The Haunted Air

"While you're thinking," he said, "I'm going to call Eli Bellitto's brother and give him some hell."

Jack had gone straight to Gia's last night after Doc Hargus had finished stitching him up. He'd stopped by his apartment this morning and picked up Edward Bellitto's number on the way to Abe's. He wormed his Tracfone and the slip of paper out of his jeans, started to dial, then…

"What the…?"

"What now?"

"He only wrote down nine digits."

Jack stared at the paper. Edward hadn't used hyphens, putting all the numbers in a straight string. Jack hadn't noticed till now that he'd been shortchanged one digit.

Abe leaned forward and looked at the paper. "A two-one-two area code—that means he's here in the city. Maybe he was in such a hurry or maybe he was a little farblondzhet from worrying about his brother so he left off the last digit. If that's the case, you can try all the possibilities. Only ten."

"But what if he left off a number in the middle? How many calls will that take?"

"Millions, you're talking."

"Swell."

Jack wondered if the missing digit was an accident at all. Maybe Edward didn't want Jack contacting him. Maybe he'd planned a vanishing act all along. If so, there went the second half of Jack's fee.

Very few of his customers ever tried to stiff him, and none of those had succeeded. Edward might be the first.

Abe pointed to Jack's cell phone. "Your new Tracfone, it's working out?"

"So far, so good. They should call it the Untraceable-fone."

Jack had picked up his at a Radio Shack along with a prepaid airtime card. He'd activated his phone online from a computer terminal in the Public Library without giving his name, address, or any credit information. Per-minute charges were higher than calling plans from Verizon and the like, but you had to sign contracts and go through credit checks for those. For Jack, the Tracfone's anonymity was priceless.

"I should maybe get one. For when I call you. You gave me that number, right?"

"You, Julio, and Gia have it, and that's it."

An idea struck Jack as he finished his bagel. He picked up his phone.

"You know, maybe I don't have to make a million calls to track down Edward Bellitto. Maybe I can simply ask his brother Eli."

"You think he'll tell you?"

"Can't hurt to try."

After information gave him St. Vincent's main number, Jack called and asked for Eli Bellitto's room.

A hoarse voice answered. "Hello?"

"Mr. Bellitto? This is Lorenzo Fullerton from the St. Vincent's accounting office. How are you this morning?"

Abe raised his eyebrows, rippling the bare expanse of his scalp, and mouthed the name: Lorenzo Fullerton?

Jack shrugged. It was a name he'd come up with years ago and used whenever he was pretending to represent officialdom.

"What do you want?" The voice sounded weak as well as hoarse.

Good. In pain too, Jack hoped.

"Well, your intake form isn't clear. We can't make out the name and address of your brother Edward. We'd all be terribly grateful if you could please clarify this little matter for us."

"Brother? I don't have a brother named Edward or anything else. I'm an only child."

3

Eli Bellitto slammed the receiver back onto its cradle. The abrupt movement evoked a jab of pain from his heavily bandaged groin. He groaned and looked at his doctor.

"You have idiots in your administration."

Dr. Najam Sadiq smiled. "You will hear no argument from me," he said in decent English.

Dr. Sadiq had been making late rounds in St. Vincent's when Eli arrived in the emergency department; as the most immediately available urologist, he'd been assigned to Eli's case.

Eli tried to shift his position in the bed and that ignited another bonfire of pain. He glanced at the morphine pump attached to the pole next to his bed. A PCA pump, the nurse had called it. Patient Controlled Analgesia. A button clipped to the bed rail allowed him to self-medicate—within limits—but he'd been holding off because the drug made him foggy and he feared saying the wrong thing. He didn't think he could hold off much longer though.

At least he'd had the presence of mind last night to demand a private room. He didn't care how much it cost. The last thing in the world he needed now was a nosy roommate.

"As I was saying," Dr. Sadiq said, "you are a lucky man, Mr. Bellitto. Very lucky. If that knife had sliced but a quarter of an inch further to the left, we would have had a much bigger problem."

Eli thought, I've got oxygen running into my nose, morphine hooked into my left arm, an IV running into my right, and a tube in my bladder draining bloody urine into a bag hanging near the floor. This is not lucky.

Dr. Sadiq went on. "The knife sliced into the base of your penis, just missing your urethra. We saved your penis without much trouble, but we could not save the right testicle, I'm afraid. It was too badly lacerated. I had to remove it."

The room seemed to darken around Eli as he listened. Not so much the details—that he had been sexually maimed and mutilated, that a piece of him had been amputated—but that it had occurred at all. What had happened to his invulnerability? Why had it failed him?

More importantly, who was that man last night? Had it been a chance encounter, or could he have been following him and Adrian? Could he know about the Circle?

Eli forced a smile. "I'm not thinking about starting a family. Not at my age."

"But you do not have to worry too much about sexual function. There will be scarring, of course, and that may interfere with erections, but with proper care and therapy, you should be able to resume normal sexual function within a couple of months."

Eli didn't care about sexual function. Last night had not been about sex, although the man who had attacked them seemed to think so. Not that Eli could blame him. Two men in the dark with an unconscious boy… the prosaic, untutored mind would naturally leap to such a conclusion. But the Circle was devoted to concerns far more profound than mere sex.

Eli wanted no more talk about his wounds or his chances for full recovery. He changed the subject.

"My friend, Mr. Minkin, the one with the head injuries… how is he doing?"

Adrian was an ox, yet their attacker had felled him in an instant and left him senseless.

Dr. Sadiq shook his head. "That I do not know. He was admitted to the neurology service. Is he your… partner?"

"Partner?"

Now why on earth would Dr. Sadiq think Adrian had anything to do with the shop? Unless… could he be even considering that he and Adrian were lovers! Yes, that had to be it.

Anger flared in Eli. What's wrong with this world? Everything is not about sex!

"Oh, no," Eli said. "He's just an old friend."

A tiny shift of his hips was rewarded by a disproportionate shock of pain. He was suddenly very tired.

"I think I'd like to rest now, doctor."

"Of course," Dr. Sadiq said. "I'll look in on you again during my evening rounds."

As soon as the door closed Eli grabbed the morphine delivery button and began jabbing at it like a telegraph operator. Soon a delicious lethargy suffused him, pushing away the pain and worries about strange men who lunged out of the darkness.

4

Jack stopped in front of Municipal Coins on West Fifty-fourth. He'd planned to come by yesterday but Gia's revelation had blown that plan clear out of the water.

Midday sun gleamed off the polished gold and silver coins in the window display, but Jack's attention was more focused on Eli Bellitto's last words than on precious metals.

I don't have a brother named Edward or anything else. I'm an only child.

Somebody was lying.

Eli Bellitto was a child molester, most likely a child killer—you go to the trouble of abducting a child as Bellitto and his buddy had, you're not likely to let him go—so lying was hardly a stretch. But why lie about having a brother to someone you thought was a hospital administrator? Unless you didn't want to acknowledge that brother.

But Eli Bellitto hadn't sounded like he was lying. Edward, on the other hand…

The phone number he'd given Jack was bogus, as was no doubt much of the story he'd laid on him. Edward had a Irish accent, Eli didn't. The two supposed brothers looked nothing alike.

No question… Edward had lied.

What particularly rankled Jack was that he'd made Edward—if that was his real first name; his last sure as hell wasn't Bellitto—for a straight shooter. Every so often a customer tried to pull a fast one, but Jack usually found out before any damage was done. Since many of his jobs involved getting even, with maybe inflicting a little hurt on someone if necessary, Jack made sure to do a fair amount of backgrounding before he took any action. But Edward had wanted Jack to keep people from being hurt, so he'd taken the man at his word.

But if he wasn't Eli Bellitto's brother, who the hell was he? Had he hired Jack to be there when Bellitto snatched that child? Seemed so. But how had he known?

Jack figured chances were slim to none he'd ever find out.

Still, he wasn't quite ready to write this off as a bad deal. Not yet. The phone number Edward had given him wouldn't allow that. If you're going to leave a phony number, you simply write down an area code and seven random digits. Why leave one out? It didn't make sense.

Jack's brain held a closetful of things that didn't make sense. He'd pitch this in with the rest.

He pushed through the door and entered the cool interior of Municipal Coins.

"Mr. Blake!" said a man who had been rearranging a tray in a long row of display cases. He bustled forward and shook Jack's hand. "So good to see you again!"

"Hello, Monte. Call me Jack, okay?"

He'd been telling Monte for years to call him Jack but the man must have been born with an extra formality gene that made it impossible for him to address a customer by his first name.

"I'll do that," he said. "Yes, I'll do that."

Monte was half owner of Municipal Coins. Every time Jack looked at him, the word thick sprang to mind: thick body, thick lips, even his curly black hair. But he moved like a ferret. Had a numismatic database for a brain and an MBA from Yale, but the only business he had any desire to administrate was rare coins.

"Just bought a big collection," he said, motioning Jack toward the rear of the store where he kept the cream of his inventory. "Some incredible pieces came in last week. You've got to see them. Absolutely gem."

Jack was one of Monte's regular customers. Probably saw him as a well-heeled collector of rare coins, but Jack's stash of coins was more than a collection. They were his life savings…

Without a Social Security number—a real one—he couldn't invest in CDs or stocks; he wouldn't have wanted to under any circumstances because that would mean paying taxes, a burden Jack had managed to avoid thus far in his life. So whenever he accumulated a lump of cash, he put it into gold coins, some of them bullion type, like Krugerrands, but mostly the rare and collectible. Not an exciting investment, but other facets of his life provided enough adrenaline and he saw no need to look for more in the investment realm. He'd missed the rocketing stocks of the nineties, but he'd also missed the crash of the aughts.

