All the Rage

SUMMARY:

Much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Gia, Repairman Jack doesn’t deal with electronic appliances—he fixes situations for people, situations that usually involve putting himself in deadly danger. His latest project is recovering a stolen necklace, which carries with it an ancient curse that may unleash a horde of Bengali demons. Jack is used to danger, but this time Gia’s daughter Vicky is threatened. Can Jack overcome the curse of the yellow necklace and bring Vicky safely back home?

All the Rage by F. Paul Wilson

for Jennifer and John and their new life together

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The Ozymandias Prather Oddity Emporium may seem familiar to some readers. Freak Show, the anthology I edited for the Horror Writers of America, chronicled its final tour. Thanks to Steven Spruill and Thomas Monteleone for allowing their characters from the anthology to appear here.

Readers familiar with the Garden State Parkway may wonder why they've never seen the New Gretna rest stop: you simply haven't looked hard enough.

Thanks to the usual crew for their enlightened and discerning input: David Hartwell, Coates Bateman, Elizabeth Monteleone, Steven Spruill, and Albert Zuckerman.

WEDNESDAY APRIL 20

"This is crazy," Macintosh said. "What are we doing here?"

Dr. Luc Monnet watched the unkempt younger man breathe into his grimy hands and rub them together as he paced back and forth on the wet grass. It had rained most of the day, but now the skies had cleared.

"You should have brought a jacket, Tom."

"You didn't tell me we'd be standing around in a field at goddamn three in the morning!"

A moonless sky vaulted above them. Nearby, the glowing ribbon of Route 290 lay still and largely empty; beyond it the lights of downtown Chicago lit the horizon with false dawn. Hulking masses of hotels or office buildings rose here and there across the flat land like desert buttes.

"You're the one who wanted to know the source of the molecule," Luc said.

Demanded was more like it, but that was such a loaded term. Luc wanted to keep everything on an even keel for the moment.

"I still do. But what are we doing hanging around a circus?"

"It's not a circus." Luc gestured to the looming shadow of the large oblong tent behind them. "As the sign says, it's an 'Oddity Emporium.'"

Macintosh snorted. "Euphemism for freak show. That still doesn't explain what we're doing here."

"This is the source of the molecule."

"Ok, fine. But why are we standing outside cooling our heels? And I do mean cooling."

Luc grinned in the darkness. If Macintosh saw him, he'd probably think it a response to his feeble attempt at humor. But Luc found nothing funny about Macintosh. Nothing likable about him either. Especially his looks. They were such a mismatched pair. Luc's close-cropped, styled brown hair, trim five-nine frame, and tailor-made slacks and sweater next to Macintosh's tall, ungainly torso, his wrinkled shirt, worn jeans, shaggy hair, and wispy goatee.

Truth was, he was glad Macintosh was uncomfortable in the cold. He wished he'd freeze to death right here and now. The swine didn't have much longer to live anyway, and that would spare Luc the ordeal of having him killed.

Killed, he thought, shuddering at the concept. I'm going to cause another human being's death tonight. What would have been unthinkable two weeks ago had become something he had to do. He felt nothing for Macintosh, only a crawling anxiety to have done with it.

"And was all the subterfuge necessary?" Macintosh whined. "Separate flights, separate hotels, you picking me up on the street in the wee hours of the morning to haul me out here to the middle of nowhere. Like some bad movie."

Luc bit back a sharp retort. Didn't the damn fool ever shut up?

"Think about that, Tom," he said, keeping his voice even. It wouldn't do to betray his loathing for this piece of human garbage. Yet. "Just think about it."

Macintosh was blessedly quiet for a moment. Thinking, perhaps? That was something he should have done before he demanded to know the secrets of the molecule.

Macintosh—what had he been thinking when he'd hired this slovenly creature? A brilliant researcher with gaping holes in his intellect. Perfect example: if he'd possessed a lick of common sense he never would have come here.

"Yeah," Macintosh said finally. "I see what you mean. But how much longer?"

Luc lifted his wrist and pressed the illumination button on the rim of his watch. The face lit, revealing 4:11:08. That was Eastern Standard Time. He hadn't bothered resetting it.

"A few more minutes," he said.

In truth, the moment he'd been waiting for had passed. Ten minutes and fifty-four seconds after four had been the mark, but he always liked to give himself a cushion. Just in case.

Canvas rustled behind them and a deep voice said, "We're ready."

Luc turned and saw a tall figure holding back a tent flap.

"Finally!" Macintosh cried as Luc led him toward the faintly lit opening.

"Good evening, Mr. Prather," Luc said to the tall, oddly shaped man holding the flap. The owner of the show had arrived.

"Good evening, Dr. Monnet," Prather said in his deep voice that seemed to echo around him. He pronounced Luc's surname properly, but with an odd cadence.

Ozymandias Prather. An odd-looking duck—nearly six and a half feet tall, with narrow shoulders, a barrel chest, and wide hips. His long, narrow head completed the conical layout of his body.

"This is Dr. Macintosh. I told you that he'd be coming."

"You did indeed," Prather said.

No one offered to shake hands.

The air within was thicker and warmer but only marginally brighter than the starlight outside.

"Didn't they pay their electric bill?" Macintosh muttered as they followed Prather down the midway toward a better-lit area at the far end of the tent. "And what's that stink?"

Luc clenched his teeth. "That's the source."

At the end of the midway, in a pool of wan light, sat a cage. Above the iron bars a chipped wooden sign heralded the amazing sharkman! in faded red letters. Two roustabouts crouched before the cage, struggling with something between them—something long and dark that ended in three taloned fingers.

"My God!" Macintosh said, stopping and gaping at the sight. "What is that?"

"That… is the source."

He knew what was going through Macintosh's mind: Sharkman? That arm cannot belong to a man of any sort. It has to be a fake, a muscle-bound performer in a rubber suit with a clawed glove.

That was what Luc himself had thought when he'd first seen the creature that crouched behind the bars. But it had proved to be the real thing. That dark reptilian skin bled when punctured; the talons on the ends of those thick fingers were sharp and deadly.

But Luc was dismayed that tonight it took only two of Prather's roustabouts to steady the creature's arm. These identical, vaguely canine fellows looked even odder than Prather—muscular, neckless hulks with close-cropped hair, big square teeth, tiny ears, and dark, deep-set eyes. When Luc had begun taking samples last year, five of them had had difficulty restraining the thrashing Sharkman.

He squinted past them into the shadows of the cage but could make out only a darker blot within. He didn't need to see the creature to know it was failing. At first he hadn't been sure, but now with each visit it was more and more apparent that it was fading away. Another month, perhaps—certainly no more than two—and it would be dead. The wellspring of the molecule would be gone.

And then what would he do?

The precipitous drop in cash flow would be the least of Luc's problems.

He did his best to shake off the sick feeling crawling through the pit of his stomach and withdrew the veni-puncture kit from his coat pocket.

Macintosh said, "This is some sort of joke, right?"

Feeling very tired all of a sudden, Luc shook his head. "No, Tom. No joke."

He unwrapped and inserted the short end of an eighteen-gauge double-pointed phlebotomy needle into the plastic sheath; with two serum separation tubes ready, he approached the arm.

"W-what are you going to do?" Macintosh said.

"What does it look like? I'm going to draw some blood."

The rank smell of the creature mixed with the wet-dog stink of the roustabouts, making him a little queasy. Holding his breath, Luc didn't prep the dark skin, simply trapped a ropy vein between two fingers and worked the needle point through the gritty epidermis—like stabbing through layers of sandpaper. As soon as he was into the vein he snapped the vacuum tube home and watched it fill with dark fluid, much darker than human blood.

When the second tube was full—always an extra, just in case—he backed away and the roustabouts released the thing's arm. The creature snatched it back through the bars, then rolled over onto its side, facing away from them.

Luc held the tube up to the light.

"That's blood?" Macintosh said, leaning over his shoulder. "Looks more like tar."

Although as black, the fluid was nowhere near as thick as tar. In fact, this sample was noticeably thinner than the last. When Luc had started drawing the creature''s blood, the tubes would fill slowly despite the eighteen-gauge needle. Tonight a twenty-two-gauge would have been sufficient. Another depressing sign that the source was failing.

Macintosh straightened and stepped closer—but not too close—to the cage. He peered into the shadowy interior.

"What is it?" he said, his voice hushed.

"No one knows," Luc said, returning the tubes to their padded transport case. "And it's a pity that you don't either."

Macintosh turned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that if you knew something about it, anything at all, you'd be useful. I'd have a reason for letting you live."

"Heh," Macintosh managed through a wobbly smile.

Luc said nothing; he simply stared at him.

Macintosh licked his lips. "That's not funny, Doc."

Luc took profound pleasure in watching the smile fade and the eyes widen as the traitor came to realize he wasn't joking.

Macintosh glanced quickly around, then made a move toward the midway. But the two roustabouts blocked his way. He tried the other direction, but three more identical roustabouts appeared.

"Oh, God!" Macintosh wailed. "You can't be serious!"

"What did you expect?" Luc shouted. Finally he could vent his fury. "You've tried to blackmail me! Did you think I would stand for that?"

"No! Not blackmail! I—"

"'Give me a piece of the action or I go to the police'. That's what you said, wasn't it."

"No, really! I didn't—"

"If you'd simply gone straight to the police, I would have been angry, but at least I could have seen you as a well-meaning citizen. But after I'd hired you, provided you with cutting-edge research technology, and trusted you with my records, you try to dip your filthy hands into what is mine, what I discovered and developed. That's despicable—intolerable."

"Please!" Macintosh dropped to his knees, held up his hands, palms pressed together as if in prayer. "Please, I'm sorry!"

Luc stoked his rage. Without it he might not muster the courage to give Oz the signal to remove Macintosh and dispose of him.

"Or if you'd accomplished what I hired you to do, I would have found a way to cut you in. But you've failed me, Tom—as a researcher… and as a man."

Macintosh sobbed. "Oh, Jesus!"

Luc glanced at Prather and nodded. Prather cocked his head toward Macintosh. In a single fluid motion, one of the roustabouts stepped up behind the kneeling man, raised a balled fist, and slammed it into the back of his neck.

Luc staggered back as he heard bones crunch like peanut shells and saw Macintosh's eyes bulge in their sockets as if his brain were pushing them from behind. Luc had never dreamed Prather's men would kill the man right in front of him. A surge of bile burned the back of his throat as he watched Macintosh pitch forward, his face landing in the dirt. His hands and feet twitched in time to the tune of his choked gurgling; then he lay still.

Luc swallowed and stared at the roustabouts. The killer had stepped back to rejoin his brothers, and Luc couldn't tell now which one had struck Macintosh, but the power behind that single blow had been… inhuman.

He felt weak in his knees. He'd wanted Macintosh gone, but not to watch him die.

A dismissive flick of Prather's wrist set the roustabouts into motion. They grabbed Macintosh's body by its feet and dragged him out like a piece of tarpaulin.

Luc struggled to pull himself together. His life seemed to have been drifting into the Abyss these past months, but with this act he felt he'd accelerated into free fall. And yet, despite his growing despair, he could not deny his relief at no longer having Macintosh's threats hanging over him.

"We'll bury him deep," Prather said. "The ground here will be pocked and scarred when we leave Sunday. No one will notice."

Still speechless, Luc removed a thick envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to him. An oily lock of the big man's lank dark hair fell over his forehead as he opened the envelope and fanned through the wad of bills. The wan light made his pale skin look cadaverish.

"It's all there," Luc said, finding his voice.

"Yes, it appears to be." He stared down at Luc with his icy blue eyes. "Why didn't you have Mr. Dragovic take care of this for you?"

Luc stiffened. "Dragovic? What do you mean?"

Prather smiled—thin, thin lips drawing back over yellow teeth. Not a pleasant sight. "Come now, Doctor. I've done a little research myself. Didn't you think I'd be curious as to why you're so interested in my mystery pet's blood?"

Luc sagged. He could smell another shakedown coming.

"Not to worry," Prather said. "I've no taste for blackmail. Extortion is so sordid. But I can't help wonder why you didn't have your best customer remove this threat to both of you." His smile broadened. "Unless of course you didn't want Mr. Dragovic to know you'd left yourself so vulnerable."

Luc shrugged to mask the bunching of the muscles in his neck and shoulders. Prather had scored a bull's-eye. The last thing Luc needed was for Milos Dragovic to learn that this pig Macintosh had almost blown the whole business. Dragovic must never even imagine that Luc did not have absolute control of his end.

"Just as well," Prather said. "The extra money for removing him will help us meet payroll."

"Business off?" Luc said, trying to steer away from the subject of Milos Dragovic.

Prather nodded. "Bad weather sends people to movies but not to freak shows. And truthfully, some of our attractions become rather… ripe in wet weather."

In wet weather? Luc thought. How about any weather?

"I'll take the next sample on May twenty-fifth," Luc said, paving his way toward the exit. "Where will your troupe be then?"

Prather smiled again. "Virtually in your backyard,

Dr. Monnet. We'll be in a little Long Island town that is one of our favorite annual stops. We'll be quite nearly neighbors for a while. Won't that be special."

Luc shivered at the thought of living anywhere near Ozymandias Prather and his freaks. "Well, it will be nice to simply hop into a car rather than fight through the airports."

"See you then, Dr. Monnet."

Relieved to be leaving, Luc turned and hurried along the dark midway toward the exit.

WEDNESDAY MAY 24

1

"What did you think?" Gia said.

"Well…" Jack glanced around as he gathered his thoughts, not quite sure what to say.

He, Gia, and Vicky had just exited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and now stood atop the high granite steps. The sun had been low when they'd entered and was well gone now. A tiny sliver of moon, a glowing fingernail clipping, hung in the sky. Below them, singles, couples, and groups lounged on the steps, smoking, eating, cuddling, hanging out. Water splashed in the oblong fountains left and right. And beyond the steps and crowded sidewalk, Fifth Avenue traffic crawled along despite the fact that rush hour was long gone. Exhaust fumes wafted up on the evening breeze that billowed the huge dark blue banner suspended above them, trumpeting the Cezanne exhibit.

Jack ran a quick apparel check, comparing his clothing to what the other museum goers were wearing. He'd gone for a slightly more upscale look tonight—light blue oxford shirt, tan slacks, brown loafers—and was pleased to see that he blended pretty well. In a bow to the current trend, he'd had his brown hair trimmed a little shorter than he preferred. He could pass tonight for a teacher or an accountant out for an evening with his wife and daughter. No one worth noticing. And that was perfect.

Jack watched Vicky doing her own scan, but hers concentrated on the sidewalk. Her dark brown hair had been unwound from her customary braids into a single long ponytail for her trip to the museum. He could read her eight-year-old mind: Where's the ice-cream man? Where's the pretzel guy? For a girl who couldn't weigh more than sixty pounds fully clothed, she could eat like a long-haul trucker.

He turned to Gia and found her pale blue eyes staring up at him as a small smile played about her lips. The breeze ruffled her short blond hair. She looked dazzling in a snug blue silk sweater set and black slacks.

"'Well' what?" Gia said.

Jack scratched his head. "Well, to tell you the truth, I don't get it."

"Get what?"

"Cezanne. Why he's so famous. Why he's got his own show at the Met."

"Because he's considered the father of modern art."

Jack shrugged. "So they say in the brochure, and that's all fine and good, but some of those paintings don't even look finished."

"That's because they aren't, you ninny. He abandoned a number of his canvases because they weren't going the way he wanted."

"Yeah, well, finished or not, his stuff doesn't do anything for me. How do they put it? It doesn't speak to me."

Gia rolled her eyes. "Oh, God. Why do I bother?"

Jack threw an arm around her shoulders, drew her close, and kissed her blond waves. "Hey, don't go getting all huffy now just because I don't like this guy. I liked Monet, didn't I?" He still remembered colors of sunlight so vibrant he'd felt the warmth radiating from the canvases.

"Monet's easy to like."

"You mean a painting's got to be hard to like to be good?"

"Not at all, but—"

"Mommy, look at those men!" Vicky said, pointing down to Fifth Avenue. "They're gonna get hurt!"

Jack turned and saw a couple of middle-aged men in jackets and ties strutting through the slow-moving traffic, seeming to dare the cars to hit them. More than a couple. Jack spotted more—a dozen, maybe two dozen, all well dressed, all in their forties, all swaggering like street toughs.

A car honked and one of the jaywalkers gave the driver the finger as he kicked a dent in his fender. When the driver got out he was jumped by two of the men and pummeled until he ducked back into the car and locked the door. They high-fived each other and continued toward the museum.

On the sidewalk to the right, one of the men snatched a pretzel from a cart as he passed. As the vendor went after him, he was grabbed by three of the well-dressed goons and knocked to the ground. They kicked him a few times and moved on, laughing.

"Jack?" Gia said, and he could hear the unease in her voice. "What's going on?"

"Not sure," Jack said.

He didn't like the looks of this. Unless they were a gang of middle-aged Gypsy Kings on a rampage after knocking over a Barney's—and Jack wasn't buying that—these guys were acting way out of character. For himself he wasn't worried, but he had Gia and Vicky with him.

"Whatever it is, let's stay clear of it."

One of the troublemakers pointed toward the entrance to the museum and shouted back to his buddies. Jack didn't catch what he said, but the others must have thought it was a great idea because they started streaming up the steps after him.

"Let's move over to the side," Jack said, ushering Gia and Vicky away from the center door and closer to the column supports at the downtown end. "Soon as they're in the museum, we're out of here."

But the well-dressed goons were easily distracted. Instead of making a beeline for the door, a number of them stopped to harass people along the way. Fights broke out. Within minutes the formerly peaceful steps of the Metropolitan Museum degenerated into one large multicentric brawl.

"Oh, Jack," Gia said, pointing directly below them. "Help her."

Jack followed her point, saw a paunchy guy in a blue blazer with some sort of gold crest on the breast pocket. He was trying to nuzzle a young woman who'd been sitting alone on one of the landings, smoking a cigarette. The more she pushed him away, the more aggressive he became.

Jack glanced around. "I don't like leaving you two alone."

"Just chase him off before he does something awful," Gia said. "It won't take you a minute."

"All right," Jack said, heading down. "Maybe you could point out something more interesting to my little friend—like the fountains, say—while I see what I can do."

Jack figured he might have to do something quick and nasty to Mr. Paunch if he wouldn't cooperate. Didn't want Vicky watching.

As Jack trotted down the steps, the slim brunette had risen to her feet and was struggling with the older man who had at least a hundred-pound advantage. The expensive clothes, the good haircut, and the shiny, manicured nails didn't go with the feral lust in his eyes.

Jack was within a dozen feet of them when she shouted, "I told you to get lost!"

"Now, now, sweetie pie," he said through clenched teeth as he pulled her closer. "You don't really mean that."

"Wanna bet?"

She stabbed her lit cigarette at his eye. He jerked back and turned just enough to save his eye, but the burning end caught him solidly on one of his jowls. As he cried out in pain and raised his hands to his face, the young woman landed a forty-yard punt between his legs. The guy's face went fish-belly white as he dropped to his knees, holding his crotch. She kicked him again, in the chest this time, and he pitched sideways and rolled down a few steps.

The woman whirled on Jack, snarling. "You want some of the same?"

Jack stopped and held his hands before him, palms out. "Peace, lady. Just coming to help." He nodded to the battered man, prone on the steps, holding his crotch and groaning. "But you seem to have things under control."

She gave him a quick smile. "Thanks for the thought." She looked around at the melee. "What's gotten into these creeps?"

"Damned if I know. Best if you just—"

"Jack!"

The fright in Gia's voice spun him around and he was taking the steps up two at a time before it fully registered that she was struggling with two of the middle-aged yuppies.

"Hey!" he shouted as fire scorched through him.

Vicky batted at one of the men's legs, screaming, "Leave my mommy alone!"

The man, whose round face and pushed-up nose reminded Jack of Porky Pig, turned and shoved Vicky away. "Get lost, kid!"

