Crisscross

God, it was like sex.

And he hadn't laid a finger on her. Yet.

He was learning things about himself, things he'd never imagined. This was turning out to be more that just payback, it was a voyage of self-discovery.

But maybe he shouldn't go all that deep about it, seeing as what today's Gemini horoscope had to say.

You may feel compelled to overanalyze things at work, but resist. A colleague becomes more expressive when you talk first. In time, you'll see that problems at work were a godsend.

He was kind of awed by that last part. His problems at "work" were already becoming a sort of "godsend." And when he thought about it, Sister Maggie was a colleague in a way. At least they'd worked together. Sort of. For sure she was going to become more expressive, and he was definitely going to talk first.

"Do you know who I am?" he said, moving closer and standing over her. "Do you have any idea the trouble you've caused me."

She shook her head and made begging sounds through her gag.

Even though no one would hear her even if she screamed at the top of her voice, Richie decided to leave the gag in place. He didn't want to listen to no bullshit. It was his place to do the talking, and hers to listen.

"I'm the guy who took those pretty pictures of you and Metcalf."

The way her eyes went wide, showing white all around, shot a bolt of ecstasy toward his groin.

"That's right. Me. But guess what happened? Someone came around and messed up all my files… destroyed them. Ain't that a pity? I don't know who that someone was, but I think—no, I'm sure I know who sent him. And you're going to tell me all about him."

He savored for a moment the tears that filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks to the gag, then he rummaged through the toolbox he'd brought along. He wanted the straight dope when he asked a question. That might require a little softening up. Or it might not. He wouldn't know until he removed the gag, and he didn't plan to do that for a while.

A boy's gotta have his fun, right?

He found the ice pick and held it up where she could see it.

"But first, a little truth serum."

8

Jack wasn't sure how to play this.

Here he was, following the Blagden truck down this bumpy country road in the dark. The very dark. The moon hadn't risen, not a street lamp in sight, and he and the truck were the only vehicles on the road.

They'd turned off the Turnpike miles ago, then wound into these low hills. No way they couldn't know someone was coasting along behind them. But did they care?

That was the question. If they knew they'd been hauling a murdered woman's body across state lines, they'd be more than a little paranoid and watching their rearview mirrors. They might even pull over to let a following car pass.

But if they believed they were hauling a weird chunk of concrete and nothing more, they wouldn't care who was behind them.

Although the truck had made no evasive maneuvers, Jack decided to play it safe and proceed on the assumption that the drivers knew the score.

So when he saw the truck slow and make a cautious turn onto an even narrower road, Jack drove on by. He spotted two sets of headlights sitting atop a rise. Through his rearview he watched the truck climb to the top of the rise and stop by the headlights.

Jack killed his own lights and pulled over. He stepped out of the car and found himself facing what looked like an open field, overgrown and bordered by a rickety wire fence. He checked the sky. Broken cloud cover blocked most of the starshine. He looked around for signs that the moon might be rising but found no telltale glow. Good. The less light the better.

He hopped over the wire and made his way in a crouch through the tall grass toward the lights.

He dropped lower as he neared the top of the rise, then stopped and squatted just out of reach of the headlights.

The flatbed and two pickups sat angled around a pit that looked maybe seven or eight feet wide. From the size of the mound of excavated dirt piled to the side, Jack guessed it was a pretty deep hole.

Deep enough to swallow Jamie's concrete sarcophagus.

Four men with shovels, plus one of the drivers, stood around the rim showing not a hint of furtiveness. That persuaded Jack that they probably wouldn't be able to add anything to what he already knew. He'd made the trip for nothing.

No… not for nothing. He'd learned where they were burying Jamie Grant.

The driver on the ground made a signal to his partner in the flatbed's cab. As Jack watched, the truck's winch began to raise the forward end of the pillar, tilting the butt over the black maw of the hole.

Jack's instincts spurred him to put a stop to this now. Jamie deserved better. But he'd be taking on six men; some of them could be armed. Better to let them complete their work. This way at least he'd know where to find Jamie when the time came to arrange for a proper burial.

And another reason for holding back: As long as he knew where to find the pillar—literally where the body was buried—it remained a potential weapon against Brady and Jensen. What he had to do now was figure out how to use it to inflict maximum damage.

So he held his place and his breath and watched the pillar angle up, up, up, then slip off the truck bed and into the hole.

9

In Midtown Manhattan an old woman cries out and clutches her back as pain lances through her. Her dog, a Rottweiler, stands beside her, legs stiff, body tense, barking in sympathy.

She knows the cause of her suffering.

Another one… they've buried another one. They must be stopped before it's too late.

But she can't do it. Someone else must act on her behalf.

10

Jack's thoughts raced ahead of his car as he cranked eastward on the Penn Turnpike. How to get the most out of that pillar…

Nothing was coming. He was dry… dry as the earth they'd backfilled into Jamie's grave.

East of Harrisburg he gave up and switched on the radio. Maybe he could zone out on music for a while, then tackle the problem with a fresh head. But he couldn't find anything he felt like listening to. He wished he'd brought along some of his CDs, but realized he probably wouldn't want to listen to them either.

The problem wasn't with the music, but with him. He wouldn't feel right, wouldn't be himself until he'd fixed this.

He switched to AM and picked up a strong, clear signal from WABC in New York. He hung on through a commercial to see which one of their stable of talk show geeks had the mike tonight, but instead wound up in the middle of the top-of-the-hour news update. He was reaching for the SEEK button when he heard…

'Wo word yet on the missing nun. Sister Margaret Mary O'Hara was last seen being pulled into a car from a Lower East Side sidewalk earlier this evening. The witness did not know the make or color of the car, and couldn't read the license plate. If you have any information on this incident—any information at all—please call…"

Feeling as if his bones were dissolving, Jack veered through the right lane and onto the shoulder where he stopped and set the shift into park.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his hands squeezing the steering wheel as if trying to strangle it.

He's got her… the son of a bitch has got her.

But how could he have known it was Maggie?

An instant of self-doubt pierced him, but then faded as he reviewed all the moves he'd made in the Cordova fix. He was certain—knew—that he hadn't left the faintest link to Maggie.

She must have made a slip talking to him.

Jack pounded the steering wheel. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

All that effort to make the fix look like an accident—for nothing. Cordova knew, and he had her. God knew what he was going to do with her. Or was doing to her. Or had already done to her.

A slimeball like Cordova… didn't deserve to live… shouldn't have bothered finessing the fix. Oxygen waster like him… best thing to do—for his victims and for the human gene pool—was to walk up to him and deliver a hollowpoint between the eyes.

But Jack hadn't wanted to set himself on that road. Feared once he started traveling it he might not be able to step off. He'd approached Cordova as a guy who wasn't doing anyone physical harm—his bloodletting was emotional and financial—so Jack had taken a parallel approach. Cordova was hands off, so Jack had gone the hands-off route.

He realized now that was a mistake. A bullet to the brain would have solved the Cordova problem. Quick, clean, easy. No more blackmail, and sure as hell no worry about a good-hearted nun being abducted.

A mood cold and black settled on Jack as he threw the Buick back into drive and merged with the eastbound traffic.

He knew where Cordova lived, where he worked. He'd find him. And if that fat slug had done anything to Sister Maggie, if he'd harmed her in any way…

11

Richie Cordova wiped the blood from his shaking hands. His hands weren't all that was shaking. His whole body was twitching. Like someone had shoved a live lamp cord up his ass.

Richie knew a few guys who might think that felt good, but he felt sick.

He turned toward the nun—or what was left of her—still tied in the chair, and quickly turned away. He couldn't look at her, couldn't believe how he'd let himself get so out of control.

No… not out of control. In control. Complete control. Of her. It had thrown some sort of switch in him, made him do things he'd never dreamed he was capable of thinking up, let alone doing.

He'd planned to kill her. That was a sure thing. Ain't no way she was leaving once he got her here. But he'd wanted to punish her some first, for ruining his game, and to get her to tell him all about it, sing the song he wanted to hear.

And she'd sung. Held out for an amazingly long time, but finally she'd started to sing. Oh, how she sang. Told him all about meeting a guy named Jack in a place called Julio's and hiring him to get back the pictures of her and Metcalf, how Metcalf didn't know nothing about it, how she'd called him and told him not to worry no more. She'd sung about how she hadn't known Richie's name. Only this guy Jack knew that and he wouldn't tell her.

Richie should have stopped then and ended it. He had what he wanted, so the thing to do was slit her throat and call it a night. He'd had the razor all set. Unlike the .38s in his pistol, a razor couldn't be traced.

But he hadn't used it. Because he couldn't stop—didn't want to stop. He had control, he was in the driver's seat and he didn't want to use no brakes, didn't want to let go of the steering wheel.

Only when the last of her life had leaked away did he come out of it. Then he'd stepped back and looked at what he'd done. And blew lunch.

He felt a little better now, but not much. It suddenly came to him that this was partly Neva's fault. A lot of the time he spent working on the nun he'd been thinking of his ex-wife, seeing her face. Yeah. Her fault. If she hadn't been such a…

Anyway, it was over. At least this part of it. He'd hide the body, try not to think about what he'd done, and move on to the next step.

And that was finding this Jack guy. That was real important, because this Jack knew who he was. Once he was out of the way, any connection between Richie Cordova and the missing Sister Margaret Mary would be gone.

But the nun couldn't remember his phone number—oh, she'd wanted to remember, Richie made sure of that, but it wasn't there.

Which left him with the name of an Upper West Side bar called Julio's. Richie wasn't sure how he was going to work this. He was at a disadvantage not knowing what this Jack looked like. The nun had given him a description but it sounded like any one of a zillion guys. He'd sleep on it and see if he came up with anything.

Sleep. Yeah, that would be good. He was dead on his feet.

But first he had to deal with the body.

Steeling himself, he turned and walked toward it…

12

Jack wasn't dressed for Beekman Place but he was in too foul a mood to play games.

He'd been to Cordova's house—picked his way in and searched it from basement to attic. Not a trace of Sister Maggie.

Next stop was Hurley's. If Cordova had snatched her, chances were slim that he'd be hanging out at his favorite bar. Then again, if he'd killed her and dumped her body, he might feel the need for a few drinks, and maybe an alibi as well. But Jack couldn't find him at Hurley's either. Even checked out the men's room. No Cordova.

Last stop had been the office: same story.

Jack had made another swing by Cordova's house—just in case he'd returned in the interim—but it looked as empty as when he'd left it. He'd parked down the street and watched the place.

Where was the fat slimeball? Jack's mind shied away from imagining what he'd done to Maggie. If Jack could find him, Cordova would tell him where she was. Jack would see to that.

But after an hour of sitting, Cordova hadn't shown. Good chance he might not show at all.

So Jack decided to pay a visit to the third woman who'd entered his life this week.

Esteban wasn't on the door and his late-shift coworker, a brawny black guy, wouldn't let Jack into the lobby.

His arm blocked his name tag as he opened the glass door six or seven inches and eyed Jack's wrinkled jeans and sweatshirt. "Are you on Mrs. Roselli's visitor list?"

"I don't know about the list, but she's expecting me. Just call her and say Jack's here for a follow-up chat."

"I don't know. This is pretty late for her."

"Just call her and see. I'll wait out here."

He nodded. "I know you will."

He closed the door and went to the lobby phone. Jack leaned close to the gap between the glass door and glass wall. He blocked his street-side ear and listened.

"Mrs. Roselli? Sorry to bother you, but there's a man here. He says his name is Jack and that you're expecting him… Pardon me?… Oh, I see… I'm sorry to hear that… is there anything I can do?… Are you sure? I can call a… Yes. Yes, I see. I'll tell him. And remember, if you need anything, anything at all, I'm right here… Right. Good-night. Feel better."

Jack backed off a step as the call ended. Sounded like the old lady was sick.

The doorman returned to the door. Jack saw now that his tag read Louis. He opened it wider this time. Apparently his talk with the old lady had reassured him about Jack.

"She's not feeling well. Says to come back tomorrow."

"She okay?"

"She doesn't sound too hot, but she didn't want a doctor, so…" He shrugged. "I'm here if she needs me."

"Good. I don't want anything happening to her."

Jack turned and walked off. Half a block away he hunched his shoulders against a sudden chill. He'd met three new women this week. Now, in the space of twenty-four hours, one was dead, one was missing, and the other was sick. Was he carrying a curse? Had he become some sort of Jonah?

What the hell was going on?

SUNDAY

1

The news came a little after nine.

With nothing better to do with his pent-up energy, Jack had been cleaning his apartment. He yearned for a cleaning service, but they might come across things they weren't meant to see. Gia sometimes helped, but today he was on his own.

He had the tuner set to 880 AM, an all-news station. Usually he cleaned to the gentle refrains of ZZ-Top or the Allman Brothers, but today he was looking for updates on the missing nun story. The morning papers had nothing new. If news hit, the radio would have it first.

Jack was mopping the linoleum floor of his kitchen when it came. It wasn't good.

The body of Sister Margaret Mary O'Hara had been found in Flushing—a guy chasing his runaway dog had discovered it. No other details were available. Police would not discuss the state of the body or anything else.

Sickened, Jack put down the mop and dropped into a kitchen chair. Two of the three women were dead. He knew each of their killers. Brady and Jensen had buried Jamie Grant alive. And Cordova… Jack wasn't an eyewitness, but he didn't have to be. He knew.

Question was… what should he do about it? How should he deal with these two without exposing himself?

He closed his eyes and rolled the people and the circumstances around and around in his brain… like a concrete mixer.

Brady, Jensen, Cordova, Blascoe, the temple… Blascoe, Brady, the temple, Cordova, Jensen…

And slowly, painfully, a plan began to form.

2

Goddamn stupid dog!

Richie Cordova sat in Hurley's and wanted to rip the TV off the wall and boot it through the front window.

He'd stashed the nun's body where no one would find her—at least no human—until she began to stink. He hadn't counted on no runaway dog.

He sat at a corner table and stuffed another donut into his mouth. Hurley's put out coffee and donuts and bagels on Sunday morning. Of course the bar was open too in case you wanted a Bloody Mary or something. But Richie had been feeling so good he didn't need no drink. Not anymore.

Shit, he thought as he washed the donut down with black coffee. This complicated things. The Jack guy she'd told him about already had the advantage of knowing what Richie looked like, while Richie didn't know him from Joe Blow. Richie's one advantage had been surprise—Jacko wouldn't have had a clue someone might be looking for him. But now he'd be on guard. That was, if he connected the nun's death to Richie. If he didn't, well, that would be great, but Richie had to assume the worst.

He'd awakened this morning feeling lots better than last night—over the shakes and actually feeling kind of good. Almost like he'd feel after a night of sex. Kind of peaceful inside. At ease. Like he could go for a Sunday morning drive and not get pissed at the other drivers.

But all that was ruined now. The stink of spilled beer cut through the smell of the coffee and Richie lost his appetite. Hurley's wasn't so inviting no more.

Richie paid up and stepped out into the bright morning sunlight. Now what?

He thought about heading for the Upper West Side and finding this Julio's. The nun had said she'd met Jack there twice, both times in the day, and that the guy had been alone at a table near the back wall.

So why not check out Julio's? Hang out on the street and watch the comers and goers, maybe peek through the window and see who's got a table by the back wall.

Richie liked the idea. Sort of preliminary surveillance. Get to know the lay of the land.

He turned and headed toward the subway.

3

Ron Clarkson twitched like an ant who'd found coke in a sugar bowl. If he'd had antennae he'd have been hovering a couple feet off the ground.

"I gotta be crazy for letting you in here," he said as he led Jack down a fluorescent-lit corridor. Tiled walls, drains in the concrete floor. "I'm gonna lose my job, I just know it."

Ron was rail thin with pale shoulder-length hair and a goatee. He earned his daily bread as an attendant at the City Morgue in the basement of Bellevue Hospital. He didn't owe Jack any favors, he simply liked cash under the table. Every so often—rare, but it happened—Jack had need of a body part. He'd place an order with Ron and they'd agree on a price. They'd usually meet off campus, say at a McDonald's or a diner, and make the exchange.

Today was the first time Jack had asked for a viewing. And he'd handed over a stiff price for it.

He didn't want to be here. He simply knew he had to be. He felt he owed it to Sister Maggie.

"You're not backing out, are you?" Jack put a menacing edge on his voice. "You took the dough, you do the show."

"Never should have said yes. Man, this is so crazy."

"Ron…"

"All right, all right. It's just…"

"Just what?"

"It's just that this case is hot—I mean it's steaming. Cardinal Ryan is all over City Hall, the mayor's all over the commish, the commish is all over the ME and crime scene crew. We got maybe a half hour before they start posting her—on a Sunday, can you believe it?—and here I am bringing you down for a look-see. I must be crazy."

"If you'd have gotten it done instead of running your mouth, I'd be on my way out by now."

"Yeah, but—"

"Just one quick look. A peek. That's all I want."

"I never figured you for getting off on something like that."

They passed some empty gurneys, and one not so empty. A green sheet covered a still form. Jack was about to ask if that was her but Ron wasn't slowing. Guess not.

"I knew her."

"Oh, shit. Then maybe you don't want to see her. I got a glimpse and…" He shook his head. "It ain't nice."

"All the more reason."

But he didn't want to see her. He felt as if his legs were slowly turning to stone, refusing to move him down the hall. He forced them forward, one step after the other after the other…

"I don't get it. Why?"

Because I need to do this to make sure I don't hesitate when I do what has to be done.

"None of your business, Ron."

"Okay. But you'll be sorry."

I know, he thought. But not as sorry as someone else.

Ron pushed through a set of steel double doors into a green-tiled room where a guy who looked like Malcolm X was studying a chemistry book.

"Crime lab," Ron said, jerking his thumb at Jack. "Needs another look. She still in 12-C?"

The black guy nodded and went back to his chemistry.

Through another set of double doors and into a big white-tiled room that felt like a refrigerator. Latched drawers lined the walls. Ron made a beeline for a drawer near the floor. The rollers screeched as he pulled it out.

"Needs a little lube," he said with a quick, weak smile.

A black body bag lay on a steel tray. Ron made no move. Jack looked up and found him staring at him.

"Well?"

"You're sure?"

No. Not sure. Not sure at all. But he nodded.

"Do it."

Ron grabbed the zipper, pulled it halfway down, and spread the flaps.

Jack caught flashes of a crimson mosaic of torn flesh, then turned away.

"Jesus God!"

Probably could have stared indefinitely if he hadn't known her. But he had. A sweet woman. And someone had turned her into… a thing.

"Told you, man."

Jack spoke past the bile collecting in his throat. "Close her up."

"What? That's it? I risk my neck bringing you down here and—"

"Close. Her. Up."

After he'd heard the zipper, Jack turned around and stared down at the glistening surface of the body bag.

You poor woman…

He tried to imagine how she must have suffered before she died, but it was beyond him. He felt the blackness he kept caged in a far country of his being break free and surge through him.

He looked up and Ron jumped back.

"Hey, man! Don't blame me. I didn't do it!"

Jack voice was a metallic rasp. "I know."

"Then don't look at me like that. Shit, for a second there I thought you were gonna kill me."

"No… not you."

4

"You locked the door?" Abe said as Jack approached the rear counter.

Jack nodded.

The Isher Sports Shop was otherwise empty, but it could have been any day of the week. Traffic in Abe's store was never exactly heavy.

The darkness still suffused him, but he had it under control. At least for the moment.

Abe was leaning on the counter, wearing what he wore every other day.

"I need some hardware."

"So you said. Hardware I got. What kind?"

"A Beretta 92."

