William Fitzgerald had been in an odd mood when he agreed to take the job as courier and he had been kicking himself all the way up the coast. It had been a stupid thing to do, and he had realized it before the door had closed behind his client, a weedy young man who couldn’t meet his eyes. He might have called him back, returned his money, and bowed out; it would have been a blow to his professional pride but William Fitzgerald had long ago rooted every last vestige of that from his soul. Instead it was a deeper, stranger urge that made him swallow his words and saw him driving a rattling tondeleo north along the ocean.

He couldn’t explain it to himself, so he kept turning it over sourly in his mind. Outside the sun blazed on the vineyards and the hills, but he didn’t see it. There was nothing for him between the city and Marinas, nothing except traffic and car noise.

There was a turn-off where the road dropped down a long grassy slope into Marinas, nothing more than a smear of asphalt with a whitewashed metal fence to keep everyone but the determined from falling down the cliff. William Fitzgerald stopped the tondeleo and pulled at his flask, eyes dazzled by the sunset. Marinas was laid out below, but he saw no maps, no circuit boards, no puzzles, only the alien industry of an anthill, or a termite nest when the rotten wall falls away.

Stephen requested it, Andrew wrote it

The man William Fitzgerald was following ran out into the lobby wild-eyed. “There’s been a murder!” he cried. William Fitzgerald was slouching next to the desk, making sour comments to the clerk. The man gabbled explanations until the clerk told him to shut up. “Save it for the police, mac.” William Fitzgerald coughed into his collar.

The dead man was lying sprawled in a puddle of afternoon sunlight, twisted over himself at an unnatural angle. The clerk grunted. “He’s dead, right enough. Check his pockets, you.”

The man stuttered and stumbled and looked like he was going to throw up, so William Fitzgerald pushed him out of the way and rolled the corpse over. A sweet scent filled the room, which, if he’d liked flowers, William Fitzgerald would have known was honeysuckle.

“My god, what’s happened to his face?” The young man jacknifed and began to vomit noisily on the terrazzo. While the clerk was distracted, William Fitzgerald pocketed the dead man’s wallet and pocket watch.

Waste not, want not.

At three in the morning the subways weren’t deserted but they were pretty empty. They felt used-up, like a house after a party or a stadium after the last fans have left. William Fitzgerald rode them around and around then, huddled in a long, stained duster, feet drawn up on the seat, head on his knees, and counted the freaks and the junkies as they got on and off.

He was two cars back when the first one was murdered by what would become known as the Subway Killer, watched dispassionately as the victim, a rail-thin boy with a shaven and pimply head, fought and was beaten and was killed, without moving, without the least interest. It all happened silently, muffled and distant through the plexiglass and the wan lighting. When it was over, the Subway Killer came back through the cars, chest heaving, and walked right past William Fitzgerald. They got off at the same stop, climbed the stairs together, and separated at the corner of Fifth and Pine. On every concrete step a little red circle remained behind, fallen from the hands of the man climbing ahead of William Fitzgerald.

He made no effort to remember his face.

It was an odd request, noted William Fitzgerald. He didn’t see the point of it, and it was making him testy.

“There’s money enough there and more,” said the grey man. He had grey eyes and hair but it went beyond that. He had a grey personality, one that avoided scrutiny as habitually as William Fitzgerald’s. William Fitzgerald had understood this as soon as the grey man walked in, and resented it. The money was certainly there, more than if the job had been strictly honest, and enough more to make that all right. He didn’t trust him.

“Certainly not,” said the grey man. “That’s all right, as far as that goes. Call him, if you like. His number is –“

He knew the number, was dialling it even as the grey man rattled off the digits. It was one of the numbers in his little leatherette book, one written in the oldest ink, in the strictest cypher.

“Do it,” said the gravelly voice at the other end, before William Fitzgerald could say anything. There was the burr of disconnection. William Fitzgerald recradled the phone without bothering to mime a conversation. He would take the job.

“Of course,” said the grey man. He handed an envelope across the desk to William Fitzgerald. Inside were names and dates and addresses; bank account numbers, safe deposit box keys. And a picture of the gravelly voice, staring forthrightly up from the glossy paper, teeth bright and large in that famous grin. William Fitzgerald set about framing his client, per his instructions, with the quietude of a skilled craftsmen.

Autumn was a slow season for William Fitzgerald. The sudden chill in the air frightened people, reminded them that a long, cold winter was coming. Bridges were mended, wandering eyes were stilled, hot blood lost its ardor; all the cavepeople huddled close together. Autumn was the season of virtue.

He didn’t like taking what he thought of as “casebook” work, but he had needs, even if few and inexpensive. Scotch, coffee, and rent were inescapable. Therefore in September he reunited a whilom orphan with her family, secured their inheritance for the desperate survivors of a tyrannical miser, and prevented (legitimately!) the conviction of an innocent young man. In October, he unmasked a blackmailer with too much professional pride to buy William Fitzgerald’s silence, exorcised the ‘ghost’ — in reality a spiteful nephew — haunting the Pemberleys (which nephew laughingly confessed his hoax to his propinquity, to William Fitzgerald’s chagrin), and uncovered a drug ring for a frustrated police officer. From each of his clients he received much gratitude and little money.

It seldom snowed in his city, but winter had come when the leaves had fallen from the trees and the tops of the tallest buildings disappeared into the clouds. Two and a half months of foreboding had despaired every heart but the most sensitive, and William Fitzgerald could relax into his accustomed round of peeping, extortion, and blackmail.