Already Dead

I look at the clock, it's 9:11 P.M. It'll be dark enough for me to go out now. I get up from the computer and pull on a T-shirt and the leather jacket. It's plenty hot out, but I need something to cover the revolver I stuff in the waistband of my black jeans.

My head is still aching from the mickey Horde slipped me. I open the closet door and look at the padlocked minifridge next to the gun safe. Last pint I had was Saturday. Usually I would have had a drink on Monday, but Evie was with me, and then I had to run out to see Horde and then someone stole my stash.

Maybe I missed something in the fridge.

I could open the fridge and look inside, but I know it's empty. It's just that the Vyrus is talking to me, reminding me how I'm gonna start feeling in the next twenty-four when it starts eating me.

I turn around and go up the stairs.

It's early and it's a Tuesday; St. Marks isn't in full freakshow mode, but it's summertime so you still get an eyeful. Squatters sucking on forties bought with the change they panhandled this afternoon, aged hippies who live in the same rent-controlled apartments they had in the sixties, Jersey kids clogging the sidewalk booths to buy cheap sunglasses and get shitty tattoos. More than anything else it's depressing. This street used to be dangerous, now it's a mall.

Sounds is on St. Marks between Second and Third Avenues on the first floor of an old brownstone. It's one big room filled with bins of CDs, and vinyl for the classicists. Just inside the door a guy is standing in front of a bunch of cubbyholes where they keep customer's bags. He's a white kid wearing unlaced Nikes, baggy jeans, a Kobe jersey, and a Lakers cap turned sideways on his head. He's standing on a milk crate so he can keep an eye on the dozen or so customers browsing the stock. I go up to him and stand there while he checks out a chick in a camo micro-skirt who's digging through the trance bin.

– Excuse me.

His eyes flick to me and then back to the chick's legs.

– Yo?

– Manager around?

He shakes his head.

– Know when he might be around?

He shrugs.

– Anyone around I could talk to?

He shakes his head.

– Not hirin'.

– Uh-huh. You worked here long?

The chick walks up to the counter with a CD and the guy uses his position on the high ground to try and get a look down her top while the college student at the register rings her up.

– I asked if you worked here long.

The chick turns from the register and hands the guy a beat-up playing card. He turns to the cubbyholes and finds a Tibetan-style handbag with a matching card clothespinned to it. He hands her the bag, openly leering at the tops of her tits sticking out of her middy tank top.

– Whadcha buy?

She takes her bag, sticks her CD in and heads for the door.

– Music, asshole.

He watches her as she goes out.

– Yeah, fuck you, too, bee-atch.

He looks at me.

– Whaddaya want?

– Like I was saying, you work here long?

– Fuck do you care?

– I don't, I just thought you might know Whitney Vale.

He grins.

– Oh shit, man.

He turns to the kid behind the counter.

– G, fool wants ta know about Whitney.

The college kid doesn't look up from the Skinny Puppy liner notes he's reading.

– Tell him to get in line.

The box guy looks down at me, still grinning.

– Hear that, fool? Get in line.

– Yeah, I heard. You ever get to take a break in this place?

– Yeah, whatsit to ya?

– Nothing, just wanted to make sure they aren't abusing their workers.

I turn to leave.

– Yeah, fuck off, freak. Go hang with the rest of the ghouls been coming around.

I walk out.

The nice thing about St. Marks, it's easy to loiter. You can just hang out and drift up and down the same couple yards of pavement and nobody will pay you any mind. I cross the street to the deli and buy a couple packs of Luckys in case this takes awhile. Then I stand on the corner and smoke and wait.

He comes out a couple times to stand on the steps and have a cigarette himself, but it's over two hours before he takes his break. He crosses the street and heads toward my corner. I turn around and get fascinated by the beats the guy there sells out of his little stall. The box guy walks past me. He slaps hands with the doorman outside the Continental, then goes into the McDonald's next door. I walk past and watch him through the window as he gets his order to go. He comes out and turns to head back to the store and I come up behind him and take him by the arm.

– Hey, man!

– What?

I turn him around and start leading him toward 9th. I grin.

– Damn, G, it's great to see you! What you been up to?

– Wha the fuck?

He tries to pull his arm free. I squeeze it tight and put my mouth close to his ear.

– Fuck with me and I'll take you back to the store, stuff you in a cubbyhole and flush the card so no one can claim your ass.

He comes with me. I steer him around the corner and halfway down the block before I let him go. He's gone scared and babbly on me now.

– Hey, hey, man, I didn't mean anything back there, you don't gotta be a dick about it. I mean, you're not a dick.

– I could give a fuck what you said.

– So whadaya want, G? I gotta get back to the store an' shit.

I stare at him. He starts nodding.

– Right, G, right, you wanna know about Whitney.

– When was the last time you saw her?

– Got me, G. Like, maybe two, three weeks back we worked together.

– She quit?

– Naw, G, ya don't quit that job, ya jus stop goin' in.

– She have any boyfriends, anyone hanging around her?

He smiles.

– G. That chick wasn't straight enough for no boyfriends. She a mad freak. Super freakin'.

– You ever see her with a guy, fifties, a guy with money?

– Hell no. Chick never had no money, always be bummin'.

– You seen the pictures in the paper, of the guys she was with?

– Shit yeah, who ain't?

– You ever see her hanging out with them?

– Got me. Anything else, G? My McNuggets be gettin' cold.

– Yeah, that's it.

I take a twenty out of my pocket.

– Here, dinner's on me.

– Sweet.

He grabs the bill. I think of something and hold onto it.

– You know anything about a guy selling nude pics of her on the Net?

– Shiiit, I don't know 'bout that, but like I say, chick a freak. Know she most definitely picked up some change on the side doin' some freaky shit for a guy.

– What guy?

He tugs on the twenty. I let it go.

– Guy name Chubby Freeze. An'you can't find Chubby, you don' deserve to be comin' on all detective-like.

I stand there thinking as he walks away. At the corner, a good twenty yards away, he turns and points at me.

– That's right, bitch! An' done let me see your ass in the shop again or I'll buss a cap init.

He throws me the bird and turns the corner to go tell his pal outside the Continental how I tried to lean on him and how he hardcased me. I walk the other way, toward Chubby Freeze's place. Because he's right, I don't deserve to be all detective-like if I don't know where to find Chubby Freeze.

– Hey, Chubbs.

– Joe! What brings you?

Chubby Freeze isn't chubby. He may have been chubby once for a few minutes right after he was born, but now he's corpulent. A very short, very fat black man who is literally almost as wide as he is tall. He sits behind a grand but beaten mahogany desk, he and his fat sprawled on a threadbare red velvet love seat in lieu of an office chair that he would doubtlessly crush.

I point at the pretty boy perched on the arm of the love seat.

– Think he could take a walk?

Chubby smiles.

– Of course, Joe. Walking is one of the things Dallas does best. Isn't that right, Dallas?

The boy shrugs and shoots me a couple eye daggers.

– Show him, Dallas. Show the nice man how you walk.

Dallas sighs, pushes himself up and sashays past me to the door. The Chelsea gym-boy looks and booth tan don't fool me. If Chubby keeps him in his office, he's not just in here to move the desk out of the way when Chubby wants to get up; the boy is dangerous. I watch him till he's out of the room. Chubby watches, too.

– Lovely, isn't he?

– If that's how you like em.

– Well, Joe, I like them every which way, but the pretty ones are a particular weakness. The pretty ones and the grotesque.

He points at the cracked red leather wingback in front of his desk.

– Sit, Joe. Relax. It's ages since we had a chat.

I sit in the chair.

– What's on your mind, Joe?

– Whitney Vale.

He bows his head, closes his eyes and pats his chest with a well-manicured hand. Fat ripples beneath his three-piece suit. He lifts his head, looks at me.

– Joe, that was a sad waste.

He takes a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket.

– Such a sweet girl.

– So you knew her?

He blows his nose on the kerchief and tucks it back in his pocket.

– Before we go any further with this, Joe, it goes without saying that I am delighted that a man of your prowess is taking an interest in this child's death, and naturally I will do anything to assist whatever investigation you may be involved with, but is it safe to say that doing so will make us even on the last thing?

The last thing.

I look around Chubby's crappy little office. It's just a Sheetrock cubicle in an industrial loft on Avenue D, but he's tried to dress it up with that desk and the love seat and other touches, like a stained Persian rug and a faux Tiffany lamp. The rest of the loft is taken up by Chubby's production studio. Two tiny soundstages, a dozen editing bays where video is cut, converted to digital and compressed for the Internet, a small room of servers, and some storage space for costumes and sets. Of course the costumes are mostly slutty lingerie and leather harnesses, and the sets are mostly sheets of plywood with dungeon walls painted on them, so they don't take up much space. Chubby does a nice business in creating and distributing Internet porn. It's not classy, but it's a huge step up from where he was when I met him fifteen years ago dealing dime bags in Tompkins. It's that step up in respectability that convinced him to shed his homey gear and trade it in for the hip-hop producer look.

He's deep in the life, Chubby is, way out there on the edge of how the citizens live and he's been out there all his life. He's a hood from a hood family and he makes no bones about it. Far as he's concerned, this is just the way things are. Guys like Chubby, smart guys who last in the life, they see things and they hear things and sooner or later they start to think things. The punch line is that Chubby doesn't know everything that goes bump in the night, but he knows some of them. Me for instance, he knows I go bump. Even if he doesn't know exactly how or why. Which gets us to the last thing. The last thing was some trouble Chubby had some months back. He wanted someone heavy to take care of it, heavy but subtle. He called me.

He's pretty careful about the talent he hires, handles all the interviews and casting himself. But sometimes something slips through the cracks. What slipped through the cracks this time was a guy who specialized in hard-core bondage scenarios. He was an expert with ropes and racks and such. Good with a knife, too, cut so thin the marks were gone in a couple weeks. He did a couple photo sessions for Chubbs and shot a video and that was it. Few weeks later a couple of Chubby's girls went missing. Not that unusual in this business, but these were two of his regular girls, girls who were part of the family here. He gave me a call and asked if I'd take a look. I went through the employment records and checked up on the short hires over the last month. I made some house calls.

The third house I called on was on Staten Island, the bondage expert. Chubby loaned me his car and driver so I wouldn't have to rely on the ferry. We drove out and I knocked and the door was answered by the bondage guy. I didn't even need to ask any questions, I could smell the girls' fear-sweat, urine, and feces reeking all the way from the basement. He thought he was smooth. He invited me in, anything to help. As soon as the door closed behind us I took care of him. Then I went down to the basement, got the girls upstairs and into the car and told the driver to take them to Chubby. After he pulled away I went back in the house and rigged the creep so it looked like he had broken his own neck doing an autoerotic asphyxiation gig with one of his nooses. When Chubby asked me what he owed, I told him it was on the house.

– I told you that was on the house, Chubbs.

– Nonetheless.

– Yeah, sure, if it makes you feel better, we have a clean slate on this.

He smiles.

– Excellent. I always felt bad that you wouldn't take payment on that, Joe. I wouldn't want you thinking you owed me anything on this girl. And I know taking a freebie isn't in your nature.

– Whatever you say, Chubbs. I just need to know what you can tell me about her.

– Of course.

He inhales deeply, casts his eyes to the ceiling and exhales,

– Under normal circumstances I would not have these details in mind, but after I heard the news I thought it expedient to review Whitney's employment records, before I disposed of them.

– Good thinking.

He waves a fat hand in the air.

– Simple professionalism. In any case. Whitney came to me just about a year ago. She was striking and uninhibited and I didn't have any girls around doing the goth thing at the time. Better yet, she looked quite a bit younger than her nineteen years. Always a bonus.

– What did she do?

– Nothing too outre.

– Outre? -It means-

– I know what it means, Chubbs, I'm just impressed at the way your vocabulary is growing.

– One cannot wallow in one's past, Joe, or one will stagnate.

– Nice.

He gestures to a beat-up dictionary on his desk.

– A word a day, that's my rule. What did you think, that I would spend the rest of my life calling people mah nigga? Self-improvement is one of the few strategies a black man can use to advance in America. And I am advancing, Joe.

– Sorry I asked.

– My apologies, I didn't mean to lecture.

– Whitney Vale.

– Yes, Whitney. Nothing too outre. As it was she was heavily pierced and tattooed, to put her in leather would have been redundant. In her first session we tried two styles: the Catholic schoolgirl, and the ravishing romantic. The contrasts with her natural esthetic were striking in both costumes, but, unsurprisingly, she soon developed a following for the schoolgirl look. We found some counterparts for her, male and female, and shot a few videos.

– What was her demographic?

– A young, troubled-looking girl in a plaid skirt? I assume it will come as no surprise that most of her fans had daddy as part of their screen names.

– Could you get me a list?

– As I said, I thought it best to delete her files and records.

He pats his slightly graying fro.

– I could perhaps put together a list of similarly inclined customers? No doubt some of them were amongst her adoring public.

I think about weeding through a list of middle-aged pervs, trying to cull something useful, being eaten from the inside by the Vyrus all the while.

– Never mind.

– Anything else, Joe?

– Know anything about the guy selling nudies of Vale over the Internet?

He shakes his head.

– I expect it is one of her fans who had downloaded her images and now wants to turn a profit off of tragedy. I of course had all of her material purged along with her records. Only prudent.

I take out the picture of the Horde girl and toss it on the desk, making sure it lands close enough to him that he won't have to stretch for it.

– Know her?

He picks it up. Looks.

– I'd say not.

– Maybe without the makeup?

He looks again, squints. Tosses the picture back.

– I'd still say not. That said?

– Yeah?

– This is a high-turnover business and I see a great many waifs looking for a career or extra income. The ones clearly too young, such as this child, are politely rejected at the door. It is possible she crossed the threshold without my knowing.

I take the picture from his desktop and slip it back in my jacket.

– Got it.

He glances at his watch.

– If that's all, Joe?

– Yeah. Thanks.

He leans forward, extending his hand across the desk, sweating from the effort. I take his hand.

– You know, Whitney went out awfully hard for such a young thing, Joe.

I take my hand back.

– What I hear, Chubbs, it had to be that way. What I hear, she was a sick girl and she's better off the way it went.

His hand flies to his mouth.

– Oh, Joe, not that.

– That's just what I hear.

I head for the door.

– You take care of this, Joe, take care of it for good and well.

I stop, the door half open.

– I'm workin' on it.

He puts his eyes on mine.

– Mah nigga.

Dallas is sitting on an old vinyl couch in the reception area. I point toward the office.

– You can go back in.

He tosses aside the magazine he's reading and sniffs into the office. I walk past the girl at the reception desk.

– Hi, Mr. Pitt.

It's Missy. One of the girls from the bondage guy's house. She wasn't out here when I came in.

She's looking better. That ear is never gonna grow back and the smile will never be straight, but she's growing her hair out and it looks like Chubby must have popped for some good bridge-work. Not that he's an altruist or anything, he just knows what's good for business. Take Missy. The other girl disappeared soon after. Maybe she split back to wherever she came from. Maybe she's in a dark apartment right now with a bottle and a handful of pills. But Missy stuck around. The way she looks, there's a market for that, Chubby could have made some nice coin off that. But it would have drawn attention, and Chubby doesn't need attention. But she still wanted a job, so he put her on the phones. Better that than having her turn sour and maybe go talking to the cops. Just business, that's all.

I nod at her.

– Hey, Missy.

Her left hand strays to the side of her head. She tugs absently at the hair, trying to pull it down over the still livid scar where her ear had been.

– Anything I can do for you, Mr. Pitt?

She looks at my face.

I remember the Staten Island house. He'd cut them both, but it looked like he'd taken a special shine to Missy. She would have died soon. Would it be so bad now to tell her Sure you can do something for me. You can let me hook you up to my works and let me tap you for a pint or two of that blood I saved. Hell, she'd probably say yes.

– Tell me, Chubby says any chicken that comes through the door gets sent away?

– That's right.

– You take care of that?

– Sometimes.

I hand her the picture.

– Seen her?

She looks.

– Oh, yeah, sure.

I'm already reaching to take the picture back from her. My hand freezes.

– What?

– Not coming in for work. Just hanging out, waiting for her friend.

– Her friend?

– Yeah, the one that… you know. Whitney.

I ask a couple questions and then I head for the door that will take me to the freight elevator that will take me to the street.

Behind me.

– If you ever need anything else, Mr. Pitt, I'm always here.

I go out the door without saying anything, and I try not to think about how good she smells. Just like food.

Outside I smoke a cigarette.

They knew each other. Of course they knew each other. That's exactly how fucked up this whole thing is.

Missy doesn't know much. She says the Horde girl would come in pretty much every time Whitney had a session. Says she'd wait in the reception area there, read magazines or maybe talk on her cell phone. Says she knew Chubby would be pissed if he knew a little girl was in the building, but she let her stay 'cause she figured the girl was Whitney's little sister. Later she realized they were just friends, but she says they acted like sisters. Like the girl was Whitney's little sister, a little sister who worshipped her big sister.

I smoke a cigarette and look at my watch. Midnight. Early yet.

Chester Dobbs's office is on 14th at First Ave. I get the address out of the Yellow Pages I borrow from a liquor store owner when I slip into his place to buy a pint of Old Crow. I walk over, taking sips from my whiskey in its obligatory brown paper bag. The booze is medicinal. The bite of alcohol and a slight buzz can sometimes take the edge off my hunger. Say in the same way that candy bars help a junkie when he starts to jones.

I cut through Tompkins. Going past the dog run, a girl squatter starts walking alongside me.

– Hey?

I don't look at her.

– I ain't got no change.

– Didn't ask for no fuckin' change.

– Can't have any of my booze.

– Didn't fuckin' ask.

Still walking next to me.

– So?

– You seen Leprosy?

I look at her. She's dirty, ragged, plump with baby fat, wearing combat boots, cutoff fatigues, a Rollins for President T-shirt, a heavy chain runs from one ear to a ring in her upper lip. Sixteen, tops.

– No.

– Hector said he saw you an him talkin' the other day.

– Don't know Hector.

– He says-

– Don't know him.

– Only, me an' Lep been hookin' up most nights an I ain't fuckin' seen him since Sunday. Mean, I don't give a shit cept he has some of my stuff an' if he gonna fuck some other chick I want it back.

But she does care. I can smell it in the salty tears at the edges of her eyes.

– Haven't seen him.

– Well if you-

– I won't.

– OK, fuckin' whatever.

She's still walking next to me.

– What?

– So can I have a drink?

I give her the mostly full bottle. She can use it more than I can.

I could have called Dobbs, Pis keep odd hours, but I plan on tossing his office whether he's in or not, so why bother. The street door is a cheap piece of crap without a dead bolt. I lean my shoulder into it and the lock pops. There's no lobby or elevator, just a dirty hallway with a hand-printed directory at the bottom of the stairs. His office is on the third floor along with American Flag Travel Inc., and DBT Theatrical Agency. Looks like the Hordes spared no expense when they hired a dick to look for their daughter.

I walk up the stairs and try to listen to the building. It sounds dead empty, but that's not right. I should be able to hear things, the whir of hibernating computers, a fan left on, the scratch of a pencil on paper from someone working late in their office, rats in the walls. But all I hear is someone coughing in an office on the second floor and the creaks of the building. It's not that the sounds aren't there, it's that I haven't been taking care of the Vyrus, and now it's starting to not take care of me. My senses are starting to fade. Another day and I'll be just like normal people, a day after that, I'll be worse. Some time after that the Vyrus will give me the last boost that will send my entire system into overdrive. Then I'll be going Jorge's route. I need some blood.

There's no light coming from under Dobbs's door. I knock to be polite. Nothing. I put my ear against the door. Just the sound of an old air conditioner, as loud and wheezy as an iron lung. I sniff the air. Dust, floral air freshener, stale farts. The door is solid and has a dead bolt. At full strength I could bust it in, but not tonight. I take out my picks. I don't have any special talent for this, I usually rely on my hearing and sense of touch to get me through. Not so much tonight. I shove the tension wrench in the keyhole and then the pick, and rake the pins. It's not locked. I try the knob, the door swings open. I put the picks away and take out my piece.