It would have been so much easier to discuss this over the phone, but one never knew when the Big Ear might be listening. And the code Jack and Abe had developed wouldn't cover the specifics of this particular purchase.

Abe frowned. "You've already got a PT 92 Taurus. It's the same pistol. Except for the safety, of course."

"I know, but I need a Beretta."

"Why?"

"I'll explain later."

Abe shrugged. "Okay. You're paying. I'll call around tomorrow and see who—"

"I need it today, Abe. And in stainless steel."

"Stainless steel? Gevalt! Impossible! You're asking me to move mountains, and believe me, my mother didn't name me Mohammed. You want a Glock 19, fine; you want an HK-MP5, that I can do. But a stainless-steel Beretta 92 on a Sunday? As my Italian neighbors in the Bensonhurst of my boyhood used to say, Fuhgeddaboudit."

"Got to have it before tonight, Abe. Really important. I'll owe you."

"Already you owe me." When Jack said nothing, Abe shrugged again. "All right, and I owe you too, but…"

His voice trailed off as he stared at Jack. It made Jack a little uncomfortable.

"But what?"

"But nothing. I'm seeing that look on your face."

"What look?"

"I know it, Jack. I've seen it before. And more often than not, when I see it, someone winds up shuffling off their mortal coil."

Jack knew he tended to let his guard down with Abe, but even with reins on the darkness, was it that obvious? He'd have to watch himself.

"Maybe it's because it's not yet noon and I've had a very bad day."

"Something's wrong? Gia and Vicky—?"

Jack held up a hand. "They're fine. It's no one you know. At least personally."

Interest lit in his eyes. "And that means?"

Abe knew Jamie Grant from reading The Light. Maybe Jack could use her as a carrot.

"The Beretta, Abe? Get me that Beretta before tonight and I'll tell you what happened to Jamie Grant."

"The Light reporter?*" Abe made a grumbling noise. "You make your best friend in the whole world earn a little news?"

"In this case, yes. Here's the math: Beretta equals story. Because without the Beretta there won't be any story to tell. At least not this week."

"For next week I can't wait. I'll start making calls. And then you'll tell me?"

Jack nodded. "If it goes down, yeah."

He had to position the pieces where he needed them, otherwise he'd lose this week's window and have to move it to next. Didn't want to do that. He wanted this to go down tonight.

5

Jack closed the top drawer of Cordova's receptionist's desk. He now had the fat man's phone numbers—home and cell. Next stop, the filing cabinets.

He leafed through the folders in the top drawer, checking out age and sex of the clients. Some contained photos. Jack pulled out males in their thirties until he had a stack of six. Then he started dialing, pretending to be calling from the electric company.

All of the first batch were home. So he went back to the cabinet. One in the second batch didn't answer. Lee Dobbins. Jack studied his picture and vital statistics. Lee lived and worked in Queens. He'd suspected his business partner in their real estate firm of dealing with the competition. The wad of photos in the file—taken by Cordova, no doubt—had confirmed his suspicions. Jack memorized the salient points, then filed Dobbins back with all the others.

He then turned on the computer. He typed a note and printed it out under the Cordova Investigations Ltd. letterhead. He tri-folded it and stuck it in a pocket.

Hey, Lee Dobbins, Jack thought as he exited the office. You just got yourself a new best buddy. Me.

Jack knew he'd have to tread carefully here. Had to assume that Sister Maggie had told Cordova everything she knew—which wasn't much beyond Julio's and how Jack looked. He'd have to alter his appearance some.

The other possible hitch was Cordova calling to check Jack's story and finding Dobbins home. Jack could finesse that by calling Dobbins just before he met Cordova. If still no answer, he was golden. If he picked up… well… forget finesse then.

6

Richie Cordova jumped when his cell phone started ringing. Who'd be calling him on a Sunday afternoon? Sure as hell wouldn't be Neva. Eddy?

He'd been chilling—in the physical as well as the slang sense—outside Julio's for a couple of hours. The place wasn't real busy but had a steady trickle in and out. Richie had taken a couple of peeks in the front window. From what he could see through all the dead hanging plants—what was up with that?—it looked like a typical neighborhood bar. Reminded him of Hurley's, and how he wished he was nursing a shot and a beer there instead of hanging out here on a street far from home. He'd promised himself to stay around until three or so, then head back to do just that. The Giants had the four o'clock game against Dallas and he didn't want to miss it.

Hours of watching and still nobody sitting at one of the rear tables. Everyone clustered around the bar where the TV was.

And now someone was calling him. He pulled out the phone, flipped it open, and thumbed the SEND button.

"Yeah?"

"Mr. Cordova?" said a funny-sounding voice he didn't recognize.

"Who's this?"

"My name's Louis Gorcey and—"

"How'd you get this number?"

"I was just about to tell you that. I'm friends with Lee Dobbins and he gave it to me. He recommends you very highly."

Dobbins… Dobbins… Oh yeah. The real estate guy. But he didn't have Richie's cell number. Or did he? Richie sometimes gave it out to clients when he needed to stay real close to a situation.

"That's nice of him, but—what did you say your name was?"

"It's Gorcey. Louis Gorcey."

Something about the way he said his s's… he sounded like a fag.

"Well, Mr. Gorcey, I'm glad Lee recommended me, but this is Sunday. My office is closed. If you want to call back first thing tomorrow morning—"

"It can't wait till then. The window of opportunity is tonight. It has to be tonight."

"Sorry, I—"

"Please hear me out. This is very important to me and I'll make it well worth your while."

Well worth your while… he liked the sound of that. But it was Sunday… and the Giants were playing Dallas…

"I'll pay you a thousand dollars cash just to meet with me and listen to my problem. If you aren't interested, then the money's yours to keep."

"This must be one hell of a problem."

"It's not so much a matter of magnitude as timing. We have to meet this afternoon because the window opens tonight."

A thousand bucks… that would be the best hourly rate he'd ever earned. And an hour was all it would be. Richie had already decided to get the money up front, listen, and say no thanks. Then he'd head for Hurley's and the game. Worst-case scenario was he'd miss part of the first quarter.

"Okay. You've got a deal. You know where my office is?"

He didn't, so Richie gave him the address. They'd meet there in half an hour.

A nasty suspicion crawled up his back as he thumbed the END button. What if this was the nun's Jack? What if he'd heard about Sister Maggie and decided to give Richie a dose of the same medicine?

He shook it off. Crazy. The nun had hired the guy to do a job and he did it. End of story. If something happened to the client afterward, so what? Not his business, not his worry.

Besides, not only did this Gorcey sound like a fag, but he knew Dobbins and had Richie's cell number.

Still, maybe he should do a little checking up before the meet.

7

Jack finally found Preston Loeb's number in an old notebook. They'd met in a martial arts class back in their twenties. Preston had been involved in one of Jack's early fix-its.

The second ring was answered by a soft, "Hello, Preston speaking."

"Preston? This is Jack." When silence followed he added, "From Ichi-san's class, remember?"

"Jack! How've you been, dearie? You never call, you never write—"

"I need a favor, Pres. A little sartorial guidance."

"You? Oh, don't tell me you're finally going to get with it! At your age? Well, better late than never, I guess. And you want me to do the Queer Eye thing for you? I'm flattered."

Even if he had the time—which he didn't—Jack was not in the mood for banter. But he tried to keep it light.

"I need help looking like someone who might be a friend of yours."

A pause, and then, "Now that's interesting. When would you want to—?"

"Now. As in right away. You free?"

"Just working on some sketches, and you know I don't like football, so, why not? Meet me at… let's see… how about Praetoria on Green Street?"

Way downtown in SoHo. He'd have to hurry.

"I'm leaving now."

8

"And now tell me, dearie, just why you of all people would want to look queer? You haven't crossed the street, have you?"

Preston Loeb stood six-one with a slim build; long, curly black hair—in the old days it had been straight—framed his handsome face. He wore a snug, vaguely fuzzy, short-sleeve, baby-blue sweater. His cream-colored slacks were tight down to the knees where they flared into outlandish bell-bottoms. A black alligator shoulder bag completed the picture.

They stood just inside the entrance to Praetoria, a men's store with a twenty-foot ceiling and front windows nearly as tall. The wan afternoon light filtering through them was swallowed in the glare of the bare flourescents high above. Everything was white except the contents of the clothing-filled racks and shelves that stretched ahead of them.

Jack shook his head. "Nope. Still hetero. And I don't want to look like a flaming queen. More like someone who's, say, just a couple of inches outside the closet."

"Well, as I'm sure you know, a couple of inches can make a world of difference."

Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. "Preston…"

"I know what you're thinking, Jack. That I'm more outrageous than I ever used to be, that I'm such a cliché. Well, you're right. I am. Deliberately. And do you know why? Because I love it. I… love… it. It's my way of thumbing my nose at all the uptight straights wandering this earth. But you know what? My clients, straight or gay, they love it too. They think a guy this flaming has to be a great interior designer. So allow me my fun, okay? Life should be fun. Although looking at you I can see you're not having much."

Jack sighed. He was right.

"You might say that. And soon I'm going to have even less. I've got to meet with a slimeball who might be expecting trouble from a stranger. I want to—How shall I say it?—put him at ease."

Pres put a hand on a hip. "And you think that if he thinks you're queer, he'll figure he's got nothing to fear."

"That rhymes, you know, and yes, that's the way his kind of mind works."

"But you know better, don't you."

"Oh, yeah."

Pres might be an interior designer and might look like a featherweight pushover, but Jack had trained with him; the guy had lightning reflexes and was a nunchuck wizard.

"Okay, then." Pres clapped his hands and looked around. "Let's get started, shall we." He pointed to the right. "There. Shirts. Always a good place to start."

Jack followed him to a rack and watched him fan through a rainbow of shirts. He stopped and pulled out something Jack could only describe as turquoise.

"Look at this. Isn't it scrumptious?"

"What's that stuff up and down the front? Looks like someone spilled spaghetti on it."

"It's embroidery, dearie. Embroidery is always fun."

"Never thought of clothes as fun."

"Oh, you'll never change: functional, functional, functional. Clothing should be an expression of the inner you."

Jack spread his arms. "And what do my clothes say about the inner me?"

"You really want to know, Jack? I mean, I don't want to hurt your feelings or anything."

"Don't worry. You can't."

"All right, then: The way you dress, it's like… it's like there is no inner you."

Jack allowed himself a smile. "Cool."

"How can you say 'cool'? That was not a compliment. I offered it with only the best intentions, but some—myself included—might consider it an insult."

"Don't worry about it. Empty is exactly how I like to look."

"Jack, dearest, you do know that you're a very odd man, don't you. I mean very, very odd."

"So I've been told."

He handed Jack the shirt. "Okay. We'll keep this as a possibility. I'll pick out some others and…"

He was staring at Jack's hair.

"What's wrong?"

"With the way you look? Everything. But especially that hair." He pulled a phone from his bag and hit a button. "Christophe? I need you, baby… No, not for me. It's for a friend… I know you're busy"—he looked at Jack and rolled his eyes as he made a chitterchatter sign with his free hand—"but you've just got to squeeze him in. It's an emergency… I never exaggerate!" A quick glance at Jack's hair. "You'll understand when you see him… Okay, we'll be over in half an hour."

"Who's Christophe?"

"He does my hair."

"You have your barber on speed dial?"

"He's not a barber.'" Pres pulled at his curly mop. "Do I look like I go to a barber? Christophe is an artiste, an architect with hair. He's agreed to see you as a personal favor to me."

"I don't have much time, Pres. Supposed to meet this creep—"

"Christophe can't give you much time. Sunday is one of his busiest days. But I understand." He started fanning through the shirts again. "Come over here. We haven't a moment to lose."

9

Richie sat at his office desk studying his horoscopes for the day. He'd been too dazed this morning to pick up the paper. But he'd fixed that and now he was staring at the readings with pure wonder. He'd read and reread them and could find no way to doubt that he'd made the right choice about meeting Gorcey.

First came Gemini: Brighter financial horizons can only be met with diligent planning. Do what it takes to keep work fresh and surprising. Be enthusiastic about how much you appreciate your current position, and it only gets better.

Could anything be better or clearer than that?

And then Cancer: Engaging conversations improve your financial status. Focus intently on your communication skills.

This was just too much. One mentioned "brighter financial horizons" while the other said "conversations improve your financial status." And here he was, waiting to take money from a guy just to listen to him talk.

How could Neva keep on saying astrology was junk?

Richie heard the expected knock on the outer door. That would be Gorcey.

As soon as he'd got in the office he'd looked up Dobbins's number and called to check on this guy. But Dobbins wasn't around. Too bad. He would have felt better if he'd been able to talk to him, have him vouch for Gorcey. But since that wasn't gonna happen, Richie would just have to take some precautions.

As he pulled his .38 from its shoulder holster, he called out, "Come on in! It's open!"

The pistol gave him comfort and he'd have liked to keep a hold on it, but he was going to have to shake hands. So he slipped it under the newspaper on his desk and pushed himself to his feet.

"Hello?" said a voice from the outer office.

"Back here!"

A guy of average height and build stepped through the door. He was maybe twenty years younger than Richie and wore black-rimmed sunglasses. He had a newspaper folded under his arm, and that was the last normal thing about him.

His spiky brown hair was just too perfect and he had this dainty little mustache crawling along his upper lip. The nun hadn't said anything about no mustache on Jack. As for the rest of him, well, queer was the only way Richie knew how to describe the coat and pants he was wearing. And he was carrying a fucking pocketbook to boot.

Shit, the guy looked even faggier than he'd sounded on the phone.

"Mr. Cordova?" He extended his hand over the desk. "Louis Gorcey. Thanks so much for seeing me."

"My pleasure, Mr. Gorcey."

Yeah, right, he thought as he got a dead-fish handshake.

"Call me Louis."

This guy looked about as dangerous as somebody's crippled grandmother, but that didn't mean he couldn't be carrying. A couple of times, Richie had learned the hard way how looks could deceive.

"Fine. But before we go any further, I'll need you to take off that fancy coat."

Gorcey's brows knitted under his perfect hairdo. "I don't understand.'"

"Humor me, Lou. I'm in a business where you can't be too careful. You call me up on a Sunday and you've just gotta see me, can't wait till tomorrow, and I start to wonder. I ain't no whacko paranoid, but I ain't no fool neither."

"Really, I don't think—"

"Don't get all huffy with me, Lou. It's a simple thing: You gonna take the coat off or ain't you?"

For a second or two, when Richie thought he wasn't going to do it, he tensed and slid his hand toward the newspaper. His fingers were almost to the gun when Gorcey let out this big sigh.

"Oh, very well. If you insist."

He untied the belt, shrugged out of the coat, folded it, then draped it over the back of the client chair. He raised his arms and did a slow, graceful turn.

Richie gaped at Gorcey's shirt. What the hell was it made of? It looked like the tablecloth his mother had brought back from her trip to Venice about three hundred years ago, the one she picked up on some island called Burano or something like that. Except this one looked like it had been dunked in blueberry Kool-Aid. The guy was wearing a fucking tablecloth.

But what he was not wearing was lots more important—no shoulder or SOB holster. Richie let himself relax a little.

"There. Satisfied?"

"Almost," Richie said. "One more thing: Empty your bag on the desk."

"Really, Mr. Cor—"

"Do that and we can get down to business."

Another sigh. "This is very unusual, and if I didn't need your help I'd refuse. But I guess it doesn't matter."

He upended the bag and out tumbled a set of keys, a cell phone, two eyeglass cases, and a couple of legal-sized envelopes.

Richie took the bag from him and shook it.

Gorcey gasped. "Careful! That's a Marc Jacobs!"

Like I care, Richie thought as he checked the inside. Nothing hiding in there. He handed it back to Gorcey.

"That's it? You carry that big thing around and that's all that's in it?"

With floppy wrists and raised pinkies, Gorcey started putting the stuff back into his bag. "Sometimes there's more. But even so, I don't like to distort the lines of my clothing with bulging pockets."

"What? Afraid someone'll think you're glad to see them?"

Richie thought that was a good one but Gorcey didn't even smile. Instead he slid one of the envelopes across the desk.

"As promised."

Richie casually picked it up with his left hand. He didn't want to look too eager but he wasn't about to get suckered either. It wasn't sealed. He flipped up the flap with a thumb and glanced inside. He quick-counted a sufficient number of hundreds.

He relaxed. Okay. Louis Gorcey seemed like the real deal. He'd passed up a chance to go for a gun and his envelope contained the right stuff. The only thing that would remove the last suspicion was if he could see the guy's eyes. You can tell a lot from eyes. But he was keeping his shades on.

Richie shoved the envelope into his top drawer and gestured to the chair on the far side of his desk.

"Have a seat, Lou." When they both had their butts settled, he said, "What can I do for you?"

Gorcey pushed his newspaper across the desk. A copy of The Light, opened to page three. He jabbed at a photo of a middle-aged man who looked vaguely familiar—jabbed him right in the eye. Richie noticed that his finger was trembling. He also noticed that Gorcey was wearing nail polish. Clear nail polish, yeah, but still polish. These queers…

"Do you know who that is?" Gorcey said.

Richie did a quick read of the caption and reworded it.

"That's Luther Brady, isn't it? The head of that crazy Dormentalist Church?"

Maybe he shouldn't have called it crazy. This guy could be some sort of Dormentalist holy roller.

"Crazy?" Gorcey's manicured finger shook worse as his voice rose. "I wish that were the only thing wrong with the Dormentalist Church! It's worse than crazy! It's destructive and conniving and vicious and malicious and it's all this man's fault! He's… he's…"

He sputtered to a stop.

"He's what, Lou?"

Gorcey's hands flapped in the air. "He's a monster. He stole a small fortune from me, but worse than that, he stole years from my life. Years! I can always earn more money, I'm good at earning money, but how do I get back those years?"

"I don't know, Lou. You tell me."

Richie had found this to be the best approach with upset clients. Let them talk till they ran out of steam.

Gorcey slumped back in the chair. "It's impossible, of course." His brow furrowed. "But I can get even."

Again Richie wished he could see Gorcey's eyes.

"How do you plan to do that?*'

"With your help, I hope."

This was getting interesting. A faggot like this Louis Gorcey thinking he could get even with an international figure like Luther Brady. Richie had expected a deadly dull hour, but this was kind of fun. Like getting paid for being entertained.

"Why tell me this?"

"Because I want to hire you."

"To do what?"

"Lee told me you're a wizard with a camera."

Richie fought the smile that wanted to bust out on his face. Dobbins said that, huh? Well, why not. Richie did know his way around a camera, and was good at low-light photography. Damn good. Just ask the cows he was milking.

He gave a little laugh and did the modesty thing. "Well, I don't know about the wizard part, but—"

"He told me all about how you caught his partner dead to rights, and I want you to do that for me. I want you to catch Luther Brady in the act."

"In what act?"

Gorcey's shoulders slumped. "I'm not sure. But I know he sneaks off every Sunday night and heads upstate into the hills. He lives at the temple on Lexington Avenue. Every other time he leaves the temple, on every other day of the week, he has a driver. But not on his Sunday night trips."

Richie smiled. "You've had him under surveillance, then."

"Well, yes. I've even followed him a few nights but I've lost him every time."

"Tailing should be left to a professional."

"That's why I've come to you."

"But what makes you think these trips involve anything wrong?"

"Because it's the only time he ventures out alone. That tells me he's up to something he doesn't want anyone to know about."

"Could be," Richie said. "Could also mean he just wants to be alone."

The hands fluttered again. "That's always a possibility, but with a man as ruthless as Luther Brady, I doubt it. And if he's involved in something that will not stand the light of day, I want pictures of it."