"Not looking for coins today, Monte," Jack said.

And I won't be buying many more if I keep allowing myself to get stiffed by customers who lie to me.

"Just a social call then?" Monte said, doing a fair job of hiding his disappointment. "Always good to see you, Mr. Blake, no matter what the occasion."

"But I am in the market for something to display my coins. Where are those clamshell cases you've been telling me about?"

Monte had been pushing a new line of pocket-sized display cases on Jack for months, telling him they were the latest and greatest thing for the collector who wanted to safeguard his coins when he showed them off. Jack had repeatedly turned him down.

"What're you planning?" Monte said, grinning as he reached up and pulled a cardboard box from a wall rack. "Taking them to a show? Or maybe give the relatives a peek?"

The last thing Jack wanted to do with his collection was display it, but he was going to have to bite the bullet and bring some of them out for the Madame Pomerol sting.

"Relatives," Jack told him. "Gonna give my Uncle Matt a peek."

"Lucky him."

From the box Monte removed a pair of keys and an oblong metal case that ran eight inches long and was just shy of five inches wide; its tapered brushed chrome surface gleamed under the lights.

"See?" Monte said, pointing. "Recessed hinges at this end and a lock at the other."

He stuck one of the keys into the keyhole and turned it. The lid popped open revealing a clear plastic shield. Under that, gray felt molded into angled slots that would display coins of varying sizes.

"But the real beauty of it is this shield here: Tough clear plastic that keeps people's hands off. Remember that old song, 'You can look but you'd better not touch'?"

"'Poison Ivy,' " Jack said. "The Coasters. Atco label. Nineteen-fifty-nine."

"Oh. Right. Yeah, well, that's what this case is all about. And if anyone, God forbid, knocks the case over, the shield will keep your coins from rolling all over creation."

Jack turned the case over in his hands. Perfect.

"How do I open the shield?"

"Another beauty feature. See that little lever recessed into the side? You turn your key over and use the edge to pull it up to where you can grab it. No one 'accidentally' popping open the lid."

"Beautiful," Jack said. "I'll take two."

5

Jack stepped out of the Sports Authority on Sixth Avenue in Chelsea with his purchases tucked into the same bag as the coin cases. He now had the raw materials for his encounter with Madame Pomerol this afternoon; all he had to do was assemble them. That would take half an hour, tops, which meant he still had a couple of hours to kill.

A trip down to the Shurio Coppe might be in order. Chat up the staff. See how the boss was doing. Maybe even cop a shurio.

He decided to walk. He liked to stroll the city, especially on warm days like this when the sidewalks were crowded. It fed his people-watching jones and kept him in tune with what the average New Yorker was wearing.

Average New Yorker… right. If such a creature existed, it was a chimerical beast. Take a simple item like men's headwear, for instance. In the first few blocks heading downtown Jack passed a gray-suited Sikh wearing a red turban, a three-hundred-pound black guy in a tiny French beret, a skinny little white guy in a Special Forces beret, a rabbi type wearing—despite the heat—a long frock coat and a wide-brimmed black sealskin hat, and then the usual run of doo-wraps, Kangols, kufis, and yarmulkes.

But Jack was gratified to see that the most common headwear by far was what he was wearing: the baseball cap. Yankee caps outnumbered Mets, but not by much. Jack's sported the orange Mets insignia. Although ninety percent of the caps he saw were worn backwards or sideways, and although Jack tended to avoid nonconformist looks, he wore his beak first. Backwards, the adjustable strap irritated his forehead; beak first it shadowed his face.

He figured in his Mets cap, aviator mirror shades, white Nike T-shirt, jeans, and tan work boots he was as good as invisible.

Jack walked through the door of the Shurio Coppe at around 1 p.m. He didn't see any customers. He found the red-haired assistant behind the marble sales counter unpacking a box. Jack noticed the return address: N. Van Rijn—Import/Export.

"Is Eli in?"

"Are you a friend of his?"

"I ran into him last night."

The clerk blinked. "You did? When?"

"Last night. Why? Is something wrong?"

"Yes! He's in the hospital!"

"Really? Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. This is shocking! Did he have a heart attack or something?"

"No! He was stabbed! It happened right around the corner. Right on his own doorstep!"

Jack slapped his hands against his cheeks. "Get out! Is he all right?"

A nod. "I think so. He called earlier and said he should be home in a few days, but he won't be back to work for a while. It's terrible, just terrible."

"Isn't it, though," Jack replied, shaking his head sadly. "What kind of a world is it when an innocent man gets stabbed for no reason at all?"

"I know. Terrible."

"Which hospital?"

"St. Vincent's."

"I'll have to stop by and see how he's doing."

"I'm sure he'd like that." The assistant shook his head again, then took a deep breath and looked at Jack. "In the meantime, is there something in particular I can help you with?"

"No," Jack said. "I think I'll just browse." He looked around. "You're here alone? Where's…?"

"Gert? She's off and I can't reach her. She'll be back tomorrow." He looked around uncertainly at the laden shelves. "I wish she were here now."

I don't, Jack thought. This is perfect.

He placed the bag with his purchases on the counter. "Would you watch this if I leave it here?"

"I'd be happy to."

Of course he would. Shops like this paid extra attention to browsers with shopping bags. All it took was the flick of a finger to push an expensive little item off a shelf and into a bag. Giving up the bag would make the clerk less watchful and free up both of Jack's hands.

The object of Jack's desire lay in the locked display case rightward and rearward, so he headed left front. He found an old, wooden, owl-shaped clock whose eyes moved counter to the pendulum. Or at least they were supposed to. It appeared to have been overwound. The price wasn't bad. He already had a black plastic cat clock with moving eyes at home; this would make a good partner. An owl and a pussy cat.

Jack carried the clock to the counter.

"If you can get this working, I'll buy it."

The clerk smiled. "I'll see what I can do."

That should keep him occupied, Jack thought as he sidled away to the right, toward the old oak display case.

Had his shim picks ready by the time he reached it. Checked the second shelf and, yes, the Roger Rabbit key ring still lay among the other tchotchkes. And the padlock still locked the door.

He'd noted Sunday that the lock was a British brand, a B&G pin tumbler model. Good, solid lock, but hardly foolproof. Opening it was a five-second procedure: two to find the shim with the right diameter for the shackle, one to slide the little winged piece of steel into the shackle hole of the lock housing, one to give it a twist, and another to pop the lock.

Jack pocketed the shims. A quick glance around—the clerk was bent over the clock and no one else in sight—then another five seconds to slip off the lock, open the door, grab Roger Rabbit, close and relock the door.

Success.

He stared at the cheap little key ring. It felt strange in his hand… just a bit too cool against the flesh of his palm, as if he'd pulled it from a refrigerator. And still that imploring look in Roger's wide blue eyes.

Originally he'd wanted it for Vicky. But Vicky wasn't involved anymore; he didn't want her near anything Eli Bellitto had owned, touched, or had even looked at. Jack wasn't sure why he wanted it now. Bellitto had turned down a ridiculous amount of money for the silly thing. That meant it was important to him. And what was important to Bellitto might be important to Jack. Or maybe Jack wanted the key ring to harass Eli Bellitto, just for the sheer hell of it.

Before turning away he let his gaze roam once more over the shelves of the display case and the junk they carried… the Pogs and Matchbox car and Koosh ball and…

A notion struck Jack, a possibility so sick and cold he felt a layer of frost form on his skin.

These were all toys… kids' stuff… all belonging to a guy who'd snatched a kid last night.

Jack stood before the cabinets and swayed with the vertiginous certainty that these were trophies, mementos emptied from the pockets of other missing kids. And Eli Bellitto was flaunting them. How many hundreds, even thousands of people had walked by this case and stared at its contents, never guessing that each one represented a dead child?

Jack couldn't bring himself to count the items. Instead he looked down at the key ring in his hand.

Who did you belong to? Where is your little owner buried? How did he die? Why did he die?

Roger's eyes had lost their imploring look. They were a flat dead blue now. Maybe Jack had simply imagined that look, but it had served its purpose: He wasn't through with Eli Bellitto.

He wondered what his own face looked like. He had to compose his expression, look calm, casual.

He took a deep breath, let it out. Tossing the key ring casually in his hand, he headed for the counter.

"Sorry," the clerk said as he approached. He tapped the owl clock before him on the counter. "I can't get it working."

Jack shrugged. "I'll take it anyway." He knew a clock-smith who'd have it ticking in half a minute. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Kevin."

"I'm Jack, Kevin." They shook hands. "You're new here, aren't you."

"Fairly."

Chalk one up for me, he thought. He'd got the impression on Sunday that this fellow was new.

"Well, good luck here. It's a great store. Oh, yeah," he said, as if suddenly remembering. He tossed the key ring onto the counter. "I'll take this as well."

Kevin picked it up and turned it over, examining it. "Never seen this before."

Jack let out a breath. He'd been counting on that. Even if Kevin had been working here awhile, he might not have paid attention to the contents of a cabinet he couldn't open.

"I found it on a shelf back there."

"Where?"

Jack jerked a thumb to the right. "Back there."

"Hmmm. Trouble is, there's no price on it. I don't even think we carry anything like this."