"No!" Vicky cried, and kicked him in the shin.

His face distorted with rage, the guy grabbed Vicky and lifted her off her feet. "You little bitch!"

Jack's anger turned to panic as the man carried the screaming Vicky toward the end of the top landing. Jack veered away from Gia and poured every ounce of strength into his legs.

"I'll teach you to kick me!" Porky shouted, raising her higher as he neared the edge.

Vicky's terrified wail rose in pitch as she saw the stone steps sloping away before her. Jack reached them just as the man was flexing to fling her. He hooked Porky's elbow, yanked him back and around, turning the guy and Vicky toward him. Jack swung his left arm around Vicky's waist and smashed his right elbow into Porky's startled face.

As the guy staggered back, Jack put Vicky down and advanced on him. With Vicky safe now, Jack's rage had room to bloom. He let the darkness boil out of its cell and take over.

If Porky had had an ounce of sense he would have run. Instead he charged. Jack sidestepped at the last second, drove his fist into the flabby belly—a solid solar plexus shot—doubling him over. And still Porky wouldn't quit. Even bent almost in half, he tried to grapple Jack's waist. Jack didn't have time to dance; he had to get to Gia. He clubbed the guy on the ear, grabbed him by the back of his coat collar and the back of his belt, and gave him the bum's rush toward the end of the landing. At the last second, Jack lifted him and sent him sailing in the flight he'd intended for Vicky. Screaming and kicking and windmilling his arms, Porky hit the granite hard and kept going, rolling and tumbling the rest of the way down.

Jack didn't wait to see him land. Turned and ran back to Gia and her attacker.

"C'mon, babe," this guy was saying as he pawed Gia. "Stop fighting it. You know you want it."

As Jack arrived he spotted a similar crest on this one's blazer. That was about all he had time to notice before the guy slapped Gia across the face.

Something detonated within Jack then and things got fuzzy. Vision constricted to a short, narrow tunnel, sound warped to a muddled roar, and he was grabbing the guy by his blow-dried hair, ripping him off Gia, and slamming his face into the base of the stone columns. Once, twice, and more, until the meaty crunches became wet slaps. Then he threw him against the museum's front wall. As he repeatedly body slammed the man into the granite blocks, Jack became aware of a voice… Gia's… shouting his name. He released the guy and turned toward the sound.

Gia stood below, on the next landing, clutching her hysterical daughter in her arms. Saying something about getting out of here.

Jack shut his eyes, forced a deep slow breath. Sounds filtered back, rising in volume. Gia's voice, loud and clear.

"Jack, please! Let's go!"

Sirens rose in the distance. Yes… definitely time to go—

But as Jack stepped toward Gia and Vicky, he saw alarm widen their eyes. That prepared him for the slam against his back and the arms wrapping around his throat in a stranglehold. The impact knocked him off the top step. Locked together, he and his attacker were pitching forward toward a granite-hard landing. Jack twisted in the air, wrenching the heavier weight of his attacker around to position the other beneath him. The hoarse voice raging incoherently in his ear cut off abruptly when they hit the steps. The other guy had taken the full impact on his back, cushioning Jack.

Jack rolled off and was shocked to see that it was the same guy he'd pulled off Gia and battered against the wall. His face was a bloody mess and he shouldn't have been able to stand, let alone attack. Wasn't standing now—lay sprawled on his back, gasping for air. Had to have at least half a dozen broken ribs. But then he groaned, tried to roll over, and for one incredulous second Jack thought he was going to get up and come at him again. But then he slumped and lay still. Guy was a hell of a lot tougher than he looked, but not that tough.

Looked around at the chaos. People shouting, screaming, punching, kicking, falling, bleeding. The Odessa Steps from Potemkin in real life. Thankfully no baby carriages in sight.

What was wrong with these guys? Who were they and why were they acting like a Mongol horde? None of them seemed to know when to quit. But what disturbed Jack more was their willingness to hurt. You don't see that in the average person. Most people have a natural reluctance to do damage to a fellow human being. Jack had had that once. Took him years to overcome it, to clear an area within so he'd have a space where that reluctance didn't exist, a place he could step into, a mode he could enter when necessary and find a willingness, an enthusiasm almost, to inflict damage before it could be inflicted, and do so without hesitation. Hesitate and you're lost. Maybe dead. Better to give than receive. Always.

These guys showed none of that natural hesitation. Good thing most of them were doughy and didn't know how to fight; otherwise this would have been a truly scary scene.

Jack took Gia's arm and led her and Vicky to the side and then down. He glanced back to his right and saw Porky at the base of the steps, near the fountain; he was screaming curses as he crawled toward the sidewalk, dragging one leg behind him. Jack wanted to go down there and break a few more of this particular jerk's bones, but no way he was leaving Gia and Vicky alone in the middle of this riot.

When they reached the sidewalk he took the sobbing Vicky from Gia and hustled them downtown. He noticed an adrenaline tremor in his hand as he raised it to hail a cab.

How had such a nice evening turned so ugly?

2

"The bid is eleven-five," the tuxedoed auctioneer said. "Do I hear twelve thousand?"

Dr. Luc Monnet fought the urge to turn and glare at the other bidder; he kept his eyes on the auctioneer. Others around him, elegantly dressed, perched on well-padded chairs arranged in neat rows on the red carpeting, had no such compunction. They craned their necks this way and that, enjoying the auction spectator sport: a bidding war.

Luc did not have to turn to know what was happening. Two rows behind and slightly to the right, a dark-haired man in a blue suit was holding a StarTac to his left ear, receiving instructions from whomever he was bidding for. Luc closed his eyes and sent up a little prayer that $2,000 a bottle was too rich for the other bidder's blood.

He'd come to Sotheby's for the sole purpose of buying the half-case of Chateau Petrus 1947 Pomerol Cru Exceptionnel offered by the Gates estate. Not simply because it was a fine, fine wine that he wanted for his collection and not because Petrus happened to be his favorite Bordeaux, but because the vintage year had special meaning: nineteen-forty-seven was the year of his birth.

But as much as he desired the wine, he would not allow auction fever to seduce him into an absurd bid. He had set himself a firm $2,000-per-bottle limit before arriving—extravagant, perhaps, but not absurd. Not for Petrus '47.

His eyes snapped open at the sound of a delighted "Ah!" from somewhere in front of him and some scattered applause. That could mean only one thing. Dismay settled on his shoulders like a weight.

"The bid is now at twelve thousand for lot twenty-two," the auctioneer said, directing his gaze at Luc. "Will the gentleman bid twelve-five?"

Hiding his fury, Luc looked down at his bidding paddle, no longer needed now that the bidders had been reduced to two. Who was on the other end of that cell phone? Some billionaire Japanese philistine, no doubt, with Renoirs on the wall and Lafite-Rothchilds in his cellar, a Hun pillaging Luc's culture, whose appreciation of his spoils stopped at their price tags, reducing art and heritage to status symbols.

Luc wanted to grab the phone and scream You've got your own culture—keep to it! This is mine, and I want it back!

But he said nothing as he assessed the situation. What if the other bidder had set his own limit at $2,000 per bottle? That was a nice round figure. So if Luc went to twelve-five, that would exceed his own preset limit, but not by much. The price per bottle would be less than twenty-one hundred—exorbitant, but still shy of absurdity.

Luc nodded to the auctioneer and was rewarded by his own chorus of "Ahs" and appreciative clapping.

"And you, sir?" the auctioneer said, looking beyond Luc. "Will you go to thirteen?"

Another pause as his competitor, his foe, his mortal enemy, conferred with the mystery bidder. Luc continued to stare straight ahead.

A loud clearing of the throat and then a voice two rows back said, "Time to separate the men from the boys: fifteen thousand."

Gasps, then applause. Luc could feel his face turning red.

"Sir?" the auctioneer said, looking at Luc with raised eyebrows.

Crushed and embarrassed, Luc could only shake his head. Twenty-five hundred dollars a bottle? The vintage had never gone for that price and he refused to be suckered into topping such an outrageous bid. May the corks be dry and crumbling and leaking air, may the wine have oxidized to vinegar, and may the swine on the other end of the line drown in it.

But Luc knew the wine would be perfect. He'd studied the bottles, how the wine rode high in the necks, how one capsule had been cut to reveal the firm, tight, branded cork.

He rose, placed the paddle on his seat, adjusted the cuffs of his charcoal gray suit jacket, and walked down the center aisle. The weight of the combined gazes against his back from the audience propelled him toward the door.

Time to separate the men from the boys.…

Indeed… and at the moment he felt as if he were back wearing knickers.

As he passed the grinning winner, yammering into his cell phone, the pig had the bad taste to wink at him and say, "Better luck next time."

Die, Luc thought, ignoring him. Fall down and die.

He pushed through the door onto York Avenue. He took a deep breath of the evening air and consoled himself with the certainty that more bottles of Chateau Petrus 1947 Pomerol Cru Exceptional remained unopened somewhere and that some of those eventually would come to auction and find their way into his cellar.

Yet he still felt a residue of humiliation. He had vied for a prize and was coming away empty-handed. He could afford three thousand, four thousand, five thousand dollars a bottle, but money was not the point. The point was winning. And he had blinked.

He didn't feel like going home right now, so he began walking. He was about as far east as possible without being in the river, so he headed west, walking up stately Seventy-second Street. And he thought about his father. Wine always brought back memories of Papa.

Poor man. If only he had found a way to hang on to the ancien domaine in Graves or at the very least cached his wines somewhere before fleeing to America, life would have been so different.

Chateau Monnet's vineyard had been among the smallest in the Graves district of Bordeaux, but it had provided a respectable living for generations. His ancestors had bottled small lots of their own wine for the family and sold most of the harvest to other vintners. But they'd never quite recovered from the Phylloxera vitifoliae plague that attacked the vineyards of Europe in the 1860s. The plant louse wiped out all—not most, all—of Chateau Monnet's vines. Like its neighbors, Monnet had had to replant its acreage with Phylloxera-resistant rootstock imported from, of all places, California.

It took years before they were harvesting grapes again. The family fell into debt. Worse, the grapes were never as good as before the plague, so the debt grew. During World War Two, with the Germans in Paris and moving toward Bordeaux, Papa decided to abandon the place—it already belonged more to the bank than to him—and flee to America.

Luc was born in New York and thus a citizen. And by then the bank had auctioned off the Monnet domain to a neighboring chateau. Unable to face the ignominy of losing the ancestral home, Papa never set foot in France again.

Luc had visited the property a few years ago. He'd found the elegant stone structure that had been the ancestral home still standing, but now converted to an inn. An inn! He'd felt degraded.

Luc had stood in its front hall and sworn that he would buy it back someday. All it would take was money. And someday—soon, he hoped—he would have enough. Then he would drive the money changers from the family temple, move his wine collection back to the land of its origin, and take up where his father had left off.

He looked up and noticed Central Park across the street. Surprised that he'd already walked to Fifth Avenue, he turned uptown. As he reached the Eighties he noticed a blaze of flashing red lights ahead. Curious, he joined the crowd of gawkers gathered behind the yellow tape across the street from the Metropolitan Museum.

Ambulances and police cars blocked Fifth Avenue. Jammed traffic was being diverted. Emergency workers were tending dozens of injured people while cops dragged bloodied well-dressed men into blue-and-white paddy wagons.

"What happened?" Luc said to the Hispanic-looking fellow next to him.

"Some kind of riot." He wore a Mets cap and a Rangers sweatshirt. "Bunch of preppies, I heard."

"Preppies?" Luc said. "I don't see any preppies."

"Not kids. Older guys. Some prep school class was having its twenty-fifth year reunion tonight and decided to go on a rampage."

A premonitory worm of unease began to wriggle in Luc's gut. "Anyone… killed?"

"Not that I know of, but I—oh, shit! What's that guy doing?"

Luc squinted toward where the man was pointing. He spotted what must have been one of the rioters—disheveled, bloody, but the crest on his blazer certainly looked preppyish—handcuffed to the door handle of one of the police cars. He squatted there with his face against his handcuffed wrist.

"Oh, Christ!" Luc's neighbor said. "Is he doing what I think he's doing?" He began shouting to the nearest policeman. "Officer! Yo, Officer! Check out that guy over there! By the unit! Oh, man, stop him before he kills himself!"

Luc spotted a growing pool of blood by the handcuffed man's feet. His gorge rose as he realized the man was gnawing at his wrist, as if trying to chew it off.

The cop went over to him, saw what he was doing, and called the EMTs.

"Shit, I heard of trapped animals doing that," said the man in the Mets cap, his voice tinged with awe, "but never a human."

Luc could not reply. His throat felt frozen.

The preppy started kicking and screaming when the EMTs converged on him and tried to restrain him. As they surrounded the handcuffed man he continued to struggle and shout. Luc couldn't be sure but he thought he saw the cop's nightstick rise and fall once, and abruptly the man was silent. One of the EMTs signaled for a stretcher.

Feeling sick and weak, Luc turned and staggered away. What an awful, tragic scene.

And he was to blame.

3

"I think she's asleep," Gia whispered.

She sat on the bed next to her sleeping daughter, holding her hand. Jack stood on the other side.

"About time," he said, looking down at the skinny little form curled under the covers of her bed. He reached out and smoothed her dark hair. "Poor kid."

Vicky had huddled between Jack and Gia in the back of the cab, shaking and sobbing all the way home. Even the safety of her own bedroom hadn't calmed her.

"What kind of human garbage would frighten a child like that?" Gia said.

She hadn't actually seen what had happened, so she didn't know that the guy hadn't been trying simply to frighten Vicky—he'd been on the verge of tossing her down the steps and possibly to her death. Jack saw no point in enlightening Gia. She was already furious. Why make her sick?

"Never seen anything like it," Jack said. "Like they all went crazy at once."

"Who were they?" Gia said, then set her jaw. "No, never mind that; I don't care about the others. I don't care about the one who was pawing me. I just want to know who it was that frightened Vicky like this. And then I want to press charges against him and have him put away."

"Where they'll put him in a cell with a three-hundred-pound serial killer who'll rename him Alice?" Jack said.

Gia nodded. "For life."

"You think that'll happen?" he said softly.

"I'll make it happen."

"Can you identify him?"

Gia looked up at Jack. "No. I didn't get a good look at him. But you…" She looked away. "No, I guess you can't identify him, can you. Can't have testimony from someone who doesn't exist."

"And you don't want to put Vicky in the middle of all that—making identification, testifying, all for what? At best, his lawyer will get him off with a fine and a suspended sentence."

Gia shook her head and sighed. "It's not fair. He attacks me, scares my little girl half to death—he shouldn't be able to just walk away."

"Well, he's not walking. Looked like he wound up with a broken leg."

"Not enough," Gia said, staring at Vicky's face. "Not nearly enough."

"My sentiments exactly," Jack said. He leaned over and kissed the top of Gia's head. "Gotta run."

"Where are you going?"

"Gotta see a guy about something."

"You've got that look…"

"I won't be long."

She nodded. "Be careful."

Jack let himself out onto Sutton Square and walked toward Sutton Place in search of a cab. Usually Gia would try to stop him, telling him to stay calm and stay put. But not tonight. Someone had frightened her daughter—touched her daughter—and she didn't want anyone thinking he could do such a thing and get away with it.

Neither did Jack.

He knew the guy could've killed her, and looked like he'd meant to. Jack tried to keep that fact at a distance, to maintain an oblique perspective. Not easy to do, but he knew if he got too close, if he thought about where Vicky might be now if he'd been delayed a single heartbeat, he'd blow again.

Needed to be cool and deliberate in his approach to this guy. Had to find a way to pound home the message that he must never try something like that again, not to any child, but especially not to Miss Victoria Westphalen. Jack considered Vicky his daughter. Genetically she had another father, but in every other way, in every corner of Jack's mind and heart, Vicks was his little girl. And someone who looked like Porky Pig had tried to kill her.

Bad move, Porky.

4

Mount Sinai Medical Center was right up the street from the museum, so Jack figured that was where the rioters and their victims would wind up. When he got there and saw all the cops and a few handcuffed guys in crested blue blazers, he knew he'd figured right.

The emergency department was in chaos. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies hurrying back and forth, doing triage, seeing the most serious cases first. Injured men, women, and even a few children were milling around or sitting with dazed looks on their faces. Some of the blazered guys were still causing trouble, shouting curses, struggling with the police. A disaster scene.

As Jack wandered around the waiting room, looking for Vicky's attacker, he picked up bits of the story. The wild men were all graduates of St. Barnabas Prep. Jack had heard of it: a rich kids' school located in the East Eighties. Seemed their twenty-fifth-reunion dinner party never got past the hors d'oeuvres. Arguments broke out toward the end of the cocktail hour. Over what? The quality of the canapes? Not enough horseradish in the cocktail sauce? Whatever. The arguments grew into fights that spilled out onto the street and from there escalated to a riot.

They were calling it a "preppy riot." Swell.

But where was the particular Porky preppy he wanted? Jack adopted a confused look and wandered into the treatment area. Peeked behind curtains and saw scalps and faces being stitched up, fingers and wrists being splinted, X-rays being studied, but no sign of the bastard he sought.

A security guard—big, black, with a no-nonsense air about him—stopped Jack. "Can I help you, sir?"

"I'm looking for a friend," Jack said.

"If you're not being treated, you'll have to return to the waiting area." He pointed over Jack's shoulder. "The lady at the registration desk can tell you if he's here."

Jack started to move back toward the waiting area. "I think he broke his leg."

"Then he's probably in the casting room, and you can't go in there."

"OK," Jack said, moving off. "Back to the waiting room."

Halfway there, he stopped a young Asian woman in green scrubs.

"Where's the casting room?"

"Right there," she said, pointing to his left, then continued on her way.

You're sharp tonight, Jack thought sourly, staring at the wooden door with the black-and-white casting room plaque dead center at eye level. Walked right past it.

He glanced up the hall. The security guard was turned away with his walkie-talkie against his face, so Jack pushed open the door and stepped inside.

And there he was. Dirty, disheveled, his hair matted with blood, he lay on a gurney with a nurse by his side and a doctor wrapping his right leg in some sort of fiberglass mesh. His looked different with his eyes glazed and jaw slackened from whatever they'd shot him up with to keep him quiet, but this was the guy. Porky. Jack felt his jaw muscles bunch. Would have loved, dearly loved, a chance to give the doctor cause to work on the other leg and both arms and maybe carve some bacon off his hide, but the cop watching from the head of the gurney would surely object.

Jack stood statue still, scanning the room. Had only a few seconds before he was spotted. Especially didn't want Porky to see him—might accuse him of tossing him off the steps—but now that he'd found him, Jack wanted his name. Spotted a clipboard atop some X-rays on the counter to his left. Snagged it and stepped back into the hallway.

The top sheet was an intake form, with "Butler, Robert B." printed across the top. A West Sixty-seventh Street address. Jack knew the building—a luxury high-rise maybe twenty blocks from his place. He memorized Butler's unit number, leaned the clipboard against the door, and headed for the exit.

Jack and Robert B. Butler, graduate of St. Barnabas Prep, had been living just a short walk away from each other for who knew how long. About time they got acquainted.

THURSDAY

1

Jack was up early and on his way downtown, enjoying the mild May weather. Too nice a morning to ponder his as yet unscheduled confrontation with the porky prep. Jack hadn't yet figured on the right approach to Mr. Butler, but it would come. Right now he was headed for a meeting with a new customer. Because she was a referral, and because he trusted the referrer, he'd agreed to meet Dr. Nadia Radzminsky on her turf. At this hour her turf was a storefront diabetes clinic on Seventeenth Street, between Union Square and Irving Place, next to a laundromat.

Jack stepped inside and found the front area filled with a jumble of races and sexes, all shabbily dressed. The young mocha-skinned, white-uniformed nurse at the desk took one look at him and seemed to know he didn't belong. Not that he was all that well dressed, but his faded flannel shirt, worn jeans, and scuffed tan work boots were still a few cuts above what everyone else here was wearing.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Dr. Radzminsky. She's expecting me."

