I was damned if I knew why. Yes, I’d known Charlie. He came into Bordertown cocky, desperate to be a desperado. He told us his name was Charles Bonney, and to anyone who didn’t recognize it, he pointed out that Bonney was Billy the Kid’s name. It was Scully, lounging at a back table in the Ferret, who finally drawled, “So you’re Bonnie Prince Charlie? Welcome name to the ane true Prin.” The name couldn’t help but stick.

Charlie didn’t usually keep the company I did, or if he did, it was out at the brittle edge. Charlie worked questionable jobs for unpleasant people, ran errands in the service of projects I didn’t want to know about. I didn’t like him, I didn’t dislike him. If he was dead, I probably didn’t want to know why.

You can’t always get what you want. “He fell out of the belfry up on High Street yesterday,” Rico said. “The tattle is that he was playing a little turnabout on his employer. Got laid off in a big way.”

“Why are you telling us?” I asked, because somebody had to.

“Because I’d like to find his employer.”

Wolfboy spread his hands: Don’t look at us.

I felt the same way. Then I heard, really heard, the infinitive verb in Rico’s sentence.

“No,” I said.

Wolfboy and the Ticker looked politely confused; they hadn’t picked up the clue yet. Rico went on.

quickly, as if she had to convince them before they caught on. As if she had to convince anyone but me. “Charlie was running for somebody doing business in a particular kind of designer drop. Looks like he ran the wrong way with something.”

Tick-Tick leaned across the table. “Are you choosing not to speak English?”

Rico slid the Peepers down her nose and gave her a stare over them. Brown eyes. “He was taking illicit substances to people who wanted to purchase them, exchanging them for money, and possibly failing to take the money back to the place where the illicit substances came from. Better?”

Tick-Tick nodded, her whole face working to stifle a grin.

“Come on,” I said, and I heard the way my voice cut across the civilized mood. “Charlie was a little thug. A little Soho thug. Thirty of ‘em could be mowed down in an afternoon and the Silver Suits wouldn’t look up from their paperwork.”

“Not quite true,” Rico assured me, her expression mildly wounded. “But you’re right. I don’t really give a damn about Charlie. So why am I here?”

We exchanged an uncertain glance—or at least, Tick-Tick and Wolfboy did, and tried to include me.