“Yes, sir, but the timing-”

Her fingers upped tempo. Miller bit his lips. The cause was lost.

“Don’t go chasing conspiracies,” Shaddid said. “We’ve got a full board of crimes we know are real. Politics, war, system-wide cabals of inner planet bad guys searching for ways to screw us over? Not our mandate. Just get me a report that says you’re looking, I’ll send it back up the line, and we can get back to our jobs.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

Shaddid nodded and turned back to her terminal. Miller plucked his hat from the corner of her desk and headed out. One of the station house air filters had gone bad over the weekend, and the replacement gave the rooms a reassuring smell of new plastic and ozone. Miller sat at his desk, fingers laced behind his head, and stared at the light fixture above him. The knot that had tied itself in his gut hadn’t loosened up. That was too bad.

“Not so good, then?” Havelock asked.

“Could have gone better.”

“She pull the job?”

Miller shook his head. “No, it’s still mine. She just wants me to do it half-assed.”

“Could be worse. At least you get to find out what happened. And if you maybe spend a little time after hours digging into it just for practice, you know?”

“Yeah,” Miller said. “Practice.”

Their desks were unnaturally clean, his and Havelock’s both. The barrier of paperwork Havelock had created between himself and the station had eroded away, and Miller could tell from his partner’s eyes and the way his hands moved that the cop in Havelock wanted to get back into the tunnels. He couldn’t tell if it was to prove himself before his transfer went through, or just to break a few heads. Maybe those were two ways of saying the same thing.

Just don’t get yourself killed before you get out of here,Miller thought. Aloud, he said, “What have we got?”

“Hardware shop. Sector eight, third level in,” Havelock said. “Extortion complaint.”

Miller sat for a moment, considering his own reluctance as if it belonged to someone else. It was like Shaddid had given a dog just one bite of fresh meat, then pointed it back toward kibble. The temptation to blow off the hardware shop bloomed, and for a moment he almost gave in. Then he sighed, swung his feet down to the decking, and stood.

“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go make the station safe for commerce.”

“Words to live by,” Havelock said, checking his gun. He’d been doing that a lot more recently.

The shop was an entertainment franchise. Clean white fixtures offering up custom rigs for interactive environments: battle simulations, exploration games, sex. A woman’s voice ululated on the sound system, somewhere between an Islamic call to prayer and orgasm with a drumbeat. Half the titles were in Hindi with Chinese and Spanish translations. The other half were English with Hindi as the second language. The clerk was hardly more than a boy. Sixteen, seventeen years old with a weedy black beard he wore like a badge.

“Can I help you?” the boy said, eying Havelock with disdain just short of contempt. Havelock pulled his ID, making sure the kid got a good long look at his gun when he did it.

“We’d like to talk to”-Miller glanced at the complaint form on his terminal screen-“Asher Kamamatsu. He here?”

The manager was a fat man, for a Belter. Taller than Havelock, the man carried fat around his belly and thick muscles through the shoulders, arms, and neck. If Miller squinted, he could see the seventeen-year-old boy he had been under the layers of time and disappointment, and it looked a lot like the clerk out front. The office was almost too small for the three of them and stacked with boxes of pornographic software.

“You catch them?” the manager said.

“No,” Miller said. “Still trying to figure out who they are.”

“Dammit, I already told you. There’s pictures of them off the store camera. I gave you his fucking name.”

Miller looked at his terminal. The suspect was named Mateo Judd, a dockworker with an unspectacular criminal record.

“You think it’s just him, then,” Miller said. “All right. We’ll just go pick him up, throw him in the can. No reason for us to find out who he’s working for. Probably no one who’ll take it wrong, anyway. My experience with these protection rackets, the purse boys get replaced whenever one goes down. But since you’re sure this guy’s the wholeproblem… ”

The manager’s sour expression told Miller he’d made his point. Havelock, leaning against a stack of boxes marked, smiled.

“Why don’t you tell me what he wanted,” Miller said.

“I already told the last cop,” the manager said.

“Tell me.”

“He was selling us a private insurance plan. Hundred a month, same as the last guy.”

“Last guy?” Havelock said. “So this happened before?”

“Sure,” the manager said. “Everyone has to pay some, you know. Price of doing business.”

Miller closed his terminal, frowning. “Philosophical. But if it’s the price of doing business, what’re we here for?”

“Because I thought you… you people had this shit under control. Ever since we stopped paying the Loca, I’ve been able to turn a decent profit. Now it’s all starting up again.”

“Hold on,” Miller said. “You’re telling me the Loca Greiga stopped charging protection?”

“Sure. Not just here. Half of the guys I know in the Bough just stopped showing up. We figured the cops had actually done something for once. Now we’ve got these new bastards, and it’s the same damn thing all over again.”

A crawling feeling made its way up Miller’s neck. He looked up at Havelock, who shook his head. He hadn’t heard of it either. The Golden Bough Society, Sohiro’s crew, the Loca Greiga. All the organized crime on Ceres suffering the same ecological collapse, and now someone new moving into the evacuated niche. Might be opportunism. Might be something else. He almost didn’t want to ask the next questions. Havelock was going to think he was paranoid.

“How long has it been since the old guys called on you for protection?” Miller asked.

“I don’t know. Long time.”

“Before or after Mars killed that water hauler?”

The manager folded his thick arms; his eyes narrowed.

“Before,” he said. “Maybe a month or two. S’that got to do with anything?”

“Just trying to get the time scale right,” Miller said. “The new guy. Mateo. He tell you who was backing his new insurance plan?”

“That’s your job, figuring it. Right?”

The manager’s expression had closed down so hard Miller imagined he could hear the click. Yes, Asher Kamamatsu knew who was shaking him down. He had balls enough to squeak about it but not to point the finger.

Interesting.

“Well, thanks for that,” Miller said, standing up. “We’ll let you know what we find.”

“Glad you’re on the case,” the manager said, matching sarcasm for sarcasm.

In the exterior tunnel, Miller stopped. The neighborhood was at the friction point between sleazy and respectable. White marks showed where graffiti had been painted over. Men on bicycles swerved and weaved, foam wheels humming on the polished stone. Miller walked slowly, his eyes on the ceiling high above them until he found the security camera. He pulled up his terminal, navigated to the logs that matched the camera code, and cross-referenced the time code from the store’s still frames. For a moment, he thumbed the controls, speeding people back and forth. And there was Mateo, coming out of the shop. A smug grin deformed the man’s face. Miller froze the image and enhanced it. Havelock, watching over his shoulder, whistled low.

The split circle of the OPA was perfectly clear on the thug’s armband-the same kind of armband he’d found in Julie Mao’s hole.

What kind of company have you been keeping, kid?Miller thought. You’re better than this. You have to know you’re better than this.