two days, we could be in Reno, where the glittery lights and the glowing, wild girls, chase all the noise from your head. Where there's two kinds of thirst, and the ice costs five dollars, and the table games run long as they can. But I see what you want, what I know is the best, and for good, or for bad, I will keep it..." The piano picked up. Her big green eyes rolled towards me, just for a second. I would swear to my deathbed that I saw her smile. She lifted her hand and turned her wrist like she was stroking someone's chin. "I'll keep my leash on you."

My hand went to my neck. My tie felt a little snug. I looked behind me, and Verne had managed to slip away somewhere else. I enjoyed the rest of the show.

The smoke curled around me as soon as I opened the door. A single light carved the two low couches and the no-man's-land of the coffee table between them out of the darkness. Miss Songdog sat on the far one, leaning over the overstuffed arm of the thing, a fur-trimmed coat loosely wrapped around her, legs crossed. Her head was tilted down and she held a cigarette aloft between the trigger and middle finger on her right hand, palm up.

She gestured it towards the seat. It was cold back here and I drew my coat tight around me before I sidled in.

"I called and you came running."

"Of course I did, Miss Songdog."

"Ten thousand cars, Fran, a hundred trains, an international airport, and you're here, still. You're here with me. Jeff can't be the only reason, can he?"

I set my jaw and leaned back into the cushion. "I still need to know who killed him."

"You told me you loved me, Fran. Is that true?" She sat up, and leaned forward to tap the ash off the end of her smoke.

"Of course."

"And you still love Jeff?"

I glanced away like I was wincing from a wound being prodded. The file. The drawer. The piles of boxes. The ransom notes. Jeff was going to sell me out to a coked out mobster whose wife I was railing on the regular.

"Yes."

"You hesitated."

"It hurts, still. Don't you miss Mister Bartell?"

It was her turn to wince, but she didn't. She leaned forward and pushed her hand down on the coffee table. It began to creak as she put more and more pressure on it. It could buckle and splinter at any second.

"I understand, now, how what he did lead directly to where I am."

I didn't move. I waited for her to finish her display of displeasure. There was a rough dent in the wood that I tried not to imagine in my skull. She settled back into her fur coat and drew it around her as if it could comfort her.

"I need someone I can trust. I thought I could trust Mister Getavo, but..."

I nodded and leaned forward. "You can trust me."

"Can I, Fran?"

Could she? I didn't know where I was anymore. I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't any closer to finding who killed Jeff. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to, anymore. Maggie was here, after all. Maggie. Why was my head swimming?

"I'd do anything, Miss Songdog." I was looking her in the eyes when I said it. There was a lump in my throat and a pit in my stomach. She reached forward and grabbed my tie and yanked me over the table. My lips met her teeth. My knees were on the wood and then I was on the couch with her. I wrapped my arms between her and the coat and she was still pulling and I was panting and getting hard, and she stopped me.

Her finger went to my lips to shush me. She pulled something out of her bra, a little bag of white powder, a promise of a good time. She laid it on the table and I straightened up. An expired gold credit card and a crisp hundred dollar bill were the tools she gave me.

"That's right," she cooed and ran her hand up my back, "As a knight to his lady."

I turned my body towards her as my world went electric. She pulled my leg up and pushed me on my back on the couch. "This is anything but courtly," I teased.

"In twenty four hours you could be in Reno, where no one cares who you are or what you're running from, but you're here with me on a dusty old couch in a grimy old club."

"In Reno the ice costs five dollars, Miss Songdog."

She made the sound of laughter while she pushed her way onto my lap. With her weight on me I sunk deeper into the cushions, only able to put my hands on her hips and look up at her like she was my whole world. My eyes must've blown wide open because I could see all kinds of color I didn't before. I reached up and grabbed her shoulders. She pushed against me, against the tent in my pants, and I was hyperaware of the whole ordeal. She reached down and dragged her cold clawtips down my snout from nose to cheekbone.

"We're going to kill somebody, Fran. We're going to kill a lot of people."

That should've upset me. It did upset me. I was just too out of my mind to realize it.

"I have a book, Fran, full of names. They're the people who were responsible for having me killed."