"I'll give you, oh, say, ten bucks for it."

Kevin reached for the phone. "I'd better just check with Mr. Bellitto first."

Jack stiffened. "Hey, don't bother Eli. I'm sure he needs his rest."

"No, it's okay. He told me to call if I have any questions."

Jack suppressed a groan as Kevin tapped in the numbers. He'd wanted to slip away with the key ring—no fuss, no hassle. That might not be possible now. But if he had to grab it and walk out over Kevin's objections, that was what he'd do. One way or another, Jack and Roger were leaving together.

Apparently Kevin called Bellitto's room directly because seconds later he said, "Hello, Mr. Bellitto, it's Kevin. Sorry to bother you, but I've got an item here with no price tag and I was wondering—"

Even from his spot across the counter Jack could hear the angry squawking from the ear piece.

"Yes, sir, but you see—"

More squawks.

"I understand. Yes, sir, I will." He hung up. "I'm afraid this is going to take a while. I'm going to have to go through the inventory and find similar items and price this accordingly." He shook his head as he gazed at the key ring. "Trouble is, I'm pretty sure we don't—"

"Let me make it easy for both of us," Jack said. "I'll pay for the clock and give you ten bucks for the key ring. If it comes to more, I'll settle up. If it's less, I get a refund. Sound fair?"

"I guess so…"

Jack picked up the key ring and dangled it between them. "Hey, let's face it, Kev, we're not talking about a Ming vase here. Just find some paper and write down, 'Roger Rabbit key ring—ten bucks—Jack.'"

"I'll put it in the sale book," he said, opening a black ledger. Kevin dutifully wrote it all down, then looked up. "Just Jack?"

"Sure. Eli will know."

Maybe not right away, Jack thought as he pulled out his wallet. But soon. Very soon.

Jack wanted Bellitto to know the key ring was gone. Because that was when he would begin wondering and worrying.

Jack planned to give him lots to worry about.

6

Morphine might help pain, Eli Bellitto thought as he pressed the PCA pump's button for another dose, but it does nothing for anger.

Imagine Kevin calling him in the hospital with a question like that. Why couldn't you get good help?

He wondered if it might have been unwise to castigate Kevin as severely as he had. With Gert off today and not answering her phone, he was minding the store on his own. No telling what untold damage a disgruntled clerk might do.

Eli was reaching for the phone to call him back when Detective Fred Strauss made his second visit of the day. Strauss managed to be lean and yet paunchy. He wore a green golf shirt under his wrinkled tan suit. As he closed the door behind him, he removed his straw fedora, revealing thinning brown hair.

"It's safe to talk?" Strauss said in a low voice as he pulled a chair closer to the bed.

Eli nodded. "Did you learn anything?"

Strauss worked Vice in Midtown South. He, like Adrian, was a member of Eli's Circle.

"I checked with every emergency room from the Battery into the Bronx. No guy with the kind of stab wound you describe. Are you sure you nailed him?"

"Of course, I'm sure." Eli knew what it felt like to drive a steel blade into human flesh. "He may think he can take care of the wound himself, but he'll need professional care."

"Yeah, but if he knows the right people, he won't need an ER."

How different things would be, Eli thought, if the stranger hadn't rolled aside at that last instant. The knife would have sliced into his lungs once, twice, many times. Eli would now be sitting comfortably at home, and Strauss's only concern would be how to dispose of the stranger's body.

"Nothing else?"

"Well, they found a witness who says she saw a guy running with a child-size bundle in the area, but with the dark and the rain she couldn't even give the color of his hair."

Eli tried to dredge up some distinguishing feature about his attacker but came up empty. What little light had been available had come from behind, leaving his face in darkness. His hair had been drenched with rain. Dry, it could have been brown or black.

But he remembered the voice, that cold, flat voice after he'd driven Eli's own knife into his groin…

Next time you look at a kid—every time you look at a kid—remember that.

Eli ground his teeth. He thought I was a child molester! A common pervert! The idea infuriated him. It was so wrong, so unjust.

"All I can tell you," he said, "is that he wasn't blond."

Strauss leaned close and lowered his voice even further. "That's not what you told the local guys. You said he was blond."

Eli leaned back from the onions on Strauss's breath. Everything he'd told the local detectives had been false. He'd sent them looking for a six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bruiser with long, bleached-blond hair. He hadn't mentioned a word about wounding him.

"Exactly. Because we don't want him caught, do we. At least not by anyone outside the Circle. He might start babbling about the lamb. Fibers from the blanket might be linked to me or Adrian or the car."

"Speaking of cars, the witness said she saw him dump the bundle in a doorway and run back to a car."

Eli stiffened. The movement stabbed a spike of pain through his morphine curtain. "Tell me she didn't see the plates."

"She thought she did. Wrote down the number, but when we traced them we found they belonged to Vinny the Donut."

"Who's he?"

"Vincent Donate A Brooklyn wise guy."

"You mean mafia?" The thought terrified Eli.

"Don't worry. It wasn't him."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because Vinny doesn't leave witnesses. Our lady must've missed a number or two in the dark. I'm checking other possible combinations but it's not looking good."

"What about his phone? Someone called EMS about the lamb. It had to be him. Don't those switchboards have caller ID?"

"They do. And they got the number, which looked like a pretty good lead until we found out he used a Tracfone."

"What's that?"

"A pay-as-you-go cell phone. The only personal information you have to give when you sign up is the zip code you'll be calling from most frequently. The one he gave was for Times Square."

"Damn!"

"It's like the guy is some kind of ghost."

"I assure you he's not a ghost," Eli said. "Can you get his phone number from EMS?"

Strauss shrugged. "Sure. Why?"

"I don't know yet. I just want it. It's our only link to him." Eli shifted—very carefully—in the bed. "What about Adrian? What did he see?"

"Adrian's useless. He gets dizzy every time he makes a quick move and won't believe it's August. The last things he remembers were in July."

"Just as well, I suppose," Eli said. "That way he can't contradict my story."

"Never mind your story," Strauss said, rising and pacing at the foot of the bed. "Who is this guy? That's what I want to know! From what you tell me, he knows how to handle himself. Took out Adrian one-two-three. And it sounds like he came prepared, which means he must have been following you two."

"If he was following anyone, it must have been Adrian," Eli said. "He must have spotted Adrian while he was researching the lamb."

All that work, Eli thought. All wasted.

Adrian was such an excellent scout, always keeping an eye out for the next lamb. When the time for a new Ceremony neared, everyone in the Circle began watching the sidewalks. But Adrian was always on alert, even when a new Ceremony wouldn't be necessary for almost a full year, he kept watch. He'd been so excited with this latest find: the right age, adhering to a predictable schedule. The perfect lamb.

They'd watched and waited, and last night they knew the time had come: a rainy night near the new moon. The pickup had gone off perfectly, they'd been almost through Eli's door, and then…

"Doesn't matter who he was following," Strauss said. "He knows about you and Adrian now. Who else does he know about?"

Eli didn't want Strauss feeling too comfortable, so he said, "And if he's been watching this room, he probably knows about you as well."

Strauss stopped his pacing. "Shit! I thought it was safer than the phone."

"It is. You did the right thing. Let's face it, for all we know, he may already know about all twelve members of the Circle. But I have a bigger concern: Why didn't he turn us in? We know he had a phone. Adrian and I were helpless. All he had to do was simply step back and call 911."

"But he didn't," Strauss said, rubbing his neck with his jittery, skinny fingers. "He carried the kid away and then called. Could've been a hero, but he just faded away."

"Taking the knife with him," Eli added. "Why? It was covered with my prints, not his."

"But his blood was on it, along with yours."

A wave of cold rippled up Eli's spine. My blood… did he want a sample of my blood… for some ceremony of his own, perhaps?

Strauss tapped his fist on the footboard of Eli's bed. "None of this makes any sense. Unless…"

"Unless what?"

"Unless the guy knows about the Circle, and how connected we all are. I, for one, would not want to get on the wrong side of us."

True. The twelve men—Eli rather liked the idea of having twelve disciples—who made up the Circle were a diverse lot, with their hands on strings that ran to and from very high places—media, judicial, legislative, even the police. Only Eli lacked civic influence. But Eli had started the Circle, and he controlled the Ceremony.

"What about the lamb?" Eli said. "Will he be a problem?"

Strauss shook his head. "Remembers being grabbed, a smelly cloth pushed against his face, and that's it." He glanced toward the closed door and lowered his voice. "And speaking of lambs, do we have a backup?"

"Gregson has one under watch but he didn't think it was ready for pickup."

"Maybe he can accelerate things. If we miss this window—"

"I know. Only one more new moon before the equinox." The Ceremony had to be completed each year during the phase of a new moon between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. "But we still have time."

What a catastrophic shame to lose the little Vietnamese lamb. He'd been ripe for picking, everyone in the Circle had been on standby; the Ceremony could have been completed last night, and they'd all have been set for another year.

"But you know what bothers me the most?" Strauss said.

"You, here, in a hospital bed. Because of the Ceremony you're supposed to be protected, immune to harm. At least that's what you've been telling us." He waved his hand in the direction of Eli's IVs. "How do you explain all this?"

The same question had tortured Eli since the blade of his own stiletto had cut into his flesh.

"I can't," Eli said. "In the two hundred and six years that I have been performing the Ceremony, nothing like this has ever happened. I have come through wars and floods and earthquakes unscathed. Yet last night…"

"Yeah. Last night you were anything but protected. Care to explain?"