The nurse sifted through the papers on her desk and came up with a yellow sticky note. "Yes. You're Jack? She said to take you right in."

She led him through a curtained doorway, past a pair of curtained examining rooms—he caught a whiff of rubbing alcohol from the one on the right—to a tiny office in the rear. A young woman with straight dark hair cut in a bob sat behind the desk. She glanced up and smiled as they entered. She looked very young—couldn't be a day over twenty. Too young to be a doctor.

"You must be Jack," she said, rising and extending her hand. She stood about five-four and had a compact frame, a stocky build—solid without being overweight.

"And you must be Dr. Radzminsky."

"Nadia, please," she said, pronouncing it "Nahd-ja." "Only my patients call me Doctor." She had a big open face, a welcoming smile, and bright dark eyes. Jack liked her immediately. "Thanks, Jasmine," she said to the nurse.

Jasmine closed the door behind her.

Nadia pointed to one of the chart-laden chairs. "Just put those on the floor and have a seat."

She offered coffee and poured him a Styrofoam cupful from a Mr. Coffee on a shelf.

"We've got sugar and Cremora."

"Two sugars'll do."

"My only vice," she said, sipping from an oversize black ceramic mug with nadj printed in big white letters along the side. "An indispensable habit you pick up in residency."

"Can I ask you something straight off?" Jack said.

"Sure."

"No offense, but are you old enough to be a doctor?"

She gave him a tolerant smile. "Everyone asks me that. Yes. I'm cursed with a baby face. A blessing if you're a model or an actress, but not when you're a doctor, especially a woman doctor trying to inspire respect and confidence. But trust me, I'm a fellowship-trained, board-eligible endocrinologist."

"That's hormones, right?"

"Right. I do glands—thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal, pituitary, pancreas, and so on. Diabetes is one of the mainstays of endocrinology, which is why I'm here, but my special interest is in steroids."

"Muscle juice?"

Another smile. "Anabolic steroids are just one kind. Cortisone is another; so is estrogen. Remember what that guy whispered to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate!"

"Sure. 'Plastics'."

"Right. One of my professors did the same thing for me once. He said, 'Steroids… the future is steroids.' And over the years I became convinced he was right. Even got to contribute some original research to the field. But enough about me, what about you? Whatever did you do for Alicia Clayton to make her recommend you so highly?"

Jack wasn't going to answer that. "How do you know Alicia?"

"High school. We weren't really friends, but we were both A students so we had advanced classes together. She went away to college, but now she's back and we keep running into each other. We're friends now. I told her about a problem I had and she gave me your number." Nadia cocked her head at Jack, a puzzled look on her face. "She said I could trust you with my life."

Hope she didn't give you any details, he thought.

"Is your life in danger?"

"No. But the way she said it—what on earth did you do for her?"

"I'm sure Alicia can fill you in on all the details."

"That's just it. She won't say anything further than it was sometime around last Christmas." Nadia smiled. "She said you were discreet too, and now I see what she meant."

As pleasant as this young woman was, Jack wanted to get to the point. "What can I do for you, Nadia?"

"It's about my boss."

Please, not a sexual harassment thing, Jack thought. A stalker he could handle, but innuendo and suggestive behavior were too slippery.

"The guy who runs this place?"

"No. The clinic is run by a hospital, and I just volunteer here."

"You give these folks insulin shots?"

"No. A nurse handles that. I monitor their charts, test for end organ damage, manage the cases. We treat mostly homeless folk here. Imagine being a homeless diabetic—no place to keep your insulin chilled, no way to check your blood sugar, unable to buy clean needles."

Pretty grim, Jack thought. And now he could see how Nadia and Alicia Clayton had connected. Alicia ran the pediatric AIDS clinic near St. Vincent's, just a few blocks to the west of here.

She went on. "My paying job—which I've only had for a couple of weeks now—is with a pharmaceutical company called GEM Pharma. Ever heard of it?"

Jack shook his head. Merck and Pfizer, yes, but never GEM.

"It's a small company," she said. "Mostly they manufacture and market generic prescription drugs—antibiotics, antihypertensives, and such on which the patents have run out. But unlike most companies of their type, GEM does basic research—not a lot, but they at least make a stab at it. That's why I was hired—for their R and D Department."

"A couple of weeks and already your boss is hassling you?"

"No. Someone is hassling him. At least I think so."

Good, Jack thought. It's not sexual. "And why's that?"

"I saw him arguing with a man in the corporate offices. They were down the far end of a hall. They didn't see me, and they weren't shouting, so I don't know what the argument was about, but I saw the other man shove him, then walk out, looking very angry."

"Not a disgruntled employee, I take it."

"No, but the man looked vaguely familiar. It took the rest of the day before I could place him. Then I remembered. He was Milos Dragovic."

Well, well, well, Jack thought, remembering a guy who'd contacted him recently about a beef with Milos Dragovic. Two customers interested in Dragovic in as many weeks. That boy do get around.

Nadia was staring at him. "I can't believe you haven't heard of him." She must have misinterpreted his silence.

"Oh, I have. Everyone's heard of the Slippery Serb."

That was what the Post had dubbed Dragovic a couple of years ago. And he lived up to the title. He'd faced indictments for gunrunning, racketeering, procuring, even murder, and had walked on every one. A sharp dresser who hobnobbed with celebrities at all the in restaurants and hot nightspots, Milos Dragovic had replaced John "the Dapper Don" Gotti as the city's chic hood.

"You're sure it was him?" Jack said.

"Totally. I dug out an old copy of New York magazine that had a cover story on him. Milos Dragovic, no question."

"And he's pushing your boss around. Any idea why?"

"That's what I'd like you to find out."

"Well, since your guy works for a drug company—"

"He's one of the founders."

"Even better. Doesn't take a genius to figure out that Pharmaceuticals of a less than legal nature must be involved. Why not call the cops and tell them the Slippery Serb is shaking down your boss? I'm sure they'd love to know."

"Because Dragovic may have something on him, some secret he's blackmailing him with. And he may already have coerced him into doing something illegal. I don't want to see him go to jail or get hurt."

As Nadia was speaking, Jack picked up on something: a timbre in her voice, a look in her eyes as she spoke about her boss at a job she'd had for only a few weeks. More than just a professional relationship here?

"Just who is this boss you care about so much?"

Nadia hesitated, chewing her upper lip, then shrugged. "Oh, hell. I've gone this far, I might as well tell you: his name is Dr. Luc Monnet."

"Like the painter?"

"Same pronunciation, but with a double n."

There, Nadia thought. I've told him. I hope I'm not going to regret it.

The last thing in the world she wanted to do was cause trouble for Dr. Monnet. In fact, the very reason she'd called this Repairman Jack was to try to protect him.

Relax, she told herself. Alicia had said she could trust this man. And Alicia Clayton's trust was not easily won.

But after the way she'd talked about him, Nadia had expected Jack to have a commanding presence, be six-two at least and built like a fullback. The man sipping coffee on the other side of her desk was a very average Joe—midthirties, good-looking but hardly dazzling, with brown hair, brown eyes, and an easy way, dressed like men she passed hundreds of time a day on the city streets.

I want the man I can trust with my life to be like Clint Eastwood or Arnold Schwarzenegger, she thought. Not a younger poor man's Kevin Costner.

But then she remembered Alicia's warning: Don't let Jack's mild Mr. Everyman act fool you; his bite is infinitely worse than his bark.

"I gather he's more than just a boss to you," Jack said.

The offenhandedness of the remark jolted Nadia. Is it that obvious?

She tried to make her shrug equally offhanded. "We go back a ways. He was one of my professors in medical school."

"The one who said, 'The future is steroids'?"

She nodded, glad to note that he'd been paying attention. "He inspired me to go into endocrinology. I owe him for that."

Jack stared at her, as if saying, Go on… I know there's more.

Oh, yes, there was. Lots. But Nadia was not about to confess to a stranger about the mad crush she'd had on Luc Monnet back in med school. His black curly hair, as dark as his glistening eyes, his fine features, his trim body, but most of all his manner. With his aristocratic bearing and his delicious, oh-so-faint French accent, he'd simply reeked of the Continent. Nadia had been so enthralled that she'd dreamed of seducing him, even worked out a way to go about it. She remembered the old fantasy…

She'd seen herself entering his office and locking the door behind her. She'd never kidded herself that she had fashion model looks, but she knew she was no bowwow either. And on more than one occasion she'd caught Dr. Monnet looking at her, so the thought that she could do it wasn't completely off-the-wall. She'd be wearing a tight short top and a miniskirt worn low to expose her navel. She'd ask him for a clarification on hormone levels and sexual response. She'd work her way around the desk till she was standing next to him, rubbing a hip against him as he reviewed molecular structures. If he didn't take that bait, then she'd simply take his hand and place it on her bare inner thigh. After that, temperatures would rise, clothes would be shed, and he'd take her right there on his desk, demonstrating along the way that he was an expert in the lovemaking art for which the French were famous.

And it had remained pure fantasy until one day near the end of the term…

Nadia shifted to banish the faint tingling in her pelvis. Doug Gleason was the man in her life now—now and forever.

"You owe him enough to play guardian angel?" Jack said.

"Curtis Sliwa I'm not. But what should I do when I think that the man who inspired me toward my life's work and gave me my first job is being coerced into doing something most likely illegal?"

"How do you know it's coercion?" Jack said.

"Come on. If a known thug is physically pushing him around, I've got to believe he's pushing him around in other ways as well."

Jack was nodding slowly. "Yeah. That would follow. So what would you like me to do about it?"

"A number of things." Nadia had worked out an algorithm for the Monnet situation, much like the ones the medical journals worked up for diagnosis and treatment of a given disorder. She pictured the boxes and decision points in her mind as she spoke. "First we have to determine the connection between Dr. Monnet and Milos Dragovic. If it's all perfectly legal—which I very much doubt—then we drop it right there. If it's not so legal, then we move on. And if Dr. Monnet is being coerced, I want it stopped."

Jack's eyes bored into her. "And if he's a willing participant in something illegal, with no coercion, then what?"

That was the final leg of Nadia's algorithm, a blank box she hadn't filled in. She hoped, prayed she wouldn't have to. She couldn't imagine Dr. Monnet willingly involved in anything illegal. He was already wealthy. He didn't need money.

But then she thought of the sleazy junk bond dealers in the eighties who'd ripped off hundreds of millions in a single year. But did they quit while they were ahead—way ahead? No. They wanted still more. The money itself had ceased to matter. It was the high from the risk that kept them pushing for more and more until finally they were caught.

Was Dr. Monnet's aloof demeanor merely a facade? Could a hunger for risk, a need for speed, a jones for adrenaline boil beneath that controlled surface?

This man sitting before her might come up with answers to questions she didn't want asked. But she had to do something. And she had to trust that an important person in her life did not have feet of clay.

She sighed. "I don't think you'll find that. But if you do, I'll make up my mind then."

"Fair enough," Jack said. "I'll need some addresses—his home, the company's corporate offices—phone numbers: yours, his, work, home, and so on."

Nadia pulled an envelope from her purse. "I've got them all right here. I've also written up what I know of his life, his training, his research, plus all I know about the company, GEM Pharma."

Jack smiled. "Efficient. I like that."

"There's just one problem," she said, feeling her stomach tighten. Alicia had told her about the Repairman Jack's usual fee. "Money."

"Yeah, well, I do charge for my services."

"Of course. I can't imagine you wouldn't; it's just that I'm only recently out of residency, and I just started this new job, and I was wondering…"

Jack hadn't moved, but she sensed that he'd somehow receded.

"If I'd cut my price?" He shook his head. "I don't haggle, especially when someone like Dragovic is involved. Sometimes I go on a contingency basis, but this isn't that sort of job."

Well, at least I tried, Nadia thought. "Ok, then, can I make time payments?"

He sat there staring at her for what felt to her like an eternity.

"Tell you what," he said finally. "Someone else contacted me about a matter involving Mr. Dragovic—just last week as a matter of fact. If I can find a way to work the two of them together, I may be able to give you a break on the fee."

"And if you can't?"

He shrugged. "I don't do time payments—a guy in my position has no legal means to go after a welsher. But since Alicia vouched for you, I'll make an exception."

Relief flooded her, "Then you'll do it?"

"I'll look into it; that's all I promise."

Nadia drew another envelope from her pocketbook and hesitated. Ten $100 bills crinkled within. A lot of money to hand to a man she'd met only moments ago. But despite his bland looks, she sensed a core of steely determination. All her instincts testified that he was the man.

"All right, then. Here's a thousand as—what? A retainer?"

He smiled as he took the envelope and tucked it away without looking inside. "Retainer, down payment, whatever you like."

"Don't I get a receipt?"

Another smile as he shook his head. "No receipts, no written reports, no evidence that we've ever met." He rose and extended his right hand across the desk. "It's all right here."

She took his hand.

"There's our contract," he said, still clasping her hand. "You trust me to do what I say I'll do, I trust you to compensate me for it."

"Trust," she said softly. "What a concept."

He released her hand and reached for the doorknob. "I'll be in touch."

And then he was gone and Nadia was alone, fighting a sudden wave of apprehension. Anyone watching her hand over a thousand dollars to a complete stranger would have thought her crazy. But money had nothing to do with her worry—although she had nothing in writing, Nadia sensed she had a contract etched in stone.

No, it was a gnawing uncertainty about what she just had set in motion and a premonition that it would end badly.

2

As Jack walked toward Park Avenue, looking for a cab uptown, he heard someone call to him.

"Yo, Jack!"

He turned and saw One-leg Lenny leaning against the wall of the Union Square Theater; he held his crutch in one hand and was rattling the change in the bottom of a Styrofoam cup with the other. His right leg stopped just below the knee.

"Hey, Lenny," Jack said. His real name was Jerry something, but he seemed to prefer the alliterative Lenny. "What're you doing down here?"

"Collectin' unemployment… the usual."

Lenny wore a fatigue jacket and his tangled graying hair looked like he'd lost his comb in Nam and hadn't bothered to replace it. He kept a three-day stubble on his weathered cheeks and dressed in raggedy shirts and oversize denims—always oversize. He looked fifty but could have been forty or sixty.

"Not exactly the usual," Jack said, pointing to Lenny's foreshortened right leg. "Every time I've seen you, the left one's been missing. What gives?"

"My hip's been bothering me lately, so I've been switching off."

Jack still couldn't figure how Lenny managed to strap his lower leg up behind him without a noticeable bulge. Had to be uncomfortable as all hell, but he claimed it helped him collect enough change to make it worthwhile.

"Say, listen, Jack," he said, lowering his voice. "I got a fine new product."

"Not today." Jack knew that Lenny dealt to supplement his panhandling.

"No, really, it's not the usual. This stuff's new and so sweet. I'll give you a taste, on the house."

"No, thanks."

"My regulars down here sure like it. Leaves your head clear and don't lay no jones on you."

"Sounds wonderful. Maybe some other time."

"OK. You just let me know."

Jack waved and moved on, forgetting Lenny and reviewing last week's meeting with the customer who'd wanted to see him about Dragovic. Jack had gone all the way out to Staten Island to meet him… for nothing.

Jack had started easing back on using Julio's for his meetings, ever since last month when he'd been standing at the bar, sipping a brew, and this guy walked in and asked if Repairman Jack was around. Julio, his usual cool self, said lots of guys named Jack came in and out all day. Was he supposed to meet this Jack here? Guy said no, he'd just heard that this was his hang and he needed to talk to him. Julio had sent him off, telling him he had the wrong place.

Jack didn't want anyplace known as his "hang"—not good for him and maybe not good for Julio. He did his utmost to work his fixes anonymously, but every so often he had to get in someone's face. He'd collected a few enemies over the years. More than a few.

So when Jack got a call last week from someone named Sal Vituolo about hiring him for a fix-it, Jack had made the trip to Staten Island. Turned out Sal wanted him to "whack"—he'd really used the word—Milos Dragovic. Jack explained that he didn't "whack" people for money, and returned to Manhattan.

But now he was thinking maybe he should drop in on good ol' Sal and see if he'd settle for something less than a "whack." Jack might be crossing paths with Dragovic for Nadia anyway, so why not let Sal Vituolo pay some of the freight.

But first he needed to check with Abe, see what he knew about Dragovic.

He raised his hand as he reached Park Avenue South and saw a cab swing into the curb, but it stopped downstream by a woman in a red suit who'd been there ahead of him. As she opened the rear door, a man in a dark blue suit darted up, nudged her aside with his briefcase, and slid into the cab. Jack watched in amazement as the woman, screeching curses, ripped the briefcase from his hand and tossed it across the sidewalk. The shocked and now embarrassed man jumped out of the cab and went after it.

Jack had to smile. Good for you, lady. Serves the bastard right.

Somebody nearby shouted, "You go, girl!"

Jack was turning to look for another cab when he noticed that instead of climbing into the cab, the woman now was going after the ride snatcher. As she rushed up behind him she pulled a pair of scissors from her coat pocket and began doing the Mother Bates thing. He shouted in pain and terror as the scissors rose and fell, jabbing into a shoulder, a thigh, his back. She was going for his neck when the cabbie and a passerby grabbed her and disarmed her. Still screeching, she attacked them with her fists.

Maybe I'll just walk, Jack thought.

3

"You were there?" Abe said around a mouthful of bagel. "At this so-called preppy riot?"

Abe Grossman's Isher Sports Shop wasn't officially open at this hour, but Jack knew Abe was an early riser who didn't have much of a life outside his business. He'd knocked on the window, waved his bag of bagels, and Abe had let him in.

"'Riot' is something of an overstatement," Jack said, pulling a few sesame seeds off his bagel and spreading them on the counter for Parabellum. Abe's pale blue parakeet hopped over and began pecking at them. "More like a whacked-out brawl. But it had some dicey moments."

Abe, midfifties, balding, his belly straining against his white shirt, was perched on his stool on the far side of the scarred counter. His stock of bikes and Roller-blades and hockey sticks and anything else remotely related to a sport was scattered helter-skelter on shelves, floors, counters, or hung from the ceiling: layout by tornado.

He winced when Jack told him what had almost happened to Vicky. "And this joker… he's still upright and breathing?"

"For the moment."

"But you have plans to make adjustments in that state of affairs, I assume?"

"I'm working on it." He didn't want to talk about Robert B. Butler now. "Know anything about Milos Dragovic?"

Abe's bagel paused in midair, halfway to his mouth. "A nice man he's not."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"He got his start in my business."

"Guns?"

Abe nodded. "In the Balkans. A true product of the nineties, Dragovic. Made a fortune with his brother running guns to both sides during the Bosnia thing. They grew up here but were born over there. Their father was in some sort of Serb militia during World War Two so they had ins. The brothers Dragovic came back rich with a small army of Serb vets that they had used to muscle into various rackets—drugs, numbers, prostitution, loan-sharking, anything that turned a profit."

"Midnineties, right? Yeah, I remember a lot of drive-bys and shoot-'em-ups back then. Didn't know it was Dragovic's work."

"Not all of them, of course, but he contributed his share. The brothers then tied themselves in with the Russians and used Brighton Beach as a launching pad against the Haitians and Dominicans. Totally ruthless from what I hear."

"A little local ethnic cleansing, eh?"

"You might say. Then when the Kosovo thing started, Milos and his brother—I can't remember his name—went back to guns, but the brother got killed in some deal that went sour. Milos came back richer and more powerful."

"What's his organization like?"

"He's a control freak. No lieutenant or right-hand man; micromanages everything himself. Not much of an entourage—thinks that shows weakness—and likes the fast lane."

"Yeah, he do love to get his picture in the paper."

"And now a club he's building, so all the beautiful people will come to him. He took over one of Regine's defunct places. And what name, do you think?"

