“Lieutenant Murdoch,” Dagmar said, “can you call every hotel and motel in Greater Los Angeles to find out if Litvinov, or his alias, is staying there? ”

“No. There are thousands of hotels altogether. We don’t have that kind of manpower.”

“I do,” Dagmar said.

There was another pause.

“Here’s what I figured out,” Dagmar said. “Either Litvinov has left town, in which case you’ll have to hope you can get him arrested back home in Saint Petersburg or whatever-”

“He’s based in Hamburg,” Murdoch said.

“Okay,” Dagmar said, “Hamburg. But my point is, either he’s gone, or he’s still in town. And if he’s still in town, it’s because he’s realized he shot the wrong man and is still planning on going after his real target. So if he isn’t found, someone else could die.”

After a moment of thoughtful silence, Murdoch spoke.

“Let me sleep on it,” he said. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you,” said Dagmar.

And got busy with her rewrite.

FROM: Consuelo

I’m going to steal a page from Chatsworth’s book and decline to reveal how I came by this information.

But.

Litvinov, the assassin, entered the country with a Latvian passport under the name Ainars Vilumanis. Latvia is a NATO country and he probably had less difficulty entering than with a Russian passport. Since Litvinov was born in Latvia he probably speaks acceptable Latvian.

As of 9:00PDT this morning he hadn’t used that passport to leave the country. He may still be in the Los Angeles area, and it’s possible we could locate him.

Anyone want to help me try?

FROM: Corporal Carrot

I thought Litvinov had nothing to do with the game.

FROM: Hanseatic

That’s what I thought, too, and then I saw this on Briana’s MySpace page this morning:

Thanks, Consuelo. You’re on the right track.

FROM: LadyDayFan

I am finding this really intriguing. Can anyone think of another example of a character in a game addressing a player directly?

FROM: Hanseatic

Only when we’ve screwed up badly and need a nudge to get us back on the right track.

FROM: LadyDayFan

We should consider ourselves nudged. We should assume that the death of Austin Katanyan is a part of the game until proven otherwise.

FROM: Corporal Carrot

But it was in the papers! The real papers! Great Big Idea can’t plant phony stories in the L.A. Times! Not stories that big, anyway.

FROM: Hanseatic

If we solve all the puzzles like good little players, everything will be revealed.

FROM: LadyDayFan

So how are we going to find Litvinov? His rap sheet doesn’t list any known associates in Los Angeles.

FROM: Hanseatic

Let’s not forget that the rap sheet lists a number of aliases. We should search for those as well.

Dagmar watched as the messages appeared on Our Reality Network, followed by concerted action as the available players located an online Los Angeles telephone directory, divided up the alphabet between themselves, and began to call motels.

Dagmar could only hope that Litvinov hadn’t googled his name and found this bulletin board, and wasn’t aware that his cover identity had been penetrated.

People in places like Dubai, the Low Countries, and Ceylon began calling motels in places like Culver City, San Gabriel, and Costa Mesa. Observing the process was fascinating, and Dagmar watched the messages pile up for the next forty-five minutes as more and more people got involved.

If Litvinov was staying at a hotel under any of his known aliases, he was dead meat.

Good, she thought.

Her handheld played “Harlem Nocturne,” and the display showed Charlie’s name.

“Where are you? ” she answered.

For the second day in a row, Charlie hadn’t come into the office-and today Karin wasn’t in, either, so Dagmar hadn’t been able to ask anyone where Charlie had gone.

“Right now? ” Charlie said. “I’m at home.”

“You haven’t been in your office.”

“I’ve got stuff to do.”

Dagmar figured she wasn’t going to get any more out of him than that.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” she said. “For starters, I had to have Great Big Idea swept for bugs.”

Somewhat to Dagmar’s surprise, there was a long, thoughtful silence on the other end.

“Probably a good idea,” Charlie said. “Did you sweep the rest of the building? ”

“I don’t think Joe Clever is interested in the rest of the building.”

“Joe Clever? ” Charlie’s surprise was palpable.

Again there was an awkward silence.

“Charlie,” she said, “whose bugs did you think I was trying to sweep? ”

Charlie gave a nervous laugh.

“I got paranoid when you started talking about Austin being killed by the Russian Maffya,” he said. “I thought-I thought maybe Austin did step on them in some way.”

“My recollection,” Dagmar said, “is that you had pretty comprehensively dismissed that possibility.”

“Well,” Charlie said, “it’s still damned unlikely.”

Dagmar wished she could see him face-to-face. He was hiding something, and his expression might have told her what it was.

“Did you find out anything at the meeting?” Dagmar said. “When you met with Austin ’s partners? ”

“No,” Charlie said. “No Maffya connections.”

“Are you sure? ”

“We didn’t talk about Austin’s projects in that kind of detail. We mainly talked about who we could get to take Austin’s place, and how we could manage the company until we got the replacement.”

“How’s that going? ”

“Karin and I are sitting in my living room cold-calling rich, busy, successful people. How do you think it’s going? ”

Dagmar laughed. “So that’s why you’re calling me. You figure I won’t hang up on you.”

“Partly to hear the friendly voice, yes. But I actually have business to discuss with you.”

“I’d better give you an update first.”

She told him about Joe Clever and his James Bond van, about how she’d nudged the players toward helping the police find Litvinov and how Lieutenant Murdoch had furnished the Ainars Vilumanis identity, which she’d then passed on to Joe Clever to post in his Consuelo guise.

She told him how she was planning on altering the structure to make Austin a character in the game. She’d tentatively decided that Austin the game character had been killed because he possessed a piece of information he didn’t know was important.

“Of course,” she added, “we can change that if we ever find out why he was really killed.”

“Sounds good, I guess.” Charlie paused. “I don’t know how I feel about using my friend’s murder as an element in an online game.”

“I know how I feel,” Dagmar said. “I feel like a complete shit.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “That’s how I feel, too.”

“But if it catches the guy…”

“Yeah. If.”

“If it weren’t for the game and Joe Clever, we wouldn’t have any idea who had killed Austin. We’d be completely in the dark.”

“To give the devil his due,” Charlie said.

“Set a devil to catch a devil,” Dagmar said. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Charlie’s voice turned weary.

“Well,” he said, “you did good.”

Something in Dagmar responded to the fatigue in his voice, and she felt her own exhaustion descend on her, weariness and sorrow that settled over her shoulders like a heavy cloak, its weight pinning her to her chair.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Listen,” Charlie said. “Why I called in the first place. The coroner is done with Austin, so his parents are flying in tomorrow to pick up the body. I’m going to be meeting them at their hotel. Do you want to be there? ”

She felt the sadness clawing at her vocal cords, turning them husky.

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose.”

“They’re going to bury Austin back in Bridgeport,” Charlie said. “I don’t know anyone there, and I’m swamped with work, so I’m not going to fly out there for the funeral. But do you think we should do something here? ”