Eli didn't like Strauss's tone. A note of hostility, perhaps? Or fear?

"I believe the problem is not with me but with the man who attacked me. After personally experiencing his superior strength, and after what you've told me about his elusiveness, I'm beginning to believe that we were not attacked by an ordinary man. I—"

Eli stopped as he experienced an epiphany. Suddenly it was all clear.

"What's wrong?" Strauss said, leaning forward, his expression tight.

"The only way to explain last night's events is to assume that we are dealing with someone who is using the Ceremony himself."

Yes, of course. That had to be it. It explained why the attacker had moved the child away, why he didn't turn in Eli and Adrian to the police; it might even explain his taking the knife. He didn't want to expose the Circle—he wanted to control it. He wanted to usurp Eli's position, and he probably thought some of the leader's blood would aid him in accomplishing that.

"Oh, that's great!" Strauss said, his voice rising. "Just fucking great! How are we supposed to handle something like that?"

Eli kept his tone low and even. This was no time for panic. "The way you would handle anyone else. You have at your disposal the resources of one of the greatest police departments in the world. Use them to find this man. And when you do, bring him to me."

"But I thought you were the only one who knew the Ceremony."

"What I can discover, so can others. You are not to worry about that. Your task is clear: Find him, Freddy. Find him and bring him to me. I will deal with him."

7

Gia stepped out of Macy's with a loaded shopping bag in each hand and headed for the curb to look for a cab. She'd picked up some good bargains that Vicky could wear back to school next month.

She wondered if the driver on the way home would give her the same strange look as the one who'd brought her down here. Probably. She couldn't blame them: Women who lived on Sutton Square did not go to Macy's for a Red Tag sale.

Probably thinks I'm a live-in nanny, she thought.

My address may be one of the best in the city, guys, but I'm living on the income of a freelance commercial artist. I have an active little girl who wears out what she doesn't outgrow. So when Macy's advertises a sale, I go.

As she moved toward the curb she noticed a black woman with a microphone; a burly fellow stood beside her, peering through the lens of the camera on his shoulder. The woman looked familiar but she was oddly dressed—the blouse and jacket on her upper half did not go with the denim shorts on her lower half. Herald Square was jammed and the crowd seemed even thicker around this woman.

Then Gia recognized her as one of the on-the-scene reporters from a local TV station—channel two or four, she couldn't remember which. The woman spotted Gia and angled her way with the cameraman in tow.

"Excuse me," she said, thrusting the microphone ahead of her. "I'm Philippa Villa, News Center Four. Care to answer the Question of the Day?"

"Depends on what it is," Gia said, still edging toward the curb.

"You heard about the kidnapping and return of little Due Ngo?"

"Of course."

"Okay." Ms. Villa pushed the microphone closer. "The Question of the Day is: Should child molesters get the death penalty?"

Gia remembered how she'd felt this morning, imagining what it would have been like if Vicky had been abducted. Or if someone ever molested the baby growing inside her…

"You mean after they've been castrated?" she said.

The woman blinked as a couple of onlookers laughed. "We're just talking about the death penalty. Yes or no?"

"No," Gia said through her rising anger and revulsion. "Death's too good for anyone who'd hurt a child. The guy who snatched that little boy should be castrated. And after that he should have his hands cut off so he can never touch another child, and then his legs cut off so he can never stalk another child, and then his tongue ripped out so he can never coax another kid into his car, and his eyes put out so that he can never even look at a child again. I'd leave him his nose so he can breathe in the stink of his rotten body."

The surrounding gaggle cheered.

Did I just say that? Gia thought. I've been hanging around Jack too long.

"You seem to have a lot of support," Ms. Villa said, glancing around at the crowd. "We might want to air your comments on the news tonight." She smiled. "The late news. We'll need you to sign a release to—"

Gia shook her head. "No thanks."

She didn't want to be on TV. She just wanted to get home. She turned as a cab nosed in toward the curb to drop off a passenger.

"Can I at least have your name?" Ms. Villa said as she and the cameraman followed Gia to the cab.

"No," Gia said over her shoulder.

She slid into the rear of the Cab as soon as it was empty. She closed the door and told him to head uptown. She didn't look back as the cab pulled away.

What had possessed her to say something like that? On camera, no less. She'd been telling the truth—those had been her exact feelings at the moment—but they were nobody else's business. She certainly didn't want her face on the tube. If she had fifteen minutes of fame coming, she wanted it through her paintings, not from flapping her gums on local TV.

8

Can I handle fatherhood? Jack thought as he knocked on the door to Madame Pomerol's Temple of Eternal Knowledge.

He'd dodged bullets and been punched, stabbed, sliced, and gouged during the years since he'd moved to the city. He should be able to handle fatherhood. At least he hoped he could.

The prospect of being responsible for raising a child to be a decent human being without screwing up along the way filled his mind, made dodging knives and bullets seem an easier task. At least then the choices were clear.

Thank God he'd be only partly responsible and could defer to Gia's hands-on experience.

But what if something happened to her?

Jack shuddered at the possibility and wondered why he was borrowing trouble. This wasn't like him. Was that what parenthood did to you?

Leave all that for later, he told himself. Focus on the now.

He checked the wig so that the long rear strands of its mullet were again draped over his ears, especially the left with its ear piece.

The door opened and Carl Foster stood there. "Ah, Mr. Butler. Right on time."

Mr. Butler? Jack thought. He almost looked around, then remembered that he was Butler.

Focus, damn it!

He half wished Gia had waited till tonight to tell him. This was going to be a delicate fix, with pinpoint timing. He had to keep his mind off the future and concentrate on the moment.

"Time and tide don't wait for nobody," Jack said, snapping into character. "That's what I always say."

"Well put," Foster replied, ushering him in.

Today Jack wore jeans, cowboy boots, a white Walking Man collarless shirt, and a plaid sport coat with two deep inner pockets, each heavy with their cargo. He followed Foster to the desk.

"Let's attend to mundane matters first," Foster said. "You have Madame's fee?"

"What? Oh, sure." Jack drew an envelope from a side pocket and handed it to Foster. "Here you go."

Foster opened it and quickly fanned through the five counterfeit one-hundred-dollar bills inside. He looked disappointed.

"I thought you said gold was the best way to deal with the spirit world."

"Yeah well, that's what my Uncle Matt used to tell me, but you know how hard it is to put together a bunch of gold coins that total an exact amount? Too much trouble, if you ask me."

"I could have given you change."

"Never thought of that. Okay, next time it's gold."

"Excellent!" Foster said, brightening as he pocketed the envelope. "You mentioned wanting to contact an uncle? Was he the one you mentioned who used to frequent spiritualist mediums?"

"Yep. Uncle Matt."

"Certainly not Matt Cunningham?"

Oh, you're good, Jack thought. Slick way to draw out some details.

But Jack wanted to be drawn out. He was primed to babble.

"Naw. His last name was West. Matthew West. Great guy. Shame he had to go."

"When was that?"

Jack wondered if Foster was taking mental notes or if Madame herself was seated at their computer, listening to the bugs and typing Matthew Thomas West's name into www.sitters-net.com even as they spoke.

"Early in the year—not sure if it was late January or early February. I just know I never been so cold in my life as at that funeral. Standing outside in that wind at the graveside—boy!" Jack rubbed his hands and hunched his shoulders as if remembering the chill. "I tell you, I thought I'd never feel warm again."

"Really," Foster said. "I recall this past winter being rather mild."

"Here, maybe, but we were freezing our butts off in St. Paul."

"Minnesota? Yes, they certainly do get cold winters out there. Is that where you're from?"

"Me? Nah. Born and raised in Virginia."

"How do you like Manhattan?"

"Love it. Never seen so many restaurants in my life. And they're all crowded." He laughed. "Don't anybody ever eat in around here?"

Foster smiled. "Yes, the Upper West Side offers every cuisine known to man."

Jack narrowed his eyes in a display of suspicion. "How do you know where I live?"

"Why, from the questionnaire you filled out yesterday."

"Oh, yeah." He gave a sheepish grin. "Forgot about that."

Jack had expected the Fosters to check up on him. He'd been the only new face yesterday when the lights had come on, so he had to be a prime suspect. That was why he'd used the name of a real person… just in case he had to come back.

But he'd given himself plausible deniability: the remote rig in the light switch could be activated from outside the séance room.

He was sure they'd checked up on him. Foster no doubt took a trip to the Millennium Towers and found that a Robert Butler did indeed live there. If he'd seen the real Robert Butler, the jig would have been up. But obviously he hadn't. If he'd called the number Jack had written on the questionnaire—someone had done just that last night and hung up—he heard an outgoing message from "Bob Butler" confirming the number and instructing him to leave a message after the beep.

The Krugerrand yesterday and today's envelope full of cash should have laid any residual suspicions to rest. At least that was what Jack hoped. These two were the type who tried to kill the competition. What would they do to someone they thought was trying to pull a sting on them? Jack took comfort in the little .38 automatic nestled in his right boot.

Foster said, "You were close to your uncle?"

"Oh, yeah. Great guy. Split his estate between me and my brother when he died. Great guy."

"Is that why you wish to contact him? To thank him?"

"Well, yeah. And to ask him…" Jack reached into the left inner breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out one of Monte's clamshell cases. "… about this." Foster's eyes fixed on its chrome finish. "Interesting." He reached for it. "May I?" Jack handed it to him and watched his hand drop as it took the full weight of the box. But Foster made no mention of how heavy it was. The fingers of his free hand glided over the tapered surface, caressing the seam, running across the inset hinges, and coming to rest on the keyhole at the opposite end.