The word buzzed like static in my head. It was bright and hung in the air. Killed. The people who killed Maggie Bartell. The people who took her from me.

"Jeff had dealings with them, too, just before he died. They were lifelong customers of his."

I shut my eyes, then I looked back. I danced up and down her inscrutable face, hard-lit from behind by the single light. Her wig had a halo around it. I couldn't deny Jeff's criminal connections anymore. Something jumped in my chest. I had two reasons to kill whoever they were, now. One of them was sitting in my lap, unbuckling my belt. I was panting.

She pulled her skirt up and I could see the lacy band her pistol lived in and her silk panties. The zipper of my slacks gave way and she pulled me out of my fur and wrapped her silicone-padded hand around it and gave me a tug. I must have been staring dumbly, because I had to make myself look up. I put my hand on her breast. It wasn't that warm, but it was soft, and I could feel her bra through the thin fabric of the little asymmetric showstopper she'd gotten me to gawk at from the bar earlier. She pulled the front of her lingerie off her flat, sexless plastic groin and wrapped it around my rocket and used her hand to push it all up against her. She rolled her hips, I gasped. It didn't take long, between her firm mechanical grip and the smooth, soft texture. It didn't take much of that, or much of my bucking and moaning against her while I filled my arms with her thin waist, to make me make that expensive bit of silk and lace a sticky mess.

She pet my head. I took a moment to unscrew my eyes. I was feeling something now, for sure. I was feeling electric, energetic, young. I looked up at her and knew I was just what she needed. I didn't even care if it was true anymore, she was going to point her finger and I'd kill whoever it landed on. Luckily, she had a better plan than that.

It was framed up like a business deal. I sniffed and brushed my nose. Was that a little bit of blood? No, just my imagination. I had to ignore it, like the itching, like the swimming feeling in my leg.

It was the next day and we were in a restaurant, in a private room reserved for the meeting. I'd already been sitting on the low couch on one side of the coffee table, across from two shorter chairs, for a few minutes, sipping coffee, when an elderly cat came in with two young, strong-looking dogs flanking him. He didn't even take his seat, and instead gestured his hand at me.

"Who the fuck is this? You're not Vincy. I thought Vincy was gonna be here!"

"Vincy doesn't work for Miss Songdog anymore." It was plain and easy to say. He got a look on his face like he was chewing something foreign.

"Thank fuck," he sighed, before he moved around to the front of one seat and sat down. The guy was out of shape, soft and wide around the middle. Money didn't impart any kind of style to him. The wide-lapel pinstripe suit jacket and pink pants were straight out of my youth. A gold chain hung where the top three buttons of his blue dress shirt were undone. "That fox was a fucking psycho."

I eyeballed his bodyguards. As far as appearances went, I was alone here. It was just me and the low-profile bullet-proof plate under my dress shirt and tie. "You're right."

"So, what's the deal here, then? Your upstart's been around a few years, and you've always been paying your cut on time, moving product, no complications. Do we really need to renegotiate the terms, or can we just keep it, er, status quo, eh?"

The door opened. No one paid attention to the robotic coyote waitress in her red hair, with her short skirt and neat, pressed black blouse and white apron. Her serving tray had a covered dish on it.

"I'm afraid we're going to seek another supplier," I began, loudly, leaning forward over the table. The two suits stiffened up. The cat's grey whiskers twitched. "Your rates just aren't competitive."

"Just aren't competitive? What is this? Where else are you going to get the parts for that rate? Koreans aren't gonna work with you, the Israelis will soon as shoot you. What, you think you're gonna play hardball with me, get me to try and cut a deal? You're the ones who should be worried--"

I cut him off. "Your fucking rates aren't fucking competitive." I brushed my hand against my nose again. He narrowed his eyes. The robot waitress laid the tray with the covered dish down in front of me and began towards the door.

"You're shitting me." The waitress made a sharp turn. She was behind them, now. "Do you know who I am? Do you know how long I've been doing this? I'm not some two-bit white-collar Cosa Nostra. You're going to tell that music-box bitch--"

I did it fast. Like lightning I glassed the dog on the left. The one on the right drew his gun, but I slammed it away with my palm. It went off as I did, blasting the corner leg off the table in front of us, as the robotic waitress behind the cat produced a stiletto and quickly opened the left dog's throat. I grabbed the remaining guard's tie and pulled him clean off his feet and used him to finally finish off the cheap import furniture, drew a knife and jammed the blade in his neck and dragged it out. He kicked and gurgled while we moved onto the topic at hand.

