“You look like you’re gonna faint,” said Kostos. “Take a seat. Supposed to be something coming down from the hounds any minute. I’d’ve gone to the station, but they’re keeping the numbers clamped down for security. There’s a peach with the Evening Expo who’s got an in with the chief—or he’s got it in with her—and she said she’d come ’round and tell us after. She’ll keep all the crispy bits for herself and her scoop, but maybe you’ll hear something good.”

Expediency trumping decorum, Aristide downed the rest of his drink in one swallow. “I very much doubt it.”

Awareness of a commotion at the entrance spread through the crowd like wind through grass, making voices rise and fall, heads turn. Folk shouted, then hissed at each other for quiet, until finally, Aristide asked, “What’s going on?”

But Kostos had hopped down from his seat and nabbed a colleague. They were both craning their necks to look over the sea of oiled hair and pillbox hats. “Is that Oleksa who just came in?” asked Kostos.

“Can’t tell,” the other man said.

“Hey!” Kostos might not have had a radio voice, but it carried. “Oleksa! What’d you hear at the kennel?”

“Laurie,” said the bartender, “don’t you go shouting like that in my place.”

Four people turned around to shush her.

“Polanka says it’s Catwalk.” The woman Kostos had addressed, who was the cause of the commotion, climbed up on a chair and flipped a notebook open like she was giving her own impromptu press conference. “I already filed it, scullers, or I wouldn’t be so free with my spoils. Our pal Chief Polanka says early investigations turned up three crispy bodies and explosives similar to those used by the nice folk who ousted Acherby and tore up half the country in the meantime.”

Some shouted protests, swiftly put down by people eager to hear the rest of the story.

“Yup,” Oleksa went on. “Emmeline Frye’s private interests look to be the target of Catwalk terrorism.”

In one fell swoop, Frye had made herself the victim of a grievous wrong, taken a chain gun to Saeger’s chances, and ruined Aristide’s prospects for blackmail. If he wasn’t so utterly furious or empty of hope, he might admire her.

“Say,” said Kostos, leaning in. “You knew Lehane. What d’you think she’d make of this?”

“This big swell knew the Spotlight?” asked a woman sitting next to them. “Knock me. Hang on, Laurie is this that sculler … Makricosta, right? No swineshittin’?” She pulled out a steno pad and pencil. “Yeah, what would she say? You were friends, right? Good friends. You think she’d have backed Saeger?”

Kostos half-managed to look sheepish.

“Hang on,” said the bartender. “You were friends with the Spotlight?”

“That dry-bite bobtail killed my cousin,” said the barback.