"Milos's Mosh Pit?"

"No. Worse: Belgravy."

Jack had to laugh. "No!"

"But it won't open till the fall, so for reservations you still have time." He looked at Jack over his glasses. "You're getting involved with this man?"

Jack shrugged. "I've found two people in as many weeks with a beef against him."

"Be careful. He's a mean one. Not afraid to get his own hands dirty—likes it, I'm told."

"Dirty as in red and wet?"

"Exactly."

Jack blew out a breath. "Well, I wasn't thinking of getting in close."

"Good thinking. With that man, arm's length is too close."

Abe finished his bagel and brushed off his littered shirtfront. The parakeet raced around, gobbling up the cascade of crumbs.

"Look at my Parabellum," he said. "Better than a Dustbuster, that bird." He shook his head. "Listen to me. I'm kvelling about a parakeet."

"You've got to get out more, Abe."

"I should go out like a schnook so I can get roughed up by some middle-aged marauders? Feh! I read the papers." He waved a pudgy hand at his stack of newspapers; Abe read all the papers every day—the Times, the Daily News, the Post, Newsday, the Village Voice, even the pink-sheeted weekly Observer. "A jungle out there. I'm better off at home watching I Love Lucy reruns."

"Come on. The city's so safe lately it's practically a theme park."

"So the mayor and his minions say, but I see the shiny mantle slipping. I perceive a contrarian trend. And besides, if the city should be too safe, it could be bad for business."

"It's great for business—except maybe yours."

Abe didn't sell enough sporting goods to pay the rent, let alone make a living. His real stock was hidden beneath their feet: if it fired a bullet, Abe sold it.

"Sales falling off?"

Abe shrugged. "Falling off, no. Flat, yes. But that's not bad. It could mean I'm reaching my goal."

"The polite society?"

Abe nodded. His idea of the ideal society was one where everyone was armed at all times. He truly believed in the Heinlein adage that an armed society is a polite society.

"What about you? How's demand for Repairman Jack's services?"

"Strong as ever. Probably won't slack off till the system works."

Abe laughed. "Such a bright future you have. But seriously. Did you ever think that maybe the city is too safe and that's why so many people are going meshugge? Maybe they were so used to feeling threatened that now that they aren't, all that pent-up, unspent adrenaline is blowing their tops."

Jack stared at him. This was what he loved most about Abe: his crazy theories. But he'd never tell him that.

Abe stared back. "Nu?"

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Then how do you explain all those otherwise law-abiding middle-aged preppies going on a rampage last night? Or how about this?" He looked down at the New York Post that lay spread out on the counter between them. "Where was it? I just—oy, Parabellum!"

"Looks like your feathered Dustbuster left you a thank-you note."

Abe grabbed a tissue and wiped up the droppings. He pointed to a column of type. "Here it is. An article about this advertising firm's CEO who hears that their biggest account is being transferred to another shop. What does he do? He picks up a paperweight and starts beating on the account exec who was in charge. Kills him almost. This is normal?"

Jack thought of the murderous rage of the cab lady but didn't mention her. Abe would only say it bolstered his theory.

"It's a big city. Takes all kinds."

"This isn't an isolated incident. All over, I'm seeing it. A trend, I tell you. People flying off the handle for no reason—or for just a little reason maybe. And all because the city is too safe. Pent-up adrenaline. Congested spleens. Something must be done."

Abe was on a roll, and Jack would have loved to hang around and see how far he could ride this, but he had to go.

"Does this train of thought have a caboose?"

"Not yet."

"I know just the thing, then," Jack said, heading for the door. "Start passing a petition for a more dangerous New York. And while you're doing that, I'll go see a new customer."

"Be careful out there," Abe called after him. "Spleens exploding everywhere."

4

Nadia felt giddy as she entered the fashionably retro art deco lobby of the gleaming thirty-story office building on East Thirty-fourth Street, her earlier apprehensions swept away by a surge of anticipation: finally, after two weeks of orientation and acclimation, she would be introduced to the project she had been hired for.

But her euphoria condensed into a cold leaden lump in her stomach when she recognized one of the men sharing her elevator. He looked fiftyish, and his beige-and-charcoal glen plaid suit had to cost a couple of thousand dollars, maybe more considering the tailoring that must have been necessary for the perfect fit around his broad shoulders; his highly polished black shoes were made out of some sort of patterned leather—lizard, rattlesnake, or some other appropriate reptile—no tie, but a diamond stud secured the deacon's collar of his shirt. His gelled jet hair swept straight back from his ruddy face like a glistening pelt, accentuating his high cheekbones, strong nose, and thin lips. His cold dark eyes swept through the elevator cab, lingered briefly on Nadia, then moved on, a raptor cataloging the immediately available rodent population.

Milos Dragovic.

Nadia's mood sank even further when she saw him press the 16 button, already lit because she'd pressed it a few seconds earlier.

He was going to the GEM offices. Why? To shake down Dr. Monnet again? She couldn't stand this. It had to be stopped. She was suddenly glad she'd hired Jack. All lingering doubts vanished. She had done the right thing.

She watched Milos Dragovic out of the corner of her eye. No question he had a commanding presence, sort of what she'd expected from Repairman Jack. He radiated power, a true alpha male who didn't want anyone to forget it. Here was a man who needed to be noticed—demanded to be noticed—whereas Jack seemed to prefer invisibility.

Nadia could see why models and starlets and celebrities were attracted to Dragovic. Something primal about his features, his hair, his build, his bearing. If there was such a thing as animal magnetism, Milos Dragovic had it.

She sniffed. The elevator car quickly had become redolent of his musky cologne—probably Eau de Testosterone or the like.

He seemed to be alone. Nadia glanced around. The other half-dozen occupants of the car appeared to be average workaday souls like her. Didn't hoods like Dragovic travel with bodyguards and gofers?

Finally the car stopped at the sixteenth floor, the home of GEM Pharma's corporate offices. Dragovic stepped out ahead of her where he faced a wall of glass etched with the GEM Pharma logo. Claudine the receptionist spotted Nadia through the glass and buzzed her in with a wave and a smile. Dragovic pushed through behind her.

"Excuse me, sir—" Claudine began.

"I have meeting with your bosses," Dragovic said in a deep, sharp, slightly accented voice, never slowing or bothering even to look at her.

Claudine glanced down at her schedule book. "I have nothing about a meeting here."

"That is because I call meeting, sweetheart."

Dragovic kept moving. No hesitation—he seemed to know exactly where he was going, striding down the hallway toward the boardroom as if he owned the place.

"I'm not your sweetheart," Claudine said in a low voice.

"Call security," Nadia said.

Claudine shrugged. "What's the point? Nobody ever objects when he busts in."

Nadia watched Dragovic's back, furious. Where did he get off bulling his way in here like this? She was tempted to follow him and see if she could eavesdrop on this meeting. But that could be risky. If she got caught it might mean a one-way ticket back to the sidewalk.

Taking a deep breath, Nadia told herself she was not going to let this ruin her big day. She headed directly for the center of the GEM offices where the stairs down to the research level were located. The company leased two floors in this building: the upper housed most of the corporate business, marketing, and sales offices; the basic research department—Dr. Monnet's baby—was on the lower level and, for security reasons, could be reached only through the corporate floor. The elevator did not make that stop.

She ran her ID card through the magnetic swipe reader and heard the lock click open. She hurried down the stairs and waved to some of the techs and programmers on the way to her office. Once there, she stepped inside, slipped into a white lab coat, then headed for the coffeepot.

Nadia noticed her hand trembling as she poured herself a cup. Too much caffeine, or still-simmering anger at Milos Dragovic?

… That is because I call meeting, sweetheart.…

The arrogance. What kind of power could he have over the GEM officers? She'd give anything to know what was happening in that conference room now.

5

"I do not want excuses!" Milos Dragovic shouted, slamming his hand on the table. He noted with satisfaction how Garrison and Edwards jumped. Monnet, the prick, simply pursed his lips, like he had a sour taste in his mouth. "I want my shipment and I want it now!"

Milos stared down at the three principals of GEM Pharma across the mahogany conference table from him. He knew all about these Harvard graduates: Garrison, Edwards, and Monnet had got together a dozen years ago and started the company. G-E-M—their initials. Cute.

To Dragovic's left sat Kent Garrison, the chubby, red-haired, perpetually wrinkled MBA who oversaw the day-to-day business. Next to him was Brad Edwards, the dark, slim, rich, pretty-boy lawyer who had put up much of the firm's start-up capital; he ran the legal department and acted as comptroller.

And last but not least by a very long shot, dapper Dr. Luc Monnet, head of R and D, one seat away from the other two. Monnet was the partner with both a Ph.D. and an M.D., who published supposedly groundbreaking papers about things only three people in the world could understand.

Monnet… simply looking at the man set Milos on edge. Something about him made Milos want to flatten his frog nose. Maybe it was his air of superiority, as if he were royalty or something. Or maybe it was the way he looked at Milos, as if he'd crawled out from under a rock. Milos could stare the other two down in a couple of heartbeats, but Monnet… Monnet crossed his arms, leaned back, and matched him eye for eye.

Milos clenched his jaw. I can buy and sell you, Monnet. My folks were immigrants just like yours. We both started with nothing, but I made the big bucks while you were pulling down a teacher's salary, living in genteel poverty. Now you're rich too, but only because of my connections. Without me you'd be bankrupt.

And yet he knew Monnet looked down on him, as if he sat high on some pedestal of savoir faire that Milos could never reach.

"Sorry, Milos," Monnet said in that cultured voice of his. "The next shipment of Loki won't be ready until early next week."

"It's true," Garrison said. Ropes of sweat trailed over his pudgy cheeks. Stick an apple in his mouth and he'd look like a roast suckling pig. "We'd give it to you if we had it—you know that."

"A-a-and let's face it," Edwards said. "We don't make any money by not shipping, right? But this ran is about to turn. We won't be able to start a new run until the weekend."

"Perhaps I don't have your attention. Yes? Is that it?" Milos said, thickening his accent. He turned, lifted a chair, and hurled it against the wall. "Now! Do you hear? I want Loki shipment now!"

His parents had brought him here from Herzegovina at age five. His father had been a Chetnik during World War Two who had found it impossible to live under the Communists afterward. He escaped and brought his family to Brooklyn, where they had never felt at ease. Milos had spent most of his childhood and adolescence scrubbing his speech of any trace of his foreign roots. He'd succeeded. By high school he could speak accent-free English. But as he'd moved into quasi-legal circles, he learned that a bit of an accent could be useful—for charming or threatening, depending on the context. So by age twenty Milos Dragovic had backpedaled and begun imitating his father's English.

"It's not there to give you!" Edwards wailed, cowering in his seat.

"Why not? You are selling to someone else? Yes? This is why you don't give me shipment?"

"God, no!" said Garrison. "We'd never do anything like that!"

"You damn better not! If I find you give Dragovic's Loki to someone else, I wring your necks like chick-ens!" He pressed his two fists together, thumb to thumb, and twisted.

Edwards winced.

"So," Milos said, placing his hands on his hips. "If no one else has my Loki, where is it?"

"We don't have it!" Edwards said. He looked like he was going to cry.

Milos hid a smile. He loved torturing these wimps. He knew they ran dry every month, knew damn well they weren't selling to anybody else, but he couldn't resist striking the fear of God—in this case, a vengeful god called Milos—into their blue-blooded hearts. He looked forward to these little meetings. And this windowless, soundproof, electronically secure boardroom was perfect. He could shout, throw things, and no one outside had a clue as to what was going on. Milos preferred to drop in without notice, sans bodyguards—he didn't want anyone else in his organization knowing the origin of Loki—and terrorize the wimps for a few minutes, then take off, leaving them quaking in their brown-stained undershorts.

All except Monnet.

Keep up the game face, Doctor, Milos thought. I've got something special saved, just for you, something that will wipe that smug expression clean off your ugly little face.

Monnet sighed. "How many times do we have to go through this? The Loki molecule becomes unstable. When that happens we need to secure a new template. We will have that by tomorrow. We will start running it immediately. We will test its potency and then go into full-scale production."

Milos leaned forward on the table, glaring at the smaller man. "Is Dr. Monnet"—he made sure to mispronounce it Moe-nett—"saying that I am stupid?"

Monnet held his gaze. "Quite the contrary. I think you are far more intelligent than you would like us to think. Which makes these transparent displays of ferocity fruitless and redundant."

Monnet's blase tone made Milos want to rip his head off. But he calmed himself and decided it was time for an about-face. Time to reconfirm their suspicions that he was utterly psycho.

He straightened and flashed them his best smile. "You are right, of course," he said softly, genially. "We should not fight. We are brothers, yes? In my heart I trust you as no others." He clapped his hands once. "So. When should your brother expect his next shipment?"

Garrison and Edwards turned nervously toward Monnet.

"We'll do a trial run of the new template tomorrow, test it late Friday or early Saturday morning. If all goes well, we'll start production immediately. Because of Memorial Day, the first shipment won't go out till Tuesday morning. But it will be a big one."

"Excellent! I will be out of town for the weekend"—he caught the looks of relief on Garrison's and Edwards's faces—"but I will stay in touch."

"Going to Europe?" Edwards said, a hopeful gleam in his eye.

"No," Milos said. "The Hamptons. East Hampton. I am having housewarming parties for my new home on the ocean. I would invite all of you, but I know that you will be too busy making my Loki, yes?"

"Absolutely," Garrison said, with Edwards vigorously nodding in agreement.

Milos fixed his gaze on Monnet. As usual, he hadn't been able to rattle him with threats and noise. But he had something special for Dr. Monnet, something he'd saved till now.

"I especially wish the good doctor could join the parties. I will be serving a nice little wine I picked up recently. A Bordeaux. You have heard of Chateau Petrus, yes?"

He saw Monnet stiffen. His tone was guarded. "Yes."

"But of course you have. It is from your homeland. I am silly. Yes, I bought six bottles of Chateau Petrus 1947 Cru Exceptionnel last night, and I will be drinking them all this weekend. It is such a shame you cannot be there to have some. I understand it is quite good."

Milos watched with glee as the color faded from Monnet's cheeks, leaving him wide-eyed, livid, and—for once—speechless.

"Have a nice day," Milos said, then turned, unlocked the door, and pushed out into the hall.

6

Luc fought to regain his composure as the door shut behind Dragovic. If he had a gun right now, he would walk out into the hall and shoot the man. He'd never fired a gun before but somehow, with Dragovic as the target, he was sure he could manage it.

At least he would if he could make his legs work. Dragovic's words had left him weak in the knees. Had that… that ape been tailing him? That could be the only explanation. One of Dragovic's men must have followed him to Sotheby's and called his boss when Luc started bidding. Dragovic had sat home and outbid him.

Why? Luc wondered. Certainly not because his Slavic palate could appreciate a fine Pomerol. The only reason could be… simply to frustrate me.

Again, why? Because I don't tremble whenever he looks my way?

If the wine episode was meant to drive home that Milos Dragovic was not a man to be taken lightly, he'd wasted his money. Luc had been forced to accept that.

Brad Edwards moaned as he stepped to the door and relocked it. "How did we ever get involved with this maniac?"

"You know how," Kent Garrison said. He mopped his florid face on his shirtsleeve. "And you damn well know why."

Brad nodded slowly, sorrowfully. "Yes, I do." He dropped his tidy frame back into a chair. "But what's worse, I don't see how we'll ever be free of him."

"I do," Luc said, finally finding his voice.

His partners sprang upright, chorusing, "You do? How?"

"By not supplying him with any more Loki."

"Not funny, Luc!" Brad said, holding up a manicured hand as if to block the words in midair. "Don't even joke about that!"

"I'm not," he said, feeling the dread slip over him. "We may not have a choice."

The sound of Kent's nervous swallow filled the tiny room. "You mean what you said about the source drying up? You don't think that's happened, do you?"

"No. We're safe this time. I would have been informed to the contrary." At least Luc hoped Oz would have called. "But I have my doubts, serious doubts, about next time."

"Oh, God!" Brad said, visibly trembling. "You mean this could be it? In four weeks we come up empty? Dragovic will kill us!"

"Yes," Luc said softly. "He probably will. Or at least try."

But he'll have to find me first, Luc thought.

He could get lost in Provence where no one, especially a Serb swine, would find him. But Kent and Brad…

Kent made a noise that sounded like a sob. "We have to tell him, prepare him, convince him that it's not our fault!"

"Do you really think you can do that?" Luc said. "The man is an animal. But despite all his threats we've had nothing to fear from him because we are the world's only source of Loki. But once we stop supplying him he'll think we're either holding out for a higher price or we've found another buyer—that's the way they do things in his world. And if he can't have it, he'll finish us. Our only hope is to stabilize the Loki molecule. If we—"

"But you can't!" Brad cried, his voice rising toward a wall. "You've been trying to stabilize the molecule since you discovered it and you've failed every time. We spent a fortune on that lab of yours. For what? Nothing! And then that Macintosh fellow couldn't do it either. So let's face facts—the Loki molecule can't be stabilized!"

"It can. The problem simply needs a new approach. The new researcher I've hired is quite brilliant and—"

"And what?" Garrison said, his face as red as his hair. "If she's so smart she'll learn too much and then try to blackmail us like Macintosh."

"Nadia is not the type."

When their salesman, Gleason, had mentioned Nadia Radzminsky as a replacement for Macintosh, Luc had been instantly interested. He remembered her for more than that one wild afternoon back in his professor days; she had been a standout student with an intuitive feel for molecular biology. He'd seen her name—second or third in the queue, to be sure—on a number of groundbreaking papers over the last few years. And after her first interview, during which she'd discoursed on his own recent papers so perceptively, he'd known she was their only hope.

"And besides, I've added extra encryption to my personal files. She'll know only what I tell her." He looked around the table. "And we're all onboard about her bonus?"

The other two nodded, Brad a bit reluctantly. "Helluva bonus," he said.

Kent leaned back and ran both hands through his damp red hair. "Worth every cent if she does it." He cast a sharp look at Luc. "And doesn't try to screw us."

Luc wasn't worried about Nadia. Her reverence for him was touching. He'd use that and the bonus—and throw in some warmth and intimacy, just for the delicious hell of it, perhaps—to keep her on track.

"Christ,',' Brad said. "We only have four weeks. When does she start?"

"I'm introducing her to the Loki molecule today. She'll start work on the new template molecule tomorrow."

"Four weeks," Brad whispered. "It can't be done!"

"It can," Luc said.

It must, he thought.

The walls of the small room suddenly seemed to close in on him. Brad had had it built as soon as they'd started dealing with Dragovic. A good idea, too, since all too frequently they had to meet to discuss delicate matters—felonious matters—and an electronically shielded, soundproof room fit the bill. But the lack of windows gave Luc a caged feeling, and now the air seemed to be going sour.

He rose and headed for the door. "As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to meet her now in the dry lab."

He unlocked the door and pushed it open slowly in case someone was hurrying down the hall. They'd had to reverse its swing in order to assure a soundproof seal when it was closed. He stepped into the hall and breathed the cooler air. At least it seemed cooler. But still he felt weak.

He leaned against the wall and wondered how it had all gone so wrong.

When Kent and Brad had approached him to be part of a new venture, to lend his name and reputation to the company they were starting up, the future had looked so bright. All things seemed possible. Now it was all turning to shit. He wanted to scream.

To think that an innocent investigation into a strange-looking creature's blood had brought him to this nadir point in his life—a drug trafficker, a murderer. How much lower could he sink?

It was up to Nadia now. He'd tried every way he could imagine to stabilize the molecule but had run up against a wall. Maybe he was too old; maybe his creative juices had dried up; maybe it was the stress dealing with Dragovic and the constant sense of impending doom, the realization that his whole world could implode at any second. Whatever the cause, he'd found himself incapable of breaching that wall.

But a new mind, brilliant, unfettered by such oppressive concerns, might succeed where he'd foundered.

