The descending sun played arsonist among high, dis­tant clouds. There was a light breeze. The temperature was perfect. It was a time to just lean back and feel content. Not many of those times fell my way.

I yelled for beer, then settled in to watch Nature redecorate the ceiling of the world. I didn't pay atten­tion to the street. The little man was there on the stoop, making himself at home, passing me the big copper bucket of beer he'd brought, before I noticed him.

Up to no good? What else? But the beer was Weider's best lager. I don't get it that often.

He was a teeny dink, all wrinkled and gray, with a cant to his eyes and a yellow of tooth that suggested a big dollop of nonhuman blood. I didn't know him. That was all right. There are a lot of people I don't know, but I wondered if he was one of the ones I wanted to keep on not knowing.

"Thanks. Good beer."

"Mr. Weider said you'd appreciate it."

I'd done a job for Weider, rooting out an in-house theft ring without getting his guilty children too dirty. To discourage a relapse the old man kept me on re­tainer. I wander around the brewery when I have noth­ing better to do. I make people nervous there. Considering what he'd been losing, I'm cheap insur­ance. The retainer isn't much.

"He tell you to see me?"

The dink took the bucket back, sipped like an ex­pert. "I'm unfamiliar with many facets of the secular world, Mr. Garrett. Mr. Weider is face-to-face with it every day. He said you were the man I need. Pro­vided, as he put it, I can pry you off your dead ass."

That sounded like Weider. "He's more achievement oriented than I am." And how. He started out with nothing; now he's TunFaire's biggest brewer and has fingers in twenty other pies.