"Do you have the key?"

"Um, no."

"Really. I'll bet there's an interesting story behind this case."

Jack put on a guilty expression as he held out his hand for the case. "You might say that. But that's between me, my uncle, and the lady."

"Yes, of course," Foster said, handing it back to him. He glanced at his watch. "I'll see if Madame is ready."

He stepped away from the desk and entered the séance room, closing the door behind him. Jack listened in on a hurried strategy meeting between Mr. and Mrs. Foster beyond that door.

"He's telling the truth," Madame Pomerol's voice said in his left ear. "I found the uncle on sitters-net. And get this: He was a coin collector."

"You should feel the weight of that case he's got. I'm betting it's stuffed with gold coins. Trouble is it's locked."

"That shouldn't be a problem for you. Get a look inside that case. I'll handle the rest."

A moment later Foster reappeared and motioned Jack toward the door.

"Come. Madame is ready."

He ushered Jack into the room. Again that claustrophobic feeling from all the heavy drapes. This time only two chairs huddled against the table.

Foster pointed to the case. "Did that belong to your uncle?"

"I'm pretty sure it did. That's one of the things I want to find out."

"Then I'll have to ask you to place it on that settee over there until later in the session."

Jack looked at the little red velvet upholstered couch against the wall about a dozen feet away. Jack knew what lay on the other side of that wall: Foster's command center, much like Charlie's but not as sophisticated. He'd found it Saturday night when he'd searched the place.

"Why?"

"Madame finds her gift works better if she is not in proximity to objects that once belonged to the departed she is trying to contact."

Good line, Jack thought as he clutched the case against his chest.

"No kidding? I'd think they'd be a big help."

"Oh, they are, they are, but later. Once she is one with the Other Side, they are invaluable. But early on, when Madame is making the transition, the auras from these objects interfere with her connection."

"I don't know," Jack said, drawing out the words.

Foster pointed to the little couch. "Please. Place it on the settee for now. When Madame has the ear of the spirits, she will ask you to bring it to the table. Have no fear. It will be quite safe there."

Jack made a show of indecision, then shrugged. "All right. If it's gonna help make this work, what the hey."

He walked to the settee and settled the case on the cushions, but his eyes were searching the wall behind it, looking for seams in the wallpaper. He found none, but noticed that the molding here ran in a box pattern just above the level of the settee. He knew one of those rectangles hid a little trapdoor; he'd seen its other side Saturday night.

Empty-handed, he returned to the table and seated himself in the chair the smiling Carl Foster was holding for him.

"Madame will be with you shortly."

And then Jack was alone. He knew he was on camera so he looked nervous, drumming on the table, fiddling with his jacket. While doing that he checked the stack of counterfeit bills inside his left sleeve, and the second metal case in his left inner breast pocket.

All set.

A moment later the overhead spots went out and Madame Pomerol made her entrance in another flowing beaded gown, pink this time. She wore the same turbanlike hat as on Sunday.

"Monsieur Butler," she said in her faux French accent as she extended her bejeweled hand, "how good to see you again."

"Nice to be up close and personal, as it were."

"I understand you wish to contact your late uncle, yes?"

"That I do."

"Then let us begin."

No preliminaries this time, no speech about not touching the ectoplasm. Madame Pomerol seated herself opposite Jack and said, "Please lay your hands flat on the table." When Jack complied she said, "I will now contact my spirit guide, the ancient Mayan priest known to me as Xultulan."

As they had Sunday, the clear bulbs on the chandelier faded, leaving the dull red ones lit. Once again shadows crowded around the table, held off only by the faint red glow from above. Jack glanced toward the settee and his case but could make out no details in the darkness.

Madame Pomerol began her tonal hum, then did her head-loll thing.

Jack guessed the reason for the hum: to help mask any sound of the trapdoor opening in the wall by the settee. Foster was probably reaching for the metal case right now.

This was SOP in the spook trade: snatch the purse, rifle through it for whatever information it contained: driver license, SSN, bank account number, address book, pictures of family members. Foster's command center had a photocopier and a key cutter, just like Charlie's; he could copy documents and keys in minutes.

If the remote switch were still in place it might have been fun to turn on the lights and catch Foster with his hand in the till, but Jack had already played that scene. He was going for a bigger sting today.

The table tipped under his hands and so he felt obliged to let out a startled, "Whoa!"

And then the low, echoey moan from the lady. The amp had been turned on.

"O Xultulan! We have a seeker after one who has crossed over, one with whom he shares a blood tie. Help us, O Xultulan!"

Jack tuned her out and concentrated on time. Foster should have snatched the case by now. He'd have had his pick set open and ready and would be working on the lock. Jack had a key but he'd done a couple of test runs picking the lock himself—and had purposely left a few crude scratches around it. As expected, the little lock turned out to be an easy pick, complicated only by its small size. If Foster had any talent, he should be turning those tumblers just… about… now.

And now he's lifting the top… and freezing at the sight of rows of gleaming gold coins. Not bullion coins like yesterday's Krugerrand, but numismatic beauties from Jack's own collection, worth far more than their weight in gold.

He wants to touch them but the plastic dome stops him. He tries to lift it but it won't budge. It's locked down. But there has to be a catch somewhere, a release…

"My case," Jack said, straightening and running jittery hands over his jacket like a man who'd just discovered that his wallet is missing. "I want my case!"

"Please be calm, Monsieur Butler," Madame Pomerol said, suddenly alert and aware and free of her trance. "Your case is fine."

Jack rose from his chair. He put a tremor in his voice. "I-I-I want it. I've got to find it!"

"Monsieur Butler, you must sit down." That was a warning to her husband to put his ass in gear and get this turkey's precious case back on the settee. "I am in touch with Xultulan and he has located your uncle. You can retrieve the case in a few minutes when—"

"I want it now!"

Jack feigned disorientation and wandered in the wrong direction first—he wanted to give Foster enough time to close the case and return it—then lurched around and stumbled toward the settee.

"We're okay," Foster's voice said in his ear. "It's back on your side."

Jack couldn't see the settee in the darkness so he traveled by memory, and made sure he banged into it when he reached it. He felt around on the cushion and found the case.

"Here it is!" he cried. "Thank God!"

As he was speaking he slipped that case into his left breast pocket and removed its identical twin from the right. He'd filled the mounts within the first with gleaming pristine beauties that anyone would recognize as valuable for their bullion weight alone. But when Foster saw the dates he'd know they were old. And since they'd looked up Matthew West on sitters-net.com, he'd assume they were rare.

The second case, however, he'd filled with lead sinkers.

"Shit, that was close!" said Foster's voice. "But worth it. You should see what's in that case. Gold coins. Not more Krugerrands, but old collectibles. They must be worth a fucking fortune. Think of something. We have got to get our hands on those coins!"

As Jack waded back toward the faintly glowing pool of red around the table, he noticed a look of concentration and distraction on Madame Pomerol's face as she listened to her husband.

She'd probably been ready to scold her sitter, but now she gave Jack a warm, motherly smile.

"See, Monsieur Butler? There was nothing for you to get upset about. You feel better now, yes?"

"Much." He took his seat and used the moment to pull the stack of thirty bogus hundreds from within his sleeve and lay it on his lap. Then he put both hands on the table and clutched the case between them. "I'm real sorry about that. Don't know what came over me. I just got scared, I guess. You know, the darkness and all."

"That is perfectly understandable, especially on your first visit." She covered her eyes with a hand. "I have made contact with your uncle."

Jack jerked upright in his seat. "Really? Can I talk to him?"

"The connection was broken when you left the table."

"Oh, no!"

"But that is not a terrible thing. I can reestablish it. But it was not a good connection, so I must ask you a few questions first."

"Shoot."

"Your uncle, his middle name was Thomas, yes?"

"You know, I believe it was. Yes, Matthew Thomas West. How'd you know that?"

She smiled. "Your uncle told me."

"Damn! That's scary."

"He seemed upset about something. Do you know what it could be?"

Jack averted his eyes, hoping he looked guilty. "I don't think so."

"Something about an inheritance, perhaps?"

Jack looked awestruck. "You know about that?"

He was perfectly aware that he'd told Foster about sharing the estate with his brother, but it was common for sitters to forget that their own loose lips were the source of most of what a medium told them.

"Of course, but communication was garbled. Something about you and your brother…"

Jack started with his story. It jibed with all the available information on sitters-net.com; he'd looked at it from different angles and couldn't see any holes. He hoped Madame Pomerol wouldn't either.

"Yeah. We were his only living relatives. Our folks were gone, and he had no kids."

No kids, Jack thought. Must've died a lonely old man, going to mediums in a vain attempt to contact his dead wife. But that's not going to happen to me. Not now…

The realization lit a warm glow in his chest.

"Monsieur Butler?"

Jack snapped to. He'd drifted away. Jeez. Not like him. Couldn't afford to do that or he'd blow the sting.

"Sorry. I was just thinking about Uncle Matt. After he died, his will divided his estate between me and my brother Bill."

"Yes, he told me his wife Alice had died many years before him. They are reunited now."

"You know about Aunt Alice? This is amazing. And they're together again? That's great."

"They are very happy. The inheritance?"