… will not stand the light of day… Was this guy for real? No, of course he wasn't. He was a queer.

"All right, Lou. Let's just say he is. And let's just say I do get pictures. What do you intend to do with them?" He shot up a hand in a stop gesture. "Don't tell me anything illegal, like blackmail. I can't be a party to blackmail. It's against the NYAPI code of ethics."

Gorcey blinked. "Ny-ya—?"

"The New York Association of Private Investigators."

Richie had joined NYAPI when he opened his office, paid dues for one year—just long enough to earn a membership certificate to hang on his wall—then tossed all further mailings into the circular file. But claiming to follow a professional organization's code of ethics never failed to impress prospective clients. It assured them that they were dealing with a man of principle.

Gorcey mumbled, "That's good to know…"

"If you're planning to use these photos—assuming there's something worth photographing—to expose this man as a fraud and a charlatan, then that's fine. That's performing a public service. But blackmail? No, count me out."

That was the speech, and convincing as usual. Should be. Richie had given it enough times.

"No… no, I'm not looking to blackmail him. I want to, as you say, expose him for the money-grubbing mountebank he really is."

Mountebank? What the hell was a mountebank? Some kind of a queer word or something?

Gorcey leaned forward. "Will you help me? Tonight?"

Richie thought about that. Yeah, he wanted the work, but he preferred not to rush things. He liked to max the billable hours. And he had a feeling it wouldn't hurt to play hard to get.

"Why's it got to be tonight? What's wrong with next Sunday?"

"Because I want him now." Gorcey was looking a little agitated, his sissy voice growing louder. "I don't want to allow him another whole week of defrauding people like me. I want to bring him down now. Do you hear me?" He slammed both fists on Richie's desk. "Now!"

Richie held up his hands. "Okay, okay. I get the picture."

This guy was really steamed. Richie fought back a smile. How'd that saying go? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Or something like that.

Gorcey leaned back. "Sorry. It's just… look, I'll pay you another two thousand just to follow him tonight and see what he's up to. Is that fair?"

Fair? For four, five hours work? Damn-fuck right it was fair. This must be one rich queer.

Richie had heard they tended to have bucks. No kids and all that…

He put his head back and rotated it a little to the left and a little to the right, trying to look like a man wrestling with a decision. He'd already made up his mind, but he wasn't ready to say yes. Who knew? If he stalled, maybe Gorcey would up the ante to three thousand.

The act worked. Gorcey piped up and said, "I'll add another thousand if you get pictures I can use."

You mean, Richie thought, photos you think you can use.

By all rights he should tell the dumb schmuck that catching Luther Brady meeting with a girlfriend or even a boyfriend wasn't going to put much of a dent in his reputation. Not these days.

Damn shame too. It made Richie long for the fifties. He'd been just a little kid at the time, but he remembered how uptight everyone had been back then. Those were the days when even a so-called breath of scandal could sink a career or a reputation. His sideline business would be so much easier and more profitable now if America hadn't changed. But it had. The new attitude was pretty much anything goes. Damn hard to shock people these days.

He sure as shit wasn't telling Gorcey that, though.

But if he did come up with something juicy—really juicy—he could always snap some extra shots—innocent ones—and tell Gorcey that all Brady did up there in the woods was sit alone and meditate.

He'd keep the real deals to himself… and add Luther Brady to his herd of cows. Brady controlled millions. His milk would be extra rich and creamy.

"Okay, Lou," Richie said. "I'll do it. Normally I lay a lot of groundwork—you know, thorough backgrounding and such—before I make a move, but I sense your urgency, Lou. I feel your pain, and so I'll make an exception in your case."

Gorcey beamed and fluttered his hands again—higher this time. He looked genuinely delighted.

"That's wonderful. I'll meet you tonight at—"

Richie waved a hand. "Wait, wait. What do you mean, you'll meet me?"

"I'm going with you."

"Ohhhh, no. I work alone."

Gorcey's lips tightened into a thin line. "Perhaps, but I expect you to make an exception this time. Especially considering the amount of money I'll be paying you."

"Sorry. Can't allow it. You've got no experience in this sort of thing. You could blow the whole operation. And why would you want to come along anyway? That's what you're hiring me for."

And besides, I don't want to be sitting in some car half the night with a queer.

"I want to see for myself."

"You will," Richie told him. "In the photos."

Gorcey shook his head and his lips tightened further. "I'm going along, Mr. Cordova, one way or another. Either in your car, or in my own, following you as you follow Brady."

Richie recognized a note of unswayable finality in Gorcey's voice. Shit. The last thing he wanted when he was working was a tag-along amateur. Especially if said amateur was queer. And double especially if it turned out Brady had a bona fide dirty little secret.

But it didn't look like he was going to have much choice.

He sighed. "Okay, Lou. I'll take you along. But I won't be able to guarantee success. And I'll want the money up front."

Gorcey relaxed his rigid posture. "Of course. That's only fair."

"By the way, what's your sign?"

Gorcey's eyebrows rose as he smirked. "I'm usually in a bar when I'm asked that question."

Richie felt heat in his cheeks. "Don't be a wise ass. I want to check to see if our signs are going to be compatible tonight."

"I'm a Taurus." His smile changed. "And don't worry, Mr. Cordova, I won't get in the way. I promise." Something strange about his new smile… unsettling. "You'll hardly know I'm there."

10

When Jack checked his voice mail outside Cordova's and heard Abe's message—"Your package has arrived"—he hopped a cab to Manhattan.

He entered the shop, locked the front door behind him, and headed for the rear.

"Did you really find one?" he said as he approached Abe in his customary spot.

Abe said nothing, merely stared.

"Abe?"

"Jack?" His gaze ranged from Jack's hair to his glossy, wheat-brown loafers, to his man bag, then back to his hair. "This is you?"

"It's part of a fix."

"On Christopher Street you're working maybe?"

"I'll explain later. Did you get the gun?"

And still Abe stared. "Your hair… it's wet?"

"Nah. Just some sort of gel. The Beretta, Abe?"

"And your coat. Like a robe it looks with that tie thing around the waist."

All this scrutiny was making Jack uncomfortable.

"Earth to Abe. Did—?"

"Has Gia seen you like this?"

"No, and she's not going to." She might like it and want him to dress like this all the time. "I'll spell it out for you: B-E-R-E—" Yes-yes.

Abe shook himself out of whatever transported state he was in and reached under the counter. He came up with a brown paper lunch bag and slid it across the counter.

Jack slipped his hand inside and removed a stainless-steel 9mm Beretta 92. It was beautiful. It was perfect.

"Abe, you are amazing," he said, turning the gleaming pistol over and over in his hands. "Truly amazing."

"I am. Yes, I am." When Jack glanced at him with a wry smile he added, "What? I should pretend to be humble? Hours on the phone I spent. No one else in this city could have found such a thing for you on a Sunday. No one."

"I thank you for this, Abe. Really. If you hadn't found it, this whole afternoon spent setting up the fix would have gone down the drain." He looked around. "Where are your cotton gloves?"

Abe pulled an oil-smudged pair from under the counter and handed them across.

"Want some oil?"

"No. Just need to wipe it down. Don't want our fingerprints on it."

"Certainly not."

He slipped on the gloves and polished the pistol's shiny planes and bevels, its Brazilian walnut stocks. Then he pushed a release button, rotated the cam, and pulled the slide assembly off the frame in one piece. He wiped the barrel and underside of the slide.

"It's used," Abe said, "but well kept."

"I see that. Used is better than new. I just want to double-check there's no serial number on the slide."

"With a Beretta, only on the frame."

"Perfect." He replaced the slide assembly, then ejected the empty magazine from the grip. "Got those Hydra-Shoks?"

Again Abe's hand disappeared under the counter, returning this time with two boxes of 9mm rounds, each with the familiar red Federal across the top.

"Federal Classics, as requested. Grain-wise I've got one-twenty-four and one-forty-seven."

"The one-twenty-fours should do."

He intended to be up close and very personal when he pulled the trigger, so he preferred a lower muzzle velocity. Jack slipped open the box and removed ten rounds. He rubbed each carefully with his gloved fingers before pressing it into the magazine.

"A CSI team you're expecting?"

"You betcha."

"And you won't tell me about it?"

"After I'm through, I'll fill you in on every last detail."

"The clothes too?"

"Everything."

"So till then I must hang?"

"But you won't be hanging alone," Jack said. "Trust me on that."

11

As he walked back toward his apartment Jack realized he had just enough time to pay a visit to the ersatz Mama Roselli. He dialed her on her cell.

A weak, raspy voice said, "Hello?"

"Mrs. Roselli? This is Jack. I stopped by last night but I heard you weren't feeling well. Are you okay?"

"I'm better, thank you."

"I was wondering if I could come over to give you an update. I found Johnny and—"

"Can this wait until tomorrow? I don't think I'm well enough yet for company."

Yes, it could wait till tomorrow, although Jack would have liked his questions answered tonight. But if she was feeling as bad as she sounded—if she was faking it she deserved an Oscar—then giving her more time to recover made sense.

"Tomorrow then. I'll see you about noon or so?"

"I'll be here."

Jack cut the connection. Her sudden frailty bothered him. He'd suspected her of being kin to Anya, a tough old bird who looked like she hadn't had a sick day in her life. The only time he'd seen her not in control was when she'd had that sudden sharp pain in her back. Took her a day or so to get over it. And the next day he'd seen an oozing sore on her scarred-up back… on what she'd called "the map of my pain"… the map of where Brady was burying his pillars.

Could it be…?

He'd find out tomorrow. Tonight he had to share a car with Cordova and somehow keep himself from strangling him.

12

They sat parked east of Lexington, where Jack had waited Friday night. Cordova had insisted on using his aging, smelly Jeep Laredo, saying he had all his equipment stowed in the back, plus they might need the four-wheel drive.

So Jack had parked his rental a couple of blocks from Cordova's Williamsbridge house and cabbed to Tremont Avenue. They'd met in front of Cordova's office and driven downtown together.

"What's with the gloves?" Cordova said. "It ain't that cold."

Jack looked down at his hands, tightly swathed in black leather driving gloves. "My fingers are very sensitive."

Cordova snickered. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Pardon?"

"Never mind."

Probably thought he was funny. A real comedian.

Jack eyed his suet body, his suet lace with its suet cheeks, his suet hands resting on the steering wheel, and wondered if this was the same car he'd used to snatch Sister Maggie.

Be so easy to reach over and grab his suet throat and squeeze… squeeze until he passed out. Let him wake up, then start squeezing again… and then do it again…

Jack wondered how many hours he could keep it up, how many times he could—

"Hell-o-o?" Cordova said. "Did you hear me?"

Jack shook his head, not trusting himself to speak at that moment.

"I said, What time's Brady usually head for the hills?"

Jack stared at the garage exit. Eight o'clock already and so far no sign of Brady. Jack remembered Jamie telling him about Brady's Sunday night trips, but had she said anything about time? He didn't think so. Had to improvise here.

"Varies. Sometimes early, sometimes late. But always after dark."

"Well, it's already after dark, so let's hope this is an early night. I hate stakeouts anyway. And to be frank, Lou, you ain't much of a conversationalist."

"I'll have plenty to say once I have Brady where I want him," he snapped. "I gave you your money. Don't expect chitchat too."

He noticed Cordova's quick, sidelong glance and reminded himself to remain in character.

He let out a long sigh. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Cordova. I'm usually quite a talker. Sometimes I swear I just can't shut up. But tonight I'm a little tense. No, I'm a lot tense. I mean, this just might be the night I get something on him." He reached over and laid a gentle hand on the fat man's suety shoulder. "You simply have no idea how badly I want this."

Cordova shrugged off his hand. "Easy with the touching stuff. I ain't into touching."

Jack snatched his hand back and dropped it into his lap. "Sorry."

Cordova's laugh sounded forced. "Hey, relax about the rest. If there's something to get, I'll get it."

Jack hoped they got something—the bigger the better. He had three scenarios planned. Plan A was the one most fully worked out, and would kick in if they hit pay dirt scandal-wise. If not—if Brady was involved in nothing blackmail-worthy—then Jack would go with Plan B. Plan C was the simplest and the least appealing: If Brady didn't show up tonight, Jack and Cordova would return next Sunday.

The thought of allowing Richie Cordova to go on breathing for another week made him queasy. And to have to spend another night with him in this car… that might just be too much to bear. Might force Jack into doing something rash.

"Hey," Cordova said, pointing across the street to where a black Mercedes was pulling out from the garage. "Is that our boy?"

Jack squinted at the plates. "Yes! That's him! Go! Go!"

"Just take it easy," Cordova said, singsonging as if addressing a child. "A professional doesn't tip his hand like that. We'll wait a few seconds, let another car get between us, then start after him."

Jack wrung his hands. "But we'll lose him!"

"No we won't. I guarantee it."

13

Jack had to admit that Cordova was good at tailing. It didn't hurt that Jack knew the Thruway exit Brady would be taking. At least he hoped he knew. Blascoe had said Brady owned a place not far from his, so Jack assumed he'd use the same exit Jamie had when she took him to Blascoe's. He told Cordova that he'd followed Brady twice to that exit and lost him afterward. That allowed Cordova to pass Brady and wait for him near the off-ramp. If Brady was watching his rear, he'd see no one follow him off the Thruway.

Jack had a bad moment or two, sitting there with the pressure of the Beretta against the small of his back, wondering if he'd made the wrong choice. But then Brady's black Mercedes came down the ramp and stopped at the light.

After that it was a trip up the same twisty road Jack and Jamie had traveled just three nights ago. Was that all it had been? Just seventy-two hours?

Brady passed the driveway to Blascoe's place without even slowing. Two miles beyond he turned onto a dirt path and headed uphill. Cordova cruised farther on for a mile or so, then turned, killed the lights, and headed back.

After he'd backed the Jeep deep into the brush about a hundred yards away from the mini-road, Cordova turned to Jack.

"Sit tight and I'll go see what's up."

Jack popped open his door. "No way. I'm going with you."

"Lou, are you crazy? You don't have any experience—"

"I'm going."

Cordova cursed under his breath as he pulled his cameras and lenses from the back seat. He continued grumbling and muttering as they made their way up the hill through the brush. Jack was struck by a strong sense of déjà vu: He and Jamie had made the same sort of trip on Thursday night just a few miles back down the road.

Cordova turned and said, "Hey, almost forgot: If you got a cell phone, turn the goddamn thing off."

"I already did."

Jack wondered about perimeter security devices but decided not to worry about them. If Brady was into something shady up here, he wouldn't want to draw attention to the place by linking it to a security monitoring company, and especially not to the Dormentalist temple.

"There's a cabin," Cordova said, pointing ahead to where lights glowed through the trees. "Time to slow down and keep it quiet as possible."

Soon they reached the edge of a clearing. The cabin—made of real logs as far as Jack could tell—stood at its center, windows aglow. A plank porch ran across the front and around the left side.

Cordova motioned Jack to wait and slunk into the clearing. Jack followed. When Cordova noticed, he waved him back, but Jack kept coming. The fat man's annoyance showed in the slope of his shoulders. Jack didn't care. He wasn't going to wait for Cordova to develop his film to see what Brady was up to.

As they neared a side window Jack began to hear music. All the doors and windows were shut, so the volume had to be near max. Sounded classical. Jack couldn't identify it. Didn't even try. Except for some Tchaikovsky, he found most classical music unlistenable.

They reached the side window and peeked through. The interior was similar to Blascoe's. So similar that Jack would bet they'd been built from the same design. The major difference was the collection of maybe half a dozen full-length mirrors spaced around the great room.

"Must love to look at himself," Cordova said.

And then the man himself appeared, wrapped in a big white terry cloth robe. He strode to the kitchen counter and poured himself some Glenlivet on the rocks.

Shit, Jack thought. This wasn't quite what he'd been hoping for.

Cordova's snide tone said he agreed. "Oh, yeah," he whispered—probably could've yelled, considering the volume of the music inside—"shots of this are gonna do real damage."

"The night is still young."

"Yeah, but he's alone."

"For the moment."

"You know something?"

"No. Just hoping."

"Yeah, well keep on hoping. Because even if we get shots of him whacking off or doing himself with a dildo, it's no big deal. You can embarrass the hell out of him, maybe, but you ain't gonna bring him down with stuff like that."

But it'll be something, Jack thought. All I need is one thing… anything… just one little thing, and Plan A goes into effect.

They hung around the window, Cordova calibrating and testing the low-light image intensifiers on his cameras, Jack studying Brady through the window. He watched him leaf through some big, antique-looking book, a hungry look in his eyes. What was it? Ancient porn?

Unlike his burning rage against Cordova, Jack felt cold, clinical, almost detached about Brady. He could torture Cordova, do to him what he'd done to Sister Maggie, and not feel an instant's regret or remorse. But that wouldn't do for Brady. Jack had other plans for him, plans that Brady might well find worse than torture.

"I say we give it an hour or so," Cordova said, now that his cameras were ready.

"We stay until we get something or he goes to bed, whichever comes first."

"Lemme tell you something: I ain't standing out here freezing my ass off till God knows when."

Jack put a hand on Cordova's shoulder, just as he'd done back in the car.

"Please, Mr. Cordova. I told you how much this means to me."

He leaned away from Jack's hand. "And I told you how I feel about being touched. Now lay off, got it? If we—"

Through the window Jack saw Brady pull a cell phone from the pocket of his robe.

"Hey. Looks like he's getting a call."

He and Cordova watched Brady go to the stereo and turn down the volume, then smile as he spoke on the phone. When the call ended, he upped the music again, and closed the big old book he'd been reading.

"This could be it," Jack said.

Cordova grunted. "And it could be nothing. But he sure do look happy, don't he. Wouldn't be surprised if—oh, shit!"

Brady had carried the book to the center of the room where he knelt and pulled up a trapdoor that perfectly matched the rest of the floor. He started down into the basement.

"If he stays down there we're fucked," Cordova said.

Jack kept silent, watching. Moments later Brady reappeared and closed the trapdoor. What was down there? A secret library of some sort? Something that could be used against him? If the photos didn't work out, then maybe—

"Oh, man!" Cordova said.

Brady had tossed off his robe to reveal a well-toned, well-tanned body.

"Buffed and baked," Jack said. "This is good. This is very good."

Cordova was already snapping pictures. "Don't get too excited now."

Jack put on a huffy tone. "I beg your pardon?"

"I mean, this kind of beefcake ain't gonna hurt him. Might get him lots of calls from the ladies, though. Or the guys. Maybe even—holy shit!"

Jack watched, fascinated, as Brady placed a feathered mask over his head, leaving only his eyes and mouth exposed. He examined himself in one of the mirrors, then slipped back into his robe.

Cordova's shutter was clicking like mad. "I got a feeling we might be heading for pay dirt."

"Shhh!" Jack whispered as he raised a gloved finger to his lips. "Is that a car?"

Cordova cupped a hand around an ear. "Damn right it is." He picked up his cameras and began moving away. "Let's ease back into the bushes and wait."

Jack followed him. They crouched in the brush as a pair of headlights became visible through the trees. Before long a Chevy van pulled up and stopped before the front door.

"Get a shot of the plates," Jack told Cordova. "I want those plates."

But Cordova already had his eye to the viewfinder. "So do I."

A gray-haired man about Cordova's age, but whippet lean, was illuminated by the courtesy lights as he stepped out of the van. He opened a rear door and out hopped two boys, maybe twelve years of age, fourteen tops. He ushered them up to the front door where Brady was waiting. After the boys were inside, the man returned to the car and drove away.

As soon as the car was out of sight Cordova was on the move toward the cabin, chortling. "Ho-ho-ho! The plot sickens!"

