Chapter One

     The ancient TriMet bus lurched forward, without warning, throwing Joe Larivee into the passenger standing behind him. He apologized as he watched his sandwich skid down the aisle toward the back of the bus. A skinny bare arm, red and pocked with oozing sores, reached out and snatched it.

     “Shit,” Joe said, under his breath. It would be a day without lunch. Payday had been yesterday, but, once again, The Agency was out of funds, and he was out of food stamps, and out of credit with the burrito man on Division. Not that Arturo had any edible tortillas anymore since the wheat rationing.

     “One hundred twenty-second and Stark,” called out the pre-recorded announcement on the bus’ speaker system, “this stop sponsored by Tommy Tonkin Bicycles by Toyota.”

     An old woman sitting in the seat nearest to Joe, rose with difficulty and hobbled off the bus. Joe sat down in her place. The seat, broken by a vandal, or perhaps merely a victim of neglect, bore a large gaping wound which pinched, and poked him in the buttocks each time the bus hit a pothole. A young man beside him gripped a ragged backpack, held it tightly against his chest with whitened knuckles, and looked, frantic-eyed, out the window, as though searching for an escape. Joe’s heart skipped. What was in the backpack? Why was the boy so scared? Joe could see that was what he was, just a boy with a few scraggly hairs jutting out of his chin. Settle down, he told himself, there’s a hundred or more reasons why this guy might be scared. He looked too much like a jackrabbit to be a ’cider.

     In front of him, a woman wearing earbuds jerked her head rhythmically to some fast-paced music. Tweaking, Joe thought. The woman was likely younger than he, but her teeth were gone, and her face scarred with the pockmarks of an old-fashioned meth addict, leaving her looking years older. He seldom saw trash-tweakers anymore with all of the new designer drugs out there, drugs with effects less obvious to the casual observer. He suspected that she wasn’t using an ordinary meth-amphetamine, but something stronger, a derivative called black trash, or death, due to the speed with which it destroyed the mind and body. Next to the tweaker sat a young woman with wrap-around sunglasses; over the past few months, more and more of these things had begun to appear. He had a vague idea about them, some new computer hardware which tapped into the simulated worlds of the grid. Joe didn’t have much knowledge about that sort of thing. Just another way for the advertisers to get into your head and sell you crap.

     Joe sighed and pulled a file folder out of his bag, “Connie Velasques” written in pencil on the tab. Beneath the name he could see the ghosts of Mary Snider, Tomas Sylvan, Letitia Jackson, partially erased. Erased just enough so that a stranger would not recognize them. But Joe did. And he knew their children, and their ex-spouses and lovers, and their job history, and their drug habits, and their pain. Joe felt the pain of each and every one.

     “You’ve got to remove yourself from all that, Joe,” Susan Miller had said to him one day in the break room. “You’ve got to remember your boundaries. You’re not responsible for the mess these people’s lives are in. You can’t hold on to all this suffering, Joe. It’ll kill you.” That was five years ago, his first week on the job. He wondered whatever happened to Susie. One day, she just didn’t show up at The Agency for work. It seemed like a recurring script. Many of the new case workers didn’t last six months, but even old-timers like Susie vanished without notice, worn out, unable to heed their own advice.

     He returned to Connie’s folder. This would be just a routine check-in. Find out how Connie was managing at her new job. How the children were faring. If Connie was keeping clean. Connie had just kicked a seven year heroin habit when she was assigned to Joe in January. She had done exceptionally well over the past nine months. Last week, the kids had started school, so the baby-sitting problem would be eased. He had high hopes for her. But Joe’s heart sank when the bus pulled up in front of the apartment building, the ambulance, the blue and red flashing lights of the police cars, a knot of officers standing around an open door. The door to Connie’s apartment.

     It was going to be another one of those fucking days.