"Oh yeah. Well, I got the house and everything in it." Jack frowned and pushed out his lower lip, just shy of a pout. "Bill got the coin collection. Uncle Matt always did like him better."

"These two things, they were not equal?"

He sighed. "Yeah, they were about equal in dollar value. But all Bill had to do was find a coin dealer to unload the collection. Know what he walked away with? A quarter of a million dollars." Jack snapped his fingers. "Just like that."

"And you had to sell the house. Not so easy."

"Damn right. Had to sell off all the furniture as well. I wound up with the same amount of cash, but I had to keep flying back and forth to Minnesota and it took me until just last week to get it. That's almost six damn months!"

Madame Pomerol gave a Gallic shrug. "But still you have much money now, yes? You should be happy. But none of this tells me why your uncle is so upset."

"Well…" Jack looked away again. "I guess it has to do with this little case."

"Yes?"

He took a deep breath and sighed again. "Last week, as I was cleaning out the last of Uncle Mart's stuff before the closing, I came upon the case. It was locked and I couldn't find the key, so I brought it back with me. I was planning on finding a locksmith to open it for me, but…"

"But what, Monsieur Butler?"

"I don't think Uncle Matt wants me to have this."

"Why do you say that?"

"You won't believe this." He gave a nervous laugh. "But then again, maybe you will, seeing as how you're a medium and all." Another deep breath, a show of hesitation, then, "It's the case." He tapped its shiny surface. "Someone or something keeps moving it on me."

"Moving it?"

Jack nodded. "I keep finding it in places where I never put it. I mean that: never put it."

"Perhaps your wife or—"

"I live alone. Don't even have a cleaning lady. But I'm looking for one. You know of anybody? Because I—"

"Please go on."

"Oh, yeah. Well, it kept moving and I kept making excuses, blaming my memory. But Saturday… Saturday really got to me. You see, I'd planned to take it down to a locksmith that day, but when I was ready to leave, I couldn't find the case. I looked everywhere in that apartment. And finally, when the locksmith was closed and it was too late to do anything, I found the damn thing under my bed. Under my bed! Just as if someone had hidden it from me. In fact I know it was hidden from me, and I have a pretty good idea who did it."

"It was your Uncle Matt."

"I think so too."

"No. It was your uncle. He told me."

"You mean to tell me you knew about this all along? Why'd you let me go on so?"

"I needed to know if you were telling me the truth. Now I do. What you say agrees with what your uncle told me."

Yeah, right.

Foster said, "There were a bunch of scratches on the case lock. Looked like this jerk tried to pick it himself. Hit him with that."

Madame Pomerol cleared her throat. "But you left out a few things."

Jack wished he knew how to blush on cue. Probably wouldn't be noticed in this light anyway.

"Such as?"

"How you tried to open the case yourself and failed."

He covered his eyes. "Oh, man. Well, yeah. Tell Uncle Matt I'm sorry about that."

"Also, you believe the case holds valuable coins, and if so, they belong to your brother, yes?"

"Now wait just a minute, there. Uncle Matt left the coin collection to Bill and the house and its contents to me. This here case was part of the contents. So it's rightfully mine."

"Your uncle disagrees. He tells me they are silver coins of little monetary worth."

Jack could feel her eyes on him, looking for some sign that he already knew what the case held. He avoided a quick, negative reaction, but he didn't want to appear too accepting.

"Yeah?" he said, frowning as he hefted the case. "Seems kinda heavy for just silver."

The lady brushed past his doubt. "I know nothing of such things. All I know is that your uncle told me they were of great sentimental value to him. They are the very first coins he collected as a boy."

"No kidding?" Jack was getting an idea of where she might be heading with this.

"Yes, your uncle was hoping to take them along with him when he crossed over, but he could not manage it. That was why they remained in the house."

"Take them into the afterlife? Is that possible?"

She shook her head. "Sadly, no. No money in the afterlife. At least not permanently."

"Can't take it with you, eh? Well, I guess that settles it. I'll just have to give this to Bill."

"Don't let him get away!" Foster cried. "I'm telling you there's a small fortune in that case!"

Jack slapped his hands on the table, picked up the case, and made as if to stand. Wasn't she going to say anything? Was she going to let him walk out with all those rare gold coins? A mook like her? He couldn't believe it.

"One moment, Monsieur Butler. Your uncle wishes me to apport the case to the other side so that he can see them one last time."

"I thought you said that was impossible."

"I can do it, but only for a very short while, then they return."

"All right. Let's get to it."

"I am afraid that is impossible right now. It is a grueling procedure that takes many hours, and for which I must be alone."

"You mean I just give you this case and walk away? I don't think so. Not in this lifetime."

"You do not trust me?"

"Lady, I just met you two days ago."

"I have promised your uncle this favor. I cannot break a promise to the dead."

"Sorry."

Madame Pomerol closed her eyes and let her head fall forward. As they sat in silence on opposite sides of the table, Jack debated whether to ask for some security. He decided against it. Better to let her come up with the idea.

Finally Madame Pomerol raised her head and opened her eyes.

She released a heavy sigh. "This is most unusual. Embarrassing almost. But your uncle thinks—"

"Wait. You were just talking to him?" He didn't ask how she'd managed to do that without all the amplified moaning and groaning.

"Yes, and he says I should provide you with a show of good faith."

Even better! Let the idea come from Uncle Matt.

"I don't think I understand."

"As a show of good faith I will put one thousand dollars in an envelope for you to keep while I apport the case to the other side. When I return the case, you will return the envelope."

"A thousand dollars… I don't think that's enough. What if the case doesn't come back from the other side? Then I'm out everything." He tapped the case. "I'll bet the coins in here are worth a couple-three thousand."

"Twenty-five hundred then, but ask no more, for I do not have it."

Jack made a show of considering this, then nodded. "I guess that'll do."

She rose with an air of wounded pride. "I shall get it."

"I hope you're not mad or anything."

"Your uncle is annoyed with you. And so, I must say, am I."

"Hey, it's not like it's for me, you know. I just feel I've got to look out for my brother's interests. I mean, seeing as how the coins in this thing are his and all."

She walked off into the darkness without another word.

She's good, he thought. Just the right mix of arrogance and hurt. And smooth.

He heard a door shut, then the lady's voice started in his ear.

"Do you believe this shit?" she said. "A thousand ain't enough for that dickhead bastard! Twenty-five hundred fucking dollars! Have we got that much in cash?"

"Let's see," Foster said. "With the cash donations from this morning and his own five hundred, we just make it."

Damn, Jack thought. They were going to give him back his own queer. Oh, well, that had been a risk all along.

"All right, stick it in an envelope for me. I'll make up the dummy." Jack heard rustling paper, then, "I tell you, I'd love to shove this twenty-five hundred right up that geek's ass!"

Carl Foster laughed. "What difference does it make how much he wants? He's not going to walk away with a cent of it."

Madame added her own laugh. "You've got that right!"

That's what you think, my friends.

While apparently adjusting his position in the chair, Jack counted five bills off his pile of queer and shoved them back into his sleeve, leaving twenty-five in his lap.

"It's the principle, Carl. He should have trusted me for a thousand. It's the fucking principle!" More rustling paper, then, "All right. I'm set. Showtime."

With that, the overheads and chandelier came on, flooding the room with light.

What the hell?

Jack glanced down at the pile of bills in his lap. He'd been counting on the semi-darkness of the séance; now he'd have to do his work in full light. This complicated matters—big time.

He leaned forward to cover the bills as Madame Pomerol returned. She carried a white legal-size envelope and a small wooden box. With a great show of noblesse oblige, she tossed the envelope onto the table.

"Here is your good faith. Please count it."

"Hey, no, that's—"

"Please. I insist."

Shrugging, Jack took the envelope and opened it. He noticed it was the security kind with a crisscross pattern printed on the inner surface to keep anyone from scoping out the contents through the paper.

Now the hard part… made harder by all this damn light… had to play this just right… be cool and casual…

He removed the wad of bills from the envelope and lowered it beneath the level of the table top. As he pretended to count them he felt the muscles along the back of his neck and shoulders tighten. He knew the Fosters had a camera in the chandelier, but he couldn't remember if it was a simple, wide-angle stationary, or a remote-controlled directional. If Carl Foster spotted Jack's switch, he might do something rash. Like shoot him in the back.

Jack decided to risk it. He'd come too far to back down now. And his ear piece would give him a heads-up if Foster got wise.

Keeping close to the table, Jack switched Madame Pomerol's bills with the counterfeits waiting in his lap.

"It's all here," he said as he brought the stack of queer onto the tabletop and shoved it into the envelope.

He listened for comment from Foster, but the husband remained silent. Had he got away with it?

The lady picked up the envelope, took a quick look inside, then ran her tongue over the glued flap.

"Please check to make sure the lock on your case is secure," she said. "For I wish to return it to you in the exact condition that you gave it to me."

Jack bent over the case, pretending to examine the lock, but kept watch on the lady's hands. There! As soon as his head dipped, he saw her switch the cash envelope with another from her billowy sleeve.

One good switch deserves another. But I'm still one ahead.

"Yep," he said, looking up. "Still locked up tight."

"Now," she said as she opened her little wooden box, "I am going to seal the envelope."

She withdrew a purple candle from the box, followed by a book of matches and something that looked like a ring. She struck a match and lit the candle. She dribbled some of the wax onto the back of the envelope, then pressed the ring thing into it.

"There. I have affixed a spirit seal to the envelope. You are not to open it. Only if the case does not return from the other side may you open it. If you break the spirit seal before then, your uncle will punish you."