Jack hesitated, then followed.

Back at the window, he saw Brady offer the boys beers, then light up a joint and pass it around.

"Giving beer and pot to minors," Cordova said. "That's a good start."

The kids looked fairly comfortable, as if they were used to this sort of thing. Jack knew what they were: male prostitutes. Teenagers. "Chickens" to the trade. Usually kids kicked out of their homes because they're gay; they gravitate to cities but can't support themselves, so they wind up fodder for chicken hawks. And Brady was a chicken hawk.

Jack had hoped for something big to use against the man, but never imagined…

As Brady threw off the robe and the two boys began to undress, Jack moved away.

"Hey, where you going?" Cordova said.

"Back to the car."

Cordova's tone was mocking. "No jacking off now."

Jack wanted to kill him right there. Do an HVAC job on his skull, then burst through the door and do the same to Brady. But that wasn't in the plan. And it wouldn't change the lives of those two boys. They'd spend some time in the state child-welfare mill, then wind up back on the street.

The night sky seemed bright compared to the darkness in Jack's heart.

14

While Jack waited in the Jeep he got the Mikulski brothers' phone number from information. Brad, the older one, answered.

"It's me: Jack."

"Hey. What've you got for us?"

Jack never made social calls to the Mikulskis. This was no exception. But he wanted to be careful since he was on a cell phone.

"Got a New York license plate for you. Write this down." Jack recited it from memory. "You might want to do business with the guy."

"What's he into?"

"Chickens. Export and import, I believe.*"

"That so?"

"And I also believe he's ripe for a takeover bid."

"How ripe?"

"ASAP."

"All right. We'll get on it tomorrow. Thanks for the heads-up, man."

"My pleasure."

Jack ended the call, then leaned back in the passenger seat. Calling the Mikulskis in made him feel a little better. Weird pair, those two. Had a real jones for pedophiles. Didn't know what was in their past to make them that way, and didn't want to. But he did know they'd track that van, and if they witnessed what Jack was sure they would, a certain chicken runner would be out of business. Permanently.

Jack wanted him gone before the shit hit Brady's fan.

He shifted in the seat and felt something jab him in the thigh. He reached down and came up with a crucifix on a broken chain. Just like the one he'd seen hanging around Sister Maggie's neck.

Jack closed his eyes and tried to stay calm. The only thing that worked was repeating… it won't be long now… won't be long now… over and over.

Cordova showed up a few minutes later. He placed his cameras in the rear, then rolled onto the driver's seat. He laughed as he started the car.

"What's so funny?" Jack said.

"We got him! We got him six ways from Sunday! He's as good as dead! Even if those pictures don't land him in the slammer, he'll never be able to show his face again! He's gonna have to hide away in his little love nest and never come out!"

He laughed again and bounced in his seat like a kid who'd just been told that Christmas had been extended to 365 days a year.

Jack said, "I'd almost think that you had as much against him as I."

Cordova immediately sobered. "Oh, well, no, I mean I'm just always happy when an investigation comes through for the client. And you gotta admit, this puppy came through in spades. I can't wait to see those photos."

"Neither can I. Where do you get them developed?"

"I got a little lab in my house."

Jack knew that. He'd seen it. Just a converted closet, but a small-time operator like Cordova didn't need more.

"Wonderful. Let's go. And don't tell me I'm not coming along, because I am. I paid for those photos and I want to see what I've got. If they're what I

need to bring Brad) down, you'll get the extra thousand T promised right then and there."

"What? Come to my place? I never…" He paused for a few heartbeats, then, "Well, I guess it would be okay. I mean, seeing as you're laying out all this money and all. Yeah. Sure. Why not."

Cordova had agreed just a little too easily. Jack had known he'd go along eventually, but had expected him to play a little harder to get.

15

Sweet Jesus, Richie thought as he arranged the prints across his desktop. They were... fantastic was the only word for them.

He sat in his darkened attic office and stared. The only sound was the breathing of the guy leaning over his shoulder. Gorcey had insisted on printing every frame. Immediately. He wanted them now. Not tomorrow or the next day. Now.

That was okay by Richie. The prints wouldn't go to waste. He'd scan them and copy them onto a CD. Then he'd stick them in an envelope marked Personal & Confidential and address it to Luther Brady.

He wanted to get up and dance. This was the mother lode. This was the California gold rush and the key to De Beers rolled into one.

Even though he'd had to take the photos through a screened window into a moderately lighted room, the images were clear enough to detail the goings-on in that cabin. Brady without his mask before the boys arrived; Brady putting on his mask; Brady making the boys earn their pay—really earn it.

Brady, Brady, Brady.

Richie had been a little sickened by the stuff that went down in that room, but he'd hung in there until he'd had enough. More than enough.

Luther Brady, you are my meat, you are my bitch. From this day forward, I own you.

Only one thing stood in the way: the guy behind him. Louis Gorcey.

He couldn't let him walk out of here. The only way Gorcey was leaving this house was horizontal and feet first.

But he couldn't risk giving Gorcey even a hint of what was coming.

He spoke without looking up. "See anything you like?" he said, knowing it could be taken two ways.

"I like none of it. I am appalled. I was hoping for something scandalous, but this… this is unspeakable."

Gorcey sounded offended. That surprised Richie. After all, didn't gay guys like young stuff? He knew he did. Girls, of course. Not boys. But teen girls, with the way they dressed these days in their tight tops and low-riding jeans leaving their smooth, rounded bellies showing, it just wasn't fair to a guy who wasn't getting much. How he'd love to pull down a pair of those hip-hugging jeans and put his face…

Fat chance. Like one of them would go for a guy forty years older—older than their dads, probably. And fat to boot.

Richie sighed. The closest he'd ever get to one of those was on the Internet. But he could dream. Oh, yeah, he could dream real good.

He tore himself away from young girls and got back to these pictures of young boys.

"Well, did I earn the extra grand?"

"Yes. You earned your bonus."

"Great. Now, what do we do?" When Gorcey didn't answer, Richie looked up at him. "Hello? Did you hear what I—?"

Gorcey's face looked strange. He'd finally taken off his sunglasses. Left his gloves on but had to remove the shades, what with the room being kind of dark. His brown eyes were scary. Murderous, almost. Richie's heart stopped for a second when he thought that look might be for him. But how could it be? They'd only met tonight, and it was Brady that Gorcey was after.

Gorcey nodded. "I heard you. But I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"Blackmail." His hand did a quick wave. "I know what you said about your code of ethics, but I'm sure Brady would pay almost anything to keep these out of the public eye."

An alarm bell sounded in Richie's head. What was going on here? Almost like this guy was reading his mind. A bowel-clenching thought wormed through his head: What if he was sitting next to the guy the nun had hired to fuck up his operation?

His hand crept toward the .38 in his shoulder holster…

Hey, wait. That didn't make sense. Gorcey had just led him to a goose that was going to lay a steady stream of golden eggs. And besides, if Gorcey was carrying—and Richie was pretty damn sure he wasn't—he'd had a million chances on the way upstate and back to do whatever damage he might have come to do.

No… Gorcey wasn't Jack, wasn't the guy from Julio's the nun had told him about. He was just a fag with a hard-on for Luther Brady.

Soon he was going to be a dead fag.

"Blackmail's illegal, Lou. Don't tell me any more. I could lose my license for not reporting you."

"You wouldn't need a license with what we could squeeze out of Brady."

"'We'?"

"Well, blackmailing him would require a certain amount of toughness that I'm not sure I have. But you seem tough, Mr. Cordova."

Richie wasn't sure how to play this. Gorcey was proposing a partnership. It was tempting in a way. It meant he wouldn't have to kill him. Disposing of a body was no easy thing—as the quick discovery of the dead nun proved. Forensic crime labs were getting better and better. Some simple little thing could fuck him up royally.

But bringing Gorcey in would mean splitting the milk from Brady, and Richie didn't even want to think about that. But even so, he didn't think a queer like Gorcey had the stuff to stay the course. And worse, he might spill to one of his lover boys, either while whispering sweet nothings or trying to impress some stud he was courting. That would queer—he hid a smile and thought, Oh, pardon me!—that would queer everything.

Okay. Let's look at the situation. I've got a gun, he don't. The shades are already pulled. My house is sealed up, and so are all the neighbors'. Nobody around here will be out on the street on a cold Sunday night like this. I can put a couple of quick ones into Gorcey's chest and no one'll be the wiser.

That would work. Then he'd wait till the dead dark hours of the morning and tote the body out to the car. He could dump Gorcey under an overpass or someplace like it and forget about him. There wasn't no connection between the two of them.

But he had to go about this real careful like. Keep Gorcey nice and relaxed so he wouldn't see nothing coming. Richie didn't want no tussle—even a pansy man could get lucky. Just a quick, clean kill.

Sticking to the upright, uptight, ethical PI role seemed the best play.

"Yeah, I'm tough enough," Richie said, "but I'm honest. I'll give you the prints and negatives and then we'll both forget we ever had this conversation. " He patted the area around his desk. "Oops. No envelopes. Have to get one out of the closet."

Out of the closet… ha!

As he pushed up from the seat, he snaked one hand into his coat and pulled the .38 free of the holster. He held it chest-high. All he had to do now was make his turn and—

A gloved hand came out of nowhere and grabbed his wrist while another shoved a big shiny pistol against his cheek.

"Wha—?"

"What were you planning to do with that, Richie?" said a hard voice that didn't sound at all like Louis Gorcey's.

Moving only his eyes, Richie looked. It was Gorcey, all right. He looked the same, and yet everything about him was different. Gorcey wasn't Gorcey no more.

Richie's knees went soft as he realized he might have made a terrible mistake.

"I-I-nothing. I was just taking it out to lay it on my desk. It's heavy and it, you know, gets in the way."

Richie tried to twist his hand free but the grip on his wrist tightened, became crushing, and the muzzle pressed deeper into his face.

"Yeah, I know. Drop it on the floor."

"Hey—"

In the space of a second, the muzzle left his cheek, slammed against his nose, and then rammed into his cheek again.

Richie let out a yell as pain shot straight through his skull and bright flashes sparked in his vision. "All right! All right!"

He dropped the gun.

"Sit."

He eased himself back into the chair. He looked up and saw Gorcey staring at him. He realized that the murderous look he'd thought was for Brady was for him.

"W-what's going on, Lou?"

"Name isn't Lou. It's Jack."

Jack? Oh-no-oh-God-oh-no! The nun's Jack!

But he couldn't let on that he knew.

"Jack, Lou, what difference does it make? You didn't have to lie about your name. All secrets are safe with me."

He saw Jack's face twist with fury, noticed that he'd reversed his grip on the pistol and was holding it by the barrel. Richie watched it rise above him, then swing down, saw the nubs of the rear sights falling toward his scalp. Tried to duck but wasn't fast enough.

Pain bloomed in his skull and the world swam around him as he heard an echoey voice say, "Shut up."

The icy, matter-of-fact tone made his bladder clench.

Another blow wiped out all sight, all sound.

16

"Hey!" someone was saying. "Hey, wake up." A foot nudged his leg. "Wake up, Fatso."

Richie forced his eyes open. The room did a half spin, then settled, then spun again. His head felt like it had exploded and then been put back together by someone who'd never seen a human skull before.

He groaned and tried to raise his right hand to his aching head but it wouldn't move. He looked and saw that it was wired to an arm of his chair. So was his left.

And then he saw that his chair had been wheeled away from the desk.

"Whuh…?"

Jack glanced at him. "Oh, good. You're awake. About time."

It looked like he'd divvied up the prints into a couple of piles. The negative strips lay tangled among them.

"What're you doing?"

"Sorting."

He stepped over to Richie's chair and stood staring down at him. The room spun again as Richie looked up. He looked away real quick when he saw what was in the guy's eyes.

"What're you gonna do?"

"If I had the time and inclination, I'd like to do to you what you did to Sister Maggie. Remember her? You threatened to ruin her life, and you did."

So here it was, right out in the open.

"You're the one she hired to mess up my computer, right?"

The guy nodded. "And you're the one who messed up Maggie."

"You gotta lemme explain. It's not how you think. I didn't—"

A black-gloved hand backhanded him across the face. "Don't waste my time."

Richie spat blood. "Okay, okay."

"How'd you find out?"

"About what?"

"About Maggie hiring me."

"Why do you care?" Another backhand across the face made Richie's head spin. "All right, all right. It was her boyfriend, Metcalf. He cracked wise about me being outfoxed by a nun. That's when I knew."

The guy sighed and said something under his breath that sounded like "Nobody listens." But he looked like he was relieved or something. Maybe this was Richie's chance.

"So it's not all my fault. It's Metcalf's too. I shouldn't take all—" He cringed as he saw that gloved hand wind up for another shot. "Don't, please! Just answer one question, will you?"

"What?"

"You her brother or something?"

Please say no, he thought. Please say no.

The guy shook his head. "Never met her before she hired me."

Relief flooded him. Maybe he could reason with him, operative to operative.

"Then why?"

"Why what?"

"Why come back? You got hired, you did the job—did it real good, I gotta tell you—and that's it. You walk away. It's over. Done. End of story. No reason to come back into the picture."

The guy stared at him like he was looking down at a splash of fresh vomit. After too long a time he took a breath and pointed to Richie's wired wrists.

"I wanted to use duct on you like you did on Maggie, but I couldn't risk carrying a roll in case you searched my bag again. Wire takes up much less space." He held up a silvery roll of duct tape. "But look what I came across in one of your drawers."

With a single swift move he ripped off a piece and slapped it across Richie's mouth.

Panic ripped through him. He tried to kick out with his feet but his ankles were wired down as well. When he saw the guy pick up the pistol from the desk Richie began to scream, but nothing got through the tape and the noise coming through his nose sounded like baby pig squeals.

"Let me introduce you to Mr. Beretta." He put the shiny barrel oi the pistol against Richie's palm. "Shake hands with him. You're about to interface."

Richie wrapped his fingers around the barrel. No way he could get it away, but if he could just keep a grip on it—

The guy twisted it free like he was taking a rattle from a baby. Then he stuck it in Richie's other hand. "Feel that? Like it? You and Mr. Beretta are going to get real friendly."

Richie screamed again as the guy picked up a beige cushion. Where'd that come from? Looked like one from the couch downstairs. What was he gonna—

Oh no! The cushion pressed against Richie's stomach as the guy buried the muzzle in the fabric.

NO!

A slightly muffled BLAM! and then searing pain shot through his gut. He screamed against the tape and writhed in agony. He'd never imagined anything could hurt like this. Never. Vomit rose in his throat but he swallowed it back. If he puked he'd suffocate, though maybe that wouldn't be so bad. At least it would stop the pain.

"I hear nothing hurts worse than being gut shot," the guy said in a cold, dead voice. "I hope I heard right."

Richie watched through eyes blurred with pain and tears as the guy turned back to the desk and began shoving all the photos into an envelope. The negatives as well.

The room got gray around the edges and he thought he was going to pass out—if only he would!—but then things came back into focus.

Richie began to sob from an excruciating spasm, the noise snuffling in and out through his nose. Felt like someone had a pitchfork in his gut and was twisting, twisting…

And now the guy was stuffing everything into his shoulder bag.

Richie wailed into the gag. He wasn't going to leave him like this! He couldn't!

Then the guy picked up the cushion and the gun again and stepped up in front of Richie.

"You don't deserve this," he said in that dead voice as he placed the cushion over Richie's chest.

What? No! NO!

17

After putting two Hydra-Shoks into Fatso's chest, Jack stepped back and watched him buck and spasm, then go still. His wide, bulging eyes lost focus and his lids dropped to half mast.

The only regret he felt was at not being able to leave Cordova alive. He'd heard it sometimes took three days to die of a gut shot. Three days of constant agony. Barely a tenth of what he deserved.

But sooner or later, when Cordova didn't show up at his office tomorrow morning, and didn't answer his home phone, his receptionist would call someone to check on him. And that might give the fat man a chance of surviving.

No survival for Cordova. Jack not only wanted him dead, he needed him dead.

He stared at the fat, bloody corpse a moment longer. Maggie… she hadn't died because of some mistake on Jack's part, she'd died because of her own good heart. Despite Jack's warning, she must have felt a duty to let Metcalf know that he didn't have to pay any more blackmail money. And Met-calf, not knowing the level of scum he was dealing with, had opened his yap.

All of this… so unnecessary… so goddamn unnecessary.

Jack reholstered the Beretta, then retrieved two of the three ejected shell casings from the floor. He kicked the third into the darkroom. He hefted his shoulder bag and did one more sweep of the area. All clean. Nothing to identify him.

All right.

He loped downstairs and headed for his car. On the way home he'd call 911 and report hearing what sounded like gunshots from Cordova's house.

MONDAY

1

Jack paused outside the front entrance of the Dormentalist temple.

He'd stopped home and dropped off all the photos he'd taken from Cordova's house. Then he'd changed into the third-hand clothing store rejects he'd picked up yesterday after his visit to Roselli. He'd used rubber cement to attach scruffy black hair to his face, then pulled a knit watch cap over his head down to the tops of his ears.

He wouldn't fool anyone who knew Johnny Roselli; he doubted even a stranger would be fooled by the beard if he got close enough.

But he wasn't planning on letting anyone that close.

His main concern was whether Roselli had skipped his camping trip and returned to the temple since Jack had left him. If so, his entry card wouldn't have worked and he'd have been issued a new one. Using his old card now could raise an alarm and wreck Jack's plans.

His other concern was Brady. Jack had no idea how long he usually carried on with his hired boys, or if he came home when he was through. The later the better, as far as Jack was concerned. Best case would be if he slept over till morning, which would be the wise thing to do after a night of Scotch and ganja.

But it was all guesswork at this point. He hated it when a fix depended on something he couldn't control, and could be sent off track by someone's whim.

Only one way to find out…

Jack took a breath and opened the door. As he stepped into the unmanned security atrium, he bore right, away from the metal detector and toward the members-only turnstile. The deep-shadowed lobby was deserted. A few bulbs in sconces lit the periphery and the elevator area where one set of doors stood open, waiting. A dozen feet beyond the turnstile a lone burgundy-uniformed TP sat in a pool of light behind his marble kiosk.

Jack gave the guard a friendly wave as he made a show of fishing the card from a pocket. The TP gave a wary, noncommittal nod, watching him.

Jack kept the EC in his left hand, leaving the right free to go for the pistol nestled in the small of his back. After positioning it at the end of the slot, he trained his eyes on the guard and swiped the card through.

He waited as the TP checked the computer. Hopefully a photo of Johnny Roselli was popping onto the screen with the message that he was a lapser—thus explaining his scruffy attire. If the guard's expression changed or he reached for the phone, Jack was out of here. He did not want to be placed in a situation where he'd have to use his weapon.

But the TP's expression didn't change. He looked up from the screen and gave Jack a perfunctory smile and a wave. The turnstile's mechanism clicked, allowing Jack to push through.

Jack released the breath he'd been holding as he waved back and headed straight for the elevators. He kept his head down as he stepped into the open car. Before pressing 21 with a knuckle, he glanced back at the guard and saw him reading from a tabloid newspaper. Probably not The Light.

Okay, he thought as the doors pincered closed, I'm in.

Now came the tough part.

He looked at the unlit 22 button and wished he could make the elevator take him there without leaving a record of the trip in the computers. That was something he needed to avoid at all cost.

Still… it would be so much easier than what he had planned.

Jack figured he was pretty much in control from here on in. Success or failure depended on him, not chance or circumstance. Even so, he knew he had a hairy hour or so ahead of him.