Four weeks… Luc squeezed his eyes shut, You must not fail me, Nadia. Everything depends on you.

7

Nadia sat alone in the darkened room, a bulbous shape floating in the air before her: a molecule of lovastatin, the cholesterol-lowering drug that had gone off-patent; Merck originally had an exclusive on it as Mevacor, but GEM now sold its generic equivalent at a much lower price.

Without taking her eyes off the molecule, Nadia tapped her keyboard, rolled her trackball, and an extra methyl group appeared and attached itself to one end of the larger mass. She rotated the 3-D image 360 degrees in two planes to make sure the new group had the proper orientation, then: voila—lovastatin had become simvastatin, Merck's other lipid-lowering agent, Zocor. But Zocor was still patent-protected, so that one was off-limits to the production department. For now, at least.

Nadia loved the dry lab and all its state-of-the-art equipment. No jars of reagents, no pipettes, no ovens or incubators—every experiment and chemical reaction in this small spare room was virtual, thanks to the holographic molecular imager. Nadia knew it had to cost a fortune, far more than any other pharmaceutical company GEM's size would spend. But Dr. Monnet had told her that GEM had made a commitment to original research. They weren't going to be a me-too company forever. The dry lab was ample proof of that.

Nadia sighed. She was restless. She felt she'd had enough practice now. She had the imager down cold. She was more than ready for her first real challenge.

"Hey," said a familiar voice behind her. "Can we play DNA Wars on that?"

Nadia gasped and spun in her chair. Her words came in a rush when she saw who it was.

"Doug! My God, what are you doing here! How'd you get in? You'll be fired if anyone sees you!"

Strong arms pulled her from the chair and enfolded her. She wrapped her arms around Doug and breathed in his cologne—Woods, she knew, because she'd given it to him for his birthday. Nadia held him close, loving the solid feel of him.

Douglas Gleason, a fair-haired six-footer with an easy smile and merry blue eyes. A natural charmer whose easygoing manner hid a tenacious, razor-sharp mind. He was dressed for work in his gray suit—the same suit he'd been wearing the day they met.

That had been last year at the annual state medical society convention. Doug had been working the GEM Pharma booth in the exhibit area. Nadia had wandered by with her shoulder bag and her laptop, interested because she knew Dr. Monnet had left his teaching position to co-found the company. She remembered the bolt of electricity that had shot through her when Doug glanced up and smiled. She hadn't meant to stop, but now she had no choice—those eyes, that thick sandy hair… A pheromonal cloud enveloped her, drawing her in…

She lingered and listened, barely comprehending a word, as he extolled the virtues of TriCef, GEM's brand-new third-generation cephalosporin antibiotic. When he finished his pitch she accepted a glossy index card and promised to give TriCef a try. But the pheromones wouldn't release her, so she asked about GEM's generic line. When he finally exhausted that subject and nothing was left to say, at least about pharmaceuticals, she thanked him and forced herself to turn away.

"Say, isn't that a 486?" Doug had said, pointing to her laptop. "I haven't seen one of those in a dog's age."

He wasn't letting her go! Nadia remembered feeling giddy with relief.

Playing it cool, she'd told him that at the moment it was an overpriced paperweight. She hadn't been able to get it to boot up this morning. Doug took a break, sat down with her, and within minutes had it up and running, booting faster than she could ever remember. He explained something about her system.ini and winini files being "junked up," which meant nothing to Nadia. Computers were like cars to her: she knew how to operate them, could make them do what she needed, but had no idea what was going on under the hood.

They got to talking and she learned that Douglas Gleason thought of himself not as a pharmaceutical sales rep but as a software designer. He even had his own start-up company: GleaSoft; it didn't have a product line yet, but that was why he was working as a sales rep: research. Well, research and a way to pay the rent while he was learning the ins and outs of the pharmaceutical trade in order to program a new tracking software package that would revolutionize how drugs were marketed to physicians.

He'd offered to take her out to dinner—strictly business on his GEM sales account—and she'd accepted. They wound up at Vong, a French Vietnamese place she never could have afforded on her resident's pay. The meal had been fabulous, and their hours together magic. Doug was bright and funny, with wide-ranging interests, but it was his entrepreneurial spirit that captured her. Here was a man with a dream, a need to take control of his life, to call his own shots, and the drive and tenacity to pursue it until he'd achieved it. If he had to be a sales rep for a few years to get started, he'd do it. But he wouldn't—couldn't—do it halfway. He threw himself wholeheartedly into everything he did, and as a result he'd achieved GEM's top sales record.

One dinner led to another, and another, and soon they were sharing breakfast. Lately they'd been talking about marriage.

But right now Nadia was worried for him. She pushed herself back to arm's length.

"Doug, this is a secure area. How did you get in?"

He held up a MasterCard. "With this."

"A credit card? How?"

"It's an old one. I hacked your swipe card and copied the code from its magnetic strip onto this one."

"But that's illegal!"

She'd been worried about him getting fired. Now she was worried about him being arrested.

He shrugged. "Maybe. I just wanted to see if I could do it. And I wanted to get a look at this machine you've been telling me about." He stepped past her and stood before the imager, staring at the 3-D hologram floating above it, a look of sublime wonder on his face. "Oh,

Nadj, this is amazing. I'd love to see the code that makes it go."

"Maybe I never should have mentioned it."

Knowing Doug was the compleat computerphile, she'd told him about the molecular imager. She'd noticed him mentally salivating when she described it. She never dreamed he'd go this far just to see it.

He was slipping around the rear of the workbench, peering at the electronics. "Oh, Nadj, Nadj, Nadj," he was murmuring, sounding a little like he did during sex, "you've got a Silicon Graphics Origin 2000 running this thing! I'd give anything to play with it."

"Don't even think about it. If this thing crashes—"

"Don't worry," he said, returning to her side. "I won't touch it. Wouldn't dare. I just wanted to see it. And see you."

"Me? Why?"

"Well, this is the big day, right? Your first real project? I just came by to wish you good luck, and to give you"—he reached inside his breast pocket and produced a single yellow bud rose—"this."

"Oh, Doug," she taking it and sniffing the tightly coiled petals. She felt lightheaded. Only a rose. How could a single simple flower touch her so deeply? She kissed him. "How sweet of you."

"Let's just hope your project's not the same one Macintosh was working on."

"Why not?"

"Because he said it was—and I quote—'a real bitch.'"

"You knew him?"

"We had a few beers now and again. Tom wasn't the cheeriest guy, and I don't think he had many friends. Wouldn't discuss any details, just kept saying the same thing over and over: 'Real bitch of a problem.' Got so fed up, he just walked out one day and never came back."

My lucky day, Nadia thought. Doug had approached Dr. Monnet and mentioned that one of his own former students was finishing up a residency and might be available to replace Macintosh.

Of course if she'd known what Doug was up to she would have stopped him. And when she did learn he'd been talking to Dr. Monnet about her… she'd felt sick. Their fling had lasted one day, one afternoon, really, much too brief to be called an affair…

She remembered entering his office at the end of the term, after she'd earned an A—she hadn't wanted him to think she had an ulterior motive—and undressing. He'd watched her with this shocked look on his face, and she couldn't quite believe what she was doing herself, but she'd been wearing only four articles of clothing so there wasn't much time for a change of heart. In thirty seconds she was standing before him in her birthday suit, her nipples so hard they ached, and he'd hesitated maybe two heartbeats…

They'd spent the rest of the afternoon making love against the walls, against the door, and on every horizontal surface in the room. Later he took her out to dinner and told her how wonderful it had been but it couldn't go on. He was married and he'd been swept away, but he hoped she understood that it had to end here.

She'd amazed him and shocked herself by saying she understood perfectly, that a long-term relationship had been the furthest thing from her mind. She'd simply wanted to fuck the most brilliant man she'd ever met.

Nadia still couldn't believe she'd said that—or done it. The whole episode, the wildest day of her life, had been so out of character. She'd never done anything even remotely like that before or since. And maybe that had been it: the urge to let go and do something outrageous. The fact that she'd completed her didactic courses and would never come in contact with Dr. Monnet again must have lent her a sense of security.

Some security. When Doug had said he'd set up a meeting for her with Dr. Monnet, he'd been so excited and proud she just couldn't say no. She'd dreaded seeing him, but Dr. Monnet had been the perfect professional. He'd acknowledged their past together as teacher and student but nothing else. He'd seemed far more interested in her later training than in their brief interlude, quizzing her closely on her contributions to the papers on the effects of anabolic steroids on serotonin levels she'd published with Dr. Petrillo.

As much as Nadia had admired him before, she'd left with boundless new respect for Dr. Luc Monnet.

But when he'd called two days later, he did mention their tryst: He told her he hadn't forgotten their "intimate afternoon," as he termed it, but that was to be buried. He needed someone for a crucial project, and he could allow nothing from the past to interfere. If she could assure him that she would approach her work with a purely professional attitude, the position was hers.

Nadia had been speechless. The man was a prince.

Dr. Monnet had expedited her hiring through personnel and she'd found herself in the GEM dry lab within days.

And even better: Doug insisted on downplaying their relationship. "I told him we were old friends, nothing more," he'd said. "So better keep it that way. They might not like it if they know we're an item. Might think it would get in the way of our work."

That had been fine with Nadia, although she didn't see how Doug could interfere with her work.

"A real bitch of a problem," her predecessor had said before quitting? She knew she'd never walk out on Dr. Monnet, no matter how difficult the project. It was too much of a thrill and an honor to be working with him.

The only one who wasn't thrilled was her mother, who didn't think a "real doctor" should do research. She wanted to know when Nadia was going to start seeing sick people, like a "real doctor."

Be patient, Mom, she thought. I'm going to do my damnedest to make a landmark contribution; then I'll go into practice—promise.

"Has Macintosh been in touch with you since he left?" Nadia asked.

Doug shook his head. "Not a word. As I said, not a real gregarious sort."

"Let's just hope he solved that 'bitch of a problem' before he left."

"Even if he didn't," Doug said with that lopsided smile she loved, "you'll just breeze right through it."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." She held up the rose. "And thanks for this. But now you've got to breeze out of here."

"Hey, Nadj, you're talking to their top salesman. They don't want to lose me. Besides, they've gone a bit overboard with the security thing, don't you think?"

"Not a bit," Nadia said. "We're going to be working with human hormones."

"So's everybody else."

"Right. But let's say you find a way to alter estrogen so it doesn't increase the risk of blood clots and breast and uterine cancer but still prevents osteoporosis, hot flashes, and keeps cholesterol down. Or better yet, say we take an anabolic steroid and block all its undesirable side effects but enhance its ability to burn fat. How much would a product like that be worth?"

Doug gave a low whistle. "You could fire the entire sales force. People would be knocking down the doors."

"Right. And that's why Dr. Monnet wants whatever we discover here to stay behind these doors until it's registered with the U.S. Patent Office."

Doug held up his hands. "All right. You win. I'm convinced." He stuck his head out the dry lab door and looked around. "Elaborate as this is, I'd have thought there'd be more to it."

"How so?"

"I don't know how much you know about GEM. It started off selling generic antibiotics but went public a couple of years ago to raise capital to buy the rights to TriCef from Nagata in Japan. GEM would have gone under if TriCef flopped, but luckily the profits are pouring in. And according to the Pharmaceutical Forum, it's a top seller. Everybody's using TriCef. I should know—my commission checks show I'm earning big bucks just on that one product. But GEM's not paying dividends. Plus, it's been cutting its sales force. My territory is now so big I can barely keep up with it."

"Just means they're confident in you. Plus they've got a hot new antibiotic, so maybe they don't need to push it so much."

Doug looked at her. "No dividend, cutting the sales force—that sounds like a company on the ropes instead of one that's raking in the profits. Did you see the annual report?"

"Well, no, I—"

"It says the company's pouring most of its profits back into GEM Basic."

Nadia raised her hand. "Hey, that's me." GEM Basic was the research division—right here where they were standing. She pointed to the molecule imager. "There's your proof."

"The amount of money they say they're spending on R and D would fund dozens of these. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

Nadia shrugged. "Balance sheets aren't my thing."

"Not exactly mine either. But I figure if I'm going to be an alpha ape in the software jungle, I have to know how a company is run. Damned if I can figure how they're running this one." He smiled. "But that's not my worry. I'll be out of here by this time next year, and in the meantime, let's keep those commission checks rolling in." He pulled her close and kissed her. "Dinner tonight?"

"How about the Coyote?"

"I'm always up for Tex-Mex," he said. "Call you later."

Nadia grabbed his arm as he started for the door. "Whoa! What if you run into Dr. Monnet on your way out? Let me go first and see if all's clear."

She led him back to the security door, passing a tech or two along the way who paid them little attention. They seemed to assume that if Doug had got in and was with Dr. Radzminsky, he must belong.

Nadia stepped through the door and looked around. No one in sight. She motioned to Doug, who hurried up behind her.

"Go," she said, giving him a quick kiss. "And don't do this again."

A smile, a wave, and he was heading down the hall toward the reception area. Nadia turned and nearly bumped into Dr. Monnet.

"Oh, Nadia. There you are. I was just calling the dry lab to tell you I've been delayed. But I'll be down in half an hour and we'll get started."

He looked distracted, frayed at the emotional edges. Dragovic's fault. Had to be. She felt her anger rise. It was criminal for a man of Dr. Monnet's brilliance to be upset by a thug. He needed a tranquil environment to allow him to focus fully on his work.

Don't worry, Dr. Monnet, she thought. I know you're in some kind of trouble, but I think I've found you help.

She wondered if Jack was already working on the case. Would he call it a case? And if he was on it, how was he starting out?

8

The quickest way to Staten Island's north shore was through New Jersey via the Bayonne Bridge. The guy Jack was going to see, Sal Vituolo, ran a junkyard there off Richmond Terrace. Lots of junkyards among the old docks along this stretch of road. Word had it some of them were fronts for chop shops, but Jack wasn't interested in car parts.

When he was a kid, New Yorkers called this chunk of rock the Borough of Richmond and used it mostly as an offshore refinery and garbage dump. Sometime in the seventies it renamed itself Staten Island. A lot of people Jack knew would rather admit they were from Jersey than Staten Island.

He steered his five-year-old Buick Century into the Sal's Salvage, Inc., lot and got out. The air smelled of brine, acetylene fumes, and carbon monoxide. Hopping over muddy puddles, he was making his way toward the office when he heard a voice shout, "Watch out!"

Jack turned and saw that someone had backed a fork-lift into a twenty-foot stack of old tires. For an instant it leaned like the Tower of Pisa but looked like it might hold; then it toppled over, sending tires rolling and bouncing in all directions. Half a dozen came Jack's way, bounding wildly. A scary sight, and he had to duck, dodge, and weave to avoid being hit. He did not avoid getting splashed with muddy water. Once in the clear, he spent an amused moment watching the yard workers chase around like frantic shepherds after a scattered flock, then went inside.

Sal Vituolo did not look happy to see Jack when he stepped through the door. The office was small, cluttered, stuffy, and dim—its two tiny windows probably hadn't been cleaned since La Guardia's day. The man behind the desk was about forty with a low hairline, two days' growth of salt-and-pepper whiskers, and a good-sized gut. Reminded Jack of Joey Buttafuco, but without the class.

"Aren't you the guy from last week? Jack, right?"

"Right."

"The guy that doesn't do what I need done."

"Right."

"So why you back? Change your mind?"

"In a way."

Before Jack could go on, Sal went on a tear. His eyes lit and his hands started stabbing the air. "Yeah? Great, 'cause I've got just the way to do it, see? I know this caterer who's gonna to be doin' the Serb's parties this weekend. I can have him hire you as one of the waiters.

All you gotta do is poison the slimeball's food. Easy, huh?"

"Piece of cake," Jack said.

"I'd do it myself if I could look the part, if you know what I'm sayin'."

"I think I do," Jack said, moving a pile of parts catalogs from a chair to the floor and seating himself. "But before we go any further, Sal, I need you to tell me why you've got it in for Mr. Dragovic."

They hadn't got that far last week. When Jack had said he didn't "whack" people for money and Sal had said he'd settle for nothing less, the meeting ended.

"It's that murder thing they had him up on during the winter."

"The one he walked on after all the potential witnesses came down with Alzheimer's?"

"Right. And you know why they suddenly didn't know nuthin'? Because one of the so-called potential witnesses got flattened dead in a hit-and-run in Flatbush a coupla days before the trial."

"So I take it then this guy he was up for killing was a friend of yours?"

"Corvo?" Sal said with a disgusted look. "He was a piece of shit. The world smells better without him. For him, the wrong side of the grass is the right side of the grass, if you know what I'm sayin'. Nah, it was the witness, the potential fucking witness—he was my sister Roseanne's kid, Artie."

"How'd he become witness material?"

"Who knows?" he said, drawing out the second word into a sigh. "Artie got in with a rough crowd. He was headin' for a fall at ninety miles an hour. I warned him, offered him a job here but he was like, 'What? Me work in a junkyard? Fuhgeddaboudit.' Like I was puttin' him on or somethin', if you know what I'm sayin'. Anyway, he happened to be someplace where he wound up knowing something about this killing Dragovic done. And the DA found out, so they was leanin' on him pretty good."

"And he ratted?"

"No way, man. Artie was a stand-up kid." Sal thumped his chest. "He was tough in here." He tapped his head. "A little thick up here, maybe—a real capa-tosta, if you know what I'm saying—but he'd never rat. Dragovic couldn't know that, of course, so he took him out."

That was the word on the street: Dragovic arranged the hit and made sure to be very visible at the 21 Club when it went down. But Jack was curious as to how much more Sal knew.

"You don't know it was Dragovic."

"Hey, I heard from people who saw it go down. The car was aimed right at Artie. When Artie tried to dodge outta the way, the car swerved to hit him. No accident."

"OK. No accident. But as you yourself said, he was in with a rough bunch. Maybe—"

"It was the Serb. Guy was there told me. Won't say nothin' officially, if you know what I'm sayin', but he tells me he recognized one of the Serb's guys at the wheel. So it was Dragovic. I know it, and worse, Roseanne knows it, and every time I see her she looks at me and her eyes say, What're you gonna do about my boy? I'm her little brother, but I'm sorta the man of the family, so I feel I gotta do something. In the old days if you knew someone in the families you could maybe get something done, but those days are gone. So I gotta find someone or do it myself. But this Serb's crazy. I try something and he connects it to me, I'm dead, probably along with my wife and kids to boot."

"You could just let it go."

Sal looked at him. "What kinda guy would I be then?"

"Alive."

"Yeah. Alive and havin' to see Roseanne's eyes lookin' at me every Christmas and Easter and birthday and First Communion, sayin', When, Sal? When you gonna do somethin'?" He sighed heavily. "Bein' the man of the family can really suck, if you know what I'm sayin'."

Jack said nothing. Nothing to say to that.

"So anyways," Sal said, rubbing a hand over his face, "I'm talkin' to Eddy one day, sayin' what am I gonna do, and Eddy says I should call you." He spread his hands and looked at Jack. "And here we are."

Jack remembered Eddy. He'd fixed a problem for him a few years ago. Obviously Eddy remembered Jack.

"Let me float a concept by you, Sal."

"Float away."

"A life for a life balances the scales, sure, but lots of times it can leave you unsatisfied. You're redressing an act that has caused a lot of heartbreak and pain to you and the people you know and love. But when you kill the other guy, it's all over for him. Done. He's gone where he's beyond pain and suffering, but you're still living with the fallout from what he did."

"At least I know he paid for what he did."

"But did he pay? Really pay? He's pain free and your sister's still hurting. Think about that."

Sal did just that, or appeared to, sitting behind his desk staring at the empty sockets of a plastic pen set. Eventually…

"I take it we're talkin' about something worse than death here, right?"

"Right."

Sal frowned. "Which means, I take it, we're back to you tellin' me you don't kill for money."

"In a way."