"Tell me what?" Miss Songdog cooed, brushing the red acrylic hair of her wig aside. The bloodied knife left a stain on the old cat's collar where she pushed it in against his fur. She had a firm grip of his head with one of her hands.

He was speechless. I was busy picking up the security dog's pistol, and pulling the extra magazines out from under his ruined coat. That gunshot would attract attention, even with the soundproofing of the walls. I moved to the door with the gun in hand.

"Guess it wasn't important, then." She shrugged it off and moved around to his front. Her hand fished in his waistband and pulled out a gun. She tossed it into the corner without a thought.

"You cocksucking made-in-China whore! You think you can kill me and get away with it? Every American suit and spook in New England's gonna be after your head! You know who I work for?"

"Sure, Bud. That's what I'm hoping for. But really, is that any way to speak to your old boss?"

"I've never worked for a fucking robot bitch." She twisted his head and he winced. She was practically in his lap. Her snout moved up to his ear and she whispered something. His body went stiff.

She looked up at me, and all I could see were her big green eyes over his head. "Van Grantze, honey, would you be a dear and wait out in the hall?"

I turned to leave. All I could do was shudder.

I stepped out into the hall and noticed my hand was bleeding, but the cut was only superficial. Then, in a sort of daze, I looked over to the left. A younger cat in a suit stopped and looked at me, and the fur on the back of his neck and on his tail all stood up. He blabbered something incoherent and reached for his gun under his jacket, but I grabbed his hand before he could unholster it and slammed him against the wall, knocking decorations off. I flicked the knife open again and I tried to jam him in the neck.

His hand caught mine and part of the blade. He hissed as he kneed me in the side of the leg and I yapped and went down. He put his weight on the blade and I felt the sharp, warm tip slip into my fur almost enough to cut me. My hand fell on a pictureframe that had fallen and I whipped it against his head. I sat up and pulled my own revolver out of my coat while he was screaming. The quiet option got thrown out the window as soon as the other bodyguard fired his gun in the room.

I shot the cat three times and he fell limp, and the polymer gun he was trying to draw fell out onto his lap. I took it.

Somewhere out of the hall I heard a voice quickly growl that there was a situation. A real waitress peaked in the hall and a rough hand grabbed her and pulled her out of view. At least these guys seemed somewhat professional. As for me, I had to duck into an alcove as a fourth bodyguard made his way down the hall with his gun raised. I waited until he was just about to walk past. I stuck the gun out into his belly and pulled the trigger, he jumped and tried to bring his pistol to bear but I was too close. I pulled the trigger again. Blood and gore splattered out on the wall and came up in the dog's spit as he doubled over onto me, staining my shirt with his blood. The gun must have been loaded with hollowpoints because the craters left in his back were gruesome enough to make me dizzy. I tried not to look at his pain-twisted face as he twitched and whimpered.

I started to smell something burning. Miss Songdog stepped out of the room she'd been in, blood splattered across her apron. She reeked of gasoline. The perky step she had was telling only of something horrible. I didn't have the imagination at the moment to guess.

"We're done here."

I nodded and followed her out the back. Soon the place would be swarming with suits and police. Sure, it wasn't as smooth as we'd hoped. We left five dead and a traumatized waitress in the dust of the wheels of the sharp black two-door she'd pulled out of storage for business.

The rest of the day was a blur. I threw up a lot. Back at Miss Songdog's, the debriefing was short and quick. The elderly cat had been a member of the Bartell crime family a decade and a half ago. She was certain he was part of the ordeal.

I languished on her couch, floating from the painkillers, feeling like I could hardly move. My head was back and I could only barely roll it to look at her. At least she was next to me, my lovely polymer Thanatos. Sure, I'd already killed for her, but this time, this time she was there. She saw me do it. She killed, too. For herself, I thought, but maybe later I'd find out if I was right on that assertion.

She held a smoke in her lips and occasionally put it to mine. The apartment was hazy. The darkness was soft, like a blanket. The past was a yawning maw.