2

Jensen sat in his third-floor office gazing over Tony Margiotta's shoulder. The only light in the room came from the computer screen. These things were a pain in the ass but in the right hands, they were amazing. Margiotta had been doing an online search for anything—anything—about John Robertson. Even though the guy had been dead two years and retired for years before that, this Google thing had come up with almost a thousand hits. But the hits, a thousand or not, weren't proving very useful.

"This is all shit," Margiotta said.

"Maybe, but keep at it. I want every one of them looked into.

"But what am I looking for?"

Margiotta hadn't been told any more than he needed to know. He already knew that Jason Amurri had been an impostor, and Jensen had told him that an outside investigation had linked him to Robertson. Any connection or reference to the missing Jamie Grant had been left out of the story.

"Find me something, anything that connects Robertson to New York City—and I don't mean just Manhattan—or to our Church or to any other church or organization that might have it in for us."

Margiotta looked up at him with an anguished expression. "This could take me all night."

Poor baby, Jensen wanted to say, but resisted. "It's already taken half the night. Consider yourself on the homestretch. Besides, you're getting time and a half."

"Yeah, but I've got a wife and a kid—"

"Who'll be glad for the bigger paycheck. Now keep at it."

Margiotta grumbled something unintelligible as he returned to the keyboard.

Jensen gave him a comradely clap on the shoulder as he rose.

"Good man. I'm going to take a stroll around to stretch my legs, maybe get a coffee. You want one?"

Margiotta looked surprised at the offer. And well he should be. Jensen didn't play gopher for anyone. But he wanted Margiotta to stay alert as he followed those hits.

He stepped out into the hallway and began making the rounds.

3

The elevator stopped on the twenty-first floor. As the doors slid open, Jack pressed the lobby button and stepped out of the car—just barely. He stopped as close to the doors as he could without trapping the back of his shirt when they closed.

On his previous tour of the temple he'd noticed stationary visual surveillance cameras in the elevator area of every floor, high in the corners above the doors, facing out. The TPs—if they were of a mind to do so—could watch you in the elevator car and then catch you again when you stepped out onto the floor. The meditation floor was no different.

But Jack had noticed that the fixed angle needed to capture the longest view of the hallway inevitably left a blind spot just outside the elevator doors.

Right where Jack was standing.

He looked longingly at the EXIT sign over the door to the stairwell on his right. That way would be so much simpler but the security cameras covered the approach and he was sure opening the door would be flagged in the security computer.

He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then fished out the big screwdriver and heavy-duty coat hanger hook he'd brought along. He'd freed the hook from its wooden hanger, then tied and glued a length of sturdy twine to its straight end. He hoped he'd done it right. He hadn't had time to call on Milkdud Swigart for a refresher course on how to hack a building.

Back in December he and Milkdud had hacked a Midtown building through the elevator shaft so that Jack could eavesdrop on a conversation in one of the offices. Jack hadn't attempted anything like that since. This would be his first solo hack.

He worked the hook through the space between the top of the elevator door and the lintel. Keeping a grip on the string, he let the hook drop on the far side of the door.

Now the hard part: catching the lever that would open the door.

He fished the hook around, twisting the twine this way and that, then pulling up. If he found no resistance, he went through the process again.

He began to sweat with frustration and maybe a little anxiety. Jack remembered Milkdud saying that old buildings with old elevators had the easiest doors to open. Well, this former hotel was an old building, so why—?

The twine resisted his pull—the hook had caught something.

He sent up a prayer to the goddess of building hackers: Please, let this be the lever.

He tugged and saw the doors move—just a fraction of an inch, but enough to tell him he was in the right place. Pulled a little harder and the doors spread farther, allowing enough space for Jack to slip the screwdriver through. He let go of the string and used the screwdriver to lever the doors open until he had room for his fingers in the gap. He slipped them through, then forced the doors apart. Once past a certain point, they opened the rest of the way on their own.

The open elevator shaft yawned before him. Thick cables ran up and down the center of the shaft, their coating of grease reflecting the glow from the caged incandescent bulb set above the doors.

Jack poked his head into the shaft and looked down. Bulbs lit the way into the dimness below. He couldn't see his elevator car, but the other, marked with a "2" on its roof, waited midshaft about ten floors down.

He looked to his right and found what he wanted. Between the two sets of doors a row of rusty metal rungs had been set into the wall. They ran the length of the shaft.

He pocketed the screwdriver, the hook, and the twine. He grabbed a rung, placed the ridged rubber sole of his work boot on another, lower rung, and swung out into the shaft. He brushed against a spring switch along the way and was startled by the ding! of the elevator bell.

So that's what makes it ring.

He would have expected a more sophisticated system, but then again, these elevators were antiques.

He grabbed the lever and pushed down to close the doors, then began the short climb to the top floor.

Brady's floor.

No problem opening the elevator doors from this side: A simple push on the lever admitted him to floor twenty-two.

The only question was whether or not he was alone up here. The lights were on, but that didn't mean much. He listened. Not a sound.

Jack closed the doors but left the screwdriver between them. He stepped through the deserted receptionist area and crossed the office, passing Brady's huge desk as he made his way toward the living quarters.

He tried the door—locked. He knocked, a series of triplets, waited, then repeated. No response. He pulled out his cell and dialed the "personal" number Brady had given him last week. A phone began to ring on the far side of the door. On the fifth ring a voice—not Brady's—told him to leave a message. Jack was reasonably sure Brady would have answered a call at this hour.

So… nobody home. But that could change any minute.

Jack turned and hurried to Brady's desk.

4

"All quiet on the Western Front?"

The TP in the lobby kiosk jumped as if he'd heard a shot. He dropped his newspaper and blanched when he saw who was speaking.

"Sir!" He shot to his feet. "You startled me, sir!"

"At ease," Jensen said, holding back a laugh.

He rarely used the elevator when he traveled from his office to the lobby. He'd found it much faster to take the stairs from the third floor. He'd eased through the stairway door at the south side of the lobby and silently made his way toward the security kiosk. He'd wanted to see how close he could get before the TP on duty realized he wasn't alone.

It had been easy. Too easy. The TP, whose name was Gary Cruz, had been so engrossed in the Sunday paper's sports section that Jensen had had to announce himself.

Jensen should have been angry, but he was too pleased with his own stealth to take Cruz's head off.

"Everything under control?"

The TP nodded. "Only one mouse in the house."

That wasn't unusual, even at this hour. A certain number of FAs would stay late or come in early to study, or catch up on assigned duties, or simply spend time on the Communing Level. The busiest after-hours periods tended to be Friday into Saturday, and Saturday into Sunday. The early hours of Monday usually found the Temple deserted. Except, of course, for the security detail.

"Thought he was a homeless guy at first," Cruz added.

"You're sure he wasn't?" This TP had better be damn sure.

"His card read him out as LFA, so that explained his looks."

"A lapser?" A sour note chimed in Jensen's head. "What's his name?"

Cruz sat and tapped at his keyboard. "John Roselli, sir. Came in about twenty minutes ago."

Roselli… he knew that name. He knew all the lapsers. He kept an eye on them to make sure they were complying with their punishment. But that wasn't the only reason. He'd kept a special watch ever since Clark Schaub. He'd been depressed because he thought his LFA designation was unjust—they all thought that—and killed himself.

A Dormentalist suicide was news under any circumstances, but when it happened in the Temple itself, and when the member did it in such dramatic fashion, it created a field day for the press. And not just rags like The Light—all the papers.

Schaub had seated himself in the center of the Great Room on the twenty-first floor, removed a straight razor from his pocket, and slit his own throat.

Covering it up had appeared impossible at first, but Jensen found a way. The only witnesses had been devout Dormentalists and they took a vow of silence to protect their Church. Jensen and Lewis and Hutch moved the body to a grove in Central Park. A police investigation listed Schaub as murdered by an unknown suspect. The case remained unsolved.

"Where'd Roselli go?"

Cruz checked his screen again. "Straight to twenty-one."

Shit. Like any other LFA, Roselli thought he'd gotten the shaft. He'd always struck Jensen as pretty stable, but you never knew. And the last thing Jensen needed now was a replay of the Schaub mess.

"Access the cameras up there. Let's see what our lapser is up to."

Cruz complied with practiced efficiency, alternating between mouse and keyboard. But as he worked, his brow began to furrow; a puzzled expression wormed onto his face.

Jensen didn't like that look. "What's wrong?"

"I can't find him."

"Well, then he must have left the floor."

Cruz pressed a button under one of his screens. "Not by the elevators. They haven't moved."

"Check the stairwell doors."

Jensen's mind raced. Each floor had access to the north and south stairways, but the doors were monitored. Access to the twenty-second floor from the stairways was blocked by password-protected steel doors that would have been at home in a bank vault.

"No record of either being opened."

"Then rerun the tapes, damn it. Let's see where he went when he left the elevator. No, wait. Do the elevator first."

Like a giant Ti Vo, the security computer stored each of the digital feeds on huge hard drives that made them accessible at any time.

Jensen moved behind Cruz and waited as he fiddled with the monitoring system. A bank of eight small screens arced across the inner front of the kiosk, just below the counter. Images from each security camera were supposed to rotate through the screens. The rotation had been halted while Cruz accessed specific cameras.

"Coming up on screen eight," Cruz said.

The black-and-white image of an elevator interior lit the screen. Car 1 blinked in the upper-left corner; a digital clock ran in the upper right. The camera showed the knit-capped head of a scruffy-looking guy staring at his shoes. Jensen got a glimpse of beard but never the face.

According to the clock, Roselli stepped off the elevator onto twenty-one at 11:22:14. Something about the way he kept his head down bothered Jensen. But no problem. The other cameras would provide a good head-to-toe look.

"Roll the floor cameras back to 11:21."

Cruz did just that and Jensen watched as he scrolled through every feed from the twenty-first floor.

John Roselli didn't appear on one.

Cruz kept shaking his head as he made a second run through the feeds. "This is impossible! Something's got to be wrong!"

Jensen looked toward the elevator doors.

No, it wasn't impossible. Every surveillance system had blind spots. And yes, something was definitely wrong. Because whoever had gone up in that car had taken advantage of gaps in the system. Jensen doubted very much that John Roselli had the know-how or even the inclination to do that.

A thought hit like a horse kick in the chest.

Roselli—the Farrell-Amurri-Robertson guy had seen him during his tour… tried to talk to him… even asked questions about him…

Could it be him? But even so, Jensen didn't know what the guy hoped to accomplish up on twenty-one.

But the floor above…

"The elevators—did either go to twenty-two?"

Cruz looked up at him. "How could they? Mr. Brady left around—"

"Since Roselli checked in."

Cruz manipulated the mouse, then, "No, sir. Nothing's gone to two-two since Mr. Brady called for it earlier."

Jensen hid a sigh of relief. And yet…

What if this Farrell-Amurri-Robertson had somehow got hold of Roselli's card? And what if he'd found a way to twenty-two?

Jensen cursed Brady for not allowing surveillance on twenty-two. He understood it—after all, Brady lived there—but it left a major gap in security.

"Call Roselli's home. See if he's there. And if he is, ask him if he's still got his swipe card."

"But—" Cruz began, then the light dawned. "Oh, I get it."

He placed the call, waited a long time with the receiver against his ear, then hung up.

"No answer, not even voice mail."

Okay. Then it was probably Roselli up there. He could have stepped out of the elevator, sat himself down right in front of the doors, and killed himself: knife, poison, whatever.

But then again, it was possible, just possible, that it was someone else.

"I'm going up for a look."

"I'll go, sir."

"No. You man the fort."

Either way, a dead Roselli or a live mystery guy, Jensen wanted to handle it alone.

But he hoped—no, he prayed—it was the mystery guy. He needed to slip his hands around the bastard's scrawny neck and watch his eyes bulge out of his head.

5

Jack pressed the button under the lip of Brady's desktop. As the doors on the opposite wall began to slide open, he pulled the Beretta from the desk drawer. He ejected the magazine from the grip and inspected it. Full. He thumbed out three rounds—not too easy wearing latex gloves—then slipped it back into its well. Next he removed the slide assembly, which included the barrel and the firing pin. He put the frame back into the drawer and placed the slide assembly on the desktop.

Then he pulled his new-bought Beretta from the small of his back and removed its slide assembly as well. This he fitted onto the frame of Brady's. That done he closed the drawer and fitted Brady's slide onto his own Beretta.

As he holstered his hybrid pistol he walked over to the now exposed globe. The little lights where pillars had been buried winked on automatically as it started its slow rotation. Was someone buried, like Jamie, in each of those spots?

Jack wanted to smash it—knock it over, pull it apart, and shatter every single one of those glowing bulbs. But he held back. He couldn't leave a hint that he'd been here.

He returned to the desk, pressed the button to close the doors, then headed for the elevator bank. After levering the doors open with the screwdriver, he swung back onto the rungs, closed the doors, then began his descent.

He'd gone two rungs when he heard the pulleys above begin to spin. He looked down and saw an elevator car with "1" on its roof moving his way.

Jack chewed his lip as he watched it rise, urging it to stop on one of the lower floors. But it kept coming. And coming.

Brady? Was the bossman home from his night of pedophilic debauchery?

Okay. No problem. Jack had done what he'd intended. He could return to the Communing Level and hang out for twenty minutes or so, then take an elevator down and stroll back through the lobby to the real world.

Expecting the car to pass him, Jack leaned away from its path. To his horror it began to slow as it approached the twenty-first.

Shit.

He hurried down the rungs and reached the door level just as the car stopped. He peered through the gap between the car doors and the floor doors to see who was trying to rain on his parade.

When he saw the black uniform and glistening chocolate scalp, he stifled a groan and pressed his forehead against the cold steel of one of the rungs.

Jensen… what the hell was the Grand Paladin doing here at this hour?

But the question vanished as he felt a scarlet rush flash through him, saw Jamie's mutilated finger protruding from the concrete. Here was the guy who'd helped bury her alive.

After coming down off the black fugue that had propelled him through his night with Cordova, Jack had been cool, almost detached in dealing with Brady. Maybe that was because he was miles away.

But Jensen… Jack had been planning to catch up with him eventually to settle Jamie's score. Now Jensen was here, within reach.

But Jack had to hold himself in check. This wasn't the time or place. This was Jensen's home field. As much as he hated to, Jack would have to wait. And improvise.

Jack hated to improvise.

6

Jensen held his pistol against his right thigh as he walked through the Communing Level.

"Mr. Roselli?" he called, keeping his tone gentle. "John Roselli?"

Come out, come out wherever you are…

… if you're here at all.

Not many places to hide on this level. He obviously wasn't in the big open area; that left the private Communing Booths along the south wall. Jensen would have to check them one by one…

And if he found no one… what then?

Jensen had no idea.

Jack watched Jensen's elevator car descend on its own to maybe the tenth or eleventh floor and stop. It had started down a minute or so after Jensen stepped off. Apparently the cars were programmed so that one waited at lobby level and the other stayed midshaft when not in use.

If nothing else it gave him some room.

To do what?

One thing he knew: He couldn't hang on these rungs till dawn.

The omnipresent surveillance cameras on the floor limited his options. Brady's lair and this elevator shaft were the only places he could move about unobserved. He could climb down to the base of the shaft and hide there until he could figure an escape route. Or…

Or what?

Jack noticed a metal inspection plate in the wall between the elevator doors. Desperate for some direction, for any sort of plan, he pulled out his screwdriver and went to work on the rusty screws. When he pulled off the plate he found half a dozen or so wires running to and from a pair of switches embedded in the opposite side. It took him a moment to realize he was looking at the rear innards of the elevator call buttons.

Fat lot of good that did him.

And then… an idea…

Jack had planned to catch up with Jensen later. But maybe he could do that now and then simply walk out of here.

He went to work on the wires.

"Where the fuck is he?" Jensen muttered.

He pulled his two-way from a pocket and called the lobby.

"Cruz? Any sign of Roselli?"

"No, sir. He's not up there?"

"Haven't you been watching me?"

"Yessir."

"Well then you know the answer to your question."

He was about to add "you moron" but bit it back. Wrong thing to show frustration with an underling. Always stay in control.

"But, sir, that's impossible," Cruz yammered. "He hasn't used the elevators or the stairs and—"

"Speaking of the stairs, did the doors register when I opened them?"

"Yessir."

Damn. He'd been hoping that was it: a faulty sensor on one of the doors. But then the guy should have shown up on the Communing Floor and stairway cameras.

One fucked-up situation here.

"I'm going to do a little more looking around," he told Cruz, then thumbed the two-way off.

He strode to the elevators and hit the DOWN button. As he waited for the car he turned and surveyed the wide-open space of the Communing Level and the city towers beyond its floor-to-ceiling windows, many lit up even at this hour. But he was not in a mood to enjoy the view.

This temple was his turf. He was responsible for its integrity. Last week a man using three false identities had infiltrated his turf and burned him. He was still stinging with embarrassment. And now another—or perhaps the same man—had invaded his space and disappeared.

Jensen had to find him.

That meant searching the temple from top to bottom—literally. He'd start with Brady's floor. He couldn't imagine how anyone could have reached twenty-two. Only he and Brady knew the access code. Without it you could press 22 all you wanted, but the car would stop at twenty-one and go no farther unless someone already on twenty-two—Brady or Vida, his receptionist—overrode the autostop.

Someone on twenty-two? No chance.

But the seemingly impossible had already happened, so…

He'd have to search twenty-two alone. Couldn't allow a squad of TPs to poke through Brady's quarters. But when he'd determined that the floor was deserted, he'd call the next shift in early and start an organized gang-bang search from twenty-one down. He'd bring in a pack of fucking bloodhounds if he had to. Nobody disappeared on his watch. Nobody.

The elevator dinged behind him and he heard the doors slide open. He turned absently and stepped toward it. Too late he realized that no car awaited him, only cables and empty space.

He let out a terrified bleat as he tilted over the chasm. His heart pounded as he flailed his arms trying to catch the doorway. The fingers of his right hand caught the lip of the molding. Not much to hang on to but enough to stop his forward motion. He teetered there, looking down at the top of the elevator car ten floors below, then began to pull himself back. He was just starting to congratulate himself on his quick reflexes when an arm shot out from the left, grabbed his tunic, and yanked him into the void.

He screamed, turning and windmilling his arms as he began to fall. He twisted far enough around to grab the floor of the doorway, first with one hand, then the other. He hung by his fingertips, kicking his feet back and forth in search of a ledge, a girder, even a loose brick, anything to help support his weight.

But he found nothing.

And then movement to his right as a man swung out of the elevator shaft and crouched before him on the edge. Jensen looked at his face and knew him. Even with his crummy fake beard and his low knit cap and his dirty clothes, Jensen knew him.

Farrell-Amurri-Robertson-Whoever.

The guy.

"Help me!" Jensen said, trying to keep from screaming. He hated pleading with this son of a bitch, but… "Please!"

Then he looked up and saw his eyes, brown and cold as dirt from the bottom of a grave, and knew he was as good as dead.

"'Please'?" the guy said in a low voice, barely above a whisper. "Is that what Jamie Grant said when you were about to cut off her finger?"

Jensen's intestines clenched, sending a wave of terror through his belly.

How could he know? How could he possibly know?

And now the guy had a knife in his latex-gloved hand. He opened it.

"Oh, please! Oh, please don't!"

"I bet Jamie said that too. But what if I were to do some of the same to you? What if I start cutting off your fingers, one at a time?"

He drew the blade lightly across the knuckle of the right little finger, then the left. The steely caress sent a tremor through Jensen's tortured arms.

"Please!"

