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“read it to me.”
    “IM received 6:12 P.M. as follows,” Joker recited. “‘I got your message. Need to talk at once. Please meet me near the rear entrance of the Muny at eight o’clock.’ End of message. The sender did not leave a logon or a number.”
    I felt a cold chill when I heard this message. I believe in coincidence as much as the next superstitious person, but this was a bit too much.
    An IM intended for John had been sent to me instead, requesting a meeting at the Muny … and, as synchronicity would have it, where would I happen to be when I received it? At the Muny.
    I took a deep breath. “Okay, Joker,” I said, “what’s the gag?”
    “What gag, Gerry?”
    “C’mon. Who really sent the message? Was it John?” I grinned. “Or was it Jah?”
    “Negative. The message did not originate from either of those individuals. The person sending the IM did not leave a logon or a return number, but I can assure you that it was not received from any PT with which I regularly interface.”
    This was flat-out impossible. E-mail could not be sent anonymously; Joker’s modem always logged the originating modem number. Joker must have contracted a virus of some sort. “Please run a self-diagnostic test,” I said.
    “Running test.” There was a long pause while Joker’s disk doctor pushed, prodded, asked embarrassing questions, and slipped a rectal thermometer up its cybernetic asshole. “Test complete,” Joker said at last. “All sectors are clean. There is no evidence of tampering with my architecture.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Neither do I, Gerry. Nonetheless, I do not have a return number for this IM.”
    I mulled it over for a second, then Joker spoke up again. “ I have opened a file, slugged ‘park,’ suffix numeral one. Are you ready to dictate, Gerry?”
    I shook my head, watching rain running down from the slate roof onto the awning. Squatters wandered back and forth around me, ignoring the guy leaning against a column with a hand clasped to his ear, apparently talking to himself. Down on the stage, a neogrunge band had replaced the killer yuppie; discordant guitar riffs and high-pitched feedback threatened to overwhelm the stolen PA system they had set up behind them. Black-market vendors were circulating through the aisles, hustling everything from wet popcorn to expired pharmaceuticals. Off in the far distance, beyond the trees, were the lights of the city’s central west end: clean, brilliant apartment towers, easily seen by thousands of people who were on prolonged camp-out in old U.S. Army tents, eating cold MREs by firelight and crapping in overflowing Port-O-Johnnies. Your tax dollars at work.
    “No,” I said. “Close and delete file. I’m going off-line now, okay?”
    “ I understand,” Joker said. “Signing off.”
    So. The self-diagnostic check had come up clean, and the IM wasn’t a prank. I pondered these mysteries while I wadded up the earphone and tucked it back into my jacket pocket. Why had a message obviously intended for John reached me instead, even though I was in the right place at the right time?
    I had no recourse except to go to the meeting place. Walking around the column, I bumped my way through the wet, hopeless crowd, heading for the amphitheater’s rear entrance gate.
    That was how it all began.
2
(Wednesday, 8:10 P.M.)
    P EOPLE WERE STILL SHUFFLING through the back entrance by the time I got there. According to the message Joker had received, I was ten minutes late for my appointment … or rather, for John’s appointment. I hung around for a couple of minutes, leaning against the fence near the gate and watching people go by, and was about to chalk off the message as some sort of neural-net glitch when a short figure in a hooded rain jacket approached me.
    “Are you Tiernan?” she asked softly.
    I gave myself a moment to size her up: a middle-aged black woman, her face only half seen beneath the soaked plastic hood, her hands hidden in