Gingerly her plastic fingers dragged a pen across a name in a book and then a photograph of a face. She looked up at me and I liked to imagine she was pleased, but I couldn't get over how her eyes looked gaunt and sunken and dead.

"That's another one." The words buzzed. The ceiling fan buzzed. Outside the traffic noises buzzed, distorted and grainy. I felt like I was rocking in place and the room was flowing like an oil liquid.

She continued without my input. "A lot of the old family are geriatric. Old men with lots of money to make young men protect them. Some of them have even gone legitimate, as far as appearances are concerned. I have them all, their names, addresses, business connections."

She took the cigarette out of my mouth and held it in hers. I managed to lift my head up to look at her. "Revenge, Maggie?"

Her eyes rolled toward me, and for a moment I thought she'd do something to hurt me. Instead she audibly sighed, a forced sound, and closed her eyes. "Revenge, Fran. First, I'll get even."

"And then?"

"Then... Then I... Then I might be free."

She handed the cigarette back to me, and I took a single, slow, long drag. I let it out through my nose and watched it dissipate into the same ambient smoke that sat at just above eye level. I trusted her. I leaned into her.

"Thank you," I told her.

"For what?"

I held the burning cigarette in my fingers and looked at it. "Did I ever tell you about what happened in Chicago?"

"You worked with the metro PD."

"It was four days before I heard the news. I was... I tried to..." I gulped, and could hardly continue. I was too far up to figure out where my train of thought was going. What was I supposed to tell her? That I wanted to step onto the train tracks right as the 8 o'clock came in at 8:04? That I thought about drowning myself in the lake? I couldn't bring myself to say it.

"You what, Fran?" I was touching her but she was so far away. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't tell if it was concern or impatience in her voice, but Maggie had never been a very patient woman.

"I never forgot, that's why I stayed there so long. I didn't come back until Jeff messaged me. I think, fuck, maybe I was too desperate with him. I was just so damn alone."

I closed my eyes. I couldn't stand to keep staring at that deathly mask. There was something burning up inside me and I was too tired and worn too thin. I was afraid it was going to burn me up. I just hoped that it was really Maggie, because for someone like her, I'd be happy to do it. I had to believe it was her. It was apparent that I was going to die doing this, but it was okay, because it was for Maggie Bartell, and I started to think, maybe Jeff wasn't worth it, maybe he really was who she said he was. But why did he call me back?

"The past is a yawning maw, Fran."

Five miles away, Cheri was planning something. She'd been combing through the files she'd stolen, synthesizing a plan, making sense of the vague wording. Correspondence, memos, emails, spreadsheets, they were all useful, but the list of names she was able to put together from it, that was her real goal. Her Personal Defense Weapon was meticulously cleaned and stashed away, her black book neatly outlined and updated, her outfit pressed and washed.

She went out into the cold night with a heavy coat and a hat over her wig. The snow was hardly fresh, and the city was hardly quiet, despite the late hour. The park was just a short jaunt from her hideout, the place where her dead drop was located. She'd never seen anyone stop near it, and there was rarely even footprints to be found. It was one of just a few she knew of in the city, where instructions were traded, where her reports were dropped off. She had a pretty cursive note, folded up and shoved into a sandwich bag, that she was to leave under a specific bush around a specific tree just off the path.

It was slipped under a chunk of snow easily, and she was away. Soon not even her footprints would remain.

She was making her way out of the park when she spied a familiar duffel coat. He'd gotten the drop on her, the flamboyant dog. She could only wince as he greeted her.

"Odd time for a walk, Cheri."

"What did you see?"

"What do you mean?" He smiled. She wrinkled her nose. She didn't want to kill him, but it would be so easy. How had she not seen or heard him? How did he know to be here? She knew he was employed at one of the clubs she frequented but, if he knew about the dead drop, if she was made...

Her hand went up. She grabbed him by the collar, and pulled him down to eye level. She'd be sweating if she could. She'd feel her heart pounding up in her throat or plunging down into her stomach if she had one, still. Her eyebrows were knit with worry, her eyes were twitching like a sleeping dreamer's. His grin didn't break. She could only ask again.

"What did you see?"