No one is in the tiny office except for Dobbs. He's on the floor behind his desk. He's ice cold, a dead man with dead blood. No use to me. Then I see the other door. I stand next to it, take a sniff, but I don't need any special sense of smell. Dobbs didn't want to share the hall bathroom with his floor mates and had his own put in. Sharp bleach with an earthy tang underneath. And? And something else. I sniff. Someone is in there. Someone I know.

I kick the door and the top hinge rips from the frame. It bangs open and hangs skewed from the lower hinge. He's sitting on the can, his hands in the air.

– I didn't do it.

– We got to stop meeting in bathrooms, Philip. People will talk.

I make him sit in Dobbs's chair while I go over the body. He was strangled. It's not exotic, but neither is it as easy as it sounds. Nothing's been kicked around in here, so it wasn't a fight that got out of hand. Someone did him. Someone got behind him in his own office. Figure it was someone he knew or someone he took at face value. He let them in the office, turned to go to his desk and got a forearm around his neck. Looks like a forearm job, lots of bruises. Someone strong and quick.

I try to get the scent, and have a bad moment when I can't find anything, but it's there, the smell of whoever did Dobbs. It's not much, someone well scrubbed, but not scented. It's not Daniel's Wraith or whoever it is that's trying to freak me out. Heck, no reason this has to have anything to do with me. Could have been Joe Blow who was screwing someone's wife and didn't want Dobbs to show the husband the keyhole pictures he'd been taking. Could have been Dobbs was working a shakedown on someone that didn't like being shook. But figure that's not likely. I toss the body. Keys, half a roll of Rolaids, lip balm, wallet with ID, couple credit cards, a few ATM receipts. No bank card.

– Where's his bank card, Phil?

– Uh, jeez, Joe, got me. I mean, I just came by to talk to the guy about a piece of work and-

– Didn't ask for your story yet, we'll get to that line of bull. I asked where's his card?

– Like I was sayin', Joe, I just came in 'cause the door was open and there he was and I turned to get the hell out, 'cause, hey, a guy like me in a room with a dead body? You got to know that ain't gonna go over well with no one. But before I could split I hear someone on the stairs, and I guess now that was you, but not knowing that, I just thought I better go hole up in the commode, and then you bust the door in and I ain't even barely looked at the guy let alone touched, I mean, rollin' a corpse is pretty low and not somethin' I'm apt to do seein' as dead people give me the heebie-jeebies.

I shift Dobbs's head to get a better look at the bruises on his neck, and a toupee slips from his head. Dobbs, you just get sadder and sadder.

– Phil. You make me come over there, turn you upside down and shake you by the ankles, and I'm gonna get sore.

He stands up and starts to dump junk onto the desk.

– Turn 'em all inside out.

On the desk is a pile much like the one he made on the floor of the Niagara's bathroom a few nights ago: baggie of pills, some scraps of paper covered in phone numbers, a creased discount admission card for New York Dolls, his tin of Nu Nile, some change and about ten bucks.

– See, Joe? Nothin'.

– Come here.

– Uh…

– Just come a step closer, Phil, I'm not gonna hit you.

He takes a step closer and I slap him across the face, grab the back of his neck, bend him over the desk and pat him down. Nothing. I let go of his neck. He stands up and takes a step back, rubbing the spot where I slapped him.

– Jeez, Joe.

__I'm gonna make you strip you don't come clean.

He holds his arms out to the sides. Christ on his cross.

– Joe, nothin', I swear.

– Strip.

He shakes his head.

– Uh-uh. I know what you think, Joe, you think I'm a coward, and sure, sure I am. But even a coward, even a coward has limits. Even a coward has pride, Joe.

He juts his chin at me. I take a step toward him. He starts to unbutton his shirt.

– I'm doin' it, I'm doin' it.

He strips to a dingy pair of boxers and points at them.

– Skivvies?

– God no.

I go through every article of clothing, run my fingers over seams and under flaps. I find a bindle of crank rolled and slipped into the stay slot on the underside of his shirt collar, but that's it.

– OK, put 'em back on.

He's wiggling his skinny ass back into those impossibly tight 501s when I remember his shoes.

– Let me see the wingtips.

– Huh?

– The shoes.

– Yeah, shoes.

He tries to dip his hand inside the right one before he passes it over and I grab his wrist and twist. A card drops out of his fingers and flips to the floor. It lands faceup. A Chase bank card: Amanda Marilee Horde.

Phil stares at the card.

__Wow, where the hell that come from?

– Where's the girl, Philip?

– I don't-

– Where?

– I don't-

– Phil, don't make the mistake of thinking I give a crap about you. I don't. At the best of times I don't like you. And right now I'm pissed. Pissed and really fucking hungry. Where's the girl?

– I don't-

I stuff Dobbs's toupee in his mouth.

– Mlumph. Mlph.

I reach in my back pocket, pull out my switchblade and thumb it open.

– I'm gonna do it old school, Phil. Poke one of your arteries, cover the hole with my mouth. It's like hitting from a beer bong.

My mouth starts to water as I talk about it. I don't want to suck on a scumbag like Philip, but I'm getting hungry enough to seriously consider it.

– Or I could haul you up to the roof, dangle you over the side and if I don't like the answers I get, I can just drop you. Let some bottomfeeder lick you off the sidewalk. You get the picture, Phil? -Ylmph.

– So where's the girl?

I pull out the now slimy toupee.

– I swear, Joe, I swear!

I start to shove the toupee back in his mouth.

– No! Mlph. Nlmph. I swearmph.

He's trying to keep his lips pressed together so I can't get the toupee all the way in.

– Didn'tmph. No onemph. Said. Mph. About. Girlmph!

I yank it out.

– Who said what?

– They didn't say nothing about no girl!

– What did they say, Phil?

– Nothing. They said take a look, take a look around is all.

– Who, Phil?

– I don't-

– Predo?

He jumps like a cat with a cherry bomb up its ass.

– Yeah, Phil, that's what I thought.

He gets dressed and I toss the rest of the office and find nothing that helps. Dobbs was an old-timer, probably had his prime back when I was hanging with Terry and the Society. I've heard of the guy in the way you hear about people that are in similar lines of work. Dobbs was mostly a straight-up skip tracer and window peeper, but he did a little rough stuff; push a guy around, collect a debt, that kind of thing. There's no reason to think he knew much about what goes on, and no reason why the Hordes would have hired him in the first place. Take it a step further, when I look in his file cabinet there's no Horde file at all. And while Dobbs may have been old school, there's an extra phone line sticking out of the wall that's not attached to anything, and an empty laptop case in the closet. Figure whoever did the choke job took his laptop so they wouldn't have to worry about any files on the hard drive, along with whatever hard copies were in the cabinet. But the asshole missed the bank card. Or didn't know about it.

– Phil.

He sticks his head out of the bathroom where he is once again resurrecting his pomp.

– Yeah?

– What say I buy you a drink?

We go across 14th to the Beauty Bar.

We needed to get out of that office, never a good idea to hang around too long with a dead body.

A corpse in an office is going to lead to cops sooner or later. And cops are a problem. Cops get ahold of you and you're in their system: go where they tell you to go, when they tell you to go. Cops nab you and it's impossible to control your environment. Try telling a cop you're allergic to the sun and he'll make you stand outside at high noon with a tanning reflector held up to your face just to teach you a lesson about smarting off. More to the point, try getting some blood from another con in a holding cell and that's it, game over. So no cops. Ever.

At the Beauty, I take the double bourbon and the fancy Scotch to where Phil is sitting in one of the chairs with the old-fashioned hair dryers mounted on the back. I pass him his drink and sit on a stool in front of him.

– Thanks, Joe. Sure I can't have my stash back? I could sure use a little boost right about now.

Stash. We'd all like our stash back. I got his in my pocket. God knows when and where I'm gonna get to take care of mine.

– Later.

– Whatever you say, Joe.

He takes a sip of his whiskey and I take a gulp of mine.

– So what's the deal, Phil?

– Deal?

I reach in my pocket and pull out Phil's baggie of pills and the bindle of crank. I fish out one of the pills, a little white tablet stamped with a number. It'll be Dexi-something, pharmaceutical grade from the look of it. Definitely a step up from the cheap black beauties he was carrying the other night.

I show him the pill.

– Yeah, Phil, what's the deal, as in what did Predo tell you?

He jumps again.

– Jeez, Joe, you know better than to use that name. 'Specially down here where the man ain't so popular.

I squeeze the pill between my thumb and forefinger and it pops into dust. Philip's eyes bug.

– Joe!

I hold up another pill.

– I'm going cold turkey, Phil, courtesy of Mr. Dexter Predo. I thought you might want to join me.

I pop the pill. He bounces in the seat.

– Joe! Joe, God, ya ain't even askin' me any questions.

I pop another one.

– Joe! I! Whaddya?

Pop.

– Ohhhhh, maaaaan.

He slumps back in the seat, his head ducked under the hair dryer.

– Said, Go take a look. That's it, man.

I hold another pill before his sad eyes.

– When?

– Morning. Morning for me, Joe. Like four this afternoon. Got a call. Man said, Go to this place, take a look, don't touch nothing.

– Then what?

– Then what, nothing. Take a look. Period, Joe. Peer-e-ud.

– When you supposed to report?

– Said they'd call me.

– When?

– Soon.

I drop the pill back in the baggie.

– Well you better go to ground, Phil.

I stand up, drop the baggie in his lap.

– You can keep those.

He grabs the baggie and goes to stand up, but bonks his head on the dryer. He plops back into the seat and rubs his forehead.

– I gotta be home when he calls, Joe. Worth my life if I ain't home when he calls.

– Find a hole, Phil. Find a hole, crawl in and pull it in after you. If you don't? I find out you been talking with Predo about this? I'll get you a hole. I'll dig it myself.

On the walk home I look over the ATM receipts from Dobbs's wallet. The four digits of the card number printed on the receipt match the last four on Amanda Horde's card. I look at the withdrawal amounts and I get it. Cagey kid.

With my face stuffed in the receipts I don't see the limo in front of my place until I'm right next to it. I look up. She's standing there next to my front door.

– Good evening, Joseph. May I speak with you for a moment?

I stay where I am on the sidewalk.

– I think that might be a bad idea.

– What would be a bad idea?

– You and me talking.

– Where did you get a silly idea like that?

– From your husband.

She smiles.

– All the more reason for you to invite me in.

She puts a hand alongside her mouth and stage-whispers.

– So as to avoid prying eyes.

I open the door. She follows me in.

Marilee Horde has been drinking. And she doesn't want to stop.

– Are you going to offer me a drink, Joseph?

– Bourbon's all I have.

She smiles.

– Of course it is.

She wanders around the apartment while I get the bottle and pour the drinks. We're on the ground floor. The trap that leads to my real digs is sealed. She's peeking in the bedroom. I leave dirty laundry strewn about and the bed unmade; everything meant to look lived in and well used. I hand her a drink.

– Thank you.

My senses are dull, but I can smell that she's not wearing the lavender oil she had on when we first met. She's scrubbed and clean, wearing a low-cut, sleeveless black blouse, short black skirt, and knee-high black leather boots. The uptowner's uniform for a trip to the East Village. Her bare arms are lean, cut muscle. She's not just toned by yoga classes, but hard, conditioned by hours of weight lifting. A sharp vein rides the edge of her right bicep. I can almost see the blood pumping through it. She walks to the secondhand couch and drops onto it, some of the whiskey sloshing onto her leg.

She wipes her finger through the dribble of bourbon on the bare patch of skin between the hem of her skirt and the top of her boots. She licks the finger.

– Not bad, Joseph. What is it?

– Old Grand-Dad.

– Excellent. And I should know.

– Whatever you say.

I sit in the chair across from the couch. She leans to the side and lifts the edge of a curtain to look out at the street. Her limo is gone. I asked her to send it away. Limos aren't all that rare around here, but I don't need one sitting out front collecting eyeballs. She gestures at the window.

– Aren't these a bit of a hazard?

– How so?

– You know.

She makes a little burning noise at the back of her throat and dances her fingers like flames.

I shrug.

She exhales loudly through her nostrils.

– Joseph, you are being positively… reticent. I'm trying to make conversation and you're being reticent.

– Sorry.

She laughs.

– Oh, you are droll.

– That's what my friends tell me.

She leans forward, elbows on knees. Her skirt creeps up a couple inches and I see the lace edge of a black silk half-slip.

– You have friends?

I shrug. She scoots farther forward. The skirt edges up another inch.

– A girlfriend?

I shrug. She shakes her head, reclines back into the seat.

– Positively reticent. So much for my morbid curiosity. I imagine you would prefer to talk professionally.

– I assume that's why you're here.

She rolls her eyes.

– Yes, I suppose it is. Well?

– Well?

– Have you found anything?

– This.

I take the ATM card out of my pocket and offer it to her. She leans forward and reaches, deep cleavage is exposed by several undone buttons on her blouse. She looks at the card. Her face shows nothing.

– So you found her?

– Just the card.

– Where was it?

– Chester Dobbs had it.

– And how did he get it.

I take a drink.

– I'm guessing she gave it to him.

She furrows her brow. I point at the card.

– You said you called him when she first went missing. He said he'd look for her, then called the next day and bailed. Figure he found her on that one day, but she didn't want to be found. She offered him a bribe. The card and her code. Two hundred a day for as long as she wasn't found. Damn sight better than the one-day fee he was gonna get if he turned her right over. Least that's what he thought.

I take out the sheaf of ATM receipts, about a week's worth. All of them telling him the maximum had already been drawn for that day.

She looks at them, starts to giggle and covers her mouth.

– Oh no. Amanda.

– Yeah. She must have been going into the bank right when it opened and getting the max from a teller.

She's looking at the last one.

– But why didn't he just go to an ATM right after midnight?

– The real question is why he didn't stay on the job and collect from both you and your daughter. Looks like Dobbs had a couple holes in his game.

She drops the slips and the card on the couch, holds her glass between her thighs and claps.

– Well done, Joseph.

She takes the glass in her hand again, drains it.

– How much does he want to tell us where she is?

– Couldn't say. He's dead.

Not a flicker.

– Oh, my.

She holds out her empty glass.

– Would you mind?

I take the glass to the kitchen counter, toss in a couple ice cubes and fill it. When I pass it back our fingers graze.

– Thank you.

She drinks.

– How did he?

– Strangled.

She lifts her glass and presses it against her neck.

– Why?

I point at the card.

– For that.

– Did you…?

– No.

– Is there reason to be concerned for Amanda's well-being?

I finish my drink.

– Yeah, there's plenty of that.

I'm fixing our fifth round. I tell myself the drunker she gets the more she'll talk. And that's true. But it's also true that the drunker I get the more I peek up her skirt.

I walk over to the couch, hand Marilee her drink. She has to try twice before she can get her fingers around it. Reclined on the couch, she props her head up with her hand and takes a sip.

– They're getting better. Why is that?

– I'm pouring more in the glass.

She laughs and a little bourbon sprays from her lips.

– A joke! Excellent, you're loosening up, getting into the spirit of things.

– Yeah, life of the party, that's me.

She gives a seal bark of a laugh.

– Another one!

She squirms around on the cushions so she can look at me.

The skirt has climbed all the way to her hips and her blouse has twisted around so that I can see most of her right breast through the translucent material of her bra.

– Are you getting tipsy, Joseph?

The truth is I am. Normally, this many drinks? It might as well be lemonade. But my resistance to poisons is eroding right along with the rest of my body.

I shrug.

– Back to that, are we?

She shrugs several times, making little grunting noises. Her breast peeks further from her blouse. The edge of a nipple appears.

– Like my daughter. Where are you going, Amanda?

She does the shrugging grunting thing again.

– When will you he hack, Amanda?

Shrug. Grunt.

– Who's your new friend, Amanda?

More of the same.

– You know many of her friends?

– Hmmn? Why? Oh right, work. Trying to find my daughter. I know some. She brings them around to raid the kitchen from time to time.

– Ever meet a girl named Whitney Vale?

She barks again.

– Oh, God. Her! Whitney.

She takes a drink, spills some down her cheek and wipes it away.

– Amanda's little idol. God save us.

– Watch the news lately, Ms. Horde?

She looks at a movie poster thumbtacked to the wall above my head, They Drive by Night.

– Yes.

– So you heard about what happened to Whitney?

– Of course.

– You know it happened in the same school where your daughter was squatting last summer?

Her eyes move from the poster to my face.

– Yes, I believe I made that connection.

– And it never occurred to you to mention to me that your daughter knew her?

– Joseph.

She drains her drink.

– Trust me when I tell you that what happened to Whitney Vale was only a matter of time. As for the rest. You were recommended to me as a detective of sorts. I suppose I assumed that if any of this were important, you'd detect it.

I look at the ice melting in my glass.

– Uh-huh. Your husband know Whitney Vale?

– My husband? Oh, God, yes. Dr. Dale Edward Horde makes a special point of meeting all his daughter's friends whenever possible.

– Why's that?

She looks at me, levers her upper body up from the couch. I can see the entire breast now. It's perfect.

– Josephs. I was sixteen when I first met Dale, and he was thirty-four. Why do you think he wants to meet the friends of his teenage daughter? God, didn't you know that's why Amanda ran away?

She drops flat again.

– And if you're going to fuck me you better do it now before I pass out.

She's staring at me, perfect tit hanging out, skirt so high I can see the lower lip of a black thong that probably cost a hundred dollars. My dick is hard. I shift in my seat. I rub a hand over my unshaven face. The patch of sunburned skin is still tender. I swallow the last of my drink and stand up. I walk to the bottle on the counter.

– I'll pass.

Behind me, she sighs.

– Well, you're not the first.

I pour a quick shot, down it and pour another before I return to my chair.

– It was, I shudder to say it, '88 or '89? I was a club kid and he was slumming at Limelight. He was at a VIP table, behind the velvet rope and all that. I caught him looking at me a couple times. I thought he was attractive and, more to the point, I could tell that he had money. So I followed him into the bathroom and blew him. He came back the next night. And I followed him into the bathroom again. That was the beginning of our courtship. We kept it remarkably well concealed for the next two years. And when I was eighteen, we met, had a whirlwind romance, and married before the end of the year. By then I'd seen enough to know why he had fallen for me so hard, but I thought we'd bridged the gap and his attraction was now for me as a person. How profoundly naive. I got pregnant when I was nineteen. And that was probably the last time he ever fucked me. Too old, he said.

She's sitting up now, her clothes more or less straight. She finished off my bottle and now she's drinking vodka from a silver flask she had in her purse.

– I'm not certain what he did to bridge the gap until Amanda was… of age. His willpower in that area has never been great. Although he has always been very discreet. I will give him that. In any case, I don't believe he's been too successful with Amanda. -

– Why?

She upends the flask, empties it, and drops it on the couch.

– You're certain you don't have anything else to drink, Joseph?

I nod. She shrugs.

– For the best, I'm certain. As to your question, he's not had great success with Amanda because I took her aside when she was ten and told her that her father would soon be trying to fuck her. Not the facts-of-life talk I had dreamed of having with my daughter, but I thought it best that she should be warned.

She gets up and walks an overly precise straight line to the window and peeks through a crack in the curtain. The back of her blouse is stretched tight over tense muscles as articulated as those in her arms.

– Don't suppose it ever occurred to you to just take her and leave?

– I'm sure it will not surprise you to discover that I have not been what anyone would call a faithful wife. Not that Dale cares. But I have not been nearly as discreet as he has been. And he has the evidence to prove it. That's how he knew Dobbs in the first place. The good detective has been documenting my infidelities for my husband for several years. The man has probably seen me naked more often than any of my lovers.

– So?

She turns from the window.

