Fourth, Pickens-if that was his real name after all- was pulling a scam on me.

I couldn't rule any of those out. That fourth one was the one I liked least, of course, and it seemed pretty goddamn unlikely, but I couldn't rule it out. I couldn't figure any way that anyone could get anything worthwhile out of me, with this story or any other, but I couldn't rule it out. I know there are people out there smarter than I am, and that means there are people out there who could fool me if they wanted to. I couldn't figure out why they'd want to-but like I said, they're smarter than I am.

If it was a con, it was a good one. The story was bizarre enough to get my interest, and there weren't any of the telltale signs of a con-nothing too good to be true, no fat fee in prospect, no prepared explanation.

I decided that if it was a con, it was too damn slick for me, and I might as well fall into it, because it would be worth it to see what the story was. So I would assume it wasn't a con.

That left three choices, and they all hinged on whether or not someone had actually paid for those buildings.

I couldn't find out the whole truth sitting at my desk, but I could get the official story, anyway. I hit my keypad, punched up the Registry of Deeds and ran down the list of addresses.

Of course, any jerk could have done that, and somebody supposedly had, because Zar Pickens had said that someone who worked for the city said the new owner was for real. The name the squatters had gotten was West End Properties, but that didn't mean anything more to me than it had to them; I asked for the full transaction records on every address where a squatter had been hassled.

Just for interest, I also tagged the command to give last-called dates for each property file, while I was at it.

There were eleven properties involved where squatters had been asked for rent. They were scattered in an arc along Wall Street and in a couple of blocks on Western Avenue and Deng Boulevard.

All eleven really had been deeded over to new owners in the last six weeks-nominally to eleven different buyers, but that didn't mean anything.

No one had called up any of the files since the transfers had been made, except for Zar Pickens's own building; that had sold five weeks earlier, and someone had called up the transaction record about two weeks back. That would have been the squatters, checking up.

That transfer said West End Properties, all right.

Somebody really was buying property in the West End, or at least getting it transferred to new ownership. That eliminated another of my options: it wasn't just an attempt to muscle a few credits out of the squatters.

But what the hell was it? Was somebody actually paying real money for buildings and lots that were about to turn into baked goods?

I was pretty damn curious by now, and I suddenly thought of something else I was curious about. I punched in for all real estate transactions made in the previous six weeks, called for a graphic display on a city map, and cursed the idiot who had wired the system for pressure instead of voice. I almost plugged myself in, but then decided to hold off. I don't like running on wire.

The records showed fifty or sixty recent deeds. After I dropped out a few scattered foreclosures, gambling losses, and in-family transfers, I had about forty left.

They were all in the West End. They covered just about all of the West End, too.

I extended the time back another week-nothing but foreclosures and gambling losses. An eighth week, nothing. Whatever was going on had started just about six weeks back.

But what was going on?

If someone had figured a way to fake property transfers, why stick to the West End? Why not take a bit here and there, maybe catch someone who could actually pay a decent rent? As I said before, there was abandoned property as far in as my own neighborhood, not just in the West End. The impending dawn was not going to catch anyone by surprise, and people had been pulling out gradually for years-half the people I grew up with, the smart ones, were off-planet, and even some of the dumb ones were out in the mines instead of hanging around the city. So if somebody had a way of stealing land, why go for the worst? Why the West End and not Westside, or the Notch, or somewhere?

Maybe there really was something that made the West End valuable after all, even with the sun coming up. I hadn't figured that in my four options.

That seemed pretty damn unlikely. Anything valuable out there should have been stripped out long ago. Most of the utility lines had been.

Somebody was making those title transfers, though, ostensibly buying up property. The next step seemed obvious: figure out who it was.

I had the com tally up a list of buyers, eliminating duplicates, and I got fifteen names. West End Properties was one; Westwall Redevelopment, Nightside Estates-there were half a dozen like that. All were meaningless corporate labels. The rest looked like casino names; there was even the classic Bond James Bond, with a five-digit code number behind it.

Someday I'll have to look up where that stupid name came from, and why the high rollers keep using it. I suppose it's another weird old Earth legend, like the Eastern Bunny, who wasn't going to be bringing me anything. Someday I'll look that one up, too, and find out why there isn't a Western Bunny. And just what the hell a bunny is, anyway.

I put the fifteen buyer names in permanent hold, then put them aside for a moment and ran out the list of prices paid.

They were pitiful. The highest was for an entire city block, six residence towers and a small park, one of the big developments from the city's prime, a century back; that was ten megacredits. When I was still welcome in the casinos I saw that much go on a single spin of a roulette wheel. Somebody-assuming that all fifteen names were actually the same outfit-had bought about two percent of Nightside City for just under a hundred megacredits.

Of course, it was the two percent that would be first to fry, but still, I felt like crying when I saw how cheaply my hometown was going.

And the big question remained: Why was somebody buying?

Was somebody buying, really? I still hadn't checked on the authenticity of these deals. Just because I saw prices listed didn't mean that anyone had actually paid those prices.

I ran out a list of the sellers and glanced down it for familiar names. There were a few-mostly corporations that wouldn't want to talk to me. IRC had a lot of influence.

I ran an extension on that list, asking for the names of the corporate officers who actually signed or thumbed the deeds. I looked it over again.

It was too bad buyers didn't need to sign deeds in the City, because I thought I might have found some interesting names that way. I ran a check, just in case, but no, no corporate buyers had let any individual names go on record.

I went back to the sellers.

I didn't exactly have any close friends on that list, but I did find someone I was on speaking terms with, a banker, and I decided to give her a call. I'd met her two years earlier, when I traced a couple of kilocredits that had somehow wound up in the wrong account; she'd been the officer authorizing the retrieval. I'd spoken to her once or twice since, but not for months. Four weeks ago she'd signed a deed on behalf of the Epimethean Commerce Bank, which had sold a foreclosure on Deng to Westwall Redevelopment.

I called the bank, since it was business hours, and asked the reception software for Mariko Cheng-and got put on hold for about half a galactic year.

I hate that. The damn program ought to be able to spare enough memory to stay on the line and chat, but no, it put me on hold. They always do that. I just had to sit there and wait.