Jack swallowed hard. "Punish me? How?"

"Most likely he will make the money disappear. But he may do worse." She wagged a finger at him as she pushed the envelope across the table. "So do not open it before you return."

Very clever, Jack thought. She's covering all exits.

"Don't worry. I won't." He put the envelope in his lap, then quickly transferred that plus her twenty-five-hundred dollars to his side coat pocket. "Oh, hey, I got a little business trip tomorrow—overnight to Chicago—so I can't come back till Thursday. Will you have ap-whatevered it by then?"

"Apported. Yes, and I believe it will have returned by then."

You mean, he thought, that you believe you will have been able to replace the gold coins with junk silver by then.

He pushed the case toward her. "Then fire away. And good luck, Uncle Matt, wherever you are."

Jack rose, waved to Madame Pomerol, and headed for the door. "See you Thursday."

He felt laughter bubbling in his throat as he strode through the waiting room and hurried down the hall, but he suppressed it. He didn't want to arouse their suspicions. He took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator because a load of shit was poised over a windtunnel fan and he wanted to be out of range when it dropped.

"Lock the front door," Madame Pomerol said through Jack's earpiece, "and let's take a look at those coins."

Jack had made it to the lobby when he heard Foster say, "Shit! Something's up with this lock!"

"What's wrong?"

"Like it's jammed."

Good diagnosis, Carl, Jack thought as he waved to the doorman and stepped out onto the street. He'd broken off a pin tip in the lock of the second case.

Instead of hurrying away, Jack loitered on the sidewalk outside. He wanted to hear this.

"Look at that," Foster said. "Wonder how that got in there. No matter, it's out now. Only take me a few seconds to… there. Now, feast your eyes on—oh, shit! Oh, no!"

"Let me—" Madame Pomerol cut herself off with a gasp. "What the fuck? You told me this was packed with gold coins! Are you fucking blind?"

"It was! I swear it was! I don't know what—"

"I do! The shit pulled a switch! He was conning us from the get-go! And you let him in!"

"Me?"

"Yes, you, you needle-dick jerk! You're supposed to screen these assholes!"

"I did! I checked out his address, I called the phone number he gave me."

"Yeah, well, you can bet your sorry ass the Robert Butler at that address ain't the guy we had here today, and the phone you called is not at that address. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

"Hey, let's look on the bright side. He thinks he walked out of here with two-and-a-half large, but all he's got is sliced-up newspaper. And we've still got his five hundred. I wish I could see his face when he opens that envelope. He may have pulled one over on us, but we're the ones that come out ahead."

"You think I give a shit about that? I don't give a rat's ass about five hundred bucks. What I care about is he scammed us. He's out some cash, but as far as I'm concerned, he came out on top. He walked into our place and fucking scammed us—in our own place! Like we were punk amateurs. If word of this gets out we'll never be able to hold our heads up. We look like big fucking jerks."

That's right, Jack thought, plucking out his ear piece as he moved on. But soon you're going to look like even bigger jerks.

He hoped they stayed good and mad, too mad to see the barb still waiting at the end of Jack's sting.

He pumped his fist as he danced across the street. This was sweet, and going to get sweeter.

9

Gia awoke from a dream about blue eyes.

She yawned and stretched in the big leather recliner where she and Jack would often snuggle together and watch one of his weird movies.

She yawned again. She never napped. She'd sat down and closed her eyes, just for a minute, and suddenly it was forty minutes later. Maybe it was the pregnancy, combined with being up late with Jack last night. She remembered being very tired carrying Vicky.

Whatever the reason, the nap hadn't refreshed her. Images of the blond child from yesterday had filled her sleep, her sad, lonely blue eyes calling to Gia, beseeching her…

For what? Why couldn't she get that little girl out of her head?

The pregnancy again. Sure, blame everything on the hormonal shifts. Being alone in the house on a summer day with no prospect of seeing Vicky till the end of the week didn't help either.

Gia pushed herself up from the chair and grabbed her purse. She didn't want to stay in the house. As soon as she stepped out into the warm humid afternoon she knew where she wanted to go.

She'd never liked the subway—the closed-in feeling of the dark tunnels made her edgy—but today it seemed to be the way to go. A quick walk over to Lexington took her to the Fifty-ninth Street station which she knew to be a stop for the N and R trains, known citywide as the "Never" and the "Rarely." She wasn't familiar with the Brooklyn and Queens lines, but the map by the token booth showed her that the N would take her right to the heart of Astoria.

She was just ahead of rush hour and her car was nearly full; the rocking made her queasy until the tracks broke free of the tunnel and into the air. She sighed with relief as sunlight filtered through the spiderweb-fine graffiti scratches on the windows.

The elevated tracks ended at her stop, Ditmars Boulevard. She stepped out of the car and headed for the stairs down to street level. She had a pretty good idea of Menelaus Manor's location in relation to Ditmars. She'd have to orient herself once she reached—

"Gia?"

She jumped at the sound of her name. When she turned she saw a man with long red hair and a mustache approaching her. For an instant she didn't recognize him, then—

"Jack?"

"Gia, what are you doing here?"

His heels beat a staccato rhythm as he strode toward her along the platform. Were those cowboy boots?

He leaned in to kiss her but she held up a hand. "Without the mustache, please?"

He smiled. "Oh, yeah."

He peeled it off and they kissed.

He kept his hands on her waist and looked into her eyes. "You're the last person I expected to see here. What's up?"

"I'm not sure," she said.

She felt off balance. What had she been thinking, anyway? That she'd just knock on the Kentons' door and ask if they had any little blond girls wandering around their house today? She hadn't thought this through. She'd been operating on impulse and that wasn't like her.

"It's that little girl you saw, isn't it?"

She stared at him. "How on earth did you know?"

"You've mentioned her a number of times since yesterday. She seems to be stuck in your head."

"She is. I don't know why, but I can't stop thinking about her. Maybe if she hadn't disappeared and we'd spoken to her, it would be different. But now, the way it is… she's a mystery."

"Not one we're likely to solve. And maybe not something you should be worrying about and traveling to Astoria for. I mean, you being pregnant and all."

"Jack, it's just half a dozen stops from home."

"Yeah, but subways are full of people, some of them sick. I don't want you catching anything."

"You never seemed to worry about that before I was pregnant."

"I did, but now I'm twice as worried, if you know what I mean."

She was touched by his concern for her and the baby, but he was going a bit overboard.

She sighed. "I just wanted to have another look, I guess."

"Well, since I'm on my way to see Lyle and Charlie myself—" he offered her his arm with exaggerated courtliness—"I shall be delighted to escort you there."

Gia batted her eyes and got into the game. "That's very kind of you, sir, but I sorely fear for my reputation if I'm seen walking with a man with that sort of haircut. I might never again be able to hold up my head in polite society."

"A new haircut? Say the word, madam, and it is done."

With a flourish Jack pulled off that hideous wig and shoved it into the pocket of his equally hideous sport coat. She combed her fingers through his tousled hair to straighten it.

"By the way, who picked out your clothes today?"

"Stevie Wonder."

"I suspected." She took his arm and they continued toward the stairway. "You seem to be in a good mood."

"So far it's been a pretty good day."

As they walked he told her about how he'd reversed a scam on an Upper East Side psychic. This was the liveliest she'd seen him in months. The old Jack was back, and Gia was glad.

At Menelaus Manor they found a pair of workmen just leaving; apparently they'd been replacing the broken windows.

Charlie welcomed them in. He didn't ask why Gia had come along, and Jack didn't offer an explanation. Anyway, Charlie seemed too taken with Jack's outfit to care.

"Ain't you ragged out!" he said, pointing to the plaid jacket and grinning. "Oh, you some ragged-out mack today!"

When he finally stopped laughing he said Lyle would meet Jack upstairs instead of in the Channeling Room, which was under repair.

Jack turned to Gia. "Do you mind waiting here while I go upstairs? Got to talk some business. Only take me a minute."

"Talk away," she said. "I'll just hang here and… look around."

Jack winked at her and followed Charlie into the hall and up the stairs. When they were gone, Gia casually wandered down the hall and into the kitchen. She poked her head into an adjoining room that held a dismantled TV. The screen was lit, though, showing a Dukakis-for-President ad. Probably the History Channel or a documentary. She went to the rear door and looked out into the backyard: a plot of dry, scrubby grass bordered by a privet hedge. No little girl.

Disappointed, Gia wandered back to the waiting room.

Well, what did she expect, anyway? Still she felt better for coming. She'd made the pilgrimage, now maybe she could stop thinking about that child.

Gia idly picked up one of the Menelaus manor pamphlets to read up on the house again, and a little booklet fell out. The cover read, WHO, ME? with "By J. T. C." in the corner. She flipped it over and saw a drawing of a church and the words, "Fisherman's Club" and "A Ministry for Laymen." Published by Chick Publications.

Gia flipped through it and realized immediately that it was a born-again tract exhorting its Christian readers to start "personal ministries" and become "soul winners" by bringing nonbelievers to Jesus.

What was it about fundamentalist sects, she wondered, that made them feel they had to get others to believe what they believed? The drive to convert other people to their way of thinking… where did it come from?

A more immediate question: Who was leaving these things here? And what did he or she hope to accomplish? People seeking out spirit mediums like Ifasen had most likely tried out the major religions and rejected them.