– If I try to take Amanda from Dale he will divorce me. He will destroy me. I will be kept from my daughter. And that will leave her alone. With him. I will not have that.

She inhales sharply and clenches her jaw.

– I think I'll be needing your bathroom now.

I stand behind her and hold her hair as she kneels on the scummy tiles and throws up into the streaked toilet bowl. She turns her head and looks up at me.

– You don't have to do that, you know. I have plenty of experience.

So I drop her hair and leave her to clean up her own mess. Everything should be so easy.

– May I get some water?

She's standing in the bathroom doorway, face damp and eyes rimmed red.

– I'll get it.

She waves me down and walks to the sink.

– My drunken seduction scene and its fallout are over, Joseph. I'm quite capable of filling a glass.

She fills the glass, shows it to me as proof. Then she sits back on the couch and opens her handbag. I watch as she takes out her compact and looks at herself in the mirror.

– Horrors.

She begins reapplying her makeup. I look at my watch, it's after two and I still have things I need to take care of.

– What about Whitney Vale?

Her eyes flick from the mirror to me and back.

– She's one of the kids Amanda had been living with in that school last summer. One of the, squatters, is it? Amanda was attached to her, wanted her to come stay with us. Well, that was out of the question. We told her she wasn't even to see any of those people. Naturally she did what any teenager would do and threatened to run away again if she couldn't see Whitney.

She throws up her free hand in surrender.

– Needless to say, I know where that kind of rebellion ends. It ends giving blow jobs to older men in nightclub bathrooms. I told her that Whitney could visit, but that she was not to spend time with her outside of the town house. I knew she would, but I hoped to keep a pretence of parental supervision. Doubly so when I met Ms. Vale.

– Why?

She traces a perfect line of scarlet around the edges of her lips.

– She's a tramp, Joseph, a tramp and a thief who was using my daughter's friendship to get money and anything else she could snatch on her visits to our home. I recognized her type the first time she came through the door. It was, after all, like looking into a mirror.

Her hand freezes and she stares into her compact.

– A seventeen-year-old mirror, but a mirror nonetheless.

– Your husband?

She pats powder onto her still flushed cheeks.

– Oh, yes, he saw that quality in her as well. And believe me, she made certain that he knew she was of legal age, despite her appearance very much to the contrary.

– She came on to him?

– Mmm. Came on to him. No, it was more that she performed for him. Flounced, let her skirt fly up a little too high, touched him a bit too intimately. Acted, in general, as though she were the fifteen-year-old that she appeared to be.

– How did he handle it?

She takes a last look in the mirror, flicks a strand of hair from her forehead, and snaps the compact shut.

– My husband is not a figurehead, Joseph. He is a gifted executive and businessman. He is also a medical doctor and epidemiologist. He did not simply found Horde Bio Tech, he is its chief researcher. He is devoted to his work and rarely at home. Then Whitney started paying us visits. For the last year it has become more and more common for him to work at home or to stop in for an unexpected lunch. I was not shocked by his interest in her, only that he allowed it to be seen by others. Then again, it really isn't all that surprising.

– Why?

– Surely you noticed.

– What?

– The resemblance? To my daughter. I think they even made a game of it when they met strangers, saying they were related.

I remember Missy telling me she thought the Vale and Horde girls were sisters.

– What did your daughter think about Whitney's little act with your husband?

She takes her cell phone from her bag.

– Amanda is a very sophisticated fourteen-year-old, but she is a fourteen-year-old. I'm not certain the threat of Dale's advances is entirely real to her. Or undesired, for that matter. It would not be unusual for her to be sexually curious about her father. In the abstract.

She opens her phone and starts to dial.

– I'm going to call my car.

She makes the call and tells her driver she's ready to be picked up.

– Amanda loved Whitney. I think she thought Whitney's flirting was a joke, a way of making fun of her father, which pleased Amanda no end. Whitney never behaved like that around anyone else. That was the inspiration for Amanda's schoolgirl crush, Whitney was so mature and street-smart. She thought Whitney was having a laugh at Dale's expense, and I suppose she was, but she was also hoping it might pay off.

– Did it?

She gets up and begins straightening her clothes, brushing away lint from my couch, smoothing wrinkles.

– -I don't know for certain. But something happened.

– What?

– Perhaps two weeks ago Whitney stopped coming over, and Dale stopped spending so much time at home. And things were somewhat normal.

I don't bother asking if she thinks her husband had anything to do with Vale's death. I don't have to. After all, the killer's hand is holding the cigarette I'm smoking.

Her cell rings once.

– That's my car, Joseph.

I get up.

– Whitney stopped coming over around two weeks ago. So what happened between then and when your daughter took off?

She walks to the door and waits for me there. I come down the hall, open the locks, and we walk to the street door.

– I came home one day and she and Dale were fighting. They stopped when I came in. Amanda ran to her room and Dale retreated to his office.

– What'd you do?

– I went to Amanda's room and asked her if her father had touched her.

– What'd she say?

– She said, Moooom. The next morning she was gone.

– And when you heard about Whitney you didn't call the cops? You didn't worry more about your daughter?

– No, Joseph. Something of that nature occurs and we know who to call. We called Mr. Predo. And he called you. The best man for the job is what he said, I believe.

She points at the door.

– Please.

I open the door and we stand there.

– You still want me to find her?

– Why wouldn't I?

– From what you said she might be better off wherever she is.

She glances at her limo, back at me, and puts a hand lightly on my shoulder.

– Find her, Joseph.

She leans close, her breasts press against my chest.

– Find her and bring her home. If she's out there, he might find her first.

She kisses the edge of my mouth.

– And his interests are becoming… baroque.

My voice husks in my throat.

– What the hell does that?

She opens her mouth, bites off what was about to come out, and shakes her head.

– Find her.

She wipes her thumb over the smudge of lipstick at the corner of my mouth, walks to the limo, and it takes her away.

Baroque.

I turn to go back inside and see Evie standing on the sidewalk just up the street. She stares at me for a second, turns and starts to walk away. But she stops. She turns back around. And she flips me off. Then she's gone.

I can't go after her now. I can't be in a scene where there'll be yelling and screaming and tears. Not when I'm this hungry. Instead I stand there and wish the guy in the bathroom at CBGB had finished the fucking job.

It's after four. I need to get my works together. I go down to the basement room and open the safe. I take out the thin leather wallet and unzip it. There's a new pair of rubber gloves inside, a tiny bottle of alcohol and some swabs. I fill the other slots and pockets of the kit with clean needles, some fresh surgical tubing and a couple unused IV bags. I close and lock the safe and slip the wallet inside my jacket. I have a few hours before sunrise to get some blood. I need to get it now so I can be at full strength tomorrow night when I go after Dale Horde.

There are rules. They aren't written down, but you follow them anyway.

1) Don't hunt where you live.

2) Don't get greedy.

3) No gruesome kills.

4) Don't tap anyone who will notice it.

5) No double taps.

6) Don't hunt Clan turf without a permit.

7) No witnesses.

All these rules can be summed up in a single phrase: Don't shit where you eat. But that's easier said than done.

The main thing is, it takes time. Gonna go for a kill? You need time. Time to find the mark. That means someone who won't be missed soon, or so much that it raises a stink. Time to take care of the mark. That means privacy to tap the mark out, drain 'em dry. The human body holds around five to five-and-a-half quarts; that's ten or eleven pints. Only rookies or thrill seekers, like the fuck who infected me, go for a kill and leave anything in the mark. And when you're done, you got a corpse that's been sucked dry to the bone. Something like that draws a little attention. So you need a place to get rid of it, somewhere it will never be found.

Say you're like me, say you don't like the kill, say you think it's bad for business. Why is it bad for business? The Coalition is far and away the largest Clan, and Terry tells me there are just over two thousand members. All together, he figures there's four thousand of us on the island. Most slobs, the rank and file in the Coalition, bottom-feeding Rogues, small outfits like the Family down in Little Italy, most get by on a pint a week. Let's go with the low end, call it an average of four thousand pints a week.

That's five hundred gallons. That's over three hundred and fifty corpses a week to keep us going. Even Brooklyn doesn't have a murder rate that high. So keeping the kills down is in everybody's best interest. Especially mine.

So you go for the tap. But that takes time, too. Got to find a mark you can knock out. That means someone you can drug or get drunk or just bash on the head. Got to make sure you can get the mark somewhere private. That usually means someplace they're comfortable, which means they're maybe comfortable with you, which means maybe they know you, which definitely means extra risks. Or it means finding the right alley at the right hour, the kind of place where you know the right kind of mark will be coming around. And what about those needle tracks? What does a non-IV-drug-user think of the new holes in his arm when he wakes up? So you have to hide the tracks, find a good vein on the ass or in the armpit. That's why junkies are a favorite. They're easy to get alone, all it takes is a dime bag. They nod as soon as they shoot up. And they're not likely to remember who the guy was that got them high or notice another track. The problem is they get tapped so much you have to worry about double tapping, and it's never a good idea to push your luck by hitting the same mark more than once.

Some guys got someone special. They got a Renfield or a Lucy that keeps them well fed and loves it. Those freaks just open their veins and let their owners fill up. They can only do it about four times a month, and that's pushing it, but it's still a good deal. Like having your own milk cow. There's other options. Guys get jobs at blood banks and hospitals, keep themselves stocked and sell a little on the side, as well. I have a hookup like that, but I'm already into him for a few grand and he won't be looking to front me anything more on credit until I pay off. Besides, he's like any other connection, never there when you need him in a hurry.

The main thing is you have to remember the numbers. Manhattan has a population of over eight and a half million. And there are four thousand of us. The odds are kind of against you.

Terry thinks the Coalition owns their own blood bank, thinks they have it outside the city, like an offshore account. He thinks they buy blood from banks around the country through blinds and cutouts, and then bring it into the city to feed their little legion. The rest of us have to walk on our toes and remember those numbers: eight and a half million vs. four thousand. We don't stand a chance.

So don't shit where you eat.

I'm shitting where I eat tonight.

I don't have a choice. I got to hit something quick. I'd like to hit a junkie. That would be the safest deal. But for that I need to have some junk to bait the mark, and I'm not holding. I could try and score and then head for a shooting gallery I know on Ludlow, but I just don't have the time. So it looks like a tap. An unplanned tap. A big turd on my dinner table.

I'm starting to get antsy. I feel little tingles and itches and I'm having trouble staying focused and the booze I drank is doing nothing to keep me mellow. It's the Vyrus coming on. Once it hits I won't be sleeping or thinking about anything else until it's fed. Soon I'll be talking to it, bargaining with it, making promises if it'll just give me a little peace. I have to deal with this now, have to get right and get some rest, have to be fresh tonight when the sun goes down.

'Cause I think I have it figured now, not all of it, but pieces. The piece where Dr. Dale Horde is fucking Whitney Vale I got figured. The piece where Amanda Horde finds out her dad is fucking her friend, freaks and splits, I got figured. And that's enough for me to go after Horde. 'Cause the other thing I got figured is that he's the one had Dobbs taken care of. Dobbs found something out, say he found out about Horde banging Vale and tried a little blackmail. That's about his speed. Horde gets rid of him and cleans out his files. And somewhere in those files is something that can tell him where his daughter is. Marilee was worried about the wrong thing; it's not about keeping Amanda away from him, it's about getting her back. Figure he's got her already, and that means she's on the clock. I don't know where the carrier gets into it, but that's one more thing the fucker's gonna tell me when I start in on him.

So here I am, walking the streets at five in the morning, watching the pale line of blue at the tops of the buildings, looking like just another sad-case junkie trying to get lucky.

I see my mark.

It's not the kind of thing I like, but it'll have to do. A girl in her early twenties wearing last night's party clothes, clearly doing the walk of shame home from some guy's apartment. Her eyes are dull and she's running her fingers along the sides of the parked cars, trying to keep her drunken balance. We're on 1lth between B and C. Just up ahead, a brownstone is being gutted and made over for condos. Scaffolding canopies the sidewalk and a thin plywood fence screens the ripped-out facade of the first floor. I can catch her in that dark tunnel, kick through one of the boards, tap her in the building, and the construction guys will find her in an hour and call the cops. It's a crappy job, but hell, I'm probably doing the chick a favor getting her off the street before some nasty piece of shit grabs her and rapes her.

I come up behind her and whack her on the back of the head. I give her a good straight shot, use the pad of muscle at the base of my open hand. Her head snaps forward and her brain bangs against the front of her skull and she goes limp. She's so gone I barely had to hit her. I catch her as she goes down, lay her out on the sidewalk, get a grip on one of the four by eight plywood sheets that make up the fence, and wrench it loose. I scoop up the girl, get her inside, scrape the plywood back into place and get to work.

She has some great veins in her arm and I don't have time to get creative. I unzip my kit, roll on the gloves and put the works together. I remove the needle from the blood cup, screw it into the receiving tube and attach the hose and bag. Then I tie the tourniquet above her elbow and swab her skin with alcohol. I hold the needle in my right hand and her arm in my left, bracing the vein with my thumb, and slide the needle in. It's a good strong vein. Blood fills the tube. I release the valve and pressure from her young, healthy heart pumps blood through the hose and starts to fill the bag. I watch the rich, almost purple blood and my dick starts to get hard.

It's over in less than five minutes. I break down my works, carefully slide the IV bag inside my jacket and it's over. I'm gonna drink this straightaway when I get home so I don't even have to worry about adding anti-clotting agents. She's got a tiny mark on her arm, but her skin is dark and I don't think she'll be bruising. Little luck and she'll think it's a bug bite. Before I leave I open her handbag and shake the contents onto the ground. I take the five bucks she's got and her cell phone. I'll just dump the phone later, but it'll make it look a little more like a mugging this way. I stand up and get ready to move the plywood out of the way. I stop.

I take another look at her, limp and helpless on the ground. I should take another pint. Just to be safe I should take one more. Hell, I should just drain her. I can. I can carry her to the avenue like she's my drunk girlfriend. Get her in a cab, take her home and have all the time in the world to get it all. Fucking chick like that, walking around loaded, shit-faced out of her mind, chick like that is asking for trouble. Shit, chick like that probably has a death wish. Be doing her a fucking favor. I bend over to pick her up.

I stop.

It's the Vyrus. It's just the fucking Vyrus talking. It's not me. I know better. That's not the way to do things. It's stupid and it's weak. It's not who I am. I may not be the sharpest crayon in the box, but I'm smarter than that. And I'm not that weak. Not yet.

So I shove the plywood out of the way, step onto the sidewalk, shove it back and head for home. I get about two steps before Hurley clobbers me again.

– I fucking knew it.

Oh, hell.

– Fucking knew it. Consorting. Consorting and poaching.

I keep my eyes closed. I know who I'm gonna see when I open them and I'd just as soon put it off for another minute.

– Mr. Clean. Mr. Shit Don't Stick on Me, and there he is, consorting with the Coalition and poaching that chick.

– Don't say chick.

– Yeah, yeah. Poaching that woman. I told Terry, told him and told him, but he coddles this guy. Knows he spooks for the Coalition and he lets him stay down here anyway. Well not anymore. Wanted evidence?

I open my eyes. Closet. Dark. Dank. Dim cracks of light sneak in around the edges of an ill-fitting door.

– I got evidence.

I'm lying on my side. I go to push myself up and realize that my hands are cuffed and my ankles are shackled. I squirm into a sitting position. The brick wall behind my back sweats moisture.

– What kind of evidence?

– Well I saw him, didn't I? Me and Hurley both saw him.

– But doing what, Tom?

– We saw him take that Coalition chick… woman into his place, and we saw him poach that other ch… woman.

– How do you know she was Coalition? Are they wearing uniforms now?

– Trust me, you saw this one, you'd know she was Coalition.

– How?

– How? The way you always know. Had that attitude, that the world belongs to me attitude. Talk about a bitch who thinks her shit doesn't stink. This one-

– Don't call women bitches.

– Yeah, right.

I scoot closer to the door and put my eye against one of the cracks. I'm back at Society headquarters. Squares of carpet sample are spread around on the floor and handmade anarchist protest posters that look like oversized ransom notes cover the walls. I can see Tom Nolan's back. He's standing at a hot plate, stirring a big pot of something steaming and smelly.

– So you saw him with a woman who might be Coalition. And what else?

– She was Coalition. But even if she wasn't? He poached. Right on the street, just whacked that girl.

– Was she a child?

– What?

– Was she a child?

– In her twenties or something.

– So she's not a girl, right?

– Right, yeah. He whacked this woman right on the street and dragged her into a construction site. Tapped her right there for anyone to see. A total fucking abuse of Society policies. On our turf. A slap in the face to our beliefs and methods. That can't be disputed, period. And besides, you're the one who's always going on about how more women are tapped than men.

Lydia comes into view and stands next to Tom.

– I'm not going on about anything. There is a huge imbalance in the number of women victimized by Vyrus-incited violence.

– That's what I'm saying.

– So you just had Hurley knock him out and carry him down the street to here?

– Hey, I had to take action. There's no telling what he's plotting with his bosses up there, what kind of trouble they have him stirring up. It was time to deal with it. He's a Coalition stooge and the time has come.

– Uh-huh.

She turns from Tom and faces someone I can't see.

– Hurley, did you see the woman he took into his apartment?

– Yeah.

– Was she Coalition?

– Don't know. Coulda bin.

– You think she was?

– Don't know. Tom said she wuz. Coulda bin. Nice lookin' lady.

– Uh-huh.

Tom turns from the hot plate.

– Hey, don't say lady.

– Why?

– Because it's demeaning.

Lydia looks at Tom.

– Get off him, Tom.

– What the hell, you just gave me shit for-

– Because you know better. Hurley's an old dog. Let him talk how he wants.

– Jesus! Fucking double standards. That's, you know what that is? That's counterrevolutionary. We're all equals. We're all equals or we're not. I don't like rules, but if we're gonna have them they have to apply across the board. -Get off it, Tom.

She turns back to Hurley.

– What about the woman he tapped?

– S'a pretty good tap, all tings considered like.

– But was it by the book?

There's silence and I can hear Hurley's brain grinding away on that one. Probably trying to remember what a book is.

– Not da way Terry likes it done. Dat's why I sapped 'im.

– OK.

She turns back to Tom.

– So now what?

– Now what? Now we question the cocksucker.

– Tom!

– Sorry, sorry. You know me and my anarchists are sympathetic to the gay and lesbian community. It just slipped out.

– Slip it back in.

She walks out of view. Tom starts stirring his stinky pot again.

– Anyway, when he wakes up we put a rubber hose on him and see what starts to pour out.

– I'm awake, Tom.

He spins around.

– How long, asshole, how long you been spying?

– You mean, how long have I been awake and trying to get back to sleep so I don't have to listen to your crap?

He comes over to the closet, close enough so that all I can see through the crack is the leg of his crusty jeans.

– That's right, smart-ass, keep fucking jerking my chain. See what it gets you.

– Hey, Tom, I'd never jerk your chain. That's Terry's job.

– OK, that's it. You fucking asked and now you're going to fucking receive.

He starts unlocking the door. -Please, man, have Hurley knock me out again so I can get some fucking rest.

The lock snaps open and I hear a chain rattling. I roll onto my back, knees tucked up against my chest.

– Hurley's not gonna do a goddamn thing, smart guy, I'm gonna take care of business myself this time.

– You planning on taking off my cuffs?

– Whatever way you want it.

The door swings open. I jackrabbit him, kicking out with both feet, and catch him in the gut. He woofs and stumbles back into the room. A spindly chair catches him across the back of the knees and splinters under his weight as he crashes on top of it. I shove myself back up on my ass and lean out the door of the closet and hold my cuffed hands out.

– Hey, Tom, I'd help you up if I didn't have these things on.

– That's it, cocksucker.

He comes at me fast. The only thing I have time for is to regret that I have such a big fucking mouth.

