Max chuckled. ‘‘It wouldn’t be a long one, Garrett. That girl has notions about how things oughta be, even if she ain’t figured out where she fits. Still, you talkin’ about marryin’ for the beer instead of the money . . . I like that.’’

Gilbey lugged over three big tankards. He settled. We three made up points of a lopsided triangle.

The professional fire tender left without being invited. Probably part of his job to know when.

I said, ‘‘There was talk about ghosts. And bugs.’’

‘‘At the World, you mean.’’ Gilbey. With foam on his upper lip.

‘‘That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?’’

‘‘Partly,’’ Max admitted.

‘‘Mostly,’’ Gilbey said.

‘‘Mainly.’’ Old Man Weider drained off half a pint.

‘‘There’s something going on over there that ain’t right. I don’t believe it’s ghosts. I think it’s somebody working stunts. With extortion in mind.’’

‘‘There are bugs, though,’’ Gilbey said.

‘‘In the winter?’’

‘‘In the winter. And the World won’t work if the customers have to deal with bugs.’’

I didn’t say so but bugs are a fact of life. In my world, anyway. You have to come to a natural understanding with them, so to speak.

‘‘You’ll see,’’ Gilbey promised.

My skepticism was too obvious.

Gilbey clambered to his feet. I thought he was going for refills. I was wrong. He collected a drawing board, two feet by three. A sheet of fine handmade paper was affixed. Someone had used writing sticks to create excellent drawings of a building.

I have a small financial interest in the manufactory that produces the writing sticks and a dozen other miraculous gimmicks.

Max has a bigger chunk of the same operation. As does Tinnie’s family. They provided the capital. I delivered the inventor.

Max said, ‘‘They call those ‘elevations,’ Garrett. That’s what the World will look like when it’s done.’’

‘‘All right. I’ll take your word. But these two here look more like maps than pictures.’’

Gilbey said, ‘‘They are maps. This is the ground-level layout. The band pits. The stages. The passageways to the center. We thought we could do the vendor work out of there. A carpenter who knows theater told us that was dumb. So that’s where the actors will wait and change and where the ready props will be stored. The vendors will operate from under the second– and first-class seating.’’

‘‘All right.’’ I followed his finger but didn’t really picture it. ‘‘It looks like a pie.’’

‘‘Our clever innovation,’’ Max said. ‘‘There are a lot of theaters these days. Not many get a full house after the first week of a play’s run. So we’ll run three at once. With limited audiences. That will make it harder to get into one of our shows. So, if you do, you’ve got something to brag about. People want to be part of the elite. We manage it right, we’ll have them trying to outdo each other in how many times they’ve been to one of our plays. We’ll use special paper tickets that they can keep and show off.’’

Max has a knack for creating artificial shortages that spark snob appeal.

Gilbey added, ‘‘We’re still a ways from a final plan. We’d like to come up with movable walls so we can change the size of the pie slices.’’

‘‘All right,’’ I said. ‘‘I see the layout. What’s this?’’

‘‘That’s the cellar. Under the floor and stage. So people and stuff can come up from there. And for storage. Prop storage is a big problem for theaters.’’

Max chimed in. ‘‘This will be only the second theater in TunFaire built to be a theater.’’

‘‘And all this is going up now? In the weather we’re having?’’

‘‘Yep. But it isn’t going as fast as it should.’’

I was amazed. TunFaire’s construction people don’t like to work in bad weather. On the other hand, they’re not fond of not eating.

Gilbey said, ‘‘We want to open in time for the spring season.’’

Thatwas ambitious. But Max Weider generally accomplishes what Max Weider sets out to do.

‘‘All right. I know the general plan. What do you want from me?’’

Gilbey told me, ‘‘What you do across the street. Show up unexpectedly. See what’s going on.’’

‘‘Find out who’s sabotaging things,’’ Max said. ‘‘It’s trivial stuff now. Pranks. Petty theft. Vandalism. Nobody’s asked for protection money yet, but it feels like it could turn serious.’’

‘‘Ghosts and bugs aren’t serious?’’

‘‘Nuisances add up.’’

‘‘Finances? In case I need to bring in other people? Assuming you want quick results.’’

‘‘I haven’t caught you robbing me yet. Manvil, give him what he needs. Keep records, Garrett.’’ Not one of my strengths, he knew. ‘‘I’m interested in results.’’

Max is a bottom-line guy. And proof that good things happen when you keep an eye on that end of life’s math.

Gilbey prepared papers. I asked, ‘‘The Old Man really has a new reason to live?’’

‘‘When he forgets Hannah and the kids. The theater excites him.’’

‘‘And you?’’

He lied, ‘‘I’m pretty much past the worst.’’

‘‘And Alyx?’’

‘‘Alyx worries us. Alyx hasn’t faced it yet.’’

‘‘All you can do is watch her and be ready when she needs you.’’

‘‘How are you going to start?’’

‘‘Go look around the construction site.’’

‘‘Use the papers. I’ll have your advance against expenses messengered to your place.’’

‘‘Good. It won’t be my fault if the money evaporates somewhere out there.’’

‘‘No. But Max would take a long, hard look if anything did happen.’’

People don’t have much faith in other people’s honesty anymore.

I didn’t recognize the World first time past. I thought they’d just be getting started, not almost finished.

I expected lots of guards, too. Thieves inevitably appear wherever there’s something burnable. Even in this brave new postwar world, where law and order threatens to become a universal disease.

I was a hundred yards into the Tenderloin before I realized I’d missed. I turned. There it was. Looking just like one of the elevations Gilbey had shown me, not quite complete. How do you walk right on by a round building without noticing?

Max had used the sheer weight of his own fortune, supported by selective gratuities, to gain possession of a grand tract on the edge of the anything-goes part of town. He’d cleared the tenements and whorehouses, the taverns and feeble storefront-branch churches.

I headed back, wondering if there was something about Max that I’d been missing. The World looked like a monument to an aging man’s ego. Gilbey’s elevations had done little to betray the scale of the project. Maybe that’s how you miss a round building. It’s too big to see.

‘‘Where you goin’ there, slick?’’ a bony old man with a peg leg, a ragged white beard, a truncheon, and a wild walleye wanted to know. His other eye was glass and brown instead of a washed-out blue.

‘‘Do you read?’’

‘‘Some.’’

‘‘Here’s word from the owner.’’ I produced the paperwork Gilbey had given me. ‘‘I’m a security specialist. The Old Man isn’t happy with the way things are going.’’

«Who?»

‘‘Max Weider. Of the brewery Weiders. The man who pays your salary.’’

‘‘Lego Bunk pays my salary, ace. And he’s one cheap-ass mortar forker.’’

Watching a semiliterate, one-eyed, walleyed man try to read Gilbey’s fancy hand was an adventure. My patience got strained before the old boy nodded. ‘‘All right, chief. Guess you’re real. Mind me asking what you’re supposed to do?’’

‘‘You have a name?’’

‘‘They call me Handsome. I don’t know why.’’

Made no sense to me, either. ‘‘Handsome, the boss is worried about delays. Says people are blaming ghosts and bugs. Says he don’t believe it. He wants some heads busted. In order to encourage the others.’’

Handsome understood. I’d referenced a bad habit of Venageta’s rulers during the recent conflict. If they thought their troops weren’t trying hard enough, they executed a few. In order to encourage the others.