"Let's make this a game. How many fingers do you think you can spare before you can't hold on any longer? I'm thinking three—a pinkie on each side, and then when you lose a ring finger on, say, the left side, you'll fall. You're a strong man, Jensen, but you're heavy." He nodded and smiled—not a nice smile. "Yeah. I think three will do it."

"No! No, please!"

The eyebrows lifted. "No? Okay. If you say so, then no it is."

And then, miraculously he was folding the knife and leaning away.

He means it?

'"Hey," the guy said. "Just kidding about that amputation thing. Had no intention of doing something like that." He drew back his right leg. "Haven't got time!

The leg shot out and Jensen caught a flash of a rubber sole just before his nose and left cheek exploded in pain. The blow jerked his head back and that was just enough to loosen his grip on the threshold.

His fingers slipped and grabbed empty air. He screamed as he tumbled backward.

Jack watched Jensen's twisting, kicking fall come to an abrupt end atop car one. He'd twisted around in midair to land face first, denting and cracking the roof but not breaking all the way through.

Jack stared down at the scene for a while. He didn't see how anyone could survive that kind of fall, but he'd heard of people who'd lived through worse, and with a guy that size—

Jensen's chest moved.

Jack stared, thinking his eyes were playing tricks. Then he saw him draw another breath.

Christ, what did it take to be rid of this guy?

Right now the fall looked like an accident—Jack needed it to look like an accident. But if Jensen lived…

Couldn't allow that.

Steeling himself for what he was about to do, Jack climbed down the rungs toward the car. Jensen's hands were beginning to move, his arms too. But not a twitch from his legs. Back was probably broken… spinal cord injury.

Well, his spinal cord was about to get worse.

Jack stopped his descent about six feet above Jensen and car one. He turned and clung precariously with his back to the rungs. He hesitated, something holding him back. Then he thought of Jamie Grant having her finger amputated, being buried alive, how it must have felt to be engulfed in concrete…

He jumped, aiming his boots for the back of Jensen's neck. He heard the vertebrae crunch as he hit with enough force to ram the bald head through the roof of the car.

For an instant Jack teetered backward, but he managed to grab one of the cables to steady himself. The palm of the glove was black with grease. He knelt next to Jensen and removed it, inverting it as he pulled it off, pocketing it, and replacing it with a fresh one.

Then he wormed a couple of fingers through the opening around Jensen's head and felt his throat for a pulse. Nada.

Jack straightened and took a deep breath. Two of three scores settled. Only Brady remained.

He climbed back up to the twenty-first, reattached the call-button wires, and replaced the inspection plate. Then he stepped through the doorway and hit the down button. He removed his gloves as the pulleys whirled into motion. Seconds later he was looking at the inside of cab one, with Jensen's glazed eyes staring back at him from a hole in the ceiling. Slow drops of blood dripped from his nose.

Keeping his head down, Jack stepped in and knuckled the lobby button. Jensen's head lay above the angle of the surveillance camera, so as far as any observer could tell, the bearded, knit-capped guy was alone in the car.

When the car stopped, Jack pressed a knuckle against 10 as the doors opened, then stepped out into the lobby.

"Roselli?" the TP at the kiosk called. "Is that John Roselli?"

"No, I'm LFA Roselli," Jack said, making for the front door. He added some attitude. "You got a problem with that?"

This was the last hurdle. If he could get past this guy without too much fuss, he'd be home free.

"Just hold on there. Where have you been?"

Jack didn't break stride. "On the Communing Level."

"No, you weren't. You didn't show up on the cameras so the GP went looking for you and—"

Keep moving… keep moving…

"I just left Jensen. And he didn't mention cameras."

The guard had a two-way up to his lips. "GP Jensen? GP Jensen?" He lowered the two-way and looked at Jack. "He's not answering. Where did you see him?"

"I left him upstairs. He's going to hang around awhile."

As Jack reached the doors the TP came out from behind his kiosk and hurried toward him.

"Wait! You can't go yet!"

"No? Watch me."

Jack pushed through the doors, hit the sidewalk, and began walking uptown. The guard stepped out behind him.

"Hey! Come back! The GP will want to talk to you."

Jack ignored him and kept walking. He was heading home. He needed sleep something awful. He found his car two blocks away where he'd left it, parked on a side street. After checking to make sure the TP hadn't followed him, he slid behind the wheel and hit the ignition.

He drove a dozen blocks then pulled over and threw the Buick into park. He put his head back as far as the headrest would allow and took a few deep breaths. A tremor shuddered through his body. That cold black rush was fading, leaving him shaky and exhausted.

He scared himself when he got like this. Not while he was in the dark thrall—he feared nothing then—but in the low aftermath it unsettled him to know what he was capable of. Sometimes he'd swear never to let it loose again, to push it back next time it lunged for freedom. Yet inevitably, when the moment came, he'd embrace and ride it.

But he never wanted another episode like tonight. It would take him a while to forget this one.

7

As per usual, Luther Brady had awakened early and driven in from the hills. He'd started the day with a slight headache—not unexpected after a night of carousing—but that was gone now. And as always after a bout with the boys, he felt rejuvenated. Give him the right playmates and he'd never need Viagra.

He liked to arrive before seven, when the temple was relatively deserted, and slip up to his quarters.

But this morning he found chaos—flashing police cars and ambulances outside, bustling cops and EMTs within.

One of the TPs recognized him and came rushing up.

"Mr. Brady! Mr. Brady! Oh, thank Noomri you're here! It's terrible! Just terrible!"

"What's happened?"

"It's GP Jensen—he's dead!"

Shock passed through him like a cold front. Jensen? Dead? He'd been Luther's most valuable asset—loyal to the Opus, fearless and relentless in pursuing its completion. What would he do without him?

"How?"

"An accident. He fell down the elevator shaft. It was awful! TP Cruz found him. His head… his head had smashed through the top of one of the elevator cars!"

An accident…

Already Luther could feel a small sense of relief tempering the shock, a slight loosening of his tightened muscles. For a moment there, and he couldn't say exactly why, he'd feared that Jensen had been murdered. Bad enough that he'd lost his right-hand man, but a murder… that would cause a storm in the media. An accident, however… well, that was a nonstory. Accidents can happen anywhere, to anyone, at any time. No reason the Dormentalist temple should be expected to be any different.

"This is terrible," Luther said. "This is tragic. I must get to my quarters to commune with my xelton."

"The police may want to talk to you."

"I'll speak to them in a little while. Right now I'm too upset."

Too true. He'd invested a lot of time, money, and effort in Jensen. He'd been one of a kind. How was he going to replace him? Worse, this was going to set back the Opus Omega timetable.

Damn it to hell! Just when the end was in sight.

He'd worry about a replacement later. Right now he had to get Vida working on a press release, and have her prepare some public remarks about what a kind, gentle, wonderful man Jensen was.

Oh, yes. And he needed her to look up Jensen's first name. He should know the first name of the man he'd be publicly mourning.

8

The clock radio woke Jack at nine. He lay in bed listening to the news about a murder in the Bronx and a fatal accident in the Midtown Dormentalist temple. He shook off the memory of Jensen's dead eyes staring at him from the ceiling on the elevator ride down to the lobby and got to work.

Wearing boxers and a T-shirt, he dug out his X-Acto knife kit and seated himself at the round, paw-foot oak table in his front room. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves—man, he was going through these things like chewing gum—and got to work.

He removed the stack of Cordova's photos from the envelope and shuffled through them a second time. Familiarity did not make the task any less nauseating. Last night, while Cordova was unconscious, Jack had sorted them into three stacks: Brady alone, Brady pulling on the mask, and the masked Brady with the boys. He'd picked one at random from each of the first two, but it had taken him a while to find three from the third with the boys faced away from the camera. He'd cut off the corners where the camera had imprinted the date and time, and left them all with Cordova.

On this new pass through the stacks, Jack culled the most damning examples from each pile, then set to work with the X-Acto, cutting out the centers of the boys' faces. No need for something like this to follow them the rest of their lives. Again he cut off the camera's date-and-time imprint.

That done, he placed them in a FedEx envelope along with the letter he'd printed out from Cordova's office computer.

If you're reading this, I am dead, and this is the man who did it. Please don't let these pictures go to waste.

Richard Cordova

He sealed it and addressed it to The Light. He made up the return address.

Then he picked up his cell phone for the first of two calls he had to make. Information connected him to the Pennsylvania State Police. When he said he wanted to report a crime, he was shunted to another line. He told the officer who answered that they needed to go to a certain farm where a concrete cylinder had been buried, and that within that cylinder they'd find the remains of the missing New York City reporter, Jamie Grant. He also told them where they could find the mold used to make the cylinder and that the symbols on it were strictly Dormentalist.

The officer wanted to know who he was and how he knew all this.

Yeah, right.

The second call went to Mrs. Roselli-Not. She picked up on the second ring.

"Good morning, Jack."

That startled him. He had no name listed with his phone. Even with caller ID, how could she…?

Maybe she recognized his number. Or maybe she didn't need electronics.

"Good morning. Peeling well enough for company today?"

"Yes. Finally. You may come over now if you wish."

"I wish. See you in about half an hour."

He got dressed, switched his latex gloves for leather, and headed out. He had the overnight envelope in hand and Anya's skin in the pocket of his coat. One he'd mail along the way. The other was for show and tell—he'd show and the old lady would tell.

He hoped.

9

Gia stood at the corner of Second Avenue and Fifty-eighth and marveled at how good she felt today. She seemed to have regained most of her strength and ambition. She'd even done some painting this morning.

But now it was time for some fresh air. This was the first time she'd been out of the house in almost a week. It was good to know the city was still here. It even smelled good. A fall breeze was diluting the fumes from passing cars and trucks. And most amazing of all: traffic was moving.

She planned to walk up to Park, maybe head downtown for a few blocks, then circle back home. As she waited for the light to change, she felt the baby kick and had to smile. What a delicious sensation. Tomorrow she was scheduled for another ultrasound. Everything was going to be fine, she just knew it.

Finally, the walking green. She took one step off the curb but froze when she heard a blaring horn. She looked up and saw a delivery van racing toward her along the avenue. Gia heard a scream—her own—as she turned and leaped back onto the sidewalk. One of the front tires bounced over the curb just inches from her feet. The sideview mirror brushed the sleeve of her sweater as the truck slewed sideways and slammed into the rear of a parked UPS truck.

The rest of the world seemed to stand silent and frozen for a heartbeat or two as glittering fragments of shattered glass tumbled through the air. catching the sunlight as they showered the impact area, and then cries of shock and alarm as people began running for the truck.

Gia stood paralyzed, feeling her heart pounding as she watched bystanders help the shaken and bloodied driver from the car. She looked back to where she'd been standing and realized with a stab of fear that if she hadn't moved, the truck would have made a direct hit. At the speed he'd been going, she could not imagine anyone, especially her and the baby, surviving an impact like that.

She looked back and saw the driver shuffling toward her across Fifty-eighth. Blood oozed from the left side of his forehead.

"Dear lady, I am so sorry," he said in accented English—Eastern Europe, maybe. "The brakes, they stop working… the steering it no good. I am so happy you are well."

Unable to speak yet, Gia could only nod. First the near miscarriage, now this. If she didn't know better she might think somebody up there didn't want this baby to be born.

10

Sitting at his office desk, Luther Brady studied the printout as TP Cruz stood at attention on the other side. Cruz looked exhausted, as he should: He'd been up all night and had lost his boss to boot.

"So the elevator records show this John Roselli going to the twenty-first floor and nowhere else."

"Yessir. At least not by elevator. GP Jensen used it next."

The printout showed the elevator going directly to twenty-one a second time. The next use after that was when it was called back to twenty-one and taken to the lobby.

"And this time?" He tapped the paper.

"That was Roselli again, sir. He's on the tape. But there was something strange going on with Roselli and the tapes."

"For instance?"

"Well—"

"Excuse me?"

Luther looked up and saw his secretary standing in the office doorway.

"Yes, Vida?"

"I just got a call from downstairs. The police are here again and want to see you."

Luther rubbed his eyes, then glanced at his watch. Only ten A.M. When would this morning end?

"Tell them I've already given my statement and have nothing more to add."

"They say they're here on a murder investigation."

"Murder?" Did they think Jensen was murdered? "Very well, send them up."

He dismissed Cruz, then leaned back in his desk chair and swiveled it toward the morning sky gleaming beyond the windows. Jensen murdered… Luther remembered his impression when he'd first heard the news. But who could survive a confrontation with that human mountain of bone and muscle, let alone hurl him down an elevator shaft? It didn't seem possible.

Minutes later Vida opened the door and looked in on him. "The police are here."

"Send them in."

Luther remained seated as she stepped aside and admitted a pair of middle-aged, standard-issue detectives. Both wore brown shoes and wrinkled suits under open, rumpled coats. But they weren't alone. A trio of younger, more casually dressed men followed them. Each carried what looked like an oversized toolbox.

Alarm at the number of invaders and the looks on the detectives' faces drew him to his feet.

"What's all this?"

The dark-haired detective in the lead had a pockmarked face. He flashed a gold badge and said, "Detective Young, NYPD." He nodded toward his lighter-haired partner. "This is Detective Holusha. We're both from the Four-Seven precinct. Are you Luther Brady?"

The detective's cold tone and the way he looked at him—as if he were some sort of vermin—drew the saliva from Luther's mouth.

He nodded. "Yes."

"Then this"—Young reached into his pocket, retrieved a folded set of papers, and dropped them on Luther's desk—"is for you."

Luther snatched it up and unfolded it. His eyes scanned the officialese but the meaning failed to register.

"What is this?"

"A search warrant for your office and living quarters."

The three other men were fanning out around Luther, opening their toolboxes, pulling on rubber gloves.

"What? You can't! I mean, this is outrageous! I'm calling my lawyer! You're not doing anything until he gets here!"

Barry Goldsmith would put them in their places.

"That's not the way it works, Mr. Brady. You have the right to call your attorney, but meanwhile we'll be executing the warrant."

"We'll just see about that!"

As Luther reached for the phone the detective said, "Do you own a nine-millimeter pistol, Mr. Brady?"

My pistol? What do they want with…?

"Yes, I do. Licensed and legally registered, I'll have you know."

"We do know. A Beretta 92. That's one of the reasons we're here."

"I don't under—" And then it hit him. "Oh, no! Was Jensen shot?"

The other detective, Holusha, frowned. "Jensen? Who's Jensen?"

"My chief of security… he died this morning… an accident. I thought you were here about—"

Young said, "Where is your pistol, Mr. Brady?"

"Right here in the desk." Luther reached toward the drawer. "Here, I'll show—"

Holusha's voice snapped like a whip. "Please don't touch the weapon, Mr. Brady."

Luther snatched his hand back. "It's in the second drawer."

"Step away from the desk, please."

As Luther complied, Young signaled one of the younger men. "Romano." He pointed to the drawer. "Gun's in there."

Luther felt as if reality were slipping away. Here in his building, his temple, his word was law. But now his office, his home, his sanctum, had been invaded. He was no longer in control. These storm troopers had taken over.

And no one was saying why. He felt as if he'd fallen into a Kafka story.

It had to be a mistake. Did they think he'd shot somebody? Who? Not that it mattered. He'd never even aimed that pistol at a human being, let alone shot one.

This mix-up would be straightened out, and then someone at the District Attorney's office would pay. Oh, how they'd pay.

"What…?" He swallowed. "What am I supposed to have done?"

Holusha pulled an index card from the breast pocket of his shirt.

"How well do you know Richard Cordova?"

"Cordova?"

Luther ran the name through his brain as he watched the man called Romano lift the Beretta from the drawer. He held it suspended from a wire he'd hooked through the trigger guard.

Cordova… he was drawing a blank. But how could anyone be expected to think under these circumstances?

"I don't believe I've ever heard of him. It's quite impossible for me to remember the name of every Church member. We have so—"

"We don't think he was a Dormentalist."

Was?

"What happened to him?"

"He was murdered late last night or early this morning. He was pistol-whipped, then shot three times with a nine millimeter. When was the last time you fired your pistol, Mr. Brady?"

Luther relaxed a little. Here was where he'd turn the tables.

"Four, maybe five months ago, and that was on a shooting range at a paper target, not at a human being."

Romano sniffed the muzzle and shook his head as he looked up at Young.

"Beg to differ. This was fired recently. Very recently." He lifted the pistol farther, twisting it this way and that as he inspected it. He stiffened. "My-my-my. If I'm not mistaken, we've got blood and maybe a little tissue in the rear sight notch."

Luther watched in uncomprehending horror as Romano dropped the Beretta into a clear plastic evidence bag. This couldn't be happening! First Jensen, now—

"Wait! This is a terrible mistake. I don't know this Cordova person! I've never even heard of him!"

Holusha smirked. "Well, he's heard of you."

"I… I don't understand."

"You probably thought you'd cleaned out his house pretty good, but you missed a few."

"A few what?"

Holusha only shook his head in reply. Luther looked to Young for an answer but all questions dissolved when he saw the detective's hard look.

"We'll need you to come up to the Four-Seven for questioning, Mr. Brady."

Luther's stomach plummeted. "Am I under arrest?"

"No, but we need some answers about your pistol and your whereabouts last night."

That was a relief. The thought of being led through the temple in handcuffs was unbearable.

"I want my lawyer along."

"Fine. Call him and have him meet us there."

He hadn't done anything wrong, but he wanted Barry along to keep everything on the up and up.

They had to be mistaken about his pistol… had to be.

That reddish-brown stain he'd spotted in the rear sight couldn't be blood. But if not, what was it?

11

"What should I call you?" Jack said. "I mean, since your name isn't Roselli?"

The old woman looked up at him from the seat of a Far Eastern fan-backed armchair. Her gnarled hands rested on her silver-handled cane. Her face was still round and puffy, her sinophilic apartment as crowded as ever with screens, statues, and inlaid tables. She wore a red turtleneck and blue slacks this time.

She cocked her head. "What makes you think it's not?"

Jack had run the gauntlet of Esteban the doorman and Benno the Rottweiler—who'd subjected him to an uncomfortably thorough inspection of his crotch—and demurred the offers of tea and shortbread cookies. Now, finally, he stood before the old lady who'd told him she was Maria Roselli.

"Because I found Johnny Roselli and he says his mother's been dead four years. You look pretty alive to me, Mrs…?"

"Why don't you just call me Herta."

"Is that your name?"

A small smile. "It's as good as any."

Swell. "Okay… Herta. I can go with that. But—"

She lifted one of her thin, gnarled hands from atop her silver-headed cane in a stop motion. "Just let me say that Johnny was both right and wrong when he told you his mother was dead. That may be true of his birth mother, but not of me. For I am his mother too, just as I am yours."

Jack felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He wasn't going to have to argue with her. She'd just—in so many words—admitted who she was.

He sank into a chair opposite her.

"So there it is: You're one of them."

A small smile stretched the tight skin of her moon face. "And who would 'them' be?"

"The ladies with the dogs. The ladies who know too damn much. You're the fourth."

The first had been the Russian lady with the malamute in June. The next had been younger, wearing a sari and leading a German shepherd. And the last had been Anya with Oyv, her fearless chihuahua. They'd all claimed to be his mother.

He had no idea who these women were, or how many more of them existed, but somehow they represented a mysterious third force in the eternal tug of war between the Otherness and the Ally.

"Yes, I suppose I am."

"On our first meeting you told me you didn't know Anya Mundy. But obviously you do. How many other lies have you told me?"

Under different circumstances he might have been angry, but now he was too tired.

"I did not lie. You said, 'Do you know an older woman named Anya?' I did know such a person, but she is gone. You should have asked me, 'Did you ever know an older woman named Anya?' Then I would have given you a different answer."