I try kicking him again, hoping to knock his legs out and get him down on the floor where I can wrap the cuff chain around his neck and maybe crush his windpipe. It doesn't work. He dodges the kick easily, grabs the front of my jacket, lifts me off the floor, and starts pummeling my face. Lydia grabs him and pulls him off of me almost immediately, but he's already jackhammered me ten or eleven times. I fall in a heap. Blood I can't afford to lose runs from my nose and mouth. Tom lunges at me again and Lydia easily shoves him back.

– Fuck do you think you're doing, cunt?

Her bodybuilder shoulders bunch, but her voice is calm.

– Watch the language.

– Stop telling me how to fucking talk, dyke!

– Tom, if you say girl, chick, lady, bitch, cocksucker, fag, lesbo, dyke, queer or cunt one more time, not only am I going to beat the sperm out of you, I'm going to have a couple shemale Vamps I know find you in an alley some night and open your back door. Wide.

He makes his move, and bounces off Hurley who is suddenly between them.

– Terry would'nae want yous two fightin'.

I'm on my side, spitting and snorting blood.

– Yeah, guys, dad's gonna be mad when he gets home and sees you can't get along.

Tom just about jumps out of his shoes trying to get at me, but Hurley puts a hand on his shoulder and he freezes. Hurley turns his head and looks at me.

– Maybe you best oughta shut yer trap, Joe.

I'm looking at the little puddle of blood on the floor in front of my face and thinking about sucking it up.

– Yeah, yeah, maybe you're right, Hurl. Hell, even you can have a good idea sometimes.

He grunts.

– 'Member dat last time ya smarted off, Joe?

– Yeah.

– I wuz gentle on ya dat time.

I shut up. He looks from Lydia to Tom.

– Yous two oughta shake hands, show dere ain't no hard feelin's.

Tom groans.

– Fucking come on.

Lydia sticks her hand out.

– He's right, Tom. We're all on the same side here. We can't let our tempers get the better of us.

She's smiling at him. He takes her hand. She squeezes. It's not obvious, Hurley misses it. Tom yanks his hand back and takes a swipe at her.

– Fuckin' bitch!

Hurley blocks the punch and gives Tom a gentle push that sends him reeling to the far wall.

– OK, Tom, take a walk.

– The fuck?

– Terry would'nae like dis. So take a walk, get some air.

– It's light out.

– So go upstairs.

– But that fucking-

Hurley raises a finger.

– OK, that's cool, that's cool, I'm cool. I'll go up. But I want that fucking spy back in his cell.

Hurley shrugs.

– Sure.

He takes two steps, scoops me up and dumps me back in the closet. The door closes and the chain is drawn back into place. I hear Tom start up the basement steps and then stop.

– Lydia, you're right, we're on the same side. I'll remember that, baby.

A door opens and closes and he's gone. A chair creeks heavily as Hurley sits down.

– See, dat's better. Everybody gettin' along.

– He says he's an anarchist, but really he's a fascist. You know he wanted uniforms? He actually wanted to get T-shirts or armbands or something for all the members of the Society. Not only that, but he wanted affiliations to be indicated on the uniforms, different symbols depending on whether you're one of his Anarchists or in the Lesbian, Gay and Other-Gendered Alliance or the Communist Manifesto or whatever your Society Affiliate might be. He said it would make for unity, so we could identify one another on the street. What he's really after is a system of classification. He wants to know where his enemies are so he can take care of them when he's ready. And he says he backs the goals of the LGOGA, but I can tell we freak him out. I mean, before I got infected, the infected queers weren't even organized, let alone represented on the council. Now he has us in his face at every meeting. Little fascist prick. And he's making a bid for Security Chief? He's already half a Stalin. Give him a badge and he'll go full-blown Hitler.

She's sitting at the table out there, eating a bowl of whatever veggie stew Tom had been mixing up.

– If he ever does take charge of security he's not gonna be too happy about having you around, Hurley. He likes using your muscle now, but if he gets the chance, he'll have his Anarchists in jackboots and carrying truncheons and he won't need your help knocking people out. That's why we need to keep an eye on each other's backs.

– I keep a eye on everybody's back, Lydia. Jus' like Terry tells me to.

– Yes, but are Terry's interests yours? Are you going to spend your whole life letting him make decisions for you?

– It's worked OK so far.

– Yes, I see that, but-

I can't listen to this with the cramps hitting me. One or the other, but please not both. I decide to do something about it.

– Hey, Lydia.

Silence.

– Lydia.

– What?

– There's nothing I'd like more than to listen to you trying to make Hurley understand the politics of personal empowerment, but I'm hurting a little in here.

– Yeah, you looked a little rough around the edges.

– Maybe I could get that blood I tapped.

– Sorry, Joe, that's Exhibit A in Tom's case against you. As much as I hate the little prick I can't mess with evidence.

– Got any you could spare?

– No.

– Uh-huh. Well seeing as I'm all cuffed up maybe you could let me out of here.

– No. I think you're going to have to stay in there until Terry gets back from the Hood.

– Any idea when that's gonna be?

– Could be tonight, could be a couple nights. Depends on when they can get him safe passage.

Couple nights.

– So maybe you can call him?

– He doesn't want us calling him up there. He thinks the Coalition may have some people inside a couple of the service providers. They could tap landlines and cell signals. He's worried they might find out when and how he's coming back down. Sounds a little paranoid to me, like maybe he's been listening to Tom, but why take the chance.

– Yeah, that's great, Lydia, but see, there's this girl out there that I need to find.

– Woman.

– No, girl. The kind young enough to get raped by her daddy.

She comes a little closer to the door.

I don't know much about Lydia, but I know enough. I know that just a couple years back she was at NYU, finishing her thesis on Radical Gender Roles. I know she was a big player in campus politics. I know she used to teach women's self-defense classes. I also know a desperate Rogue tried to jump her one night and got eye-gouged and groin-punched for his trouble. But not before he bit a hole in her cheek. What I hear, it turned out she knew some people that she didn't even know she knew. They noticed when she started getting sick. Guess these friends got her through and hooked her up with Terry. I think the biggest shock for her was discovering that Vyrus-infected lesbians and gays were completely unorganized. She took care of that.

She's a tough enough nut, but she's young. Literally young, under twenty-five. She's still soft on the inside, still holding the values and feelings she had before she was infected. Hell, most everybody does. Then they grow up, or they die.

– So why do you care, Joe?

– Truth is, I don't. Just a job to me. But I figure you probably care

– You're a piece of work, Joe.

– Little girl out there, no one to help her.

– A real motherfucker.

– All alone.

– So tell me where she is, I'll help her.

– Don't know where she is. That's why I need out of here. So I can find out.

– How you planning to do that?

– Gonna beat on a guy.

– So tell me the guy's name, I'll beat on him.

– Yeah, I know you'd be into that. Thing is, the guy lives above

Fourteenth. And he's connected. You go up there, hand a beating to this guy, could be political repercussions.

– I see that. But there's another thing.

– Yeah?

– I got no reason to believe you. How about that, Joe? Any reason I should be listening to this? -I got a reason to lie? Say it's crap and you let me out. Where am I gonna go? I leave the neighborhood and I'm dust. I stay in the neighborhood and you guys can pick me up whenever you want. Where do I run?

– Uptown.

– Any deals I have with those guys only work 'cause I'm down here. I try to live above Fourteenth and suddenly I'm not so useful. You hear what Dexter Predo does when someone stops being useful?

– Yeah.

– Well it ain't no lie.

She's quiet again. -She's fourteen, Lydia. And her name's Amanda.

I work my fingers into my jacket pocket. They took my gun, my knife, my works and the blood I tapped, but the picture's there. I take it out and slip it under the door.

– That's what she looks like.

The trailing corner of the picture disappears as Lydia picks it up. There's nothing but the sound of her breathing and Hurley turning the page of a newspaper, and the Vyrus whispering pain and hunger in my veins. The picture slides back under the door.

– You know what you shouldn't have done, Joe?

– What?

– You shouldn't have tapped that woman last night. That was rape, Joe, and I don't deal with rapists.

She walks away from the door.

– I'm going upstairs, Hurley. If this asshole starts trying to soften you up with some shit about a little girl, don't listen to him.

– Shite, Lydia, Joe knows better den ta try an soff-soap me.

He's right, I do. And that leaves me alone in the closet with no one to talk to except you know who.

It's not a very rich or enlightening conversation. Mostly it's just the Vyrus chanting: feed, feed, feed over and over again, and me replying with: make it stop, make it stop, make it stop. Pretty boring stuff. I also do my fair share of groaning and sweating as I clutch at my cramping stomach and occasionally bang the back of my head against the floor. Imagine the worst case of food poisoning you've ever had. It's like that except it hurts more and you don't have the relief of shitting or vomiting. But it comes in waves. So from time to time I get a little break where I can lie there and think about the next series of cramps and remember that this is just the start and that it will get much worse. And that has me worried, because it shouldn't even be this bad yet. I should have had at least another day before this kind of pain started. All I can figure is that the dose Horde gave me put more of a whammy on my system than I knew. Throw in the cuts I got from Vale, my sunburn, and the beating Hurley gave me, and I guess I've been overdoing it a bit. The Vyrus is tired and grouchy, like a small child kept up too late. For now it's just whining, soon it will start to cry. And then the shrieking and the tantrums will begin.

Pause while a mongoose crawls through my lower intestine.

I've been here before. I know I can take it. I know the cramps will get worse and then subside into a constant pain that I'll be able to cope with pretty well. After that things will start to get interesting. After that I'll be approaching the frontier of my personal experience. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Jorge comes to mind. I need to distract myself.

– Hurley. Hey, Hurl!

– Yeah?

– What's, what's the longest you ever went?

– Me?

– I don't mean the other guy named Hurley that's out there with you.

– Ya gotta mouth, Joe.

– Yeah, forgive me, I'm a little tense.

– Yeah, s'tuff, ain't it?

– Uh-huh. So what's the longest?

– Almost two weeks once.

– No shit.

– Yep.

– What happened?

– Shouldn't oughta be talkin' wit' ya, Joe.

– Jesus, Hurl, what the fuck can it hurt? Oh, God!

Return of the mongoose.

– Ya OK, Joe?

– No.

– OK.

– So two weeks, huh?

– Yeah.

– What happened?

He doesn't say anything. I press my face close to one of the cracks at the edge of the door.

– C'mon, man, I'm just trying to take my mind off the cramps.

His chair scrapes as he shifts.

– OK. Dis wuz way back. Sure ya wanta hear dis?

– Yeah, yeah.

– OK. Way back. I wuz workin' fer some bootleggers. Way back. Stuff would come in onna water, onta Long Island. I did da muscle, rode shotgun like.

– Some things don't change.

– Well ya gotta talent ya gotta stick wid it.

– Sure.

– Anyhows, no big ting, da boats is runnin' up onna shore an da guys is takin' da booze off an' we get hit.

– Another outfit?

– Naw. Law.

– Same thing.

– No lie. Specially dese coppers. Dese wuz da ones we had paid off so's we could work da beach. Decided dey'd sooner handle distribution demselves like. Did'nae even give a warnin', jus opened up. Tommy guns. Ya been shot much, Joe?

– Once or twice.

– Hurts, doan it? Kee-rist! Got me good. Riddled up me legs and me belly. Fellas got me inna car an blasted us out. Foockin' cops had a roadblock a mile up. Got us good. Blew da rig right off da road. I went out da winshield, so I missed it when dey trew a grenade inna winda. Blew dose guys ta hell. Too bad, good guys.

– What about you?

– Me? Flew twenny yards when da car crashed. Landed inna culvert next ta one a dem steel drainpipes. Used me arms ta drag meself inta it. Den, just passed out like. Time I came to, cops wuz all gone.

– Then what?

– Lied dere, Joe. Legs wuz blown ta bits. Could'nae even crawl anymore. Just lied dere and lied dere. Holes healed up quick, like dey does. But me insides wuz a mess and da bones wuz all splinered. Shite takes a little longer.

– Sure.

– So's I'm lyin' dere fer some time. A week I'm lyin' dere. Lost all dat blood, bones heelin' slow. Vyrus gettin' bad on me. Prayin like, dat da sun don't get reflected down inta dat pipe.

– Rough.

– No lie, Joe, I taught I'd bought it. Kept gettin' worse an worse. Me gut an den me head an den me skin. Fore it wuz over, every-tin' hurt. Friggin' hair hurt.

So I got that to look forward to.

– 'Bout da middle of da second week, it just stopped.

– The pain?

– Everytin'. Could'nae feel nuttin'. Taught, Well,'ere goes. Dis'U be it. Did'nae feel nuttin' fer more'n a day. Strange not feelin' nut-tin'. Den it got real strange.

– How so?

– Cuz suddenlike, I wuz feelin' everytin'.

Mongoose attack.

– Sorry, missed that last bit.

– Sure, I heard ya in dere. I wuz sayin' how I tink dat ting happened, how dey talk about dat place when da Vyrus is just about down an out. Cuz all a sudden, I was fine, better'n fine. Boy wuz I hungry, dough. Jus' hopped up an walked over ta da road. First car I flagged stopped fer me. Way I looked, musta tought dered bin a accident. Guess der had been at dat. Anyhows, family in dat car never got ta ask any questions. Whew! Never fed like dat 'fore or since, Joe. It wuz sumpin'.

– Enclave talk about that place. Daniel says they all live there.

– Yeah, dat's what Terry said when I got back an told im da story.

– Terry was around?

– Sure, we go back.

– Terry goes that far back? I thought-

– OK, dat's enough story time. Ya shut up in dere now, Joe. Ya got better tings ta worry 'bout den dat ol' histry.

And he shuts up. Fine with me, I got something new to think about. Me, I always thought Terry went back to the sixties, right about the time the Society was formed. Far as I know, that's what everyone thinks.

The mongoose comes back and I stop thinking.

– Hey, Pitt.

Time has passed. Unpleasantly.

I come out of my latest swoon and a bright light hits my face. I squint up into it and something far more substantial than light hits my face.

– Lydia went to one of her queer meetings.

I lift my head off the floor and he knocks it back down.

– And Hurley slipped out to check the message drop, see if the runners have brought any word from Terry.

I leave my head on the floor, so he kicks it this time.

– Guess who got left with guard duty?

He's at it for awhile, kicking and punching. He knows that kind of pain will only go so far with the shape I'm in. But that doesn't seem to keep him from enjoying it.

– You're looking pretty bad, Pitt. Know what's looking worse? Your future.

He kicks me again. I groan. He nods appreciatively.

– That's right, looking pretty fucking bleak. Even bleaker than it was a couple hours ago. Know why?

One of my molars has been knocked loose and hangs by a flap of skin. I bring my cuffed hands to my face, yank the tooth free and flick it on the floor.

– Didn't know you were a fortune-teller, Tom.

He laughs.

– Man, I can't wait, I can't fucking wait for it to all come down on your head. When that tough-guy shit finally cracks I just know you're gonna turn out to be the biggest fucking crybaby I've ever seen.

– You reading my future or what?

– We found the kid.

Oh, fuck.

– Yeah. Pretty messy, Pitt, pretty fucking messy.

Fucking hell. The girl.

– What was that about? You just hoping no one would find him down there?

Him?

– 'Cause someone did. Couple my boys were looking for a new safe house, checking some basements on B. They smelled something. Found him tied to that pole with his neck snapped. His fucking dog, too. What was with all the cuts, Pitt? Trying to hide the pints you tapped?

Leprosy.

– You're getting greedy and sloppy. Must be all the time you're spending uptown. Shit, everyone knows you used that kid to run your errands. And everyone sure as shit knows that little neck snap is your specialty. Terry finds out you did a kid, did him sloppy like that on our turf? He won't care anymore how long you guys known each other.

I don't bother denying it. Besides, he's right, I did kill Leprosy and I should have cleaned it up. Doesn't matter if he's an idiot about everything else.

– Problem is, Terry's got that mercy streak. Someone's got to go, he likes to just put a few in the back of the head. Doesn't believe in sending a message. So me, I got to get my licks in now.

He punches my face a few more times. Stops.

– Oops. Getting late.

He rises from his squat.

– Time to make the coffee for the next shift.

He starts to close the closet door.

– Don't worry, I'll be back on in a couple hours. Maybe I'll bring a little blood. Keep your strength up. After all, Terry may not be back for days.

He closes the door, locks the chain. My face is swollen and broken. I don't have to worry about it for long. Soon enough real pain comes to call.

And Tom's right about the crying, but the tears have nothing to do with anything he did to me.

It's hard to say what the Vyrus is doing to me. Because not only do I have no idea what it's doing, but neither does anyone else. Terry spelled it out for me a long time ago. What it boils down to is that investigating and isolating a virus, even a simple one, takes a shitload of resources. Not even the Coalition has the kind of resources necessary. If the Vyrus were ever made public there would be no end of research fellows out there trying to make their name breaking open one of the strangest freaks of nature to come gibbering out of the asylum. Also no doubt that all the infected would be herded into sterile-environment camps so as to protect the general population. I was around when AIDS first dropped. I haven't forgotten how quickly human compassion flies out the window. Not that I'm looking for compassion, just that I know better than to assume it exists.

In the absence of any real knowledge about what the thing is doing inside of us, we're forced to go by what we see and feel. I know the Vyrus wants blood because I feel its thirst. I know it makes me stronger because I feel it in my muscles. I know it heals me and slows my aging because I can look in a mirror. I know it has fashioned me into a predator because I hunt and I kill. But I don't know what it is doing to me now. Terry thinks the cramps are like a cattle prod, little jabs to get you off your ass and out there feeding. He also thinks they might be the last gasp as the Vyrus scrapes the bottom of the barrel and consumes the last un-infected blood in your body. The long aching pain that follows is maybe the Vyrus beginning to feed on itself. That's what Terry says anyway. Doesn't much matter to me, all I care about is that it won't hurt quite as much as the cramps when it comes. But it hasn't come yet.

– Joe.

Light.

– Joe.

In my face.

– Joe.

I can only tell because it brightens the darkness behind my clenched eyelids.

– Damn it, Joe.

I don't steel myself for Tom's next thrashing. The cramps are on me hard, and having my face busted some more is the last thing on my mind. My mind barely exists now except as a place for the signals from the nerves in my gut to land and wreak havoc.

– Joe, get the fuck up.

He grabs me under my arms and yanks me to my feet. It makes it hurt worse.

– Auuuggh!

– Shut up.

He shoves me and I land in a chair. I pull my knees up and roll back onto the floor.

– Stop being such a wimp.

He grabs my hands and pulls them away from where they are clutching my stomach.

– Auuugh!

He grabs the cuff chain and yanks my arms out straight.

– Such a wimp. You know the pain of childbirth is worse than the cramps?

I open one eye a tiny bit. Lydia.

– And that's not just feminist propaganda. I know infected women who gave birth, they told me.

She sticks a key in one of the cuff locks and it snaps open. She looks at my face.

– I see Tom came by.

– Ung-hungh.

– Give me your ankle.

I roll on my back and lift my feet off the floor. The cramps lurch.

– Augh.

– Shut. Up.

I close my eyes and nod as she unlocks the shackles then pulls me up and puts me back on the chair.

– Can you walk?

– Ungh.

– Fucking wimp.

She grabs my shoulders and pulls me to my feet again.

– Can you walk?

I don't answer, just put one foot in front of the other. And fall down. She kneels next to me.

– Joe, this is it. This is the only shot you get. Tom's crashed and Hurley's hunting and the sun will be up soon. Get up.

She reaches inside my jacket, takes out the picture and sticks it in my face.

– Get up and go get the girl, Joe.

She's pulling on me again. I get up.

– Come on.

She holds my arm and walks me across the room.

– I'll rig it here, make it look like you smashed the door and blindsided me and got the keys.

We're at the bottom of the steps that lead up to the sidewalk trap. They're steep.

– It won't hold, but Tom can't make a serious move on me. He knows I can take him.

– Hurlehungh?

– Hurley won't do anything without Terry. Come on.

I crawl up the steps and she pushes the steel door open.

– Bloohnd?