"You know, I got to thinkin' about that last week. 'I don't kill for money.' Real funny way of putting it."

"Think so?" Jack wasn't too comfortable with where this seemed to be going.

Sal stared at him a moment, then shrugged. "So whatta you got in mind? Some of the old meat-hook-and-cattle-prod thing?"

"Not exactly. I was—"

"A little amputation action, then. Wham! Both legs off at the knees. That'll cut him down to size—in more ways than one." He grinned. "Yeah. Everywhere he goes he's eyeballin' other guys' crotches."

Jeez, Jack thought.

"No, I was thinking about a different approach, maybe coming at him through what's important to him. Dragovic seems to like the limelight, to be seen with the glitterati, to get his picture in the paper with celebrities and—"

Sal slapped one hand on the desktop and pointed a rust-stained finger at Jack with the other. "Acid in the face! He'll be blind and ugly as shit! That's it! That's it! Oh, I like the way you think!"

Jack bit the insides of his cheeks. Maybe this wasn't going to work.

"Acid in the face is always an option," he said, "but it's sort of crude, don't you think? I'm looking for a move with just a tad more style. You mentioned a party this weekend. Where?"

"Out at his new place in the Hamptons. Not one party—two."

"That might be a place to start. Got the address?"

Sal reached for the phone. "No, but my caterer friend will know it. Thinking of torching his place during one of the parties?" Sal said as he punched in the numbers. "Maybe his face'll catch fire and melt. I could go for that."

"Arson is always an option," Jack said, keeping his voice steady.

Sal Vituolo was a shoo-in for Bloodthirstiest Customer of the Year. How was Jack going to come up with something short of death, dismemberment, or disfigurement that would satisfy him?

Maybe a look at Dragovic's new place would inspire him. But if he wanted to avoid the holiday weekend traffic, he'd have to go today.

9

"I call it Loki," Dr. Monnet said.

Nadia stood at his side as he sat at the console and manipulated the hologram of the molecule that floated before them. She'd wondered, feared that being alone with him, being this close, might trigger that old sexual excitement. Thank God, no. She was still in awe of him as a scientist, but that one afternoon seemed to have permanently purged the lust she'd felt.

She concentrated, squinting at the image, not because it was too small or out of focus but because she had never seen anything like it.

"Did you make it?"

"No. I found it."

"Where? On the moon?"

"Right here on earth, but please do not ask me to be more specific. At least not at this time."

Nadia accepted that. Before inserting a sample of this Loki molecule into the imager's sequencer, Dr. Monnet had sworn her to secrecy, insisting that nothing of what she was about to see was to leave this room. Looking at it now, she could see why. This was unique.

Nadia stared at the odd shape. The molecule looked like some sort of anabolic steroid that had collided with serotonin and then rolled around in an organic stew where it had picked up odd side chains in combinations unlike any she'd ever seen.

Something about that singular shape and the way it seemed to go against the laws of organic chemistry and molecular biology as she knew them disturbed her. She felt chilled and repelled… as if she were witnessing a crime.

She shook off the feeling. How silly. Molecules weren't right or wrong; they simply were. This one was unusual in a disorienting way, and that was all.

And yet…

"That can't be stable," she said.

Dr. Monnet glanced up at her. "It is… and it isn't."

She didn't see how it could be both. "Sorry?"

"It remains in this form for approximately four weeks—"

"Four weeks!" she blurted, then caught herself. "Excuse me, Dr. Monnet, but that structure doesn't look like it would last four nanoseconds."

"I agree. Nevertheless, it does last about twenty-nine days; then it spontaneously degrades to this."

He tapped a few keys and a second hologram took shape in the air a few inches to the right of the first. Nadia felt a trickle of relief when she saw it. This molecule had a much more natural structure. She felt oddly comforted to know that the aberration on the left assumed the more wholesome configuration on the right.

There I go again. Wholesome? Where did that come from? Since when do I assign moral values to chemical structures?

"What are its properties?" Nadia said.

"Animal studies are under way. It appears to work as an appetite suppressant."

"We can always use one of those. Any side effects?"

"None yet."

Nadia nodded, feeling a tingle of excitement. A true appetite suppressant with a low side-effect profile would be the equivalent of a license to print money.

"But don't load up on GEM stock yet," Dr. Monnet said, as if reading her mind.

"I won't." Looking at that molecule again… Nadia couldn't imagine herself allowing something like that into her system, no matter how thin it might make her.

"Because we have the stability problem to contend with. We can't exploit a product with a shelf life of twenty-nine days, no matter what its effects."

"I take it then that the degraded molecule is bio-inert?"

"Utterly. That's why I call the unstable form Loki."

"Wasn't he some sort of Norse god?"

"The god of deceit and discord," he said, nodding. "But Loki was also a shape shifter, able to assume another form at will."

"Ah. Now I get it. And I'm guessing that's my job: stabilizing the shape shifter."

Dr. Monnet swiveled in the chair and faced her. "Yes. It's an extremely important assignment, a problem we must—absolutely must—overcome. The future of this company hinges upon it."

Oh, don't tell me that, Nadia thought as she looked at him. "The future of the company… that's… quite a responsibility."

"I know. And I'm counting on you to handle it."

"But you have other products—"

"They all pale in comparison to this."

"You think this is doable?"

"I'm praying so. But there's something else you must know about this molecule. It… it changes in a manner unparalleled in science."

The intensity in his eyes, the way they bored into her, made Nadia uneasy.

"How so?"

Dr. Monnet licked his lips with a quick dart of his tongue. Could he be nervous?

"What I am going to tell you will sound impossible. But I assure you that I know through personal experience that it is true."

I don't believe this, Nadia thought. He actually looks unsure of himself.

He took a breath. "Once Loki changes to its inert state, any record of its former structure—whether digital, photographic, a plastic model, even human memory of it—changes as well."

Nadia blinked, thinking, Pardon me, Dr. Monnet, but what the hell?

"No offense, sir, but that's not possible."

"Exactly what I said the first time I witnessed its degradation. I knew it had changed, knew side chains were missing, but I couldn't remember which ones. No problem, I thought. It's in the computer, so I'll just call up the original structure from memory. But the molecule in memory looked exactly like the degraded molecule."

"How is that possible?"

He shrugged. "I didn't know, and I still don't know. But I figured it must have been a freak occurrence, So I procured another sample—"

"What's the source?"

A grimace. "That, I'm afraid, will have to remain classified for the time being. But after the change in the molecule and its records occurred a second time, I decided to take precautions. I made hard copy printouts of the original molecule and filed them away. When the next degradation occurred, I pulled them out and…" He paused and swallowed as if his mouth was dry. "They had changed. They all looked exactly like the degraded molecule."

"Impossible."

"My sentiments exactly. But there I was, staring at the evidence. The only explanation I could think of was mischief or sabotage. But who? So I thought of a foolproof way to overcome this. After obtaining a fresh sample, I took multiple photos of the unstable form and hid them in various places in the office and my home; I even went so far as to build a crude model and lock it in a safe."

"That should have done it."

Dr. Monnet was shaking his head slowly. "No. When I went to check later, they all had changed: the computer backups, the photos, even the structural model."

"I know I sound like a broken record, but that's impossible!" Nadia couldn't believe Dr. Luc Monnet was feeding her this nonsense. Had he snapped?

He smiled but with no trace of humor. "I kept repeating that word too, like a mantra. I must have said it thousands of times since I began working with Loki, but after months I have come to accept the fantastic as fact. What choice do I have? Its properties are predictable and replicable. And I have sat here and watched my photos and models and drawings change before my eyes, felt all memory of the structure I had been looking at only seconds before vanish like smoke."

"But that's—" No. She would not say the word again.

"You don't believe me," he said, and this time she found a trace of humor in the twist of his lips. "Good. I'd worry about you if you did. Were positions reversed, I'd say that you were in dire need of intense therapy and large doses of Thorazine. This is why I waited until today to introduce you to Loki. Today is this sample's twenty-ninth day. When you come in tomorrow morning you will find it all changed, and you will not remember what the original looked like."

Yes, I will, Nadia promised silently. Oh, yes, I will.

"And then your work will begin. I'll give you a fresh sample—perhaps the last fresh sample we will be able to secure—and then you will have twenty-nine days to stabilize it. I'm hoping you will not leave us flat like your predecessor."

"I'm not a quitter."

"I know you aren't. That is why I have high hopes for you."

Not a quitter, no, but she had zero tolerance for looniness. Too much pseudoscience and bad science around as it was, and she would not add to it. A molecule that degraded to a different form was no big deal—but changing all records of its former structure as well? Absurd. Dr. Monnet said this phenomenon is predictable and replicable? She'd see about that. Nadia was going to make copies of the Loki molecule's structure, including a printout to take home with her. Tomorrow morning she'd prove how wrong he was.

"You say it's going to change overnight. Do you know when?"

"I know the exact minute."

"Really? What's the trigger?"

A heartbeat's worth of hesitation. "A celestial event."

Oh, please! "Which one?"

"Can I hold that in reserve as well?" he said, sounding apologetic. "I'm not trying to be coy or overly mysterious, but I feel you will be more accepting of all this tomorrow when you've seen—experienced for yourself—the changes I've described."

It was the way he said it that unsettled her—not with the note of someone anticipating vindication, but with the air of a rational man who had been forced to accept the unacceptable.

"This whole thing doesn't make sense. It borders on… supernatural."

"I know," he sighed. "That is another reason I christened it Loki. Loki was a god, a supernatural being."

10

"I'm so glad I talked you into this," Gia said.

She was dressed in faded jeans and a pink Polo shirt, and had taken the wheel of the Buick. Legally it was Gia's ride. Jack had bought it, maintained it, and paid its monthly garage fee, but it was registered in Gia's name and hers whenever she needed it. Both of them felt more comfortable riding in a car registered to a real person.

"Me too," Jack replied, but not so sure he meant it.

Gia had been working on a painting when he'd stopped by her place. If he'd had any inkling she'd want to drive out to the Hamptons, he never would have mentioned it. But mention he did, and she'd jumped on the idea with such enthusiasm that he couldn't say no.

It'll be all right, he told himself. Just a cruise by Dragovic's place, maybe a walk on the beach to see the ocean side of his property, and then back to the city. No risk, no danger to Gia and Vicky, just a couple and a child taking in the sights.

"I've never been out to the Hamptons," Gia said. "Have you?"

Flecks of pigment still clung to her fingers as they gripped the steering wheel. Vicky sat in the backseat, engrossed in an old Nancy Drew hardcover Jack had found in a used bookstore. A good night's sleep seemed to have been all she'd needed to recover from last night's scare, although Jack wondered how she'd react next time Gia took her to the museum.

"A few times," Jack said. "Just to see what it was like."

They'd cruised the Long Island Expressway most of the way out, then switched to the two-lane Montauk Highway for the drive onto the south fork. They'd passed though West Hampton, Bridgehampton, This-hampton, That-hampton, and lots of fields between. Farm country out here—the potato fields had been plowed and planted; cornstalks stood ankle-high under the late May sun. All the windows were open and the breeze ruffled Gia's short blond hair, lifting and twirling little golden wings.

"South Hampton College," Jack said as they passed the road sign pointing to the right. "Home of the Fighting Quahogs."

"What?" Gia laughed and glanced at him. "It didn't say that! Did it?"

"Of course it did. Would I make up something like that?"

"Yes. Most certainly yes." She hit the brake. "I'm going to turn around and go back to that sign, and if you're lying…"

"OK, OK. I made up the Fighting Quahogs. But if they're not the Fighting Quahogs, they should be, don't you think? That's one tough clam."

"Enough about clams. What about your trips out here? Were you with anyone?"

Jack smiled. Gia was always looking for clues about his pre-Gia love life.

"All by myself. Went all the way to Montauk one time. Put in calls to Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Sting, Paul McCartney, and Kim Bassinger to let them know I was coming—they all live out here, you know."

"I read the papers too."

"Yeah, well, you being from Iowa and all, I wasn't sure you knew. Anyway, they never got back to me. Not a one. Must have been out of town."

"They're busy people. You've got to give them more notice."

"I suppose. But I did stop off to see the Memory Motel—you know, from the Stones song? Walked the dunes. Nothing special except for the size of some of the houses. I guess I'm not much of a beach person."

"I love the beach. Thanks for letting us come along. It's such a beautiful day to get out of the city… especially after last night." She glanced into the backseat where Vicks was still absorbed in her book, then at Jack. "Did you find who you were looking for after you left?"

Jack nodded. "Got his name and address. He's got a broken leg."

"Good. What are you going to do?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Last night I wanted to have him strung up by his thumbs and let the Yankees use him as a tackling dummy."

"Uh, Gia, the Yankees are a baseball team. They don't tackle."

"Whoever then. You know what I mean. I'm saner now. Maybe a broken leg is enough."

"Maybe…" Jack said aloud, mentally adding: for you.

He still intended to pay a visit to Mr. Butler but wasn't going to be able to work him into the schedule today. Tomorrow for sure.

"Want me to take the wheel for a while?" he said, knowing her answer.

Gia preferred to drive rather than be driven by him—all but insisted on it. Which was fine with Jack since Gia's license was the genuine article.

Gia shook her head. "Uh-uh."

"I thought you might want to enjoy the scenery."

"That's all right. I know you think you've got this perfect depth perception, but you drive too close to things. I'm always jumping, thinking you're going to hit something. Besides, this is an easy drive."

"This time tomorrow afternoon will be a completely different story. Bumper-to-bumper for miles and miles."

Jack rested his hand on Gia's thigh, leaned back, and closed his eyes, wishing every day could be like this—not just the weather, but the ambience, the togetherness, the peace.

"Where are we going, Jack?" Gia said.

"East Hampton."

"No, not this afternoon. I mean, in life. You. Me. Us. Where?"

Jack opened his eyes and studied her profile. What a nice little nose she had. "Is there something wrong with where we are?"

She smiled. "No. But sometimes, especially when it's good like this, I have to wonder how long before something goes wrong."

"Why does something have to go wrong?"

"Well, with you doing what you do, doesn't it seem like just a matter of time before a big load of you-know-what hits the fan?"

"Not necessarily. I'm being more careful, more choosy, sticking with fix-its I can handle from a distance."

"But where does it end? You can't be Repairman Jack forever."

How true.

"I know. This isn't carved in stone, but I'm thinking maybe four or five more years and I'm out. I'll be forty then. That's when the reflexes begin to slow and you start needing reading glasses. Might be a good time for my midlife crisis. You know, look around at my life and say, 'Is this it?' and go off and do something radically different and crazy like, I don't know, becoming an accountant or a stockbroker."

"CPA-man Jack," Gia said. "I can see you coming up with all sorts of unique ways to handle an IRS audit."

Jack didn't laugh. The future wasn't funny. Not having an official identity, being a nonentity to the IRS and all the other federal, state, and local arms of the bureausaurus was fine now, but what happened later if he got tired of the constant hiding and dodging and simply wanted to kick back and join Shmoodom? He hadn't thought of that when he'd erased himself from the societal map. Hadn't figured he'd ever get to that point.

And he still might never. Jack wondered if he could ever reconcile himself to the idea of paying income tax. He expended time—hours and days and weeks out of his life—earning his fees, sometimes at the risk of that life, and at its most basic what was life but a struggle against a ticking clock, doing the most with the time you were allotted. To allow then some government bureau to confiscate the product of his time… it was like handing over chunks of his life. The way he saw it, once you surrendered sovereignty over part of your life, even a tiny part, you've already lost the war. After that it becomes an issue not of whether you have a right to your own life but of how big a chunk of your life you're going to surrender. And no one asks the giver. The decision is made by the takers.

But still… what if the only way to secure a future with Gia and Vicky was to enter their world? He certainly couldn't see them entering his. If he needed to put himself back on the map, how did he do it? He couldn't appear out of nowhere without a damn good explanation of where he'd been all these years.

If it came down to that, he'd figure something out. After all, he still had time…

"Would you be offended if I retired and bought a farm? I mean, you being a vegetarian and all."

"Why would I be offended?"

"Well, I'd want to grow, you know, steaks."

She laughed. He loved that sound. "You can't grow steaks."

"OK, then I'll hunt them—wild filet mignon, free-range T-bones."

"You mean cattle," she said, playing along. "You raise cattle and then you slaughter them and slice up their dead bodies into steaks."

"You mean kill them? What if I get attached to them and can't?"

"Then you've got yourself a bunch of very large pets that go 'moo.'"

Vicky was suddenly hanging over the seat between them, pointing through the windshield as they cruised into another town.

"Look! Another windmill! That's the second one I've seen. Are we in Holland?"

"No," Jack said. "This is still New York. A town called East Hampton. And speaking of which…"

He unfolded a map and figured out where they were.

Immediately he realized he should have checked sooner.

"Hang a U-ie when you can. We overshot our turn. We have to get back to Ocean Avenue and then to Lily Pond Lane."

"Thanks, Chingachgook," Gia said as she got them going the other way. "Lily Pond Lane… wasn't that mentioned in a Dylan song?"

"Believe so."

"I read somewhere that Martha Stewart lives on Lily Pond Lane."

"Hope she fixed us something good for lunch."

As they wound their way south toward the ocean, the homes grew larger and larger, one more imposing than the next, and the walls and privet hedges and fences around them grew taller and taller, all posted with signs listing the security company that guarded the grounds behind them.

"Who owns these?" Gia said.

"The Calvin Kleins and Steven Spielbergs of the world."

"And the Milos Dragovics."

"Yep. Them too. He's supposed to be at the end of Faro Lane—there. Hang a left."

Faro Lane was short and straight; the three-story house at its end blocked any view of the ocean and a good part of the sky. A Mediterranean-style tile roof, but royal blue instead of red, capped light blue stucco walls.

"I think he likes blue," Jack said.

He scanned the perimeter as they passed. A high stucco wall with what looked like broken glass embedded along the top—more aesthetically pleasing than razor wire, he supposed; videocams jutted from the walls of the house, sweeping the grounds. No security service was listed on the wrought-iron gate—Dragovic probably used his own boys as guards—but Jack spotted a German shepherd through the opening.

And then Gia stopped the car.

"Hideous," she said, shaking her head and making a disgusted face as she stared through the windshield. "No other word for it. Of all the colors available, he had to pick those? Whatever look he was going for, he missed."

"No-no!" Jack said. "Don't stop!"

He glanced up, saw a security camera atop the gatepost pointed directly at him, and quickly turned away.

"What's wrong?" Gia said.

"Nothing." Damn! Was that cam used as needed or on continuous feed? Did they have him on tape? "Just keep moving and see if we can find a way to take a walk on the sand."

Should have come alone, he thought. Never guessed she'd stop. But what's done is done. And no point in making too much of it. Who'd be suspicious of an old Buick stopping to take a gander at the big blue house? Probably happens every day.

Gia drove farther west and found a public parking area for Georgica Beach. The three of them kicked off their shoes—Jack surreptitiously removed his ankle holster and jammed the little Semmerling into his pocket—and barefooted it up the dunes. Jack and Gia strolled hand in hand eastward along the higher dry sand while Vicky frolicked along the waterline, playing tag with the waves.

"The water's cold!" she cried.

"Don't get wet," Gia told her.

They trekked up a dune and stopped at its summit to gaze at the blue expanse of Milos Dragovic's twenty-room summer cottage. From this angle Jack could see that it was U-shaped, squatting on the sand like a wary blue crab stretching its claws toward the sea. An oblong free-form pool glistened between the arms, surrounded by a teak deck. A glass-roofed structure that was either a solarium or hothouse huddled in a corner. And all around the grounds men were setting up tables and umbrellas and scrubbing chairs and chaises.

"Looks like someone's having a party," Gia said. "Are you invited?"

"Nope."

"Are you going anyway?"

Jack heard the tension in her voice, turned and saw the worry in her eyes.

"Maybe."

"I wish you wouldn't. He's not a nice man, you know."