Annoyed, Jack leaned forward. "Okay, let's bypass the wordplay and cut to the chase: You manipulated me into getting involved with the Dormentalism. Why?"

Herta reached out and stroked Benno's head. The dog closed its eyes and craned its neck against her hand.

"Because it must be destroyed. Or barring that, it must be damaged, crippled, driven to its knees."

This lady didn't mince words.

"Because it's connected to the Otherness?"

She nodded. "It was inspired by the Otherness, and has become its tool."

"How does a cosmic force inspire a cult?"

"Through a man whose drug-addled mind was open to influence when the Adversary was conceived—or I should say, reconceived."

The Adversary… also known as the One… who moved about under even more identities and names than Jack… the Otherness's agent provocateur in this world… whose True Name Jack had learned only a few months ago…

Rasalom.

And Jack was pretty sure he could name the owner of that drug-addled mind.

"Cooper Blascoe told me he got the idea for Dormentalism from a dream back in the late sixties. Was that when Rasa—"

Herta's hand shot up. "Do not say his True Name! I don't want him to know where I am. And neither do you."

Jack hated to admit it, but she had that right. He'd had a taste of what this Rasalom guy could do. Pretty scary.

"What do you mean, 'reconceived'?"

"After millennia of striving to maximize the human misery that fed him, he was permanently eliminated shortly before World War II. At least that was what was thought. But in 1968, through a freak set of circumstances, he contrived to be reconceived in the womb of an unsuspecting woman."

The date rang a bell… Jack had been to a town where a "burst of Otherness" had occurred in 1968… been there a number of times. None of his visits had been pleasant, and he'd nearly lost his life there.

"That wouldn't have been in Monroe, Long Island, would it?"

She nodded. "It would. And that was not the first time he came back from the dead."

"Anya mentioned that he'd been reborn a number of times. But look, I've got to tell you, Cooper Blascoe didn't seem like a bad guy. Hard to believe a hippie like him was working for the Otherness."

"He was merely a pawn. His dream of the Hokano world that he turned into a pamphlet was Otherness-inspired. He planted the seed that Luther Brady later twisted into the monstrous entity of his church, to use as a tool to help the Otherness dominate this sphere."

Jack shook his head. "But as I understand it, the Otherness means to change everything here, make our reality living hell. Brady doesn't seem the type who'd try to screw himself. Unless of course he's insane."

"He is quite sane, but is possessed of the notion that the one who completes the Opus Omega—"

"Opus…?"

"Opus Omega: the Last Task, the End Work—burying those obscene columns in all the designated spots."

"You mean…" Jack pulled the flap of Anya's skin from his pocket and unfolded it for Herta to see "… in a pattern like this?"

A cloud of pain passed across the old woman's puffy face.

She sighed. "Yes. Just like that."

"So it all comes together. 'No more coincidences,' right? The flap of skin I can't throw away, your hiring me to infiltrate the Dormentalists where I'd get a view of Brady's globe and recognize the pattern… everything's been carefully orchestrated."

He felt like a goddamn puppet.

"'Orchestrated' gives me too much credit. No one—not the Otherness, not the Ally, and certainly not I—has that much control. People and objects are placed in proximity in the hope that certain outcomes will ensue."

"Is Brady in the same boat?"

"Luther Brady is driving himself. I doubt he has any concept of what the Otherness's new world order will be like, but I have little doubt that he believes that the man who completes the Opus Omega will be rewarded with an exalted position in it."

"But how does he even know about this Opus Omega?"

"He too had a dream, but his was of a map of the world. It showed the nexus points around the globe, each radiating lines toward the others. Wherever three lines crossed, the intersection glowed. He had no idea of its significance until a forbidden book, The Compendium of Srem, was delivered into his hands."

"Forbidden, huh? How exactly does a book become forbidden? Like banned in Boston?"

She offered him a tolerant smile. "In a way. It was banned in the fifteenth century by the Catholic church."

"Six hundred years… pretty old book."

"That was merely when it was banned. It's much older than that. No one is quite sure how old. The Compendium first came to the church's attention during the Spanish Inquisition when it was discovered in the possession of a Moorish scholar whose name is lost. He was put through unimaginable agonies before he died, but either could not or would not say who had given it to him.

"The Grand Inquisitor himself, Torquemada, is said to have been so re-pulsed after reading only a part of The Compendium that he ordered a huge bonfire built and hurled the book into the flames. But it would not burn. Nor would it be cut by the sharpest sword or the heaviest ax. So he dropped it into the deepest well in the Spanish Empire; he filled that well with granite boulders, then built the monastery of St. Thomas over it."

Jack gave a low whistle. "What the hell was in it?"

"Many things. Lists and descriptions of unspeakable rites and ceremonies, diagrams of ancient clockwork machines, but the heart of The Compendium is the outline of the Opus Omega—the final process that will assure the ascent of what it calls 'the Other world.'"

Jack felt a chill. "The Otherness. Even back then?"

"Surely you realize that this cosmic shadow war is about far more than humanity. The millions of years since the first hominid reared up on its hind legs are an eye blink in the course of the conflict. It began before the Earth was formed and will continue long after the sun's furnace goes cold."

Jack did know that—at least he'd been told that—but it was still hard to accept.

"And as with all forbidden things," Herta went on, "77ie Compendium could not stay buried. A small subsect of monks within the monastery spent years digging tunnels and secretly excavating the well. They retrieved the book, but before they could put it to use they were all slain and the book disappeared for five hundred years."

"If a boulder-filled well with a monastery overhead couldn't keep it out of circulation, where did it hide during those centuries?"

"In a place built by the Ally's warrior—"

"You mean the one Anya told me about—the one I'm supposed to replace? He's that old?"

Here was another thing Jack couldn't or wouldn't accept: Like it or not, he'd been drafted into this cosmic war.

"Much older," Herta said. "Almost as old as the Adversary. More than five centuries ago he trapped the Adversary in a stone keep in a remote pass in Eastern Europe. He sealed away many forbidden books there as well, to keep them out of the hands of men and women susceptible to the Otherness. But the fortress was broached by the German Army in the spring of 1941. Fortunately the Adversary was killed—albeit temporarily—before he could escape."

"But this Compendium thing made it out?"

"Yes. It and other forbidden books ended up in the hands of a man named Alexandru, one of the keep's caretakers. After the war he sold them to an antiquarian book dealer in Bucharest who in turn sold The Compendium to an American collector. A quarter of a century later, the collector was murdered and the book stolen."

"Let me guess who was responsible for that: Rasa—I mean, the Adversary, right?"

"Not personally. He was a child at the time. But his guardian then, a man named Jonah Stevens, committed the crime and saw to it that The Compendium reached a recent college graduate named Luther Brady."

"And the book told him to start burying concrete columns at these spots around the globe?"

Herta shook her head. "Not start—finish. The Opus Omega had been begun long before, but there was no way for those ancients to reach certain parts of the Old World, let alone the New. Remember, The Compendium was already sealed in the Transylvania Alps when Columbus set sail for the Americas."

"So Brady picked up where they left off. But why Brady?"

"Because he's the sort who is highly susceptible to Otherness influence. He was and still is inspired by dreams of power—of literally changing the world."

"I didn't mean Brady specifically. I mean, why work through someone else at all? Why doesn't the Adversary just go out and bury these pillars himself? This Opus would probably be finished by now, and he wouldn't have to deal with all this Dormentalist bull along the way."

"But that would mean revealing himself, something the Adversary does not want to do."

"Why not?"

"Fear. He avoids drawing attention to himself for fear of alerting the Ally's champion. So he must work behind the scenes."

"I've seen some of what the Adversary can do, and if he's afraid… well, this champion must be one tough cookie. Do you know him?"

Herta nodded. "I know him well."

"What's his name?"

Herta hesitated, then, "His mother called him Glaeken."

12

Luther Brady leaned toward Barry Goldsmith, his personal attorney for the past dozen years. Barry had met him here at the Forty-seventh Precinct house and the two of them had been sitting alone at this battered table in this stuffy interrogation room for what felt like hours.

"How long can they keep us here?" Luther whispered.

He was sure they were being observed through the pane of mirrored glass set in the wall before them.

"We could leave now. I could demand that they either charge you and arrest you, or we walk."

"Arrested… I don't want to be—"

"Don't worry." Barry patted his arm. The gesture retracted the sleeve on his charcoal Armani suit, revealing his glittering Rolex. "I don't do criminal defense, but I know enough to tell you that they'll need a lot of evidence to put the cuffs on someone of your stature and pristine record. And we know they don't have that evidence—can't have that evidence, right?"

He sounded as if he wanted reassurance. Well, Luther would give it to him.

"Barry, listen to me and trust me when I say that I have never even heard of this Richard Cordova, let alone done him harm. And they say it happened up here in the Bronx. I don't know if I've ever in my life even set foot in the Bronx."

Another pat on the arm. "Well, then, we've nothing to worry about. They need motive and, considering that you've never heard of the man, you have none. They need opportunity, and a man who's never been to the Bronx could not have committed a crime here."

"But they took my pistol…"

Barry frowned. "That bothers me a little too. Was it out of your possession at any time during the past twenty-four hours?"

"I haven't been carrying it around, if that's what you mean. It's been in my desk."

"Which is in your office, and we both know what a fortress that is."

Yes, a fortress to which only he and Jensen—

Jensen! He could have taken the pistol. Luther couldn't imagine why, but—

No. He remembered seeing a report this morning from the Paladin office tracing Jensen's whereabouts last night. Nothing about going to the twenty-second floor. In fact, no one had entered the top floor last night—neither by elevator nor the stairway.

So it couldn't have been Jensen. But could his death be in some way connected…?

"The pistol will vindicate you," Barry was saying. "That's probably why they've kept us waiting: ballistics tests. They'll compare slugs from your gun to the ones in the murdered man. When they get no match, they'll have to apologize. And that's when I'll go to work. They'll regret they ever heard your name."

"But that's the big question: Where did they get my name? There must be thousands and thousands of nine-millimeter pistols registered in this city, and who knows how many unregistered. But detectives from the Bronx show up on my doorstep. Why?"

Barry frowned again and shrugged.

Luther pressed on. "What worries me more is that one of the cops said my gun had been fired recently. And that there was blood and tissue in the rear sight. And I looked as he was bagging it and… and I thought I could see a brown stain there."

Barry's frown deepened. He appeared to be about to speak but stopped when the door next to the mirror opened.

Detectives Young and Holusha entered. Holusha carried a manila folder. He dropped it on the table as he and Young took seats opposite Luther. Young's expression was neutral, but Holusha's sent a spasm through Luther's bowels. He looked like a chubby cat contemplating a trapped mouse.

"I'll cut to the chase," Young said. "The ballistics people say the slugs that killed Cordova came from your pistol."

"Yeah," Holusha added. "Got a perfect match on the grooves, and guess what—you missed one of your brass. We found it in the darkroom. Tests show your firing pin fired that round."

A spasm again ran through Luther's gut. "That's impossible!"

Young ignored him and picked up without missing a beat. "The lab found blood on the rear sight that matches the blood type of the victim. DNA results are weeks away, but…" He left the rest to the imagination.

This couldn't be! It wasn't possible! This had to be a nightmare and he'd awaken any minute now.

"He's being framed!" Barry cried. "Can't you see that?"

"Two sets of fingerprints were lifted from your pistol," Young said, his gaze never shifting from Luther's face. "Yours, Mr. Brady—which we have from your gun permit application—and the victim's." His eyes narrowed. "Anything you want to tell us, Mr. Brady?"

"He has nothing to tell you except that he's being framed!" Barry said, slamming his palm on the table. "The pistol was stolen from his office, used to murder a man he's never heard of, and then returned! It's the only explanation!"

"A man he's never heard of?" Holusha said through a tight smile. "You're sure of that?"

"Damn right, he's sure of that! You may have a weapon, detectives, but you do not have a motive!"

"No?" Holusha opened the folder and arranged three photos in plastic sleeves before him. Then he slid them across the table. "I'd say these were motive, wouldn't you? Mucho motive."

Luther's blood turned to ice when he saw them.

13

"Glaeken…" Jack rolled the unfamiliar name over his tongue. "Strange name."

"It is ancient. He goes by another name these days." Don't we all, Jack thought.

"Well, then, why don't you tell Glaeken what's going on?"

"He knows."

"He knows!" Jack leaned forward. "Then why isn't he out there kicking Adversarial butt?"

Herta sighed. "He would if he could, but Glaeken no longer has the powers he once did. He was relieved of his immortality in 1941 after the Adversary was killed, and has aged since."

"But that was over sixty years ago. He must be…"

"Old. Still quite a vital man, but he could never stand up to the Adversary in his present condition. That is why you have been… involved."

Involved, Jack thought. Nice way to put it. Dragged kicking and screaming into something I want no part of is more like it.

Slow nausea curdled his stomach as he began to realize there might be no way out for him. The Ally's torch was going to be passed his way, no doubt sooner than later if Glaeken was as old as Herta said.

Then he thought of something else…

"The Adversary is hiding from a frail old man… that means he doesn't know." He barked a laugh—first laugh in a couple of days. It felt good. "Oh, that's rich!"

"This is not a laughing matter. As long as the Adversary remains unaware of Glaeken's circumstances, he will be cautious in his doings. He will work through surrogates to prepare the way for the Otherness. But should he learn the truth…"

"The gloves will come off."

"As far as Glaeken is concerned, yes. He hates Glaeken. And he should, for Glaeken has killed him more than once. The Adversary will hunt him down and destroy him."

"And when he's finished with Glaeken, what happens to me?"

"You'll take his place. But don't worry about that now. It hasn't happened yet. It may never happen."

"But—"

She waved a hand in the air. "There is no point in worrying about events and situations over which you have no control."

No control… that's the part I worry about.

"Can I ask an obvious question: Why doesn't the Ally just step in and squash the Adversary and these Otherness ass-kissers like the bugs they are?"

"First off, you must remember—and this is always a blow to the human ego—that we are not that important. We are a mere crumb of crust on the edge of the pie they are vying for. Secondly… I don't know this for sure, but from what I've observed I sense a certain game play in the conflict. I

sense that how one side increases its share of the pie is almost as important as the securing of the extra piece itself."

"Swell."

"That's just my sense of it. I could be wrong. But I can assure you that the Ally is active here in a limited way, and that's good, I suppose."

"You suppose?"

"Well, it counterbalances the Otherness, but I'd prefer that this world, this reality, had been left out of the conflict altogether." She raised a fist toward the picture window. "Take your fight somewhere else and leave us alone!"

"Amen to that."

"The Ally's presence, though minimal, will prevent the Adversary from becoming too bold even should he learn the truth about Glaeken."

"Which brings us back to Brady and Dormentalism and buried pillars. What's the story there?"

"The Compendium laid out the requirements of the Opus Omega: Find each site as laid out on the map, and there bury a thirteen-foot column of stone quarried from a site proximal to a nexus point. Luther Brady improvised a method of substituting concrete that included some sand or earth from within or around a nexus point. But special rock or sand isn't all that is necessary. Each column requires one more indispensable ingredient: a living human being—at least living when the column is sealed. Dormentalist "martyrs"—missionaries who go missing while spreading the Dormentalist gospel in Third World countries—aren't missing at all. They're buried in cylindrical tombs all over the globe."

"Not all of them are Dormentalists," Jack said, feeling a heaviness settle on him.

Herta nodded. "Yes, I know. Your friend, the reporter. I'm sorry."

Friend… we didn't know each other long enough to be close friends. But still…

"That is what Dormentalism is all about," she said. "Luther Brady turned a silly, hedonistic cult into a money-making machine to finance Opus Omega. Brady knows that fusion is a hoax. No powers are achieved at the top of the Dormentalist ladder. But the exercises practiced along the long slow road to the upper rungs do have a purpose: They identify people susceptible to Otherness influence. The aspirants may believe the nonsense about getting in touch with their inner xelton, but what they're really doing is more finely attuning themselves to the Otherness. Luther Brady reveals Opus Omega to the select few who reach the top of the ladder, telling them it will bring about the Grand Fusion—never mentioning the Otherness. He then appoints these sick folk as his Continental and Regional Overseers to further the Opus."

"Let's just say he completes this Opus Omega. What then?"

"When pillars are buried in all the designated sites, the Otherness will become ascendant. The Adversary will then come into his own and the world will begin to change."

The world changing into a place hospitable to those creatures he'd fought down in Florida… he didn't want to picture that.

"Okay, then. At Brady's current rate of pillar planting, when do you think he'll be done?"

"In about a year. Perhaps less."

Jack closed his eyes. A year… his child would be here by then. Neither the baby nor Gia nor Vicky would have a future if Brady succeeded.

And then the solution struck him. So obvious…

"We'll dig them up! I'll put an excavating crew together and we'll yank them out faster than Brady can bury them. We'll make his…" Herta was shaking her head. "No? Why not?"

"Once they are inserted into the ground, the damage is done. It's too late. Digging them up will accomplish nothing."

Damn. He'd thought he was onto something.

"That's why you want the Dormentalist Church, as you said, destroyed… damaged, crippled, driven to its knees."

She nodded.

Jack rubbed his jaw. "Destroying it… that's a tall order. It's everywhere, in just about every country. But crippling it… that might be possible. Let's say Brady gets kicked out of the driver's seat. What will that do?"

"It won't stop Opus Omega—his High Council will carry on without him—but it will slow it down. And that will buy us some time."

"For what?"

She shrugged. "Time for the Ally to realize the extent of the threat to its interests here. Time for the Adversary to make a mistake—he's not infallible, you know. He's made mistakes before. And he's eager, so eager for his promised moment. After millennia of struggle, his time is almost within reach, and he's impatient. That may work to our advantage."

"I think we may just get that extra time."

Her eyes brightened. "You do? How? Why?"

"If things go the way I've planned, Mr. Luther Brady should be doing a perp walk sooner rather than later."

"A perp…?"

"Just keep watching your TV." Jack stood and noticed Anya's skin flap still folded in his hand. He held it up. "What do I do with this?"

"It was meant for you to keep. Don't you want it?"

"It's not exactly something I care to frame and hang over my bed. Why don't you take it. You know, as a reminder of Anya."

Herta rose and began unbuttoning her blouse. "I need no reminder."

"What—?" Jack said, startled and embarrassed. "What are you doing? Wait a second here."

Her twisted fingers moved more nimbly than perhaps they should have, considering her swollen knuckles.

She glanced up at him. "A second or two is all this will take."

As she undid the bottom button she turned away toward the picture window and let the back of her blouse drop to her waist.

Jack gasped. "Holy—!"

"There is nothing holy about this, I assure you."

He stared at her damaged skin, at the array of cigarette burn-sized scars and the lines crisscrossing between them. Except for one fresh wound, slowly oozing red to the left of her spine, her back was an exact copy of Anya's.

"What's going on here?"

"It is a map of my pain," she said over her shoulder.

"That's just what Anya said. She called it a map of the Adversary's efforts to destroy her. Why?"

"Because he cannot win if I am still alive."

As crazy as that sounded, Jack took it at face value.

"But who are you?"

"Your mother."

Jack fought an urge to scream and kept his voice low. "Not that again. Look—"

"No. You look. Look more closely at my back."

"If you mean that fresh wound, I see it." Realization clubbed him. "The pillar out in Pennsylvania! You mean, every time Brady and his gang buries one of those pillars—"

"I feel it. I bleed."

Jack sat again. "I don't understand."

"You do not need to. But look closely and tell me if you see any other difference."

Jack stared and noticed something else Anya hadn't had: a deep depression in the small of her back, big enough for, say, two of Jack's fingers. He reached toward it, then snatched his hand back.