– No, I don't have any here. Hit your stash, but don't stay at your place, they'll be looking there. Go on. Go.

She shoves me up onto the street, then reaches up through the trap and grabs my pants leg. I look down. Her face and one arm are stuck up through the trap, the picture of Amanda Horde in her hand.

– Take it. I wrote a number on the back. Use it if you have to.

I groan as I bend to take the picture from her.

– Help that girl, Joe. I find out different, or find out you were lying to me, and I'll come after you with my people. We'll firebomb your house and then we'll dog you through the streets.

– HoKugh.

– So fucking run.

I do, lurching and stumbling down the sidewalk, the loose cuffs still dangling from my wrist, the girl's picture in my hand, and no place to hide.

I make it ten yards before the heaves grab me. I bend over the hood of a parked car and choke up bile until I'm empty and gagging on air. When it stops I look around, trying to find a dark corner to creep into. But nothing will be dark for long. Home, Lydia said. Go home and hit my stash. She doesn't know there's no stash to hit. I pitch myself off the car and reel down the street. At the end of the block I lean against a street sign: 3rd and C.

Evie lives on 3rd. Just a block and a half away on 3rd between A and B. Evie will look after me, she'll take care of me.

And she has blood. Over five quarts of it.

I shake it off and take the right onto C, away from Evie and the blood that's killing her.

Christian and the Dusters would take me in, but there's no way I can make it to Pike before the sun is up. I need a hole. I need a deep hole in the ground where I can ride out the last waves of the cramps. I look up at the sky; it's already bright enough to burn my eyes and make them tear.

I need a hole.

The blue sawhorse barricades are still in front of the school on 9th, but the cop car is gone. Five-thirty A.M. traffic is on the streets, but I can't worry about that; I'm less than an hour from getting burned down. I edge between two of the sawhorses and walk hunched over to the door. There's a new chain and padlock. I'm far too weak to break it or to force the thick double doors. I won't be scaling the side of the wall, either. Maybe if I didn't have the cramps I could shimmy up a drainpipe. If I try it as I am I'll probably get hit with a cramp halfway up and fall a couple stories onto my head. That might be just enough to solve all my problems. Instead I start checking the ground floor windows. The steel screens on almost all of them have suffered some form of abuse over the years. It doesn't take long to find one where the lower right bracket has been wrenched from the brickwork.

The corner of the screen can be pulled up, but only a few inches, not enough for me to squeeze through. I squat, get a grip on it with both hands and push up with my legs and arms. The screen is made from heavy-gauge steel that's gridded in a pattern like chicken wire, the edges sharp prongs. They dig into the palms of my hands, popping holes through the photograph I hadn't realized I was still holding. The screen starts to bend. From down the street I hear the rumble of a sanitation truck. Just a few yards away from me on the sidewalk is a huge mound of trash. A cramp hits and tries to cut my legs out from under me. My knees buckle slightly and the screen starts to spring back. The truck's air brakes blast and squeal as it slows, approaching the abandoned school. I squeeze my eyes shut, muscling the screen upward, and its spiked edge pops through the skin of my hands just like it did the photograph. The cramp bundles my organs, trying to curl me into myself. The screen wrenches upward, leaving a gap perhaps large enough for me to wriggle through. I pull my hands free of the prongs as the truck grinds to a halt behind me, smash them against the window, grab the jagged-edged sill and pull myself up. Broken glass digs at my belly, offering awful relief from the cramps. My upper body flops inside and my pants get caught on the screen. I tear them loose, using my forearms to pull myself along the floor and into the empty schoolroom. I writhe to my knees on broken glass and peek out the window at the sanitation guys climbing off the truck. I reach out and lace my fingers through the holes in the screen and pull. It's easier to drag back down than it was to push up, and I get it close enough to the window that maybe it won't be noticed from the street. That done, I stick my fingers past the broken shards of glass and pull the bloody photograph from the bloody barbs.

Then I fall down.

The cramps have become a huge hand that tangles its fingers in my intestines and balls itself into a fist. I crawl, leaving bloody smears on the floor from my oozing hands, and find the basement door. I look at the stairs, then let gravity tumble me down. I want to stay at the foot of the stairs in a tangled mess of blood and glass and cracked bones. Instead I take advantage of the fist relaxing for a moment and get to my feet. Anyone coming into the school will see the bloody handprints on the floor and follow them to the basement. I need my hole. I stuff my hands into my armpits to keep more blood from dribbling on the floor, and memory leads me through the rank blackness. I make it to the old storage room, shoulder the door open and fall behind a pile of the broken and graffitied desks, just as the fist squeezes closed.

Fuckmefuckmefuckme. Please! Makeit! Stop!

– Hey?

Stopstopstopstopstop!

– Hey.

Pleasepleasepleaseplease!

– Get out of here.

Nonononono!

– This is my place, you got to get out.

– No. Just. Just fucking leave me aughhhlone!

– No, asshole, you have to get out. I… Shit, you're fucked up.

The fist starts to relax, my intestines slowly slipping from its fingers. I open my eyes.

She's squatting a few yards away, shining a flashlight on me; the girl whose picture is clutched in my lacerated hand.

She points at my face.

– The cops do that to you? '

– No.

– No?

– No.

She points at the top of my head.

– What's that?

I reach up to feel whatever she's pointing at and the loose cuff hanging from my left wrist knocks me in the chin.

She shakes her head.

– But the cops didn't do that to you.

– No.

– Uh-huh. Well, whatever. You still have to get out of here.

– You got the lease on the place?

– Yeah, right. No, I don't have the lease. But it's my hideout. Find your own.

I touch my face.

– Can't really see myself walking around much right now.

– Why? You said the cops aren't after you.

– I need to stay here.

She stands up.

– You are being such an asshole. Look, you can't stay here. OK?

– I. Hungh.

The fingers start to tighten again. I pull my knees up against my chest.

– Oh, maaan. You're a junkie aren't you? You starting to jones? Here.

She pulls something out of her pocket and holds it out to me. A twenty-dollar bill.

– Go get a bag and fix. Just do it somewhere else.

– I. Uhn. I'm not. Augh.

She takes a step back.

– Don't throw up in here. Do not puke in here!

I clench my teeth, shaking my head back and forth; not at her but at what's happening inside me. She steps closer, shoves the toe of one of her Nikes under my ass and starts trying to shove me toward the door.

– Out. Get out\

My gut ripples and I heave up a final dribble of bile that lands on her sneaker.

– Grossl So gross! Get out\

She's kicking me now. The point of her toe hitting the side of my stomach is a new agony. I reach out to block her foot and the picture falls from my hand and cartwheels to the floor. She looks down at it, at the blood-smeared image of herself. I hold a hand up.

– Aughm! Amandahungh.

She bolts for the door. I grab the cuff of her jeans. She stops, lifts her other foot and steps on my arm.

– Let go!

I keep my grip and she tries to rip her leg free and trips herself onto the floor.

– I'm gonna scream! I'm gonna!

She starts screaming and reaches down, clawing at my hand, trying to pry my fingers loose from her jeans. I grab her wrist.

SNAP!

She stops screaming and stares at the cuff I have ratcheted onto her, chaining her right wrist to my left.

– That is so wrong.

– Take it off.

– I don't have the key.

– Gaaaud. So lame.

We're sitting next to each other, our backs against the wall. The cramps haven't hit me for five minutes and I'm starting to hope I might be in the lull.

– Let me see that.

She reaches for the photograph still lying on the floor.

– Don't touch it.

Her hand stops.

– Why not? It's of me.

– The blood, don't get it on you.

– Whatever.

She picks it up by the edges. It doesn't matter, really. The Vyrus can't survive outside a host. But it bothers me, seeing her fingers graze the blood, knowing what was recently living in it.

– I can't believe they gave you this.

She drops it on the floor.

– How'd you find me? You talk to that Dobbs creep?

– Sort of.

– Talk about lame. That guy doesn't have a clue.

– No, he doesn't.

– Doesn't matter. I'm not going back.

I rattle the cuffs.

– Yeah, you are.

She rolls her head to the side and looks at me.

– You ever try dragging a screaming teenage girl down the street?

I remember a night over twenty years ago: a young girl screaming, a hunger I didn't know how to control. But it doesn't matter. The past is a dead thing. I can't change it.

– You ever been knocked out and hauled around in a sack?

– No way. My dad would freak and you would never get paid.

– Not taking you to your dad.

She bugs her eyes at me.

– Oh, no\

She laughs.

– Her? She sent you?

She picks up the picture.

– Of course she gave you this one. She knows I hate it.

She tears it in half and drops the pieces to the floor.

– Bitch. So what's she want? There a junior deb ball I'm supposed to go to or something?

I pick up the pieces of the picture and put them in my jacket pocket.

– She doesn't want you to end up like Whitney Vale.

She starts to say something else, closes her mouth instead. She looks at her shoes, rubbing the toe of one against the bile stain on the other.

– Whitney got what she deserved.

Whitney Vale, eighteen, jamming a knife into the back of a kid's skull; her body being eaten by a germ.

– For what?

– I don't know. Maybe for fucking my dad"?

– Like I said, your mom doesn't want you to end up like Whitney.

– Oh. My. God. She told you that? She is such a freak. I know what she says about him. But my dad has never touched me. The only reason he fucked Whitney is 'cause she was all over him. So gross. The only guy who ever touched me was one of mom's creepy boyfriends. So what's she want to do, kidnap me to protect me from my dad? She is so lame.

She stands up.

– Let's go.

– Huh?

– Take me home.

I look at my watch, it's just after sunrise. She yanks on the cuffs.

– You got me, toughguy, now take me in.

– We can't go yet.

– Look, I'm not going to spaz or anything. I mean, the sooner you take me back there, the sooner I can run away again. So let's just get it over with.

– We have to wait.

– For what?

– For the sun to go down.

– Why?

– Because I'm allergic to it.

She stares at me.

– You are such a loser.

– Because. It's hard to pee when you're handcuffed to some ass-hole and you're both just waiting for the pee.

The door is swung open. I'm squatting on one side of it with my arm stretched out, and she's on the other side. Our hands grip the edge of the door, mine just slightly above hers.

– So say something.

– For a girl who has some experience living in squats, you're awfully pee shy.

– Fuck you.

I chew on my split lower lip, sucking at one of the cuts, trying to ease the prickles inside me with the dull copper taste of my own blood. It doesn't help. All it does is whet my appetite, as if I need it whetted. I stop sucking.

Blood still fills my veins and pumps through my heart and carries oxygen to my brain, but as far as the Vyrus is concerned it might as well be dust. My blood has been occupied and harvested, whatever it is that the Vyrus consumes has been stripped away. But there's more of what I need right on the other side of this door.

– Hey!

– What?

– Don't pull on the cuffs.

I look. She's right, I've been tugging her toward me from around the door.

– Sorry.

– Yeah you're sorry. And stop being so quiet, I told you to say something.

– Like what?

– Anything. Tell me who busted up your face. Not that I don't think there's like a line of people waiting to bust it up.

– Guy doesn't like it.

– Your face?

– Yeah.

– Well. Can you blame him? Are you going to kick his ass?

– Hadn't thought about it.

– Maaan.

– What?

– For a big guy.

– Yeah?

– For a big guy, you're kind of a pussy.

– You pee yet?

__Damn it. I was almost there. Why'd you have to say that? Now talk about something else.

– How'd you get in here?

– There's like an alley around back, off of Tenth? The gate's not locked. Whitney showed me last summer. Go through the gate and there's the basement door. Squatters busted the lock off that couple years back, I guess.

My legs hurt from squatting. I'm pretty sure I fractured something in my right ankle when I came down the stairs. I shift to keep it from aching and I lose my balance for a second. Our wrists tug-a-war before I steady myself. I grab the edge of the door and accidentally touch her fingers. -Don't touch me.

A moment's silence.

– Talk.

Jesus fucking.

– Why'd you run away?

Now it's her turn to get all silent.

– If it's like you say and your dad isn't messing with you?

– None of your business.

– OK.

More silence.

– Are you jerking off back there?

– No.

– Then stop getting all quiet, it's creepy.

– OK. Why'd you run away?

– I told you, none of your business.

– Fine.

Silence.

– Fuck do you care?

– I don't. I just want you to piss so I can stretch my legs.

She laughs.

– Stretch your legs, I just went.

She digs through her little backpack looking for something. She's holding her flashlight in her cuffed right hand as she searches with her left. She jerks my left hand this way and that as she rummages.

– Why'd you have to cuff my right hand?

– If I'd cuffed your left you would have to walk around backward.

She stares at me.

– Yeah, right. Like I would have done that.

Our hands bump.

– Your hand is all cold and sweaty.

She gives me a fish-eye.

– Are you sick? 'Cause if I catch something from you I am going to be so pissed.

– Just clammy by nature.

– Gross.

I am cold and sweaty. The Vyrus is downshifting, trying to save energy, storing up for its last big push. But sick is not a big enough word for what I am.

She pulls a few things out of the pack; some extra clothes, an MP3 player, batteries, a bottle of water, and finally comes up with what she's looking for: a handful of diet bars. She holds one in her left hand and tears the wrapper open with her teeth. She catches me watching her.

– You want one?

I do want one. I haven't eaten for awhile and I usually eat like a pig. You have to, just to keep up with the high revs the Vyrus usually runs your metabolism at.

– Sure.

– There's peanut butter or chocolate and coconut.

– Peanut butter.

She hands me the bar and we eat by the dim light cast by her flashlight. She finishes hers, throws the empty wrapper on the floor, and picks out another.

– So my mom was the one who called you?

I chew for a couple seconds. The peanut butter was a mistake, it's hard and sticky and hurts my sore jaw as I chew.

– Yeah.

– What'd she say?

– Said you were missing, said she wanted to find you.

She's picking at her second bar, pinching tiny pieces of the chocolate coating between her fingernails and nibbling them.

– What about my dad, you talk to him?

– Yeah.

She huffs.

– Aaand?

I think about my meeting with Dr. Dale Horde, the way he casually put me in my place like it's something he does ten times a day. The way he mickeyed me so Predo's spook could rob my stash.

– Said he wanted me to find you.

– Yeah, right.

She's peeled about half the chocolate off her second bar, leaving the coconut underneath untouched.

– Mom says he wants to fuck me. Least that'd be something.

Looks at me all the time like he can't figure out where I came from. Only time he pays any attention is when one of my girlfriends comes over. Then he tries to be all supercooldad so he can impress them. Lame.

– That why you split?

Knowing I'm a fool for asking, knowing I don't need to know any of this stuff, knowing this stuff just makes the job harder.

– I don't know. Maybe because my mom gets drunk all the time. Maybe because she told me my dad wants to fuck me. Maybe because I think that makes her jealous. Maybe because my dad is creepy with my girlfriends. Maybe because I stole a pair of my mom's earrings and to punish me she took my computer away and I snuck in my dad's office to use his computer and I found all this porn on it that Whitney did and that grossed me out. Not that she did it, because I knew about that, but because my dad was looking at it. Maybe because I looked in his drawers and found pictures of him fucking Whitney. Maybe because I was pissed at Whitney and came down here to kick her ass. I don't know. I just ran away.

She folds the torn ends of the wrapper around the mutilated bar and shoves it back in her bag.

– God. Hate it when I do that. Just eating 'cause I'm bored. Whitney says that's how you get fat.

She pulls up the bottom of her Che Guevara T-shirt, looks at her flat stomach and pinches a quarter inch of skin.

– Fat.

I look the other way, not wanting to see her healthy tanned skin and the flush of blood that rises as she pinches herself.

– So she call you after Whitney got… whatever? That freak her out?

– If it did, she didn't say anything.

– She wouldn't. Was she drunk when you saw her?

– Couldn't say.

– Yeah, most people can't. I can. If she's awake, she's drunk. She make a pass at you?

– No.

She looks at me.

– Uh-huh. As if. So'd you fuck her?

– No.

She looks at me some more.

– You'd be the first, then.

– Not according to your mom.

She laughs. But not like anything is funny.

– So.

– Yeah?

– You know what happened to Whitney?

– I heard.

– That for real? That Satanist guy did it?

– That's what they say.

– Yeah. Right.

She reaches in her bag and pulls out the partially eaten diet bar and starts picking at the chocolate again. I watch her. I try not to ask. I fail.

– What?

Fool.

– Nothing.

– You think different?

You fool.

– No.

She picks a piece of chocolate, eats it, picks another and drops it on the floor; then goes on like that, alternating a bite for a drop.

– Just.

– Yeah?

– I got the idea that, maybe. I don't know. That maybe she was blackmailing my dad.

She scrapes off a last bit of chocolate with her front teeth, looks the bar over to see if she missed any, then tosses the coconut remnant into a corner.

It doesn't make any difference.

Say she was. Say Whitney took those pictures of them fucking and threatened him; threatened to show them to his wife, who was looking for some kind of leverage to get Amanda away from him; threatened to take them to the papers and smear his rep. Hell, she might have threatened to just post them for anyone who wanted to gape at Dr. Dale Edward Horde, founder, president, chairman and CEO of Horde Bio Tech, as he fucked an Internet porn star. So say she was blackmailing him. So what?

I know what the kid doesn't. I know her dad and Whitney crossed paths down here, right in this room, right on that square of cardboard not ten feet away from us. But by the time they did, she had already crossed paths with something much creepier than Amanda's pederast father. By the time he found her the carrier had already taken a bite out of the back of her neck. Did he even know?

Figure it this way. He comes down here with some muscle, the same muscle that probably killed Dobbs for him, and they found Whitney. Couple days after being infected, her brain would still be pretty much intact. Her speech centers, even some of her short-term memory might work. She might even have been fighting her new impulses, trying not to become what she already was. Figure Horde and his goons confront her somewhere. She won't answer any questions. They think she's being tough, but she's just having holes bored through her brain by the bacteria. Doesn't matter, they find the pictures and whatever else she has on Horde. But he's not done, wants to teach her a lesson, but wants to do it somewhere private. Figure he remembers the place Dobbs found his daughter last year. Maybe that makes it better for him, having her on the floor in here, makes it easier to think about Amanda, makes it closer to what he really wants. Whitney wouldn't have been easy. The smell of his living flesh so close would have made her crazy. His guys would have had to hold her down while he raped her. And when he was done? What the fuck did he care. He has the evidence now and if she talks to anyone it's just the word of a teenage runaway slut against his. No contest. So he left her there. And the next people to see her were probably the two fashion junkies who came looking for a safe place to fix.

But it doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything for me, just fills in a couple gaps. It doesn't make my job any easier. It doesn't make me any less hungry. It doesn't help me forget the little girl lying on her side next to me taking a nap. It doesn't make my cold hand feel less of the warmth of her body as she curls tighter, pulling my chained arm close to her. It doesn't make me any less aware of the cardboard sheet on the other side of the room where I smelled the rank sweat of Horde fucking a still-breathing dead girl.

It makes no difference to me at all. I still have to get her home. I still have to find the carrier. I still have to do the job.

I tell myself this.

But all the while I see pictures of Horde's neck in my hands, my thumbs digging a hole through his skin and ripping open the throbbing artery. And I feel the hot blood splash against my lips and chin as I fit my mouth over the hole. As if that will make the world a better place.

Fool.

I am such a fool.

– You really allergic to the sun?

– It's called solar urticaria.

– Sounds like VD.

– It's not.

– So what happens if you go to the beach or something?

– What happens if you stick your hand under the broiler?

– No shirt

– No shit.

– That's so wrong.

– Yep.

– Were you born with it?

– Not really.

– So when was the last time you were out in the sun?

– Long time ago. You got any change?

We're on the corner of 10th and A, standing in front of a pay phone. I wiped most of the gore from my face and hands before we came up and have my jacket buttoned to hide the blood on my shirt. The holes in my hands have scabbed, but aren't healing nearly as quickly as they would if I was straight. They ache and throb like my face and ankle. But the needles keep me too occupied to worry about things like that. All my hurts will be healed when I get some blood, but I'm running out of time.

