“Yeah, right,” I said. I sat in a chair across the table from her. I reached across and tapped the holoset off. “How long you known my mother?” I asked. Another shot in the dark.

Umm Saad looked perplexed. “Your mother?”

“Goes by Angel Monroe sometimes. She’s staying down the hall from you.”

Umm Saad shook her head slowly. “I’ve only seen her once or twice. I’ve never spoken to her.”

“You must’ve known her before you came to this house.” I just wanted to see how big this conspiracy was.

“Sorry,” she said. She gave me a wide-eyed, innocent smile that looked as out of place on her as it would have on a desert scorpion.

Okay, sometimes a shot in the dark doesn’t get you anywhere. “And Abu Adil?”

“Who’s that?” Her expression was all angelic and virtuous.

I started to get angry. “I just want some straight answers, lady. What I got to do, bust up your kid?”

Her face got very serious. She was doing “sincere” now. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know any of those people. Am I supposed to? Did Friedlander Bey tell you that?”

I assumed she was lying about Abu Adil. I didn’t know if she’d been lying about my mother. At least I could check that out later. If I could believe my mother.

I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Yaa Sidi?” said Kmuzu. He sounded afraid that I might rip Umm Saad’s head off and hand it to her.

“All right,” I said, still feeling wonderfully malignant. I stood up and glared down at the woman. “You want to stay in this house, you’re gonna have to learn to be more cooperative. I’m gonna talk to you again later. Think up some better answers.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” said Umm Saad. She batted her heavy fake eyelashes at me. It made me want to punch her face in.

Instead, I turned and stalked out of the apartment. Kmuzu hurried behind me. “You can take the personality module out now, yaa Sidi,” he said nervously.

“Hell, I like it. Think I’ll leave it in.” Actually I did enjoy the feeling it gave me. There seemed to be a constant flood of angry hormones in my blood. I could see why Saied wore it all the time. Still, it wasn’t the right one to wear around the station house, and Shaknahyi’d promised to annihilate any moddy I wore in his presence. I reached up reluctantly and popped it out.

I could feel the difference immediately. My body was still quivering from the leftover adrenalin, but I calmed down pretty quick. I returned the moddy to my briefcase, then grinned at Kmuzu. “I was pretty tough, huh?” I said.

Kmuzu didn’t say a word, but his look let me know just how low his opinion was.

We went outside, and I waited while Kmuzu brought the car around. When Kmuzu let me out at the station house, I told him to go back home and keep Angel Monroe out of trouble. “And pay attention around Umm Saad and the boy too,” I said. “Friedlander Bey is sure she’s somehow connected to Reda Abu Adil, but she’s playing it very cagey. Maybe you can learn something.”

“I will be your eyes and ears, yaa Sidi,” he said.

As usual, the crowd of hungry young boys was loitering outside the copshop. They’d all begun waving and screaming when they saw my Westphalian sedan pull up to the curb. “O Master!” they cried. “O Compassionate!”

I reached for a handful of coins as I usually did, but then I remembered the Lamb Lady I’d helped the week before. I took out my wallet and dropped a five-kiam bill on each of the kids. “God open upon you,” I said. I was a little embarrassed to see that Kmuzu was watching me closely.

The boys were astonished. One of the older kids took my arm and steered me away from the rest. He was about fifteen years old, and already there was a dark shadow of beard on his narrow face. “My sister would be interested to meet such a generous man,” he said.

“I’m just not interested in meeting your sister.”

He grinned at me. Three of his yellow teeth had been broken off in some fight or accident. “I have a brother as well,” he said. I winced and went past him into the building. Behind me, the boys were yelling my praises. I was real popular with them, at least until tomorrow, when I’d have to buy their respect all over again.

Shaknahyi was waiting for me by the elevator. “Where you at?” he said. It seemed that no matter how early I got to work, Shaknahyi got there earlier.

“Aw right,” I said. Actually, I was still tired and I felt mildly nauseated. I could chip in a couple of daddies that would take care of all that, but Shaknahyi had me intimidated. Around him I functioned with just my natural talents and hoped they were still enough.

It wasn’t that long ago that I prided myself on having an unwired brain as smart and quick as any moddy in the city. Now I was putting all my confidence in the electronics. I’d become afraid of what might happen if I had to face a crisis without them.

“One of these days, we’re gonna have to catch Abu Adil when he’s not chipped in,” said Shaknahyi. “We don’t want to make him suspicious, but he’s got some tough questions to answer.”

“What questions?”

Shaknahyi shrugged. “You’ll hear ’em next time we pass by there.” For some reason, he wasn’t confiding in me any more than Papa had.

Sergeant Catavina found us in the corridor. I didn’t know much about him except he was Hajjar’s right-hand man, and that meant he had to be bent one way or another. He was a short man who lugged around too much weight by about seventy pounds. He had wavy black hair parted by a moddy plug, always with at least one daddy chipped in because he didn’t understand five words in Arabic. It was a total mystery to me why Catavina had come to the city. “Been lookin’ for you two,” he said. His voice was shrill, even filtered through the Arabic-language daddy.

“What is it?” I asked.

Catavina’s predatory brown eyes flicked between me and Shaknahyi. “Just got a tip on a possible homicide.” He handed Shaknahyi a slip of paper with an address on it. “Go take a look.”

“In the Budayeen,” said Shaknahyi.

“Yeah,” said the sergeant.

“Whoever called this in, anybody recognize the voice?”

“Why should anybody recognize the voice?” asked Catavina.

Shaknahyi shrugged. “We got two or three leads like this in the last couple of months, that’s all.”

Catavina looked at me. “He’s one of these conspiracy guys. Sees ’em everywhere.” The sergeant walked away, shaking his head.

Shaknahyi glanced at the address again and jammed the slip of paper into a shirt pocket. “Back of the Budayeen, spitting distance from the graveyard,” he said.

“If it isn’t just a crank call,” I said. “If there is a body in the first place.”

“There will be.”

I followed him down to the garage. We got into our patrol car and cut across the Boulevard il-Jameel and under the big gate. There was a lot of pedestrian traffic on the Street that morning, so Shaknahyi angled south on First Street and then west along one of the narrow, garbage-strewn alleys that wind between the flat-roofed, stucco-fronted houses and the ancient brick tenements. Shaknahyi drove the car up onto the sidewalk. We got out and took a good look at the building. It was a pale green two-story house in terrible disrepair. The entryway and front parlor stank of urine and vomit. The wooden lattices covering the windows had all been smashed some time ago, from the look of things. Everywhere we walked, we crunched broken brick and shards of glass. The place had probably been abandoned for many months, maybe years.

It was very still, the dead hush of a house where the power is off and even the faint whir of motors is missing. As we made our way up from the ground floor to the family’s rooms above, I thought I heard something small and quick scurrying through the trash ahead of us. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and I missed the sense of calm competence I’d gotten from Complete Guardian.