Ketzel clashed with this new administration. She became convinced they were trying to force her into early retirement. In her younger days, she might have schemed some subtle revenge, but she was in truth older, and fighting had become less appealing. Her husband wanted to move to Boca, she told Alfonzo with a sigh. “They don’t have winter there.” When it became clear Ketzel was going, Lucky might have used the opening as his chance to jump on top of the dog pile. But Alfonzo learned that Lucky harbored dreams of moving to the countryside. A short time after Ketzel announced her retirement, Lucky revealed he had accepted a job in the Buffalo library. Lucky told Alfonzo he had gotten into an intentional-living collective with a sheepdog couple, fifty sheep, three goats, and a flock of chickens. It sounded new-agey to Alfonzo, but he was happy for Lucky.

From then on, Alfonzo was alone. He thought replacement bosses would arrive, but they never did. It had something to do with the budget, the higher-ups said.

The vacancies, like the leaks and so many other problems, were always related to the budget. The budget was a practical and yet abstract creature invoked to explain away any and every issue within City Hall. Why do the subways run slow? Because the budget ate the money meant for a new signal system. Why must that hospital close? Because the budget got squeamish about the outer-borough ill.

Mayor Shergar had campaigned as a horse who would tame the budget. He snorted over pensions and promised that fat would be trimmed, departments streamlined and modernized and revamped. There would be public–private partnerships, and he would shrink the budget from a tiger to a kitten, which would make it easier for the city to drown the budget in the river.

And yet, once Shergar took office, the budget only acquired new cravings. It wanted the mayor to throw soirées and give tax breaks as party favors. It sulked. The budget didn’t want to expend too much of itself on the old or young, the infirm or the unruly. It wanted the attention of the rich and private. The budget had fantasies of omnipotence. It was hard to tell who, mayor or budget, was Svengali to whom.

The ins and outs of this relationship was of mostly casual interest to Alfonzo, but then he heard rumors that the mayor was planning to hire a private firm—Bunnywell Animals Atlantic—to take over public records.