– Here.

She's holding out her hand, change pooled in her tiny palm. I pluck out two quarters.

– What's your mom's number?

– The apartment or her cell?

– Cell.

She rattles off the number and I dial. She stands on one side of the phone, trying to make it look like she's not with me. Pretty hard to do with the cuffs, even when they're covered by an extra T-shirt from her bag.

– Hello.

– Ms. Horde, it's me.

Amanda looks at me.

– Joseph. I.

– I have her.

– Oh, I. Thank you, Joseph.

Amanda raises her eyebrows.

– She's just so relieved, isn't she?

I ignore her.

– Do you want to come and get her?

– Yes I. No. No, you should. Can you bring her here?

Amanda is making little kissy faces.

– Is she just so grateful to you? Can she just not wait to see me?

– Sure. What's the address?

She gives me an address on 81st off Park Avenue. Amanda is just looking bored now, watching everything but me, and listening to every word I say.

– We'll grab a cab and be there in twenty minutes.

– Good. Good. Joseph?

– Yeah.

– Can I?

– What?

She doesn't say anything.

– You want to talk to her?

Amanda turns her head to look at me again.

– No. No. That's. Just. You better just bring her home.

– OK.

I hang up and grab Amanda's backpack from the ground.

– Let's go.

– Didn't want to talk to her darling daughter?

– Guess not.

– Don't be shocked.

– I'm not.

I wave the backpack at a passing cab. It stops. I open the door and wait while Amanda thinks about it. She looks inside the cab, looks at me. I gesture at the open door. She shrugs and climbs in. I get in after her and give the cabbie the address and we roll. She's looking out the window. I'm gritting my teeth and a little gasp squeezes out between them.

She turns from the window and looks at my face, looks at my swollen and scabbed lips stretched tight over my teeth.

– What's eating you?

– Nothing. Just shut up for awhile.

– And I was looking forward to another chat. As if.

And she goes back to the window. And I go back to feeling the pain that's building inside me. My veins have started to burn.

The hours spent in the school basement hiding from the sun have brought me closer to the next phase of Vyral starvation. The stage where my body will simply shut down as the Vyrus makes adjustments deep within my brain. I'm at the border now, this is as far as I've gone. I know I can take the pain right here in this moment, but I don't know if I can take what will come in the next minute or the minute after that or all the very few minutes remaining to me.

So I grind my teeth and clench my right fist, my fingernails digging into the scabbed palm of my hand. And I tell myself that she is not the answer. Tell myself that having the cabbie pull over and dragging her into a dark alley is not the answer. But the Vyrus is telling me a different story. That's OK, I can ignore it. I can ignore it just as easily as I ignore our hands sitting on the seat between us, the chain joining them beneath a retro Joan Jett T-shirt she picked up somewhere on St. Marks because she thought it was cool.

– Moooom, I'm hoooome.

The elevator from the lobby opens directly onto the foyer. It's no more or less than you'd expect: large, but not too large; expensively appointed, but not too expensively appointed; tasteful, but not too tasteful; boldly decorated, but not too boldly decorated. All in all, the kind of place I would expect to find a fabulously wealthy and dysfunctional family with ties to the Coalition. But not too much like that. I wait for the inevitable housekeeper to arrive, but none does. Nor does anyone answer Amanda's call. I look at her. She looks back and shrugs. What did you expect, a victory parade? I smear my forehead against my shoulder, wiping some of the cold sweat away.

The sweats got bad just as the cab pulled up to the Hordes' brownstone. I had to ask Amanda to pay the cab because Tom took the last of my cash. She looked at me like I was lame, but I've gotten used to that. She got a key out of her hip pocket and let us into an entryway that was similar in every way to this foyer. Then she led me into an elevator to take us the two flights to the floor her mother occupies. This accompanied by one of many sideways glances to see what I think of her folks keeping separate quarters. I notice the glances, but I'm not giving much back, focused as I am on the simmering fluid hissing through my organs, I'm starting to wish the cramps would return.

– Mom!

No reply.

– Come on, she's probably passed out.

, She storms ahead of me, dragging me by the cuffs as I stumble clumsily behind her. She looks back at me.

– You want to try walking for a change?

I don't say anything.

– I knew it. You are a junkie, aren't you?

I don't say anything.

– Well come on, junkie. Get paid and then you can get rid of me and go fix.

She hauls me down the central hallway that runs the length of the brownstone. I catch peripheral glimpses of a bathroom, a kitchenette, a large bedroom. All done up in the not too style. At the end of the hall we come up against a closed door. Amanda slaps her knuckles against it once, then shoves it open.

– Hey, Mom, I'm hooome.

She gives my arm a jerk and I take a lurching step into the room and she holds her cuffed hand up in the air.

– And look what I found. Can I keep it?

Marilee Horde looks up from the glass in her hands. She's sitting on a couch that matches everything in her little sitting room perfectly. Her red-rimmed eyes flick dully from Amanda to me to Amanda.

– Oh. Oh, Amanda. I'm. I am sorry.

Amanda drops her arm.

– You got that right, Mom.

Marilee's head drops back down and she stares deep into her glass.

– Sorry.

Amanda takes a step into the room.

– Mom?

The guy who knocks me out doesn't hit me half as hard as Hurley did. Then again he doesn't have to, I'm already halfway there. I go down and out. Sorry thing is, the Vyrus doesn't seem to care whether I'm conscious or unconscious. It just keeps hurting me.

Metal is rasping on metal.

– How much longer?

– Little while. Quicker if we go through his wrist.

– Just the cuffs, please.

I can hear them talking, but I can't see anything. My eyes must be closed, but rather than darkness, they peer into a pale gray abyss. Then something bobs up out of the abyss, something dark that suddenly resolves into a man's face.

– He's awake.

The rasping stops and another face appears looking down at me. Something waves in front of my face. A hand.

– Uh-uh. His eyes are open, but he's not awake.

Yes, he's right, my eyes are open. The gray abyss is the ceiling of Marilee Horde's sitting room. I try to shift my eyes to get a look around. They don't move. I try to blink. Nothing. I am frozen. The hand that was waving in front of my eyes slaps lightly at my cheeks.

– He's out.

A third face appears. I know this one, Dr. Dale Edward Horde.

– Not to tell you how to do your jobs, but is he, perhaps, faking it? The hand flourishes and an instrument materializes between its fingers: a stiletto long and thin, a rainbow glittering along its well-honed edge. The blade dips close to my right eye and the point hovers there, eclipsing half of the world.

– I'd say no.

– I'd like a more conclusive test.

The blade darts down and I hear the faint sound of steel entering flesh and feel the slightest tug in my cheek. No pain, but the taste of my own dead blood runs down the back of my tongue.

– He's not home.

– Very good.

The stiletto reappears, blade now lacquered with crimson. A handkerchief flutters and wipes away the blood. Then handkerchief, blade, hand, and two of the faces exit from sight. Horde remains above me, gazing down, inspecting me. He purses his lips and pokes a finger at my cheek. It comes back into view with a smear of blood on its tip. He looks at the precious drop, rubs it between his thumb and finger, sniffs at it.

– To think.

Then he shrugs, wipes his fingers on me and he, too, disappears.

I would like to have felt the blade pierce my cheek. It might have assured me that I am still alive, that the exterior world can still affect me. But I have no such evidence. Just a body that feels shot full of novocaine, immobilized and without sensation. On the outside, anyway. The inside is another matter. The inside is a cauldron of something bubbling and viscous, something that I think may be now burrowing into my bones, seeking out some last refuge of blood.

Someone tugs at my arm and my head rolls slightly to the left. I can't make my eyes focus beyond a foot or two, but I see the two men. One of them has his knee planted on my wrist, pinning it to the floor. The other kneels across from him, crouched over a blurred range of small hills on the horizon of the carpet. The girl. His picks something up from the floor, applies it to the girl's arm. Metal rasps on metal again as he hacksaws the cuffs from her wrist.

Horde stands over them, observing.

– Don't cut her.

– Like I said, be easier if we went through his wrist.

– No.

– He's not long for the world. Far gone as he is, he won't be coming back.

– No. He has a role to play, and a severed appendage will not suit.

– OK.

– I'll kill you if they hurt her, Dale.

Horde turns toward the other end of the room, where his wife was sitting when we came in.

– Something, dear?

– I'll kill you.

– I think it's safe to say that these gentlemen won't be harming our daughter in the least.

– Kill you.

Her words badly slurred.

– Have another drink, wife.

I watch the man with the hacksaw, the same one who had the stiletto. His movements are sharp and strong and he works the saw with an unnatural swiftness. My sense of smell has been dulled to near uselessness. I can't smell the man with the saw, but his movements give him away. He has the Vyrus. He could be a Rogue that Horde has somehow dug up, but he has a look I know. The expensive black suit, the conservative haircut, the carefully knotted tie, all say Coalition. One of Predo's enforcers on loan to Horde. The other has the beefy look of a stock bodyguard. One of Horde's own company men.

There's a little ping as the hacksaw parts the steel of the cuffs. The enforcer puts the saw aside, frees Amanda's wrist and starts to lift her from the floor. Horde puts a hand on his shoulder.

– I'll do that.

The enforcer and the goon stand and step out of the way, out of my view, as Horde kneels and tucks his arms under his daughter's back and legs and lifts her from the floor. Only his lower body is in focus for me now, but I can see the obscure shade of his head as he cradles the girl and puts his face close to hers.

– Home again, home again, my dear.

A glass shatters over by the couch. The smudge of Horde turns.

– Be careful, wife, you'll hurt yourself.

– What did you do to her?

– Gave her something to make her sleep, love. She was hysterical. She needs sleep after her ordeal. Imagine the trauma of being abducted by this filth.

– She wasn't.

He rocks the girl from side to side.

– Yes, love, she was. She was plucked from the streets by this man. This man who you then hired to find her.

– I?

– Strange coincidence that. Except that it was no coincidence.

Was it, love?

– Dale, what are you?

– Very clever of you. Hire the same man you paid to abduct your daughter to then find her.

– No.

He's putting on a show for her now, rehearsing a story for more official recitations at later dates. I'm happy for the distraction. Anything is better than the thing with teeth inside me.

– Yes, I assure you that is exactly how it happened. How naive of me not to have seen it when I met with him to discuss the case.

– Kill you.

Something crashes.

– Gentlemen, if you would please keep my wife from hurting herself.

There is a rush of movement and the slightest of scuffles.

– Don't harm her, please.

– Fuck you, Dale, fucking fuck you!

– If one of you could simply inject her with a half cc from the vial I used to calm my daughter? You'll find a clean syringe in the case there. Intramuscular will suffice.

– No! Fucking no!

She shrieks. Horde passes the time cooing at his daughter. I pass the time dying in horrible agony. Then Marilee is quiet.

– Better, yes? In any case, the humorous part of the whole tale is that I simply suspected you of cuckolding me with your hired hand. It was only when the men I had following you witnessed your visit to Chester Dobbs's office that I suspected the truth. I can only assume that you originally paid him off the case to make room for your own man. But as to what happened next? Did Dobbs threaten blackmail or some such?

A slight moan from the couch.

– No, do not answer, just relax. I will assume blackmail. Why else would you feel so compelled to kill him?

I'm listening to the frame Horde is building around us, around his wife and me, trying to stay a step ahead of it, trying to figure out what picture the frame will surround. His wife and I in cahoots in the kidnapping of the girl, his wife as Dobbs's murderer. I'm trying to imagine the picture such a frame would suit. It's a good problem, complex and detailed. It distracts me. But not enough.

Pain is becoming.

– The tragedy. The real tragedy of it all is that I couldn't save you from yourself. The tragedy is that, despite what you had done, trying to take my daughter from me, I still loved you and wished to save you from your own weakness. But I was too late. Too late to save you from a brutal murder at the hands of your hired thug turned lover.

Pain is eclipsing.

– How fortunate that I should remember Amanda's little hiding place from last summer. And how clever of your partner to have used the site of a recent massacre as his hideaway. Who would ever have thought to look there? Too bad, though.

Pain is not what I thought it was.

– Too bad we were not in time to spare you from your fate. But thank God.

I have never before felt pain.

– Thank God we were in time to save Amanda. Save her before he could abuse her, more than he already had. Was that it?

Pain is a new thing.

– Was that why you quarreled? Because you saw how he had misused her? I like to think so. I like to think that at the very end, your mother's instincts took over and you tried desperately to save our little girl. How brave you were to fight him. How awful it must have been when he slid the needle into your skin and left you helpless. Pain lives.

– Helpless to do anything for your daughter as he touched her again, right in front of your eyes. Helpless as he turned his attentions to you. What a terrible end you had. If only we had arrived a few moments earlier, we might have been able to do more than to simply avenge your demise.

Pain breathes.

– But it's all over now. All over. Perhaps you'll have peace knowing that your daughter is safe now. Safe at home in her father's loving arms.

Pain has a home inside my body.

A grunt, and tumble of clumsy footsteps as Marilee stumbles into view clawing at her husband's face. The enforcer materializes, pulls her away and throws her to the floor. Horde nods as if she is reacting as he knew she would, reacting childishly to his story.

– Turn her over.

The enforcer flips Marilee to her stomach as Horde sets his daughter gently in a chair.

– Bare her neck.

The enforcer sweeps Marilee's hair from the back of her neck and pulls the collar of her blouse down. Horde steps out of view, and then back, now holding a small black cube with rounded corners. He kneels next to his wife and holds the cube in front of her face. It splits opens like a jewelry case. He shows her the contents.

– I finished.

She moans. He takes something white and pink from the case.

– I've even tried it out already.

He sets the case aside.

– Twice.

He holds the white and pink object, pinched between his thumb and middle finger.

– First on Whitney. Which was, naturally, somewhat by design. He shifts the white and pink object to the palm of his hand, letting it rest there.

– And later, in a spontaneous moment, on a downtown ragamuffin.

The white and pink object springs open slightly, like a clamshell.

– And now it is time for another trial. With a considerably larger dose I think.

He lifts the white and pink object to his face, opens his mouth wide and slides it inside. He bites down hard on the dentures, setting them in place. Marilee begins to thrash her head from side to side.

– Hold her still.

The enforcer pins Marilee's head to the floor. Horde leans over the back of his wife's neck, his mouth stretched open, muscles I and tendons popping from his own neck, and he bites her.

I have found my carrier. But it is too late to do anything about it. I am pain. And a black shroud drops mercifully over my life.

I am dead.

And so I am free to remember my life.

I remember being small and helpless in the house of my parents. How they took advantage of that helplessness, my mother and father. Hands in dark rooms, probing me. Belts like whips, lashing me.

I remember the marks on my body that would be healed years later when the Vyrus took up residence and cleaned house. The marks discovered by sympathetic schoolteachers.

I remember my mother and father struggling in the arms of the police. The last memory of them. And then the others.

New sets of parents, none for more than a year, none a particular improvement over biology. And I remember the street where I taught other children the lessons I had learned at home. The grasping hands, the lash. I remember seeing fear in someone else's eyes, and that it made me feel larger.

I remember running the streets, warlord of my tiny tribe. And then being found and being poisoned. And fear and helplessness returned. And then Terry and the Society and something new. A reason. And years of work and learning, as I am taught how to be in the world. Then the discovery that I have become Terry's favorite tool. His sharpest instrument when it is time to apply fear. When it is time for the lash. Then not wanting any longer to be the whip.

I remember being alone and doing the job.

The Coalition and the Society and their dirty little errands. The job that is just survival. And then Evie. And I remember her whispering to me in the dark of my room while the day was bright outside, telling me what she felt. And having nothing to say to her in return except lies about who and what I am, but telling them all the same. To keep from being alone. And then the years since, years close to the edge. Balancing between Evie and the job. Every step closer to the edge of… something. I remember Whitney Vale. The almost human look in her eyes when I took the knife from her, the cough when the blade went in. And Leprosy, the bite in the back of his neck reeking of rotting. And the picture of the girl, alone somewhere, helpless. And her mother's breast pressed against me as she kissed the edge of my mouth. And Philip babbling over Dobbs's strangled corpse. And Daniel asking for my help as Jorge vomited his life into the room. And Dale Edward Horde, arrogant and cruel, experienced in the use of the hands and the lash. And Amanda's hand chained to mine, close by one another, covered by cloth. And the scouring acid in my veins. And a smell that isn't there, describing something that cannot exist. And the basement of the school, scene of a crime no one has defined, but one I can too easily imagine.

And screaming. People screaming. Someone I know screaming.

And I am not dead.

Not dead.

But not alive.

The basement of the school, illuminated by a hissing camp lantern.

Marilee is screaming. She has a reason to.

– Use the condom.

– I don't like 'em.

– I gave it to you for a reason. Use it.

– Fucking. Can't feel anything.

– Neither will you leave any traces of your semen.

– OK.

– We can afford a certain level of contradiction in the evidence we leave behind, but let us not bow to hubris and become, dare I say it under the circumstances, cocky.

– OK, OK.

Horde's goon opens the foil packet. He's kneeling next to Marilee, his pants and drawers pushed down his thighs, struggling to roll the rubber onto his semi-hard penis. Marilee is on her stomach, skirt torn half off, panties around her ankles. She's bound and gagged and drugged, but the bacteria is running in her now and her screams pierce the room as she struggles against the belt looped around her wrists.

I am spilled against a pile of junked desks. Thrown here to be dealt with soon enough. When Horde is done with his wife and daughter.

He's naked, standing above the sheet of cardboard where I smelled the residue of his rape of Whitney Vale, his rape of the dead. His daughter sleeps peacefully at his feet. Her shoes and socks removed and set neatly to the side. He watches the goon put on the condom, tug the panties from Marilee's ankles and position himself between her legs.

– Not yet.

The goon looks at him, dick in hand.

– What?

– Wait. Turn her head. I'd like for her to see this. And keep your hand away from her teeth.

The goon shakes his head, grabs a fistful of Marilee's hair and twists her face toward her husband. Horde is roped with lean muscle and pelted with graying hair. He squats next to Amanda, his penis sharply erect between his knees, and he begins to undo the button and zipper of her jeans.

– Self-control is a virtue. I always told you that, wife. With every one of your infidelities I would remind you that your inability to control your appetites was a weakness for which you would eventually pay.

He opens his daughter's fly slowly, then butterflies it and pauses, gazing at the triangle of white cotton beneath.

– Giving in to one's passions on a constant basis weakens the individual, as well as the passions themselves. Self-control, willpower, not only strengthen the individual, but also sharpen the appetite.

He inserts his index fingers at the waistband of Amanda's jeans and begins to tug them down over her slight hips.

– Self-control allows one the time to fully contemplate one's desires, and to imagine detailed scenarios in which those desires might be fulfilled. It also allows one the time to arrange circumstances so that the most favored of these scenarios might come to fruition.

The jeans are off now, and he folds them carefully and places them atop Amanda's shoes and socks.

– And if you look back, I think you will see how it is that your lack of self-control, and my own ample supply of this virtue, has led you to be in your current position, and me to be in mine.

He runs a finger over the elastic waistband of his daughter's panties. He nods his head.

– Now you may begin. But make sure she is watching me.

The goon grunts and clumsily tries to shove his now utterly limp penis into Marilee while still forcing her to watch her husband. Horde tucks his fingertips into the panties and begins to slide them down. I close my eyes. I can close my eyes. And I can feel my body. And it is not filled with pain. I open my eyes.

– Hey.

No one hears.

– Hey!

They hear this time. The goon, with a handful of Marilee's hair and something less than a handful of limp dick. Horde, with his daughter's panties pulled just past the tops of her hip bones. They both stop and turn their heads to look at me where I stand leaning crookedly against the pile of desks.

– Stop that.

Horde purses his lips.

– He was supposed to be finished?

– I've got it.

The enforcer is on me. He appears before me from whatever corner he has been lurking in, seizes my throat and shoves me through the pile of half-rotted desks. The wood tops of the desks splinter and crack and he pins me to the wall, fingers digging into my neck.

