"Wait a minute, you don't know why her file was destroyed?"

　　"Is why we're gonna need your help. The money's good."

　　"Oh, shit. Yah, hah, hah, hah, you lost her's what happened, some idiot back there wiped out the computer file, right? Now you don't even know where she is, and you think I do."

　　"Not exactly. We think now she's headín back here."

　　"She wa'n' spoze to Hector, that was never part of the deal. I wondered how long it was gonna take — twelve, thirteen years, not bad, you mind if I call the Guinness Book Hot Line with this, it has to be a world record for fascist regimes keepin' their word."

　　"Still simmerín away with those same old feelings, I see — figured you'd be mellower by now, maybe some reconciliation with reality, I dunno."

　　"When the State withers away, Hector."

　　"Caray, you sixties people, it's amazing. Ah love ya! Go anywhere, it don't matter — hey, Mongolia! Go way out into smalltown Outer Mongolia, ése, there's gonna be some local person about your age come runnín up, two fingers in a V, hollerín, 'What's yer sign, man?' or singín 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' note for note."

　　"Satellites, everybody hears everything, space is really something, what else?"

　　The dope cop permitted himself an Eastwood-style mouth-muscle nuance. "Don't be disingenuous, I know you still believe in all that shit. All o' you are still children inside, livín your real life back then. Still waitín for that magic payoff. But no prob, I can live with that. …… and it ain't like you're lazy or afraid to work, either. …… impossible to tell with you, Zoyd. Never could figure out how innocent you thought you were. Sometimes you looked just like a hippie bum musician, for months at a shot, as if you never turned a buck any other way. Rill puzzlín."

　　"Hector! Bite yer tongue! You tellin' me I — I wasn't innocent, me behavin' like a saint through it all?"

　　"You behaved about like everybody else, pardner, sorry."

　　"That bad."

　　"I won't aks you to grow up, but just sometime, please, aks yourself, OK, 'Who was saved?' That's all, rill easy, 'Who was saved?' "

　　"Beg pardon?"

　　"One OD'd on the line at Tommy's waitín for a burger, one got into some words in a parkin lot with the wrong gentleman, one took a tumble in a faraway land, so on, more 'n half of 'em currently on the run, and you so far around the bend you don't even see it, that's what became of your happy household, you'd've done better up against the SWAT team. Just in the privacy of your thotz, Zoyd. As a exercise, li'l kinda Zen meditation. 'Who was saved?' "

　　"You, Hector."

　　"Ay se va, go on, break your old compinche's heart. Here I thought you knew everything, it turns out you don't know shit." Grinning — a stretched and terrible face. It was the closest Hector got to feeling sorry for himself, this suggestion he liked to put out that among the fallen, he had fallen further than most, not in distance alone but also in the quality of descent, having begun long ago concentrated and graceful as a sky diver but — the tos-tada procedure was minor evidence — he growing less professional the longer he fell, while his skills as a field man depreciated. He had come, with these falling years, simply to rely on going in, trying to neutralize whoever was there with a repertoire of assault that still ran from stupefy to obliterate, and if they were waiting for him one time and got in the first move, ay muere, too bad. Hector sadly knew this wasn't anywhere near the samurai condition of always being on that perfect edge prepared to die, a feeling he'd known only a few times in his life, long ago. Nowadays, with his old fighting talents lapsed, what looked like simple impulse or will might as easily have been advanced self-hatred. Zoyd, the big idealist, liked to believe that Hector remembered everybody he'd ever shot at, hit, missed, booked, questioned, rousted, double-crossed — that each face was filed in his conscience, and the only way he could live with such a history was to take these chances with his own bad ass, upping the ante as he moved into his late midcareer. This theory at least had kept Zoyd from lying around hatching plots to assassinate Hector, as others had been known to waste hours of potentially productive lives doing. Hector was the kind of desperado whose ideal assassin was himself — he could choose the best method, time, and place and would always have the best motives for it of anyone.

　　"So, let me guess, I'm spoze to be some early-warning alarm, some invisible beam she can walk through and break, so you get a few minutes' edge but meanwhile I'm the one gets interrupted, or come to think of it, broken, somethin' like that?"

　　"Not at all. You can go on with your life, such as it is. Nobody runnín you, you don't call in, we don't call unless we need you. All's you got to do's be there, in place — be yourself, as your music teacher probably used to tell you."

　　Late hit, Zoyd thought, not like him, what's wrong with the li'l fella today, with this edge on everything? "Well sounds like a breeze, and you mean I get paid for it too?"

　　"Special Employee scale, maybe even a bonus."

　　"Used to be a twenty, as I recall, limp and warm from some agent's wallet his kid gave him for Christmas. . . ."

　　"Sure — you'll find today it can be well into the low three figures, Zoyd."

　　"Wait a minute — bonus? What for?"

　　"Whatever."

　　"Can I have a uniform, a badge, a piece?"

　　"You gonna do it?"

　　"Bullshit Hector, you givin' me a choice?"

　　The federale shrugged. "It's a free country. The Lord, as they call him around my office, created all of us, even you, with free will. I think it's weird you don't even want to find out about her."

　　"You're one sentimental hombre, you meddlin' ol' Cupid ya. Well maybe you can relate to this — it took me a long time even to get to where I am on the whole subject o' her, now you want to post me right back down into it again, but guess what, I don't want to go back 'n' waller in all 'at."

　　"How about your kid, then?"

　　"Yes, Hector. What about her? I really need to hear some more federal advice right now about how I should be bringin' up my own kid, we know already how much all you Reaganite folks care about the family unit, just from how much you're always in fuckin' around with it."

　　"Maybe this ain't gonna work after all."

　　"It does seem," Zoyd careful, "like that you're spending a lot on one long-ago federal case everybody's forgotten."

　　"You should see how much. Maybe it goes beyond your ex-old lady, li'l buddy."

　　"Far, far beyond?"

　　"I used to worry about you, Zoyd, but I see I can rest easy now the Vaseline of youth has been cleared from your life's lens by the mild detergent solution of time, in its passing. …… ." Hector sat slumped in zomoskepsis, or the contemplation of his soup. "I should charge you my consultancy fee, but I already checked your shoes, so I'll give you this for free." Was he reading strange soup messages? "Your ex-old lady, up till they terminated her budget line, was livín in a underground of the State, not like th' old Weatherpeople or nothín, OK? but a certain kind of world that civilians up on the surface, out in the sun thinkín 'em happy thotz, got no idea it's even there……" Hector was usually too cool to be much of a lapel-grabber, but something in his voice now, had Zoyd been wearing a jacket, might have warned of an attempt. "Nothín like that shit on the Tube, nothín at all…… and cold …… colder than you ever want to find out about. . . ."

　　"That case, I got no problem staying out of the way, 'specially anybody she's been runnin' with, and good luck yourself, pal."