"He says he's an honest businessman who's never been convicted of a single crime."

Gia frowned. "I know the rant: everybody picks on him because he's a Serb. But who believes that? What does he do, anyway?"

"Bad stuff, I'm told. I'm not sure of the specifics. I'm waiting for People to do an in-depth cover story."

"What are you keeping from me?"

"Truthfully, I don't know much about him. I don't find flashy hoods interesting reading."

"He was accused of murder."

"But the charge was dropped."

"Please don't get on the wrong side of this man."

"Trust me, that's the last thing I want to do. But I do want to get a closer look at his house."

They walked down the dune, scattering a flock of resting seagulls along the way.

"It's even uglier close up," Gia said.

Jack was making a mental map of the grounds. If he were going to invite himself in, he'd have to approach from the beach. He studied the wide open pool area, then looked out to sea. An idea began to form as he watched Vicky gathering shells along the waterline.

"Uh-oh," Gia said. "Looks like we're attracting a crowd."

Jack turned. Two very tall, very broad-shouldered beef jerkies in wraparound shades and ill-fitting dark suits were scuffing toward them across the sand. Both had broad, flat faces and bristly military-style haircuts—one brown and one that had probably been brown once but was now a shade of orange-blond. And Jack could tell from the way their sleeves rode in their left armpits that both were armed.

"Keep moving, folks," said the dark-haired one in a deep, thickly accented voice.

"Yeah," said the other, with the same accent. "This is not place for sightseeing."

"Nice house," Jack said, trying what he hoped was a disarming smile. "Who's the owner?"

Turnip-head smirked. "Someone who does not want you standing in his front yard."

Jack shrugged. "OK." He turned and took Gia's elbow. "Let's go, dear, and let these nice men get back to their work."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Gia said, pulling free of his hand.

Her eyes were narrowed and her lips were pulled into a thin line as she stared at the two guards. Jack knew that look and knew it meant trouble. Once she got her back up, she could be a badger.

"Gia—"

"No, wait. This beach is public property. We can stand out here all day if we please, and we might just do that."

Jeez. This was the last thing he wanted. Up till now he'd been just a guy out for a walk with his wife or his girlfriend who had to be shooed along. Now they'd remember him. And worse, they'd remember Gia.

"Just move on, lady," said the dark-haired one.

"No. You move on. This isn't Kosovo, you know."

That did it. Jack saw Turnip-head's cheek twitch and knew she'd hit a nerve. The dark-haired guard looked Jack's way. Jack couldn't see his eyes behind the black lenses, but the rest of his face said, We both know where this is going, don't we.

Jack knew. He turned, bent, pressed his shoulder against Gia's abdomen, and gently lifted her off the ground.

"So long, gents," he said as he carried her back up the dune.

He heard their laughter behind him and one of them say, "Now there is smart man."

Gia was beating her fists against his back, crying, "Put me down! Put me down right now, Jack!"

He did—at the top of the dune. She faced him, furious.

"I don't believe you did that! You carried me off like some sort of caveman!"

"Actually, I was trying to be un-caveman and avoid a fight."

"What fight?"

"The fight that would start as soon as the guy with the orange hair shoved you and told you to shut up and get moving."

"If he tried that I'd shove him right back."

"No, I'd have to do the shoving, and that would mean facing both of them because I couldn't take on one without the other stepping in, which meant I'd probably get hurt."

"You did OK last night, and besides—"

"Those two aren't a couple of middle-aged drunks. They're not even rent-a-slabs. They've got ex-military written all over them. They're tough, they're in shape, they've probably been in battle, and though they weren't looking for a fight, they were ready for it. It would not have been pretty."

"Well, who said you'd have to step in?"

"Come on, Gia. Some guy lays a hand on you right in front of me and I'm just going to stand there and watch? I don't think so. I'd have to do something."

She threw her hands up. "I'm so sick of this macho shit!"

Uh-oh. A four-letter word from Gia. That meant she was really ticked.

"I'm not sure I know what macho is, Gia. I hear that word and I think of somebody named Tony or Hernando in a sleeveless T-shirt, tattoos on his deltoids, and a stiletto in his fist. Is that how you think I am?"

"You know damn well I'm not talking about that. It's this 'a-man's-gotta-do-what-a-man's-gotta-do' attitude. I can't stand it sometimes."

"You want me some other way?"

Sal Vituolo's words of a few hours ago came back to him. Bein' the man of the family can really suck, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Yeah, Sal. I know what you're saying.

Gia said, "I want you alive, dammit!"

"So do I. That's why I got us out of the line of fire." He held up his hands, making two Vs with his fingers, and put on his most beatific expression. "You know me… a man of peace."

That teased a hint of a smile from her. "You're a piece of work is what you are." She sighed. "It's just that I get so mad when somebody like that tries to push me around."

Jack pointed past her. "And here comes another reason for staying out of a knockdown drag-out."

Vicky came puffing up the dune carrying a horseshoe crab carapace filled with clamshells. "Look what I got!"

They oohed and ahed over her sandy treasures all the way back to the parking area.

As Gia drove the now slightly fishy-smelling car back toward the city, Jack sat in silence, pondering his next move. Since he'd already been made by Dragovic's security, he'd have to work behind the scenes.

They were near Hicksville on the LIE when Jack spotted a sign for the Jericho Turnpike. That made him think of a couple of good old boys whose services he'd employed a few years ago. And that gave him the start of an idea…

"Do you mind if we make a stop?" he said.

Gia glanced at him. "Usually it's Vicky who's got to—"

"Not that. I want to see if some old acquaintances are still in business. Take the next exit."

He directed her off the highway and along a rutted dirt road until he saw the hangar with its red sign: TWIN AIRWAYS.

"Is this the place?"

"Yeah. It's their own private airfield." He pointed to the helicopter and two Gulfstream executive jets on the runway. "They charter those out."

"And why are we here?" Gia said.

"Need to talk to these guys." He got out and started toward the hangar. "Why don't you and Vicks stretch your legs and check out the planes while I check the office."

Luckily, both the Ashe brothers were in—tall, lanky twins in their midthirties. Both had fair, shoulder-length hair, but Joe wore a stubbly beard while Frank sported a droopy mustache.

"Well, well," Frank said in a thick Georgia drawl. "Looky who it is."

Joe stepped up and stuck out a hand. "Where you been keepin' yerself, boy?"

They liked small talk about as much as Jack, so after thirty seconds or so of catching up, Joe said, "What brings you round, Jack?"

"A little business. A couple of quick charters."

"No offense," Frank said, "but since it's you, I gotta ask: how legal we talking 'bout?"

Jack shrugged. "Not terribly zflegal."

"Not no RICCO-level shit where we could get our assets froze, I hope. That would be a bummer."

"No-no," Jack said. "Not even close. More legal than the last time. Promise."

"Reckon we can handle that," Joe said. "What's up?"

11

Doug Gleason congratulated himself as he left Dr. Alcott's office in Great Neck and walked toward his car. Another once formidable barrier had fallen. He'd penetrated Dr. Alcott's perimeter defenses and actually got to sit down with the man. A coup among sales reps.

Doug had never seen himself as a salesman but had thrown himself into the job to see what he could wring from it. He'd approached it as he would a programming problem, establishing object relationships and then functionally decomposing them. His applied system had met with resounding success.

In Doug's two years on the job, the most important truth he'd discovered was that knowing all the receptionists' first names, knowing the names of all their children and grandchildren, burbling at their baby pictures, smiling for them until you thought your cheeks were going to cramp, did not guarantee you a sit-down with the doctor. You needed the secret weapon.

Food.

A crumb cake or bagels and cream cheese in the morning or pizzas and subs at noon and, for the battle-hardened veterans who manned Dr. Alcott's front lines, the afternoon coup de grace: chocolate-covered strawberries.

Those had done it. The guardians of the gate had hoisted the white flag and all but demanded that their boss give that nice young Mr. Gleason five minutes.

Doug stowed his sample case in the trunk, then slipped into the front seat of his company car—more of a business office on wheels, actually. In addition to the indispensable cellular phone, he had a cellular fax, a cellular modem for his laptop computer, and a small inkjet printer.

He checked his cell phone—not wanting to be interrupted in Alcott's office, he'd turned it off—and the display told him he had voice mail. The message was from a pharmacist in Sheepshead Bay wanting to know where he could return some TriCef that was going out of date.

Doug wondered about that as he returned the call. TriCef had been out a couple of years now, long enough to start hitting its initial expiration dates, but with the way it was selling, there shouldn't be any of those old batches left.

When he got the pharmacist on the line, Doug identified himself and said, "So what did you do, lose a bottle in the back of one of your cabinets?"

"Not at all," the man said with a vaguely Jamaican-sounding voice. "TriCef simply isn't moving for me."

"Top-selling branded cephalosporin in the country."

"Yes, I read Pharmaceutical Forum too, but it's not moving in my place. Same with most of the other pharmacies around here. Only a couple of our docs have ever written for it."

Troubled, Doug gave the pharmacist directions for returning his outdated stock directly to the company and said good-bye.

Was this a trend? Were sales of TriCef slowing? Not according to his commission checks. But GEM commissions were based on dollar amounts shipped rather than number of prescriptions written. And GEM did its own distribution, so it was right on top of product flow. If sales were slowing, his checks would be shrinking.

So Sheepshead Bay had to be an anomaly.

But an anomaly was a glitch, and the programmer regions of Doug's brain abhorred glitches. He opened the pharmacy section of his computer's address book and made some random calls. First three, then five, then a dozen. Each pharmacy had the same story.

TriCef wasn't selling well. Had never sold well.

Unsettling, but only a bit. Because this didn't make sense. Somebody was buying it. GEM's profits were on target and the stock price was steady.

He wondered what the head honchos would say about it. As top salesman in a small company, he'd met all three. He didn't particularly care for any of them—and couldn't figure Nadia's near worship of Monnet—but at least they'd been reasonably accessible. Until lately. Over the past months they'd grown increasingly withdrawn, all but moving into their fortresslike boardroom.

Was something going on? Something he should know?

Doug knew this little mystery would keep nipping at his ankles until he solved it. Maybe it was something Nadia should know as well.

Nadj… that was another mystery. How had he lucked onto her? Every day he awoke thankful that he'd found her and that she somehow, miraculously, cared for him.

He had planned to knock off early today anyway. Why not spend some of the afternoon looking into it? He had hours before he was to meet Nadj for dinner. That should be enough. He was an expert with the investigating tool he planned to use: his computer.

He was sure there was a logical explanation, but at the moment he couldn't imagine what it could be.

But if it was findable, he'd find it. He smiled as he started the car. This could be fun.

12

"How many old tires can you scrape together?" Jack said into the phone in the Ashe brothers' office.

He'd come to terms with Frank and Joe on the when and how of the delivery; now he had to arrange for the payload. For that he'd called Sal Vituolo.

"Old tires?" Sal said. "Christ, I got tires up the freakin' wazoo. They ain't good for nothin' though, 'cept maybe dumpin' in the ocean."

"I've got another use for them. Can you put together a truckload?"

"You kiddin'? I can put together two or three. What you gonna do with a buncha old tires?"

"Trust me—you're going to love it. Pile them in the back of your biggest truck and I'll be by later to pick them up."

"This got something to do with the little matter we talked about earlier?"

"It do."

"Awright! You got 'em!"

As Jack hung up he wondered what sadistic uses Sal was imagining for those tires. He turned to Frank and Joe.

"It's a go."

Frank grinned through his droopy mustache. "Gotta hand it to you, Jack, you sure do come up with some fun stuff."

"Boy's downright evil," Joe drawled.

They sealed the deal with a handshake; then Jack headed back to the car. Gia and Vicky had seen all they wanted of the aircraft and were waiting for him. He reminded himself to call Nadia when he got back and let her know that her fix-it was being cofinanced by another party, so she'd only have to pay half the usual fee. Sal, however, would pay full fare.

He threw an arm around Gia and kissed her. He was feeling very good about the day.

"Why are you smiling?" Gia said.

"Just glad to see you."

"Uh-uh," she said. "You've got that cat-after-a-canary-casserole look."

"Well, I did just solve a little problem that's been nagging me."

"Does it involve a certain Serb?"

"It do."

"I don't want to know about it," she said, slipping in behind the wheel. "I just want to know if you'll be in danger."

"Not this time. This gig will be strictly arm's length."

At least it'll start out that way, he thought. Things go right, it'll stay that way. But when was the last time everything went right?

13

Doug was not his usual gabby self at dinner. Nadia watched him push his chiles rellenos back and forth across his plate while his Corona went flat. All around them in the Lost Coyote Cafe people were laughing, talking, calling across the room to friends, but their table was an island of silence.

"Earth to Doug," Nadia said. "Earth calling Douglas Gleason, are you there?"

He snapped his head up and straightened in the seat, ran a hand through his sandy hair, and smiled. "Sorry. Just thinking."

"About what? Something wrong?"

"I'm not sure," he said.

His blue eyes held hers as he told her about the call from the pharmacist this afternoon and the other calls he'd made.

Nadia's last sip of her margarita soured on her tongue. "Is the company in trouble?"

"That was my first thought," he said. "And it occurred to me that maybe it wasn't such a good idea for both of our incomes to depend on the same source. If something goes wrong with GEM, we could both be out of work."

If something goes wrong with GEM... She didn't want to think about that. She'd just started…

"But you said that magazine, what was it called?"

"Pharmaceutical Forum."

"Right. Didn't it say that TriCef was tops in its class?"

Doug nodded. "But it's a lie."

Nadia tensed. "How can you know?"

He glanced around, looking furtive, then leaned forward. "My company laptop hooks into the GEM system to let me download my data, email, and new information on the product line directly, and upload my contact reports. I spent a few hours this afternoon using that entree to hack into other areas of the GEM network."

She gasped and reached across the table to grab his hand. "Doug, you could go to jail for that!"

"Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. It's not as if I was trying to crash their system or anything. My company laptop puts me on the other side of their fire wall, so I'm not really breaking in. But I didn't push things. I was very careful. If I ran into a secure area, I tried to sneak past rather than break through."

"This sounds dangerous."

He sipped his Corona. "But what was I going to do, Nadj? I couldn't just sit around wondering and not do something to find out. You know me."

Yes, Nadia knew Doug. Once he sank his teeth into a problem, he wouldn't let go until he'd solved it. She'd seen him stay up for forty-eight hours straight resolving a programming glitch.

"And obviously you learned something you're not supposed to know."

"Yeah. I broke into the sales master files." He glanced around the little restaurant. "I guess I'm not such a great salesman after all. My sales figures for TriCef stink. The only consolation is that I'm not alone—the entire sales force has tanked on TriCef."

She could feel his hurt. "But your commission checks—"

"Inflated. Just like everyone else's."

"But that doesn't make sense!"

He sighed. "Tell me about it."

"So the company's in big trouble?"

His eyes fixed her again. "That's just it: the company's bottom line is fine. TriCef is a major hit overseas, doing gangbusters business. The dollar amounts are staggering."

"So much so that they can pay you commissions on antibiotics you haven't sold?"

"Apparently, yes. But why the discrepancies between the real and published sales figures? Why are Pharmaceutical Forum's figures so inflated?"

"Obviously, to hide the fact that TriCef is a flop in the U.S."

"But it's a monster overseas. What's the point?"

Nadia shrugged. 'To protect the stock price?"

"I don't see that. They're operating in the black."

"How about company pride?" Nadia knew Dr. Monnet was a very proud man. But would he involve himself in a deception of this magnitude? Surely he valued his personal reputation more than the company's.

"You might have something there," Doug said after a swallow of beer. He picked up a blue corn chip and dipped it in the salsa. "GEM started as a generic company. TriCef is their first time out competing against the big boys and they want to look like winners."

"I'm sure that's it."

"Well, I'm not that sure. I've still got a few questions that need answering." He grinned. "Let's go to my place when we're done. I'll make you into a hacker."

Nadia forced a smile. "OK."

She knew Doug would gnaw this bone till he was satisfied no morsel remained to be gleaned from it, and she had an uneasy feeling she should stick as close as possible to him on this.

14

The front section of Ozymandias Prather's trailer served as the business office for the Oddity Emporium. Luc Monnet sat inside and glanced at his watch. Almost time.

He'd been enormously relieved to learn that the creature was still alive.

He looked around the tiny office: a rickety desk, two chairs, and no room for much else. The rear section, Prather's living quarters, Luc presumed, was curtained off. Curiosity about the lifestyle of this strange man with an even stranger business nudged him to take a peek, but he resisted. He was not a snoop.

Nothing wrong with perusing the walls of the business office, though. It was papered with old posters and flyers, one particularly old one mentioning a Jacob Prather and his "Infernal Machine." Prather's father, perhaps? Behind the desk was a map of the U.S. with a planned route that circled the country.

"Find anything interesting?" said a deep voice behind him.

Luc jumped. He hadn't heard Prather come in. He moved quietly for such a big man. Luc didn't turn but continued looking at the map.

"You've played in all these places already this year?" Luc said.

"That is a future route card," Prather said. "A dream of mine… for when I've gathered the proper troupe—the ultimate troupe, one might say—of handpicked performers. That will be the tour to end all tours."

Something in his voice made Luc turn. Prather's eyes were bright under his lanky hair; his grin looked… hungry.

Luc glanced at his watch, as much to break contact with Prather's eyes as to check the time. The digits read 8:43. A minute past time.

"Have you. got the creature secured?" Luc said.

Prather nodded. "We are ready if you are."

"Let's go then."

"Payment first," Prather said, holding out a wide, long-fingered hand.

Luc hesitated. He'd always paid after he'd drawn the sample. "Is something wrong with the creature?"

"Yes. It is dying, as we both know. But do not fear—it is not yet dead."

Then, why did Prather want payment first? Luc stiffened at a terrifying thought—if the creature was near death, if this was to be the last sampling of its blood, then Luc was of no further value to Prather. If they would no longer be doing business, then Luc, a witness to murder, was… disposable.

He would never forget how casually Prather had disposed of Macintosh.

"You look frightened, Dr. Monnet," Prather said, baring his teeth in a yellowed grin. "As if you fear for your life."

"No, I—"

"Relax, Doctor. I am a man of my word, forthright in my dealings. I am so because I must set an example for my troupe." He extended his hand closer to Luc. "This is my business office; let us do business."

Luc pulled out the envelope and handed it to him. "I've included advance payment for three of your roustabouts as security when I test this batch."

Prather nodded as he counted the money. "Things got a little out of hand last time, you say?"

"A little."

More than a little. Luc had lost control of two of the test subjects. He chewed his upper lip at the memory. It had been quite nearly a disaster.

Prather sighed as he closed the envelope. "I don't like hiring them out, but attendance is off this tour. In good times people seem less inclined to go and stare at those less fortunate than they—at least those who appear less fortunate. So we must make ends meet any way we can." He stuffed the envelope into one of his own pockets. His voice dropped to a whisper, as if he were talking to himself. "Because I must keep the troupe together—by any means necessary."

Wondering at the hint of desperation in Prather's voice, Luc followed him out of the trailer and into the twilight. He caught the scent of the Long Island Sound as they followed a path of trampled marsh grass to the main tent.

"You're fairly isolated out here," Luc said, wondering why Prather had chosen this relatively well-off section of the North Shore to set up. "Do you do enough business in this area?"

"Not as much as we might in a more blue-collar location," Prather said. "But we do enough. The owner rents us the land for a reasonable fee, and the truth of it is, we like the town."

"Monroe? What so special about Monroe?"

"You wouldn't understand," Prather said.

Just then a young woman came running toward them across the grass, crying, "Oz! Oz!"

She was short, thin, with a long ponytail trailing from her undersized head. Luc could see that she was crying. She grabbed Prather's hand and pulled him aside. Between sobs she whispered in a high-pitched voice, her words tumbling out so quickly Luc couldn't catch their meaning beyond something about someone named Rena being "so mean."