Horde holds up a hand.

– Don't kill him. He needs to be shot.

The enforcer keeps his eyes locked on my face.

– I know. He's strong.

Predo keeps them gorged on blood. That's what Terry told me. He said that short of the Secretariat, the enforcers are rationed the largest shares of Coalition blood. They feed to surfeit, their appetites always appeased. Predo keeps himself lean, hungry and subtle, but his instruments are often blunt and hard. I have likely never fed as well as this one feeds daily. He is strong, trained and experienced in the use of that strength.

Which is the advantage he retains when my heart explodes. But first it stops.

Death has truly and finally arrived.

Good.

I have failed. Failed as a child; failed as a man; failed as a revolutionary; failed as a lover; failed as a goodguy. My only success in life has been as a pawn. Fuck it, I never asked to be any of those things. And my life was over by rights long ago. I've just been waiting to catch up to it.

Then my heart explodes, beating a manic rhythm, and I realize my life is not over. Hell. The world shivers and splinters, vibrates at a frequency beyond my senses' range of reception, and then resolves into clarity.

I feel the room. Cracks in the concrete walls etched in sharp detail; fecal and delicate odors both, articulated and singular; sounds enunciated perfectly, from Marilee's scream to Amanda's peacefully drugged inhalations; the taste of my own tongue; the whorls of the fingerprints on the hand gripping my throat. My heart trip-hammers, trying to dig its way from my chest. And all of it; cracks in the walls, smells of shit and Horde's French milled soap, sounds of scream and breath, taste of my own flesh, unique identifying ridges; all of it pales beside my hunger.

I grab at the enforcer's wrist. The movement jars the world. The room shivers again, bright trails of light tail from every object, and I miss the enforcer's arm entirely. It's too fast, I'm too fast. I try to breathe, realize I am already breathing, air desperately chugging in and out of my lungs in an attempt to keep up with my heart's need. I wait for the shock of the enforcer's clutch on my neck. But it doesn't come. He is frozen, stunned by the speed of my attack, not yet certain what has happened. I grab at him again, slowly this time. My hand clips his forearm, knocks his hand from my throat. He drops into a crouch, the thin stiletto blade sprouts from his hand, and he waits, poised for my next move.

But I am not interested in him. He has nothing for me. I can smell what is inside him and it will not nourish me or feed my hunger. But the others, three of the others in the room have what I spoil for. They are bursting with it.

The enforcer waits for my attack, but I do not attack. I charge, sweeping my left arm at him as I go past, launching him into the discarded desks, a wrecking ball through crumbling brick. The goon is the closest. I am nearly upon him before he or Horde have registered what has happened. I will drink their blood and they will die before they know death has begun.

The air at my back thrums as something passes through it.

I spin, see the enforcer leaping at me, sidestep and catch only half his blow. Still it drives me to my knees. The stiletto arcs down, a glitter that winks at my neck. I bring up my arm to block the blade. I am too fast again, my arm whistles in front of his, but misses entirely. He is again startled by my speed, and the angle of the glitter changes and it draws a line along the edge of my jaw. I jump up and he dodges back. What I need is behind me. I cannot be bothered with him now. I turn.

The goon is on his feet, pants bunched around his calves, penis shriveled inside its latex wrapper. He is holding his jacket, trying to pull something from one of its pockets, something that has snagged and will not come free. I reach for him, and instead of grabbing his shoulder I shove it. There is a dull snap as his shoulder pops out of its socket and he is sent reeling and crashes to the floor by the door. I look at the bound and half-naked woman at my feet. But she smells wrong. She has been polluted and will poison me if I try to drink her. I crouch, ready to leap on the helpless goon who now struggles with his one useful hand to pull free whatever weapon is concealed in his jacket.

The enforcer lands on my back.

One arm snakes around my throat and the stiletto thrusts at my face. I bring my hand up, the stiletto pierces the palm and juts out the back, the point halted an inch from my eye. I fall backward, lift my feet from the floor and land on the enforcer. He makes a noise and the arm around my neck loosens. I roll to my left, tumbling free of him, wrenching my hand from the blade and coming to my feet.

There is a tingling along my jaw and in my hand. I can feel the flesh knitting, the Vyrus in overdrive, closing my wounds as they are inflicted. The enforcer is up. He is between me and the goon now. No matter. There is more food here.

I turn to face Horde and his unconscious daughter. The stiletto enters my back, is plunged into my liver twice before I can seize his arm, hunch forward, and toss the enforcer to a far corner of the room.

The pain is more persistent this time. The healing tickle not such a balm. The Vyrus is fighting a losing battle against the damage I'm absorbing. I must feed.

The enforcer is on me again, charging from the corner. He crashes into me and we sprawl on the floor. He straddles my chest, pins my arms with his knees. The stiletto comes down, drives through my left forearm and sticks in the crumbling concrete below. He covers my eyes with his thumbs and starts to gouge them out of their sockets. I wrench my head to the side and catch his wrist between my teeth.

His blood is acid. It fills my mouth, scorching my tongue. I close my throat against it. The small bones of his wrist crunch between my teeth and he howls and rips himself free and off of me. I gag and spit his torn meat from my mouth and yank the stiletto from my arm. I roll to my knees. The wound in my arm stays open, streaming blood. The Vyrus is dealing with my more mortal hurts. Ignoring that which will not kill me outright. The enforcer is between me and the others again. He comes in low, in a wrestler's crouch, the blood clotting at his wrist.

I see the Enclave in my mind. Their disciplined sparring. The control they exert over the Vyrus gone berserk in their veins. It can be controlled, this power. I have seen it.

He feints at my right arm, the arm that now holds his blade. I dodge to the left, away from the feint and into the real attack he had planned for my wounded left arm.

He cranks the arm up and back and pain explodes in my shoulder as he tries to snap it before I can react. But I am already reacting, twisting to my left, bringing the stiletto around in an arc behind his legs, and drawing it back, the blade raking the tendons just above the tops of his knees. He drops, his legs folding like marionette limbs beneath him, my arm falling from his grasp. I plant the heel of my left hand beneath his jaw as he comes down and force him back, his legs powerless beneath his body. I climb onto his stomach, still shoving his head back, baring his throat, and stab him in the neck. Over and over. Blood sprays, and air whistles from a dozen holes. I shove the blade in one final time, fixing it at the far point below his jaw, and then heave it over to the other side. I leave the stiletto lodged in his twitching corpse and stand up.

The woman on the floor has freed her hands and is clumsily trying to get to her feet, but the bacteria is still finding its place and she is delirious with it. The goon is by the door, whimpering and trying to get at his weapon.

But there is blood here at my left hand.

I turn to kill Horde and his daughter, and he shoots me in the stomach.

The gun is small, the slender European automatic of the well-to-do. The pain flares and disappears in the same instant. The tingle of regeneration fills my belly. I move at Horde, knowing I can pluck the weapon from his hand before he can fire it again.

Two vicious insects latch onto the back of my neck and I am knocked to my knees by 50,000 volts.

I open my mouth and howl silently and piss myself. Two wires run from my neck to the black box in the goon's hand. I flail at the wires, yank them from my skin and scramble to my feet. The goon is screaming, banging his head against the wall, fumbling one-handed with the Taser, trying to insert another charge. I take a step toward him.

Horde shoots me again. The bullet rips through the meat of my left thigh. I stumble but don't fall, and turn to face him again. And am stung by the 50,000 once more.

Steam wisps from the holes in my arm, leg and stomach, and Horde adds a new hole, this one punched through my chest. I feel my right lung collapse and I echo it, keeling and folding to one side until I am supported by my right knee and hand, left hand clamped over the gasping hole in my chest. No tingling now, and no vibrant clarity of senses. The Vyrus has run its course. I am an empty and useless vessel that is beyond repair.

Naked and still erect, Horde steps over his daughter and comes close to me, the gun declined at my head.

He glances about the room, at his lost and struggling wife, the fear-crazed goon, the nearly decapitated enforcer, and his sleeping child. Then to me.

– I will not lie to you, Pitt; that was unexpected.

He tilts his head at the enforcer.

– And rather spectacular. Honestly, I've never seen the infected in action. I had no idea of the ferocity. Or the reserves you can call upon. Was your recovery typical? Or are you unique in your constitution?

I bleed.

– Regardless, I think it's safe to assume that you are beyond help at this point.

He thinks for a moment.

– But just to be safe.

He shoots my right arm. I sit there, helplessly listing on my one good limb.

– All this carnage may be oversetting the scene a bit, but I trust that Predo will be able to tidy things up. And I'm sure that the authorities will understand the excesses I took in avenging myself on you. You would understand as well if you were to stay present long enough to witness what you did to my daughter. But it is not to be.

He shakes his head.

– A shame. Nothing would please me more than to have you in my lab. But. He heaves a sigh.

– Predo forbids it. I can experiment all I like with the… well, one feels comic to call it this, but with the zombie bacteria. But he will not allow me a subject of research for the Vyrus. No bother, I'll get one on my own soon enough.

– Husband.

He looks at his wife. Standing in clothes askew, leaning crookedly against the wall behind her. -I think I want to eat you.

She tries to take a step and stumbles, her body, already decomposing, is arguing with the bacteria over who controls what.

Horde smiles.

– Don't worry, love. You won't have to live with that feeling for long. And who knows, perhaps I'll cut something from Amanda for you to nibble. I assure you she'd feel only the mildest pain in the state she's in. The dear won't even remember. What do you say? Something she won't miss, of course. A little finger?

He turns his eyes back to me and shrugs.

– As you can see, I have a great deal to take care of here. My family is waiting.

He presses the barrel of the gun against the top of my forehead. I watch his finger as it tightens on the trigger.

Something changes in the room.

A darkness flickers across the corner of my vision. A darkness perilously cold chills the air. A darkness passes between Horde and myself, erasing its own scent as it travels. The darkness cuts through Horde and he drops rigid to the floor. The darkness bleeds across the room, momentarily blackens the shadows in a high corner, and is gone.

And I forget about the darkness and go after what I need.

I crawl up Horde's naked body, every part as rigid as his penis now, his skin icy to the touch, and a rim of frost on his gun. I dig my fingers under his jaw and pull. His flesh tears far easier than it should. Flesh tears with a crunch like stepping on snow. I bend my head to lap his blood. And find it frozen. His torn neck filled with dead crimson slush.

I rage.

And remember the sleeping girl.

I drag my gunshot leg toward her.

– Joseph.

The woman has the whimpering snot-faced goon. She holds his hair in her hand, his head pulled far back. In her other hand, she holds the enforcer's stiletto.

– You did a good job, Joseph.

The hard wiry muscles of her arms and shoulders flex as she pushes the knife into the artery.

Blood splashes.

From across the room I crawl until my mouth is over the hole in his neck. It has been years since I have had blood from the vein. It is just as I remember. The blood floods my throat and warmth swells in my stomach and a harsh burning tingle attacks my hurts.

A few blissful red minutes pass. They might be seconds or hours; over far too soon, a pleasure greater than their brevity would suggest. And when the man is empty and I am full and my face is rinsed in his gore, I feel as I always do when I feed, like I want more. I go for the girl.

And I am pummeled to the floor by her mother.

– Joseph.

I am fed, but weak. The Vyrus is replenishing itself, repairing its host. It wants more. I stand. She brings her doubled fists down on me again.

– Joseph!

Behind her I can see the girl's eyelids flutter. I must have her. I stand. And am hammered down again.

– Joseph.

I try to crawl past her. She is on my back and we are a pile of struggling limbs on the floor. I try to free my arms, to pull myself across the few yards between us and the child. The mother twists her legs around mine and binds my arms in the circle of her own.

– Joseph. Please, Joseph.

Her lips are on the back of my neck, and then her teeth, gnawing gently, experimenting with biting, but not breaking the skin. The girl's eyes open blindly, close, open again and close again. Her teeth are on my neck.

– Joseph. Help me. Teeth carrying poison.

I forget the girl, flex the muscles in my shoulders and back, and feel Marilee's grip fail. I writhe loose of her arms and legs and scuttle away from her. She sits in the middle of the floor, arms slack, looking at me. Then she looks at her daughter. And crawls to her.

– Ms. Horde.

She kneels next to the child.

– Ms. Horde.

She touches the skinny bare legs.

– Marilee.

She picks up the folded jeans and starts fussing them back onto the girl. She gets them as far as her knees and stops. She looks up at me.

– I'm hungry, Joseph.

Her hand rests on Amanda's naked thigh, gripping it too hard, dimpling the skin.

– I'm so hungry.

She looks at her daughter.

– Help me, Joseph.

The holes in my body are all closed, blood trapped inside, but I can feel that only one lung is inflating, and poisons released from my pierced intestines and liver are pooled in my gut. The Vyrus will deal with it, given time it will make me whole. But if the woman attacks me now, with the bacteria fresh and strong in her, she will finish me.

I stand and walk to her. She reaches a hand up to me. I take it and help her to her feet. She puts a hand alongside my face, and presses her mouth against mine. When she pulls away her lips and chin are smeared with the dead man's blood.

– I had a feeling about you, Joseph.

I bring my right hand up to the back of her head.

– From the first moment I saw you, I had a feeling you were special.

I bring up my left hand, the cuffs, one bracelet sawed through, still trailing from my wrist, and cup her chin.

– Special. Like you were someone I could trust.

Her eyes drift to her daughter and back to me.

– Can I trust you, Joseph?

I run a tongue over my lips, taste the blood.

– Yeah, sure.

– Good.

And I break her neck.

It's not easy. It's very hard. I am drained and weak and she flinches at the last moment. I heave once and her spine crackles and she starts to tremor. Then I heave again and feel the clean snap and she goes still.

I lower her to the floor, and as I do I meet Amanda's open staring eyes, see her mouth gaping in a silent nightmare scream, and then her eyes close again. This moment, I hope, to be lost with the rest of her terrors.

Lydia brings three of her hammers. Two of them are diesels, beefier than her but not nearly as cut. The other is a pre-op tranny a huge chick with a dick, shoulders and tits the size of bowling balls.

– Is she OK?

– They shot her up with something. I don't know what.

– They who?

I look at Amanda, limp in my arms.

– People who aren't around anymore.

Lydia nods.

– What now?

– She needs a safe place.

– How long?

– Don't know. Couple days maybe.

She looks at the tranny.

– Sela?

The tranny nods and answers in a throaty rumble.

– Sure, I can take care of the sweetie.

Lydia looks at me.

– OK?

I look at Sela.

– People may come.

Sela lifts both her arms, flexes them bodybuilder style and her biceps just about pop out of her skin.

– Their problem.

I nod.

– OK.

Sela lowers her arms.

– Let me have the cupcake.

I hold her out. Sela plucks her from my arms and tucks her easily into the crook of one of her own. I point at the bloody fingerprints on her jeans and shoes, left there when I finished dressing her.

– See if you can get her into something clean before she wakes up.

Sela is watching Amanda's sleeping face, one Lincoln Log finger brushes loose hair from her forehead.

– No problem, we'll get cupcake all sorted out. C'mon, ladies.

One of the diesels opens the door and checks the street outside, then signals an all clear. Sela follows her out and the other diesel brings up the rear, closing the door behind her. Lydia points at the closed door.

– She'll be fine with them.

– Yeah.

She goes to the door, puts her hand on the knob.

– We should get going, sunrise soon.

– Yeah.

We step out of the empty storefront onto Avenue B. Lydia locks the door behind us and we start down the street. I point back at the storefront.

– That a Society safe house?

– One of mine.

– Hn.

She's burned a safe house. Let someone outside her circle know about it. There'll be skin to pay for that. There's always skin to pay for something. Then again, chances are she won't have to worry about anything I know much longer. She looks at me from the corner of her eye, smiles slightly.

– Tom's been going batshit.

– Yeah?

– Yeah. Told him I went to give you some chow and you sucker-punched me and grabbed the key to the shackles. He tried to track you, but I had a couple of my people out gumming up your scent. He's frothing. Says he'll have me up on charges when Terry gets back.

– Still not back?

– No. Got a message from the drop, though. The Coalition's raising some kind of stink, clogging up all passages across their turf. Know anything about that?

– Nope.

She stops on the corner of 9th and B.

– I go this way. What about you?

I point the opposite direction.

– Home.

– Sure about that?

– Nowhere else left.

She nods.

– Anything else?

– Got a smoke?

She shakes her head.

– Give my money to the death merchants at the tobacco companies? You should know better.

– Right.

She stuffs her hands in her back pockets.

– The girl?

– If you don't hear from me tomorrow, wait for Terry. He'll know what to do.

– He usually does.

– Yep.

At home I get cleaned up, and in bed with a cigarette. Every time I take a drag the cuff still hanging off my wrist bangs against my neck. I could pick the lock, but my wallet with the picks is on the opposite side of the room. Too far away. I put my cigarette in the nightstand ashtray and take hold of the dangling cuff. I begin to twist it round and round. The chain bundles and knots and the cuff still locked on my wrist digs into the skin. I crank the loose cuff once more and wrench my locked wrist in the opposite direction and the chain pops, one broken link shooting across the room. I put the sawn-through cuff on the nightstand and pick up my cigarette. I rub my wrist, massaging the red skin under the single cuff I now wear like a bracelet. I spin the bracelet around and around and think about the girl that it had been locked to.

And I lie in the dark, sucking smoke into my one good lung.

When I finally sleep I dream. I don't dream about the girl or her mother or her father. I don't dream about Whitney Vale or Evie or the wretched things that raised me. I dream about a darkness. And I see all the details I had only glimpsed in that room.

The way the darkness seeped into the room through a crack in the air. How it cut the space between Horde and myself. How it passed through Horde, passed through him as he would have passed through a mist. How it flapped and shivered as with pleasure, gliding up to the shadows in the corner of the room. The things bulging from within the darkness, trying to get out. The shapes bulging from it, pressing it outward from the inside, like people trapped inside a black sheath of rubber. The hole it cut in the shadow. The last shape, digging from within it, before it inked the shadow black and disappeared.

The shape like an oily black relief of Horde's screaming face.

– Stop screaming, Pitt.

I open my eyes. They're already here.

– Little early, guys.

Predo has set the chair from my desk next to the bed and is sitting in it. He looks at his watch.

– It is nearly midnight. You have slept all day. Now it is time to get up.

– Yeah, guess you're right.

I sit up in bed and stretch.

– I'd offer you guys some coffee or something, but I don't like you. So. I throw off the covers and move to get up and Predo's giant holds up a hand.

– If you could just stay on the bed for now, Mr. Pitt.

– Yeah, sure.

I grab my smokes from the nightstand, light up, lean my back against the wall and sit there in my shorts and undershirt, and smoke. Predo lets it go for a minute, then gets tired of it.

– Where is the girl?

I take a drag. I think I can feel some of the smoke going into my right lung. A good sign.

– Say, Mr. Predo.

His eyes tighten, but he waits for it.

– Know what I'm noticing?

He waits.

– No? OK, I'll tell you.

I stub my cigarette in the ashtray.

– I'm noticing how you're not asking what happened to the Hordes.

I grab the pack of Luckys and knock a fresh one out.

– When last seen, one of your enforcers was with them. You'd think he'd have called in by now. But he hasn't. Know how I know he hasn't?

I flip my Zippo open.

– Because I killed him.

I thumb the wheel.

– But I have a feeling you already know that.

I light the butt.

– And that you don't give a fuck.

I close the lighter with a snap.

– Care to comment?

He temples his fingers and presses them to his lips.

– May I have a cigarette?

I pass him one. He taps it against his thumbnail then places it carefully between his lips and leans forward. I flick the Zippo to life and hold it out. He dips the tip of the cigarette in the flame, inhales, leans back and exhales with a slight cough.

– Filterless.

I close the lighter and put it back on the nightstand.

– Yeah.

He takes another drag, exhales without coughing this time.

