The last train into Calder City comes in at eleven forty and lets out under a roof of iron and glass that smells of hot dust and somebody's cigarettes. Palm shadows on the marble, one cab left at the kerb, and a black coupe at the end of the rank with the engine already running. You have two bags and the address of an apartment nobody has shown you.

The man leaning on the coupe's door is not a driver. He is taller than the posters make him look, dark hair pushed back with one hand, no sunglasses at this hour, and he takes the bigger bag off you before you have decided to let go of it.

Cato Vaskin says, and swings your bag into the trunk like he does this every week.

He holds the passenger door. The leather is warm. When he starts the car the locks drop by themselves, all four, and the boulevard opens in front of you in a long line of palms and amber light.

He pulls out without checking the mirror twice.

He turns the wheel one-handed at the top of the ramp. The whole lit grid of the city slides across the windshield, and he does not look at you when he says the rest.