Herta backed toward him. "Go ahead. Touch it. It's healed now."

Jack felt a touch of queasiness. "No, I don't think—"

"Place your fingers in the wound. It will not bite you."

Jack reached out again and slid his forefinger to the first joint into the depression. It was deep; he could feel nothing against his fingertip. He eased his finger farther in, to the second knuckle. And still nothing against his fingertip.

Jack couldn't bring himself to push farther. He withdrew and leaned closer to see if he could get an idea of how deep it was. Maybe then—

He jerked his head back. "Jesus Christ!"

"He had nothing to do with this either."

Had he seen what he'd thought he'd seen? No. Not possible.

But then, "not possible" had lost all meaning some time ago.

Jack peered again into the opening. He saw a scar-lined tunnel and, at its far end, light. Daylight. A circle of blue sky and distant buildings.

Christ, he was looking at the Queens waterfront on the East River, viewing it through a hole that ran clear through Herta's body. Jack backed away and leaned to his right, looking past Herta at a wider view of the same scene through the picture window. It was as if Herta had been run through with a spear and the wound hadn't closed—it had healed along the walls of its circumference, yes, but left an open tunnel through her body.

"What—what did that?"

"Anya's passing," Herta said, pulling her blouse back up over her shoulders.

"That must have been—"

"It was beyond anything I have ever experienced. Far beyond the agony each pillar inflicts."

Jack spoke slowly, feeling his way along. "Why should these pillars wound you? Who are you?"

"I've told you: I'm you're—"

"Please don't say 'mother' again."

"Then I shall say nothing, for that is the truth."

He tried another tack. "If every pillar wounds you, I can see why you want Brady stopped. But if he finishes the Opus, that in a way benefits you too. I mean, no more pain from new pillars."

Herta nodded and turned as she finished rebuttoning her blouse. She fixed him with her dark eyes.

"Yes, I suppose that is true about no more pain. Because I will be dead. The whole purpose of Opus Omega is to kill me."

14

The interrogation room was silent, breathless while Luther Brady stared at the photos and felt as if his bones were dissolving.

This couldn't be! These photos… him with the two boys from last night. At least he thought it was last night. He didn't hire the same boys every time and couldn't make out their faces. But yes! That was the mask he'd used last night. He rotated through a series of them for variety. But last night or last month didn't matter. The very existence of these photos was a horror, but even worse, they were in the hands of the police.

How? Who?

Petrovich! He'd delivered the boys as usual. This time he must have stayed around and shot these! The greedy little shit! He—

But how did they wind up with this Richard Cordova they were talking about? And who had used his pistol to kill him?

"Wh… wh…" His dry tongue seemed unable to form words.

"Fakes," Barry said in a dismissive wave of his hands. "Very obvious fakes. I'm no computer whiz, but even I know what can be done with Adobe Photoshop. They've even put a mask on the guy in these photos! Give me a break, will you? The whole thing is ludicrous!"

"Where…" Finally Luther could speak. "Where did you get these?"

Holusha tapped the center photo. "We found them under the cushion of the victim's desk chair. The chair where he was killed." The finger moved to a brown stain along the edge of the photo. "That's some of his blood that leaked around the cushion."

"You must believe me," Luther said, leaning forward and covering the photos with his hands. He didn't want anyone, especially Barry, looking at them. But he had to convince these detectives. "I did not kill that man! I swear it! I am being framed for something I did not do!"

Young hadn't broken his relentless stare. "Why would someone want to do that, Mr. Brady?"

"The Dormentalist Church has more than its share of enemies," Barry said. "Mr. Brady is the Church's spiritual leader, its public face. If this plot to disgrace and discredit him succeeds, the Church will suffer irreparable damage."

"Well, then," Young said, "the solution is very simple. If you weren't at Mr. Cordova's house last night, Mr. Brady, where were you?"

With those boys!

But he couldn't admit that. And what good would it do? He'd never allowed any of the boys to see his face. Not even Petrovich knew what he looked like.

"I was in my cabin upstate."

"Can anyone vouch for your presence there?"

"I… no, I was there alone. I go there every Sunday evening to escape the pressures of the Church and the city so that I can commune with my xelton."

Holusha snickered. "Your xelton or whatever it is looks an awful lot like a couple of teenage boys."

"No one to verify your presence at the cabin last night?" Young said.

"No."

"I didn't think so." Young withdrew some folded papers from his inner coat pocket. "I have here a warrant for your arrest."

As he handed it to Barry, Holusha pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

"Luther Brady," Young said, "I'm arresting you for the murder of Richard Cordova. I know your attorney is already present but I'm going to read you your rights anyway: You have the right to remain silent…"

The rest of the words faded into the roaring in Luther's ears. He'd heard them on TV so many times he knew them by heart. But never in his darkest nightmare had he imagined that someone would be reciting Miranda to him…

He glanced at Barry, who'd grown awfully silent, and saw him staring at the photos.

"Barry…?"

The attorney looked up at him and shook his head. He seemed to have receded to the far side of the room.

"You need more help than I can give you, Luther. You need a criminal attorney. A good one. I'll start making some calls right away."

"Barry, you've got to keep these photos from the public. They're fakes, Barry." He turned to Young and Holusha. "I swear they're fakes, and I beg of you, don't let word of them get out. Once something like this gets around, you're forever marked. Even after you've been proven innocent—which I will be, I assure you—you never lose the taint."

"We'll do what we can," Young said. "We're more interested in the murder right now."

Luther fought to keep his knees from buckling as he felt the cuffs snap around his wrists. Yesterday he'd been on top of the world, the Opus Omega all but completed.

Now he was being arrested for murder and his life was swirling down the toilet.

How? How had this happened?

15

Jack nodded to Esteban as he walked through the lobby and out to the sidewalk.

Beekman Place was quiet, as usual, but not as quiet as Herta had been when Jack tried to squeeze more information out of her. The Opus Omega was designed to kill her? What the hell?

Why? How? She wouldn't say.

Who was she that Rasalom and the Otherness wanted her dead? Beyond her usual I-am-your-mother line, she wouldn't say.

What she did say was that she was tired and he should go. They'd talk another day.

He walked uptown toward Gia's. Vicky would be in school, but he hoped Gia was home. He needed a dose of sanity.

TUESDAY

1

The news broke overnight.

When Jack awoke he flipped on MSNBC. He wasn't sure why. Maybe because the channel had had Brady on as a guest so many times. But Imus in the Morning was playing—who was the genius who'd dreamed up broadcasting a radio program on TV?—so he switched around until he saw Brady's face.

It was a photo and the voiceover was going on about how everyone was shocked—shocked!—that Luther Brady had been arrested for murder. Then they switched to a live feed from outside the Bronx House of Detention for Men where Brady had spent the night. A pretty, blond news face was standing on the curb while a hundred or so protesters shouted and waved signs behind her.

After some prefatory remarks she motioned a young woman onto the screen. Jack recognized the eternally cheery Christy from the temple. Only today she wasn't cheery. She stood there in her gray, high-collared jacket with the braided front, tears streaming down her cheeks as she blubbered about the injustice of it all. That a wonderful man like Luther Brady, who'd bettered so many lives the world over, should be accused of murder, it just… it just wasn't fair!

"Fairer than you'll ever guess, my dear," Jack muttered.

Next the blond reporter brought on another familiar face—the Aryan poster boy, Atoor. In contrast to Christy's grief, Atoor was angry. Color flared in his scrubbed cheeks as he denounced the police, the DA, and the city itself.

"It's a witch hunt! It's religious persecution! We all know that the old-time entrenched religions call the shots in this town, and obviously they've decided that Dormentalism is becoming too popular for its own good. So the solution is to trump up charges against the head of our Church and throw him in jail. What next? Burning him at the stake?"

Jack applauded. "Well said, young man! Well said! But let's not burn him at the stake yet."

If the Penn cops were earning their pay, there'd be lots more shit raining on the Dormentalist roof real soon.

With that in mind, he headed out the door for Gia's. The baby was scheduled for a follow-up ultrasound in just over an hour.

2

"I can't believe it!" Luther said.

This whole situation was a horror, and it worsened at every turn.

Bail denied… the gavel bang after those shocking words still rang through Luther's head like a slammed door.

Arthur Fineman, the criminal attorney Barry had referred him to, didn't appear too worried. He seemed so out of place in this dingy meeting room in the detention center, like a Monet that had somehow fallen into a garbage dump. His suit looked even more expensive than Barry's, and his Rolex flashier. Considering his hourly fee, he could well afford both.

Luther, on the other hand, felt dirty and disheveled.

And humiliated… forced to walk a gauntlet of reporters and cameramen as he'd been led—handcuffed!—to and from the Bronx courthouse on Grand Concourse.

"Don't worry. We'll appeal the denial of bail."

Luther tried to contain his outrage, but some of it seeped through.

"That's all well and good, fine for you to say, but meanwhile I'm the one who stays behind bars. Every day—every hour—that passes with me locked in here, unable to defend myself to the public, only makes it worse for my Church. Only one side of the story is getting out. I need to be free to present my side to the media."

Fineman shifted in his seat. He was deeply tanned and combed his silver mane straight back so that it curled above his collar.

"The DA managed to persuade the judge that you're a flight risk."

"Then it's your job to unpersuade him. I am not a flight risk. I'm innocent and that will be proven in court!"

Flight risk… the Bronx DA had argued that since the Dormentalist Church was a globe-spanning organization, its leader might find shelter among his devoted followers anywhere in the world. Fineman had spoken of Luther's lack of criminal history, of his obvious ties to the city, even offered to surrender Luther's passport and post a two-million-dollar bond. But the judge had sided with the DA.

Luther was convinced now that someone high up was pulling the strings in this plot against him.

"We'll worry about that later. The first thing I want to do is have you held here pending our appeal."

"What do you mean, 'held here'? I want you to get me out!"

"I mean that until I do get you out, I want you here as opposed to Riker's."

Luther's heart quailed. Riker's Island… home to some of the city's most violent criminals.

"No… they can't."

Fineman shook his head. "If you can't make bail or, as in your case, you're denied bail, that's where they put you."

"You can't let them!"

"I'll do my damnedest to prevent it."

"That's not saying you will, that's only saying you'll try."

Fineman leaned forward. "Mr. Brady, I'm going to be frank with you."

A sting of alarm raced through him—this couldn't be good—but he didn't let it show.

"I should hope so."

"They have a good case against you. So good that my contacts in the DA's office tell me there's talk of seeking the death penalty."

Luther squeezed his eyes shut and began again the mantra that had sustained him through the endless night in this concrete-walled sty. This cannot be happening… this cannot be happening!

"But before the DA does that," Fineman added, "you may be offered a deal."

Luther opened his eyes. "Deal?"

"Yes. Let you plea to a lesser charge that—"

"And admit I murdered a man I've never met or even heard of until after he was dead? No, absolutely not. No deals!"

A deal meant prison, probably for most if not all his remaining years. Prison meant that his life's work, Opus Omega, would remain unfinished. Or worse, finished by someone else… someone else would claim the glory that Luther deserved.

No. Unthinkable.

"They'll regret this," Luther said, anger seething through his fear. "I'll put thousands—tens of thousands—in the streets outside the courthouse and outside this prison. Their voices will shake these walls and—"

Fineman raised a hand. "I'd go easy on the protests. So far the DA hasn't mentioned those photos. If you push him too hard, he might release them. Just for spite."

"No… no!"

"Look, Mr. Brady. I've already put someone on the dead man, to dig up anything and everything known about him. I've got to tell you, in just a matter of hours he was able to come up with whispers about blackmail. This plays right into the DA's hands."

"Doesn't it play into our hands too? If the man was a blackmailer, it means he had to have enemies. We can—"

"But your pistol has been identified as the murder weapon, and the victim's prints are on it; probably his blood as well. And the photos found in his home were of you."

Luther could take no more. "I didn't kill him!" he screamed. "Do you hear me? I didn't do it! There must be some way to prove that!"

Fineman didn't seem the least bit ruffled.

"There is. We need someone, anyone, who can vouch for your whereabouts at or near the time of the murder."

Luther thought of something. "My E-Z Pass! It will show my tolls to and from the cabin on the night of the murder!"

Fineman shook his head. "That proves that your transponder made the trip, not you. I need a person, a living, breathing person who saw you far from the crime scene that night."

Luther thought of Petrovich. Maybe there was a way to have him vouch for Luther's presence at the cabin that night without incriminating himself.

"There might be someone. His name is Brencis Petrovich. He, um, made a delivery to the cabin Sunday night."

"Do I dare ask what?" Fineman said.

Luther looked away. "I'd rather you didn't."

3

"What's wrong, Jack?" Gia said. "You're not yourself today."

His mood concerned her. He'd come in looking tired and worn-out but hadn't wanted to say much. She hadn't told him yesterday about the near miss by that truck; Vicky had been around and Gia hadn't wanted to frighten her. Considering his mood, maybe this wasn't the right time either.

He sat slumped in an overstuffed armchair before the TV. It was tuned to a cable news channel. He looked up and gave her a wan smile.

"You mean, not my usual life-of-the-party self?"

"You'll never be the life of the party, but you seem like you're a hundred miles away. And I know what that means."

"It's not what you think."

She'd seen him like this before and she did know.

"One of your fix-its isn't going well, right?"

He straightened in the chair and motioned her closer. When she got within reach he took her hand and guided her onto his lap. He slipped his arms around her and nuzzled her throat.

"I have no fix-its in progress."

His breath tickled so she pulled back a few inches and looked at him. "I thought you said you were running two."

"'Were' is right. They're done. It's just that things didn't turn out so good for one of my customers."

That had such an ominous tone. They had agreed last year that Jack would give her no more than a vague outline of what he was up to. He didn't feel he should name names or give specifics about what people had entrusted to him. And that was fine with Gia. She'd worry if she were privy to the details.

All she knew about these jobs was that one had to do with a blackmailer and the other with finding a missing son for his mother.

"Is he all right?"

"Let's not talk about it. It's over."

If it's really over, she thought, then why are you like this? But she knew better than to ask.

"At least we still have a healthy, thriving baby."

This morning's follow-up ultrasound had shown, in Dr. Eagleton's words, "a perfectly normal twenty-week fetus."

Fetus? She remembered thinking. That's no fetus, that's my baby.

Jack's arms tightened around her. "Wasn't that great to see him moving and sucking his thumb? God, it's amazing."

"Him? They still don't know the sex."

"Yeah, but I do. I—"

She felt Jack tense. Without releasing her he reached for the TV remote. As the sound came up she heard something about a woman entombed in concrete.

"… confirmed the remains as those of missing New York reporter Jamie Grant. Sources say early indications are that she was buried alive in the concrete."

"Oh, God!" Gia said. "How awful."

Jack made no comment. His gaze remained fixed on the screen. He seemed hypnotized.

"Symbols molded into the concrete column have been identified as similar to those found throughout the world in temples of the Dormentalist Church, and the mold for the pillar was discovered hidden in a New Jersey concrete company owned by a member of the church's High Council.

"Ms. Grant was a respected journalist and a fearless critic of the Dormentalist Church. Her murder has sent Shockwaves throughout the world of journalism. We mourn her passing."

"Wait a minute," Gia said, straightening and looking at Jack. "Wait just a minute. Didn't you say that the son you were looking for was a Dormentalist?"

Jack continued to stare at the screen. "Did I say that?"

"Yes, you did. I remem—"

He tightened his bear hug. "Just a sec. Look who's doing a perp walk."

She turned back in time to see a vaguely familiar-looking man being led from a doorway to a police car.

"In a related story that may or may not be coincidence, Luther Brady, head of the Dormentalist Church, is a suspect in the murder of an ex-cop in the Bronx. He has been denied bail."

Gia swiveled to face Jack. "Did you have anything to do with this?"

It was the first time all morning she'd seen him smile.

4

"More bad news, I'm afraid," Fineman said.

Luther Brady lifted his head from where he'd been resting it on his arms, which were folded on the table. He was numb.

They'd found Grant's body. How? The news story said the Pennsylvania authorities had acted on a tip. From whom?

It had to be an insider, but that didn't make sense. Everyone high enough up to have known will be under investigation now.

Nothing made sense anymore.

Luther looked at Fineman, dapper as ever. "How could things get worse:

"Mr. Petrovich is not available, it seems. My investigator learned he drove off in his van and never came back. The van was found abandoned in Lower Manhattan. The police report mentions bloodstains on the front seat. Petrovich appears to have vanished."

Luther lowered his head again. What else could go wrong?

Petrovich had been a long shot anyway. A guy with his record probably didn't want to get within a mile of a police station, let alone walk in to swear to a statement.

"I've had feelers about a plea bargain," Fineman said.

"I will not—"

"Don't reject it out of hand, Mr. Brady. Give it careful consideration. You know what's going on outside. Your church is getting heat from all sides. It looks for all the world like someone in your organization killed that reporter to shut her up. That's not going to help you one bit."

He wanted to grab Fineman's silk tie and tell him that yes, he was part of the Grant bitch's death, a big part, and part of a host of others too, but he had nothing to do with this one. On this count he was innocent.

But he said nothing.

Fineman wasn't through, however. "Plus you've got to realize that if the

DA should go public and announce that he's seeking the death penalty, your chance for a deal will be gone. He'll be locked into that position and won't be able to let you plead down without suffering serious political fallout."

Luther didn't see that he had a choice. Making a deal meant losing his freedom but keeping his life. No deal gave him a shot at freedom, but the downside was death. Luther had decided he'd rather be dead than spend the rest of his life behind bars.

"No deals." He raised his head and looked Fineman square in the eyes. "An innocent man doesn't make deals."

At least the photos were still under wraps. He prayed to whatever power had guided him thus far that they'd stay that way.

WEDNESDAY

1

"Gevalt!" Abe said as he studied the hot-off-the-press copy of The Light.

Jack had hung around the newsstand down the street, waiting for it to be delivered. He bought a copy as soon as the string on the bale was cut and walked directly to Abe's, reading it along the way.

Four words took up the whole front page.

SPECIAL

JAMIE

GRANT

ISSUE

The first five pages were filled with loving tributes to a fallen colleague. But starting on page six, the paper tore into Luther Brady, saying that even if he personally had nothing to do with Jamie Grant's death, he'd fostered the tactic of ruthless retaliation against any and all critics of the Dormentalist Church, creating an atmosphere of disregard for the rights and well-being of anyone considered an enemy of his church.

And then the piece de resistance: censored photos of an unidentified man—obviously Brady on closer examination—with the two boys. The paper said that it had received these photos the day before, with a note purportedly from the man Brady was accused of killing. The photos and the note had been forwarded to the police.

Abe looked up from the paper. "You're involved in this, aren't you?"

Jack tried for a guileless look. "Who, me?"

"You think I'm going to buy that Fm-so-innocent punim? I'm not. You promised me when I found you that Beretta that you—wait a minute. Wait just a minute." He narrowed his eyes and pointed a stubby finger at Jack. "Brady's supposed victim wouldn't happen to have been shot with a nine millimeter, would he?"

"That's what I hear."

"And that nine millimeter wouldn't happen to have come from a Beretta, would it?" Abe turned his palms up as his fingers did a come-here waggle. "So tell me. Tell-me-tell-me-tell-me."

Jack told him, giving him a Reader's Digest version of Sunday night and Monday morning.

When Jack was done, Abe sat back on his stool and waved a hand at the spread-out pages of The Light. His voice was hushed.

"You did this? By yourself you brought down a global cult?"

"I wouldn't say 'brought down.' It hasn't gone away. I can't see it ever going away completely."

"But you kneecapped it."