– One of the advantages of the Vyrus. I do not personally take advantage of it often, but when I do, I prefer filterless. More flavor.

– Yeah.

– You are right.

He picks a flake of tobacco from his tongue.

– My agent did fail to report when expected.

He shakes the tobacco from his fingertip.

– Another of our agents went to the Horde residence and reconstructed some of the action that had taken place there. Based on that reconstruction, and my knowledge of Dr. Horde's predilections, I was able to make an assumption as to where he had taken his… party. The agent went to the school. Yes, I do know about the Hordes and their man. And my agent. And you are correct about something else, as well. I do not give a fuck.

He takes another drag, but pulls a sour face this time and shakes his head.

– What does that say as to how I feel about you?

He drops the freshly lit cigarette to the floor and steps on it.

– You see, you are mistaken about what is happening in this room, Pitt. You think you are maneuvering yourself into position for some kind of bargain. You hope to leave this room not only with your life, but with information, and perhaps some kind of profit. It is true that there is a bargain to be struck here, but what lies in the balance is not your life, but rather the manner of your death.

My cigarette burns a little closer to my fingers.

– You have killed an agent of the Coalition. And so you will die. Put simply, you can tell us where the girl is right now, and we will kill you in some quick and relatively painless manner. Or, if you prefer, you may withhold that information, and force us to extract it from you. After which, we will drive to a location in New Jersey which I understand is excellent for viewing the sunrise. Need I be any more blunt?

The heat of my cigarette's cherry reaches my fingers. I bring it up to my face and eke out a last drag before putting it out. I hold the smoke from that last drag, then jet it out my nostrils.

– I know Horde was the carrier.

I pick up the cigarette Predo crushed on rny floor.

– Yeah, I know, a statement like that is pretty much a conversation killer.

I drop the crushed cigarette in the ashtray.

– Where do you go from there? So let me expound a little bit. Just so you know I know what the fuck I'm talking about.

I gather my thoughts. And hope they don't fall apart too quickly.

– Say you're a man like Horde. Say that in addition to owning a company like Horde Bio Tech, you are also its top researcher. And just for the sake of argument, say you also happen to be a very sick motherfucker who happens to have access to certain facts about how things work on the darker side. That's our side, Predo. Oh, I'm gonna get dressed now.

I scoot to the edge of the bed. The giant takes a step toward me, but Predo shakes his head and he stops. Standing is tricky, but I manage. Predo watches as I shuffle to the closet.

– Not feeling well, Pitt?

– Been better.

I stand in front of the closet for a moment and look at myself in the mirror on the door.

Predo continues to watch the space where I had been sitting on the bed.

– You were saying?

Not surprisingly I look like shit. The bruises around my eyes and nose aren't so bad, but the tooth Tom knocked out is still gone. The Vyrus will knit bone, but it won't grow new ones.

– Yeah. So say you're Horde, and everything I've said is true of you. And it is true. We know that. So that all being the case, who could blame you for taking a professional interest in something like a very bizarre and dangerous bacteria? A bacteria that, I don't know, say a bacteria that consumes its host and compels him to eat human flesh.

The wounds in my arms and left leg are corked with plugs of brick-red scab. I pull off my undershirt.

– It would just make good business sense to look into something like that.

The holes in my belly and chest are scabbed as well and surrounded by angry red skin. If I can get some more blood they'll be gone in a couple days. If I get out of this room alive.

– Just imagine if something like that were to become widespread. Situation like that, the first company on the block with a vaccine would clean up. Face it, who's not gonna pay top dollar to get a shot that's gonna keep them from eating their neighbor's brain?

I open the closet, grab a pair of old jeans, pull them on and get a black T-shirt from the shelf. I face Predo as I shrug into the shirt.

– But where to start? How do you develop that vaccine?

I go to the desk, scoop up my wallet, keys and loose change, and put it all in my pockets.

– Now I don't know much about this kind of thing, but I'm guessing the first thing you'd need is someone already infected with the bacteria. The technical term would be zombie. Not many people know how to come by a zombie, Mr. Predo.

I go sit back on the edge of the bed and wiggle my feet into a pair of socks.

– You know where to get one?

I reach under the bed for my shoes.

– Sure you do. If anyone knows where to get a shambler, it'd be Dexter Predo.

I lace my shoes.

– But then things get really tricky. Way I hear it, the bacteria only lives in the human body, and sooner or later it kills its host. So what's a brilliant millionaire researcher to do? I grab my smokes and get a fresh one going.

– Some people might say, fuck it, I'll just keep making new zombies. Every time one is ready to kack, just have it bite a new subject and, presto: new zombie. Hell, some folks might extend the life of their subject by feeding it some brains. But really, how long is that gonna work? Gonna be a whole lot of bodies going in and out of that lab. Might raise a couple eyebrows. And this.

I jab my cigarette at him.

– This is where being a brilliant epidemiologist comes in handy. 'Cause it turns out the bacteria can exist outside a host. How? Fucked if I know. But it can. I've seen it. Which means you can get it under a microscope and look at it all you like without needing to make any new shamblers. Unless you have a reason for making new shamblers. Now what could possibly be a good reason for making new shamblers?

I blow some ash from the tip of my smoke.

– Any ideas?

He stares through me, studying the wall behind me. The giant just stands there like a good boy and waits for Predo to order him to tear my fingers off for being an asshole.

I point a single finger at the ceiling.

– Here's a thought.

I aim the finger at Predo.

– What if you had the idea to study the bacteria in the wild? What if, now that you had it isolated, you wanted to see how it spreads, how quickly? For a man looking to cure a potential zombie epidemic, that could be valuable information. Especially if you're thinking about starting the epidemic yourself.

I tap the finger against the side of my head.

– But, can't have something like a zombie epidemic getting out of hand before you're ready to deliver your vaccine and make your. billions. That would suck. So what do you do? Oh, you go ahead and make a plan to put it out in the general population. But it needs to be a very special population. I put the finger away and smoke.

– See, nobody wants that kind of experiment on their turf. That shit gets even a little out of hand and next thing you know, there's a lot of attention focused on your yard. Nope, something like that doesn't get tested on Coalition turf. And not uptown, things are too tense with the Hood. Not on Enclave turf. Nobody fucks with Enclave turf. Sure, things are pretty open below Houston or in the Outer Boroughs, but it's just about impossible to keep an eye on things out there. Tough to collect data. And the experiment could fly off the handle. But what about Society turf? Hell, why not? Everybody wins. Horde gets to watch the bacteria move around in a population, and the Coalition gets to cause a little trouble below Fourteenth. A little sand in the Vaseline to keep Terry and his crew busy. That'd be good, what with DJ Grave Digga trying to stir up trouble. And after all.

I blow a smoke ring.

– You got a jerk like me down here to handle things in case the shit hits the fan. And a toady like Philip to keep an eye on me.

I blow a stream of air that rips my smoke ring to shreds.

– So Horde goes to work. He infects Whitney Vale. Tell me?

He focuses his eyes on me.

– Did you know he had been fucking her and that she was blackmailing him? 'Cause I'm guessing you never would have signed off on her as patient zero if you had known.

He blinks, slowly.

– Let's call that no. He probably sold her to you as a porn hustler no one would miss. When you found out the truth you must have flipped. And when I stumbled across Vale, you must have shit a brick. Metaphorically speaking.

Predo taps an index finger on his thigh.

– Will you be concluding soon?

I nod.

– I'll pick up the pace. How 'bout this? Horde fucks Vale; Vale blackmails Horde; Horde has one of his goons hold down Vale while he rapes her and infects her with the bacteria; Vale shambles around; I catch sight of one of Vale's victims and start tracking a carrier; I catch up to Vale and her pals at the school; shit hits the fan; Philip lets you know shit is hitting the fan; you call me in. You have to call me in, a scene like that one at the school, the TV news involved and all, if you don't call me in I'm gonna start wondering why, and you don't want me wondering shit. Back at the ranch, Amanda Horde finds out about daddy and her buddy fucking, and runs away; Horde calls Dobbs; Dobbs finds the girl; the girl bribes Dobbs off the case; Ms. Horde hears about Whitney being killed and gets a little more worried about her husband than usual, and she asks for help; you give her me to keep me…

I stop, smoke in my lung. I blow the smoke out.

– You give her me?

Predo scratches his upper lip.

– Lost your thread, Pitt?

He puts his hand back in his lap.

– Not as easy as you thought?

I look at him.

– You gave her me. But you shouldn't have wanted me anywhere around the Hordes. I was looking for the carrier already. Get me looking for the girl and I might put it all together. I did put it all together.

The slightest smile creases the corners of his mouth.

– Apparently not.

He stands.

– Are you done showing off now? Would you like to know what it is you are missing?

I nod.

– All you had to do was ask, Pitt. Why should I have secrets from a dead man?

He pushes the chair back to its place next to my desk.

– What you are missing, Pitt, is information you could not possibly have in the first place. That being the case, I do not think you should be at all embarrassed. You did quite well, all things considered. The information you are lacking has to do with Horde Bio Tech and the disposition of that company's stock. HBT is not a publicly owned company. Indeed, until recently it was owned entirely by the Horde family. They still control the majority of the stock. Specifically, preferred stock shares that carry weighted voting rights, the shares that control the company. Those shares comprise sixty percent of HBT's total value, and Dale Horde owned all of them. Of the remaining forty percent, the non-preferred shares, the vast majority are held by elements of the Coalition. We came into possession of these shares at a time when Horde was in need of funding, and not quite as liquid as he might have liked. Fortunately, we were able to help. Does the pie' ture begin to leap into clarity?

I stare at him.

– I think it does. Horde owns and controls HBT, controls every aspect of its operations, including to what questions it may or may not devote its considerable research laboratories. Those laboratories are central to the Coalition's interest in Horde and HBT.

He leans down a bit, looks at my eyes.

– I think I may see a little light dawning in there, Pitt. Good. Let me be brief before that light dims. It is true that Dr. Horde wished to research the bacteria, but his true interest was in the Vyrus. That was an interest we were unwilling to allow him to pursue. There is so little we know about the Vyrus, it would never have done for Horde to perhaps make significant discoveries. Discoveries we could not be certain he would share with us. Discoveries he might use against us. Still, the resources HBT can bring to bear far outstrip any that we have previously had at our disposal. Which led to the proposal that we should investigate strategies which would allow the Coalition to take control of those resources.

I watch the smoke drift off my cigarette.

– The stock.

Predo wags a cautioning finger at me.

– Careful, Pitt, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But yes, the stock. If the Coalition were in control of HBT, we might steer whatever course of research we wished, secure in the knowledge that we had installed our own people in the key positions necessary to protect the nature and results of that research. How to take control? We thought to take advantage of Dr. Horde's appetites and maneuver a subject not unlike Ms. Vale into his path. That plan was discarded. If cornered by blackmail, Dr. Horde might become a fierce adversary, an adversary with knowledge of far too many of our secrets. So we came to assassination. If Dr. Horde should die, his shares would fall to his wife. And she, we felt, would be quite easily convinced to relinquish control of them. But even with our advantages, assassination is difficult, much more difficult when the subject is a man like Dr. Horde. Any investigation into his death would be exhaustive. And if an assassination should go awry, he would certainly retaliate against us. We were, in fact, mired in the planning stages when you became involved. And I had a thought. Why should the Coalition assassinate Dr. Horde when you might be made to do it for us?

I lick my fingertips.

– It is not generally in my nature to work on the basis of instinct, but I felt this was an opportunity that warranted some little risk. The question was whether or not you could be depended on to act in a predictable manner. I felt certain that you could.

I pinch out the cherry at the end of my cigarette.

– You are, as you have proven, not an utter fool, and could therefore be expected to discover a certain amount of the truth. You have a notorious temper. And though you seem to be the only one not aware of it, you are famously unmerciful with those who abuse children. Was there any doubt that when you learned some very little about Dr. Horde that you would lose that temper? Very little doubt. You are an independent contractor. If you failed, Dr. Horde could not hold us accountable for your actions. If you succeeded, we would be prepared to conceal the few threads that connect you to the Coalition. If captured, the authorities would likely interpret Horde's murder as the action of a madman. Once in the hands of the police there would be little you could tell them before you expired in custody. And if you survived and found yourself at large?

He gestures to the room.

– Well, here we are, tying up loose ends. Is there anything else you would like clarified, anything that might make your position more apparent to you so that we might move ahead with the unalterable course of events?

I drop the snuffed butt into the ashtray.

– Why'd he cut Leprosy?

He looks at the ceiling.

– Leprosy?

I rub my thumb and index finger together, brushing the gray ash from them.

– The kid.

He looks back down.

– Yes. The one you had asking about Dr. Horde's daughter. Well, I can't say for certain, but I think he viewed your involvement as a balm to his wife. He never intended that you should lay hands on the girl. He hoped perhaps to track your progress so as to find young Amanda first. For himself. I think it likely that he got carried away questioning the boy. His taste for youth seemed to have more to do with inflicting pain than with receiving pleasure.

I think about lighting another smoke, decide not to.

– Why infect him?

– He infected the boy?

I nod. Horde shakes his head.

– To play with his toy? He was quite proud of having isolated the bacteria. I am just as curious about why he killed the detective Dobbs. Do you know?

I rub my forehead.

– He didn't.

– Who did?

– Dobbs was Horde's peeper. He had all the goods on his wife and her lovers. She had her own plan. Wanted to take off with her daughter, but knew Horde could make her out as an unfit mother. She went to Dobbs for the pictures and whatnot, and he balked. So she choked him to death and grabbed the stuff.

– You are certain?

– When we met she asked about my sense of smell. Could I tell her scent? Next time I saw her she was scrubbed and clean, just like whoever did Dobbs. It was her. She wanted to get her daughter out.

– Yes, I can see that. And it brings us back around to where we started. Back to my question. Where is the girl?

– You don't need her.

– The girl.

– Let the girl be, she doesn't know anything. She was fucking unconscious when it happened. I got rid of Horde, let the girl be.

– Yes, Pitt, you got rid of Horde. And you got rid of his wife, as well. Which leaves the girl as Horde's heir, heir to the stock, Pitt.

He takes off his jacket.

– An underage girl.

He tucks his tie inside his shirt.

– For whom that stock will now be held in inviolable trust.

He unclips his cuff links.

– Controlled by the Horde family's rather too incorruptible lawyers.

He rolls up his left sleeve.

– Until she comes of age at twenty-one.

He rolls up his right sleeve.

– Unless she dies in the same horrible, disfiguring fireball of an automobile accident in which her parents will be shortly dying.

He puts his hand out to the giant.

– In which case the stock will be made available to the other shareholders. And, I believe, I have already told you who those shareholders are.

The giant places a pair of black leather gloves in his hand.

– So.

He pulls the tight gloves on and snugs them over his knuckles.

– Where? Is? The? Girl?

I look at his hands, then his face.

– I gave her to Lydia Miles.

He doesn't move.

– Lydia Miles?

– You know, the Society's resident gay rights loudmouth.

– Where did she take the girl?

– Got me. But if I don't call in a couple days she'll give her to Terry Bird.

I decide it's time for another smoke, so I get one ready.

– And did I mention that I have Horde's teeth?

Light it.

– Not his real teeth mind you, just those fancy fake dentures of his. Now those are some interesting dentures. Not too many reasons for dentures like those, full of a nasty bacteria and all. Unless you plan on making a bunch of zombies on someone else's turf and you want them to look normal. Normal for zombies, I mean. Shit like that would be just the thing to make Terry ready to hook up with Grave Digga and launch a two-front offensive on the Coalition. Something like that he could take to all the small Clans. The Dusters, the Wall, even the Outer Borough freaks, they'd all flip. Hell, Daniel might be interested in something like that. Picture that: Daniel and a dozen Enclave knocking on your door. Gives you the chills.

Predo's fists close tight. I can hear the leather squeak.

– Where are the teeth?

After I got Amanda dressed, I stripped and wiped blood from myself with Horde's clean undershirt. He was far too skinny for anything of his to fit me, but I managed to scavenge an outfit from the enforcer and the goon. Then I went through the pockets of my own discarded clothes and found the picture of Amanda, the one she had ripped in two. I fit the halves together and translated the torn and stained phone number on the back. I had the girl in my arms when I remembered the teeth.

I found the case in Horde's clothes. The hinge creaked slightly when I opened it. Inside, the teeth were fitted snugly in a foam rubber nest. They gleamed. He must have cleaned off Marilee's blood before he put them away. I eased them out, careful not to touch the biting surfaces. They looked perfect, like the healthiest teeth in the world, a bit on the sharp side perhaps. I opened them. The canines had tiny black dimples at the tips, holes smaller than those of syringes. Inside they would be hollow, a delivery system for something that isn't supposed to exist outside a human body. I closed them and returned them to the case.

I collected the girl, found the door she had told me about and carried her out of the school. It was raining, hours after midnight and the street was empty except for a couple scuttling past, trying to share a too-small umbrella. I got to the pay phone on the corner, called Lydia and gave her the girl.

Then I came home, got cleaned up, left the teeth sitting on the bathroom sink, and forgot about them until right now.

– The teeth are someplace safe. Someplace they'll stay as long as the girl stays safe. Something happens to her, I send the teeth to Bird

He frowns

– Who sends them if anything happens to you? I blink. And that's enough for him to know. He smiles. -You did not give them to anyone. They are simply hidden someplace, are they not?

Quickly, you only get one chance at this.

– I gave them to Lydia with the girl.

He shakes his head.

– No. You did not. They are hidden someplace. Someplace close at hand, I would say.

He exhales.

– And so. Here we are again. But with a variation. Where is the girl, and where are the teeth?

I think about making a break for it, but I'm done. So I take a drag instead and say what's on my mind.

– Predo, you're a dick.

The uppercut catches me under the jaw and dislocates it. I fly into the air, across the bed, crash into the wall and tumble onto the mattress. He's stronger than the enforcer was.

The giant scoops me up and full nelsons me in front of Predo. Predo squares up.

– Where?

I try to say something smart, but can't get my jaw to move, so I just shake my head. Predo cocks his fist. He'll knock my jaw clear off this time.

– 'Lo, Joe.

We all look up to the top of the little circular stair that leads down to this room. I grind my jaw and it pops into place.

– Hurley. How you doing?

He stands at the top of the stairs looking down at us, a huge hammerlike.45 held casually in either hand, neither of them pointing at anything, yet.

– OK. Door's unlocked up 'ere.

– Yeah?

– Tought I'd come in. Ya don't mind?

– Naw.

He nods at Predo.

– Mr. Predo.

Predo lowers his fist.

– Hurley. It has been a long time. How is Terry?

– Same. But he won't like yer bein' down 'ere none, Mr. Predo.

– He'll be understanding on this occasion. Trust me.

The giant is eyeing Hurley, wearing the unmistakable expression of a big man who wants to prove he's the most dangerous guy in the room. Hurley keeps his eyes on Predo, wearing the expression of a man who knows who the most dangerous guy in the room is. Predo's face shows nothing.

Hurley lets the barrel of one of the forty-fives wave in my direction.

– Terry sent me over. Wants ta see ya.

– He's back?

– Yeah, wants ta see ya.

– Well, I'm busy, but I think I can get away.

I look at Predo. He lifts his chin at the giant, and the giant releases my arms.

– Let me just go to the can.

I walk into the bathroom, pick up the case and stuff it in my back pocket. The tableau in my bedroom remains in place. I stand at the foot of the stairs.

– Don't worry, Mr. Predo, I'll take care of what we were talking about. Get it to someone who can handle the responsibility like you suggested. And you look after my friend. OK?

He doesn't say anything.

– OK, Mr. Predo?

He nods, begins stripping the gloves from his hands.

– Yes, I suppose that will have to do.

– Yeah, I suppose it will.

Halfway up the stairs I get hit with a last piece. I pause and look back down.

– I took care of business, didn't I, Mr. Predo? Did that job you wanted done?

He rolls his sleeves back into place and begins to fit the cuff links to their holes.