He watched Prather nodding as he listened, saw him pat her shoulder and murmur in a reassuring tone. She smiled, giggled, then skipped away as if she hadn't care in the world.

"What was that all about?" Luc said when Prather rejoined him.

"A domestic squabble," the tall man said. "We are a family of sorts, and every family has them."

"And you're the father they come to as mediator?"

"Some of them do. Many in the troupe are quite adept at handling their own affairs and solving their own problems. Lena and her sister Rena, however, have a mental age of about six. Their petty disagreements seem momentous to them. I play Solomon."

"Ah. I thought she looked microcephalic."

Prather nodded. "They're called 'pinheads' in the trade. Lena and her sister are known as 'the Pin Twins' under my canvas."

Luc felt a twinge of revulsion that his face must have mirrored.

"Offended, Doctor?" Prather's mouth twisted into what might have been a smile. "Exploitation of the mentally retarded… that's what you're thinking, am I right?"

"Well…" That was exactly what he'd been thinking.

"But you know nothing of their life before I found them. Lena and Rena were living in a cardboard box in Dallas, vying with rats for scraps from restaurant garbage bins, being repeatedly raped and otherwise abused whenever it suited their fellow street dwellers."

"Dear God."

"Now they live in their own trailer, they travel the country, and during the show they sing and recite nursery rhymes in close harmony for the customers who stop at their stall. And they are safe, Doctor." His deep voice took on an edge. "We watch out for each other here. No one will ever hurt them again."

Luc said nothing as Prather lifted the tent flap for him. What was there to say?

A moment later he was standing before the Sharkman cage. A pair of the vaguely canine roustabouts had one of the dark creature's arms. Luc shuddered as he realized that one of these two could have dealt Macintosh's death blow last month. Their powerful bodies seemed relaxed; they were expending little effort to hold the creature's arm steady. One of them probably would have been enough. Even the creature's stink seemed to have faded since last month.

Luc closed his eyes as the world seemed to tilt beneath his feet. This is it, he thought. The last sample. The creature is all but gone.

His fingers trembled and fumbled as he prepared his phlebotomy needle, but he managed to find the vein and fill his tubes with the black fluid. When he stepped back the roustabouts released the arm, but the creature didn't even bother to withdraw it into the cage.

Luc held up one of the tubes and tilted it back and forth. The inky fluid within sloshed around like water.

"And next month?" he said to Prather.

"I doubt very much there will be a next month for this poor creature," Prather said. "But if you want to pay a visit, just for old times' sake…"

Prather's voice faded, replaced by a vision of Milos Dragovic's rage-contorted features and his coarse voice echoing, Where is my shipment? Where is my shipment?

"I don't…" Luc's mouth had gone dry. He swallowed. "You will call me if… when it happens?"

"Yes," Prather said softly. "We will mourn our brother."

Struck by the note of genuine melancholy in Prather's tone, Luc glanced at him but saw no mockery in the big man's expression.

Feeling as if the tent were collapsing on him, Luc turned to go. He realized too late that he was leaving the back of his neck exposed to the kind of crushing blow that had killed Macintosh. He hunched his shoulders as he hurried for the exit, but no one followed him.

He allowed himself a sigh of relief when he hit the night air but did not slow his pace. No time to waste. He had to get this sample to the synthesizer immediately.

15

"Here," Milos said, patting the cushion next to his thigh. He wore a double-breasted Sulka suit, pure cashmere navy chalk over a pearl gray thirty-three-gauge worsted cashmere turtleneck. "Come sit by me. I want to share something with you."

The young model swayed toward him across the deep carpet of the living room like she was strutting a runway. He didn't know her real name. She called herself Cino—pronounced "Chee-no"—but Milos doubted that was on her birth certificate. She'd probably been born Maria Diaz or Conchita Gonzales or something like that. She'd never tell. And what did Milos care about her given name? All that mattered were the dark, dark eyes under the silky widow's veil of her bangs, the jutting cheekbones, and the jaguar-lithe body.

Milos watched her move toward him now, her slim hips swaying rhythmically within the tight black sheath she wore. He'd met her two weeks ago at a club opening and had been struck by how thin she was—downright bony. She looked better in her photos where the camera did her a service by adding a few pounds to her anorectic frame. Women this thin did not populate Milos's fantasies. In his dreams he preferred sturdier bodies, women with more meat on their bones, flesh he could grab and squeeze and hang onto during the ride. Someone like Cino… well, sometimes he was afraid she'd snap like a twig.

But Cino had the look everyone wanted. And if everyone wanted it, Milos Dragovic wanted it even more.

The best of everything, first class all the way—that had become his credo, the rule by which he would live the rest of his days.

The watch on his wrist, for instance: a gold, thirty-seven-jewel Breguet, considered the best watch in the world. Did it tell time better than a Timex? Hardly. Did he need to know the phases of the moon on its face? It said there was a new moon now—who cared? But people who counted would know it cost upward of thirty grand.

Did he need the fifty-inch plasma TV screen hanging like a painting on the wall of the entertainment room? He hated television. But the sort of people who'd be his guests here Sunday would see it and know it was the best screen money could by.

This house and its lot, where waves tumbled onto the beach beyond the sliding glass doors that lined the south wall of the living room, was the absolute best money could buy. But that hadn't prevented certain locals from interfering with its construction. The Ladies Village Improvement Society—he'd thought someone was putting him on, but this turned out to be a real group, with real clout—had objected to his blue tile roof. He'd paid through the nose to bypass them.

But then, he'd paid through the nose for everything connected with this place. He'd overpaid for the land, been overcharged by the contractor who built it, gang-raped up the ass by the crew of fag decorators who had been swarming through the rooms for the past few months, and to top it all off, the place squatted a hundred yards from the Atlantic Ocean, a sitting duck for the next hurricane that wandered too far north.

Milos didn't care. It was only money, and he'd always known how to make lots of money. What mattered was having the best. Because if you had the best, that meant that you recognized what was best, and people—at least people in America—equated that with class. They were all jerks as far as Milos was concerned. He didn't know a designer sofa from something from the JC Penny catalog, an antique dresser from a junk store reject, but so what? He simply hired people who did. And what was the only thing you needed to hire anyone? Money.

It all came down to money.

But sometimes money wasn't enough to impress the people who really mattered—the people inside. They demanded more than money. They wanted breeding, lineage, class, celebrity—take your pick. Some computer geek could start a company, sell it for a hundred million a few years later, but he'd still be a geek. He'd still be an outsider. Milos had always been an outsider, but now he was working his way in. It took work, it took smarts, but he was learning the ropes.

His reputation—some called it shady; he preferred colorful—actually worked as a plus, lending him an air of dark celebrity. That was a toehold in that other world. He found that certain insiders liked to drop his name. He played up to that. That was why he had invited Cino out for the weekend. She would be his trophy, a decoration on his arm for both parties.

But most important, she would talk when she returned to the city next week. The girls always talked. That was why everything she saw this weekend must be first class, the best. Even the sex. Cino was less than half his age but she'd developed some kinky tastes in her twenty-two years; she liked it rough—as long as she didn't end up with any bruises—and Milos was more than happy to accommodate her. She'd talk about the sex and everything else, and he needed her to describe it to her friends and acquaintances as the best. Because they would quote her in their circles and that would spread to other circles and soon all the insiders would know about Milos Dragovic's Memorial Day Weekend parties and wish they'd been invited… and they'd vie to be asked to his next gala.

And that vying would spill over to his club. When Belgravy opened in the fall, it would be the place to be.

Cino barely dented the cushion as she alighted next to him.

"Share what?" she said, showing perfect teeth that appeared to glow amid the smooth olive tones of her face. "A secret?"

He glanced at her. You want secrets, my dear Cino? I could tell you secrets that would send you stumbling and screaming from the room.

"No… no secrets." He gestured to the wide-based crystal decanter on the glass coffee table before them. "Just some wine."

"I don't really like red wine. Champagne's my thing. You know that."

"Of course. Your other lover. Dampierre."

"Not just Dampierre—Dampierre Cuvee de Prestige."

"Of course. And only the 1990 vintage."

"Mais oui. That's the best."

Milos wondered if it was truly the taste of her Dampierre Cuvee de Prestige 1990 she preferred or the fact that it was harder to find and twice as expensive as Dom Perignon. If it was price and rarity that turned her on, then she'd go absolutely wild for the Petrus.

"I have something even better here." He lifted the decanter and held it up to the light. "A very special red wine, a Bordeaux whose grapes were harvested long before you were born. In nineteen forty-seven."

"Nineteen forty-seven!" she said, laughing. "That's before my father was born! Is it still any good?"

"It's marvelous," Milos said. "I've been letting it breathe."

Actually, he hadn't tasted it, but anything this expensive had to be good. He hadn't poured it into the decanter either. Kim had done that.

Kim was further proof of the Milos maxim: you don't have to know shit—you simply have to hire people who do.

And Kim Soong knew damn near everything—about food, about wine, about clothes, about all sorts of important things. How a gook got to know so much was beyond Milos, but Kim had become indispensable. He had done a little dance when Milos showed him the half-case of Petrus 1947. Milos had figured it had to be pretty good stuff if Monnet had wanted it; Kim's reaction had confirmed that. Kim really knew red wines.

But Kim had said to pour this Petrus—he'd pronounced it "pet-troos" and Milos had made a note of that—directly from the bottle to a glass would be an insult to the wine. Imagine… a wine with tender feelings. It had to be candled and decanted. Milos hadn't the foggiest what the hell that meant, but he'd gone along, and soon he was watching, fascinated, as Kim slowly poured the wine into the crystal decanter while staring through the neck of the bottle at a candle flame on the other side.

And now Milos did the pouring, from the decanter into the pair of wide-mouthed tulip-shaped glasses Kim had set out. Half a glass each. He handed one to Cino, then raised his own.

'To a weekend full of surprises," he said, locking eyes with her.

"I'll drink to that," she said.

Milos took a sip and swallowed. It tasted… awful. But he let nothing show on his face. He looked at his glass.

I spent two and a half grand a bottle for this shit?

He took another sip. Not quite as bad as the first, but still awful.

He glanced at Cino who looked as if she'd just spotted a maggot in the bottom of her glass.

"Eeeeuw! This tastes like cigarette ashes!"

"Don't be silly," Milos said. "It's delicious."

Actually, she wasn't far off. It did taste like ashes.

"Blech!" Another face as she returned the offending glass to the table and pushed it as far away as she could reach. "Like sneaker soles."

"Just try a little bit more." Milos forced a third sip. Ugh. How was he going to drink the rest of this? "It's really excellent."

"Tastes like dust bunnies. Where's my Dampierre? I want my Dampierre."

"Very well."

He pressed a button built into the coffee table, sending a signal to the kitchen. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and a black vest, Kim whispered into the room a moment later and did one of his little bows.

"Yes, sir?"

"It appears the lady does not find the Petrus to her liking."

Another little bow. "Most unfortunate."

"Old holy water," Cino said.

Milos wanted to clock her. "Perhaps you would taste it, Kim, and give her your expert opinion."

Kim smiled. "Of course, sir. I would be honored."

He whisked this oversize silver spoon from his vest pocket and poured maybe half an ounce of the Petrus into it. He sniffed it, then slurped it up like hot soup—Milos never would have believed Kim could be such a slob—and rolled it around in his mouth. Finally he swallowed. His eyes rolled up in his head before he closed them. They stayed closed for a moment. When he opened them he looked like someone who'd just seen God.

"Oh, sir, it's wonderful! Absolutely magnificent!" He looked damn near ready to cry. "Nectar of the gods! Mere words cannot do it justice!"

"See," Milos said, turning to Cino. "I told you it was good."

"Laundromat lint," she said.

"Perhaps the miss's palate is not so educated as Mr. Dragovic's. It takes a certain seasoning of the tongue to fully appreciate a well-aged Bordeaux."

You just earned yourself a bonus, Kim, Milos thought. But Cino wasn't the least bit impressed.

"I appreciate Dampierre, aged all the way from 1990. When can I have some?"

"Right away, miss," Kim said, bowing and backing away. "I shall return in an instant."

Furious, Milos rose with his glass and moved away before he throttled her. Cino liked it rough? Cino might get more than she could handle tonight.

He pretended to study one of the paintings his decorators had stuck on the walls. A swirling mass of creamy pastels. What the hell did it mean? All he knew was that it was expensive.

He sipped the wine again. Did Monnet and people like him really enjoy this stuff? Or did they just pretend to?

"You really should give the wine another chance," he said. "At twenty-five hundred dollars a bottle you—"

"Twenty-five hundred dollars a bottle!" she cried. "For stuff that tastes like wet cedar shakes? I can't believe it!"

"Believe it," he said. "And worth every penny." Even if she hated the wine, she'd talk about the price tag.

"Say, who's this?" she said. "He looks like you."

Milos turned and saw her by the bookshelves, holding a framed photo—Milos's sole contribution to the room.

"He should. He was my older brother."

"Was?"

"Yes. He died a few years ago."

"Oh, I'm so sorry." She sounded as if she meant it. "Were you close?"

"Very."

Milos felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of Petar. They had done so well running guns to the HVO in Bosnia, but they fell out during the Kosovar meltdown. Peter hadn't wanted to sell to the KLA. He'd wanted to supply only the Serbs. Oh, how they fought, like only brothers can fight. He remembered Petar screaming that he would die before he supplied the KLA with the means to kill Serbs.

How prophetic.

To this day Milos could not understand his brother's idiotic posturing. They'd always sold to both sides when they could. And the KLA had had a blank check from the Arabs to buy anything they could get then-hands on—they'd been willing to pay multiples of the going rate. How could he turn his back on such an opportunity?

But somehow, somewhere Petar had got it into his head that he was a Serb first and a businessman second. Fine. Milos would do the deal on his own. That was when Petar stepped over the line. Bad enough that he would have nothing to do with the KLA, but when he tried to sabotage Milos's deal…

Milos still regretted shooting his brother. His only consolation was that Petar never knew what hit him and did not suffer an instant. The point-blank shotgun blast literally took his head off.

Milos had killed before and since—Emil Corvo being the most recent. He'd been careless with Corvo and might have been sent up had he not iced one witness to chill the rest. Who was the one he'd ordered the hit-and-run on? Artie something… he couldn't even remember his name.

That was the way it was. A death settled problems, cleared the air, and Milos believed in doing his own wetwork when he could. Not because it was personal—never personal. It simply kept everyone on their toes.

But with Petar it had been personal, too personal to allow anyone else to do. He'd grieved for months, and to this day he missed his older brother.

Ah, Petar, he thought looking at the photo in Cino's hands, if only I could have seen the future then. Had I known of Loki and the millions it would bring, I would not have bothered with the KLA deal, and you would be here with me today to share in the bounty.

Milos's throat tightened as he lifted his glass to the photo. "To my beloved brother."

Wishing to hell it was vodka, he forced the rest of the Petrus past the lump in his throat.

16

Nadia blinked and bolted upright to a sitting position. Dark. Where were her clothes? Where was she?

She glanced out the window and saw the underside of the Manhattan Bridge and remembered. She was in Doug's bed—alone.

God, what time was it? The red LED digits on the clock said it was late.

Where was Doug? She called his name.

"Is that Sleeping Beauty I hear?" he called back from somewhere in the apartment.

"Where are you?"

"I'm in the office. Come here. I want to show you something."

She stretched, arching her back under the sheets. She and Doug had returned to his place with the intention of hacking into the GEM mainframe together, but made a detour to the bedroom on their way to the computer. She smiled at the memory. Doug hadn't been the least bit distracted during their lovemaking. She'd had his full attention then.

And afterward, lying snuggled in his arms, she'd dozed off. She never did that. Well, almost never. But she hadn't been getting enough sleep lately.

She slipped out of the bed, pulled on her clothes, and detoured to the kitchen where she found a Jolt Cola in the fridge. She preferred Diet Pepsi, but this would do. She carried it to the second bedroom that Doug had converted to an office.

She found him, dressed only in his boxer shorts, munching cereal from a blue box as he stared at the monitor. She loved the broad wedge of his shoulders.

"Eating something good?" she said, leaning against his back and watching the numbers run across the screen.

He handed her the box without looking up. She was startled to see a familiar cross-eyed propeller-headed alien on the front.

"Quisp?" She flashed back to the cute Quisp versus Quake commercials of her childhood. "I thought they stopped making this ages ago."

"So did I, but apparently it's still sold in a couple of places around the country. I ordered some on the Net."

She tried a few of the crunchy saucer-shaped pieces and nearly gagged. "I don't remember it being this sweet."

"Gotta be ninety-nine percent sugar. But what's even better…" He held up his wrist. "Look what you can get."

"A Quisp watch?"

"But wait—there's more!" He handed her a little gold ring set with an image of the cereal's alien mascot. "Will this do until I can get you that diamond?"

She laughed. "You've gone bonkers."

"I think the term is qwazy"

She pointed to the monitor screen. "What are you up to now?"

"Trying to get into GEM's financial data. Not the cooked figures they publish in their annual reports, I want the real skinny."

"My God, Doug! They'll trace you!"

"Not to worry. I routed the call through a Chicago exchange."

"Chicago? How—?"

"Old hacker trick."

"Please, Doug," Nadia said, riding a wave of foreboding, "don't do this. It'll only get you in trouble."

He sighed. "You're probably right. But it's eating at me, Nadj. They're paying me commissions on sales that aren't there. The profits they've supposedly allocated for R and D should be enough to fill a ten-story building with researchers and equipment, yet we both know that the GEM Basic division occupies a single floor and that's sparsely populated. The money's going somewhere. If not to GEM Basic, then to what? Or whom?"

"Where the money's going won't help you when you're going to jail."

"I'm being careful."

"Why don't we just say it's a mystery and leave it at that."

He smiled. "You know, I remember in catechism class back in grammar school when I used to ask the nuns all sorts of questions about God and heaven and hell. Lots of times the nuns would say, 'It's a mystery,' and that would be that. Subject closed. That didn't satisfy me then, and it doesn't satisfy me now."

Nadia remembered kids like Doug from her own years in Catholic school. There was always one in every class for whom pronouncements from On High and exhortations simply to "have faith" never cut it. They kept asking questions, kept probing and pushing. Everyone else in the class had already swallowed the latest bit of dogma and was ready to move on. But not these guys—they wanted an explanation. They had to know.

"OK, try this: it's none of our business."

"When both of our livelihoods depend on GEM, I think it's very much our business."

Their livelihoods, Nadia knew, were only a small part of it. Even if Doug had won a multimillion-dollar lottery this afternoon, he'd still be picking away at GEM's computer defenses. It was an itch he had to scratch.

She leaned around and kissed him on the lips. "Call me a cab. I've got to go."

"What about your hacking lessons?" he said.

"Some other time. I've got to be at the clinic bright and early."

He picked up his cell phone and ordered her a cab. Doug's apartment was in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn; you could get old waiting under the Manhattan Bridge for a cab to cruise by.

When he clicked off, he reached out and pulled her onto his lap. "If you lived here," he said, nuzzling her throat, "you'd already be home."

Nadia puffed her cheeks as she let out a breath. "We're not going to get into this again, are we?"

"You're going to be living here anyway when we're married." His nuzzling was sending goose bumps down her back. "Why not just move it up a few months?"

"It's over a year. And do you want to convince my mother?"

He laughed. "No thanks!"

She'd moved in with her mother during her residency. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. She'd been spending so much time at the hospital, it didn't make sense to rent a place when Mom's little two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment on the upper border of Kip's Bay was just a few blocks from the medical center. Might as well pay the rent stipend to her rather than a stranger.

Now she wished she hadn't. Not that they didn't get along. Just the opposite; they got along too well. Mom was seventy and a widow—Dad had died five years ago. She'd come over from Poland before the war. She might be an American citizen now, but she had never really let go of the Old Country. Her accent was thick, and pictures of Pope John Paul II papered her apartment walls.