She searched through the Menelaus brochures and found another Chick pamphlet called "This Was Your Life!" As she opened it she heard a child's voice begin to sing.

"I think we're alone now…"

Gia turned and her heart tripped over a beat. There she was—the little blond girl. She stood in the doorway to the hall, her blue eyes bright as she stared at Gia. She wore the same red and white checkered blouse, the same brown riding breeches and boots as yesterday.

"Hello," Gia said. "What's your name?"

The girl didn't smile, didn't respond. She kept her hands clasped in front of her as she sang and stared at Gia.

"Do you live around here?"

The song went on. She had a good voice, a sweet tone that stayed on key. But the single-mindedness of the singing was making Gia uncomfortable. As the child went into the verse her hands fluttered to her neckline and began unbuttoning her blouse.

The nape of Gia's neck tightened. "What are you doing?"

The relentless singing and the blank look in the child's eyes were all disturbing enough. But now this… opening her top…

Was she demented?

"Please don't do that," Gia said.

The air in the room thickened as the last button popped free of its hole and the child gripped the two edges of the blouse and spread them, revealing a bare flat chest with a wide, ragged red gash down its center—

No-no-no, not a gash, a gaping bloody hole, a gaping bloody empty hole with nothing where her heart should be—

10

Jack was in the middle of describing his doubling back on Madame Pomerol's variation of the Spanish handkerchief scam when he heard Gia's scream. Before he knew he was moving he found himself up and racing for the stairs, leaving behind his rapt audience.

He pounded down to the first floor, his feet barely touching the stairs, and found her in the middle of the waiting room, doubled over, face buried in her hands, sobbing.

Jack spun, saw no one else about, then grabbed her wrists and pulled her to him.

"Gia! What's wrong? What happened?"

Her tear-stained face was the color of a freshly shucked oyster when she looked up at him. "She had no heart! She opened her blouse and her heart was gone!"

"Who?"

"The little girl!"

"The one you saw yesterday?"

Gia nodded. "She… she—" Her eyes widened and she pointed toward the hall. "Look! There's her blood!"

Jack turned just as Lyle and Charlie piled down the stairs. He saw a glistening red trail on the hardwood floor of the hall, saw Charlie's sneaker land in it and slip. Charlie went down but bounced back up again, staring in horror at his bloody hands.

"Blood! Dear Lord, where—?" He looked at Jack. "Who?"

Lyle, poised on the bottom step, pointed toward the kitchen. "It runs that way!"

He and Charlie moved down the hall, gingerly sidestepping the red splatters. Instinctively Jack started to follow, but Gia clutched his arm.

"Don't leave me!"

Jack wrapped an arm around her back and held her closer, trying to absorb her Parkinsonian shakes.

"I won't. Don't worry."

But within him every angry cell was pulling toward the hall to follow that wet red trail. He wanted—needed—to find whoever had frightened Gia like this. He didn't know how they'd done it—faking up a little girl so it looked like she had no heart—and he didn't care. Anyone who terrified Gia like this was going to answer to him.

He watched Lyle and Charlie enter the kitchen and follow the trail to the left, heard Lyle say, "It goes down the steps." Jack heard their feet on the cellar stairs, their voices crying out in shock.

"Jack!" Lyle called. "Jack, you've got to see this! It's… it's…" Words seemed to fail him.

Jack glanced at Gia but she shook her head. "Don't you leave me alone here! Please!"

He had to see what they were talking about. He turned and called out, "How about Gia? Is it all right for her?"

"No… yeah… I don't know if it's all right for anyone, but I guess so. Just come quick! I don't know how long it will last!"

He looked at Gia again. "Come on. I'll be right at your side, holding on to you."

"Damn right you will," she muttered. She shuddered, then straightened. "All right, let's go. But if it's awful, we get out of here, promise? We head home and we never come back."

"Promise."

They moved like Siamese twins, edging down the hall hip to hip, avoiding the blood on the floor. Stepped into the kitchen, then made the turn and stopped at the top of the cellar steps. A single bulb lit the narrow stairwell. A two-inch railing ran along the right wall. Below, near the bottom steps, he could see Lyle and Charlie, their postures tense, hunched, as they stared into the basement. The steps made a turn where they stood, putting the basement out of Jack's line of sight.

"I'll go first," he said, and started down. He felt Gia close enough behind him to be riding piggyback, a hand on each of his shoulders, squeezing. He steadied himself by gripping the wobbly railing.

Below, the Kenton brothers looked up at him. Lyle's face was tight with strain, Charlie's was slack and beaded with sweat. They looked like frightened kids. Jack wondered what could put these two grown men in such a state.

A few more steps and he found out.

"Holy…"

"Oh, dear God!" Gia said into his ear and she leaned against him and peered over his shoulder.

The basement floor was awash in bright red liquid. It rose to the level of the bottom stair tread and lapped at the one above it. And it moved, circulating in a slow, counterclockwise rotation.

Jack said, "That's not…"

"Damn right it is," Lyle said. "Can't you smell it?"

Gia's fingers suddenly turned into talons, digging into Jack's shoulders.

"There's someone in there!" she cried.

Jack leaned forward, squinting at the surface of the red lake. "Where?"

"There!" An arm speared over his right shoulder, finger pointing. "Dear God, don't you see it? Right there! A hand, reaching up from the surface! It's a child! That little girl! She's in there!"

"What you talking 'bout?" Charlie said. "Ain't nobody in there."

Jack had to agree. Barely a ripple on the surface from wall to wall.

"I don't see anything either, Gi."

"Are you all blind?" Her voice was taking on a panicky tone. "That little girl is drowning! There's her arm, reaching up for help! Can't you see it? For God's sake, somebody grab it! Please!"

Lyle turned to her. "I don't see a thing. I'm not saying you're not, okay, but even if somebody were in here, it's only a foot deep, tops."

Her eyes wild, Gia began trying to squeeze past Jack. "I can't stand this, Jack! I've got to do something!"

Jack wouldn't let her pass. "Gia, no. We don't know what's going down here, and you're too close already." He didn't know what effect whatever was happening might have on the baby.

"Jack—"

"You know what I'm talking about. You shouldn't—"

"The level's rising!" Charlie cried.

Jack turned and saw that the blood had reached the tread of the next to last step.

"Let's all back up a little," Lyle said.

But as he stepped up, his foot slipped. He let out a startled cry as he fell back, arms out, one hand clawing for purchase on the wall, the other reaching for his brother. But Charlie had turned his back and by the time he responded it was too late.

With pinwheeling arms, Lyle hit the pool and sank from sight. Charlie shouted and crouched to jump in after him, but Jack reached out and grabbed his shoulder.

"Wait!"

Jack stared in mute shock at the crimson froth where Lyle had disappeared.

What the hell? Even though the level continued its rise, faster than ever now, the pool couldn't be more than two feet deep. And was it his imagination or was the blood circulating faster too?

Seconds later Lyle broke the surface, splashing and gasping, his head and face coated with blood.

"Praise God!" Charlie cried. He gripped the rickety railing with one hand and leaned out over the pool, reaching with his other. "Get up here!"

But Lyle continued to splash about, trying to shake the blood out of his eyes as the flow pulled him away from the stairs.

"Lyle!" Jack called. "Stand up!"

"Can't! Floor's gone! No bottom!"

"Jack!" Gia said. "The little girl—I don't see her arm anymore! She's gone!"

The blood was lapping at the fourth step now. The flow had rotated Lyle to the far side of the cellar, and as Jack watched he saw an eddying depression begin to form in the center of the blood. The velocity of the rotation accelerated.

"A whirlpool!" Charlie shouted. He leaned further out over the blood, stretching his arms, reaching toward his brother. "Lyle! Grab hold when you come 'round!"

A bottomless whirlpool of blood, Jack thought. Turning counterclockwise. With the level rising instead of falling. In a cellar in Queens.

Not the weirdest sight he'd ever seen, not by a long shot, but he knew of only one thing that could be behind something like this.

He'd deal with that later. Right now he had to get Lyle out of that pool and Gia out of this house.

He gripped Charlie's arm as Lyle started to float toward them. "I've got you. Grab him as he comes by."

But as Lyle rotated their way, the sucking center of the whirlpool pulled him closer to it and further from the walls. He tried to swim toward Charlie's outstretched hand; Jack could see the desperation in his blood-soaked features as he reached for it, heard his cry of dismay as his fingers fell short by inches and he swirled away.

"Swim!" Charlie shouted. "Swim toward the walls!"

Jack could see Lyle struggling in the thick fluid, doing a crude dog-paddle. He was a lousy swimmer.

"Can't!" he gasped. "Current's too strong!"

"We need rope!" Jack told Charlie. "Got any?"

"Rope?" Charlie's panic seemed to ease as he concentrated on the question. "No… we've got string but—"

"Never mind," Jack said. The solution had been right in his hand. He turned to Gia. "I need you to go back up to the kitchen for a minute."

"I'm not leaving—"

"Just stand in the doorway. Please. I need you out of the stairwell to do this. Hurry. We may not get another shot."

She turned and padded back to the top step and turned, watching him with frightened eyes. Jack followed her a few steps, then grabbed the railing with both hands.

"Charlie—help me rip this out of the wall."

Charlie frowned, then brightened. "Right!"

Ten seconds later Jack was easing toward the red pool with the ten-foot railing in his hands. The blood had risen past the halfway mark on the walls and was moving faster. Lyle had rounded the far side of the whirlpool and was coming their way again, but now he was even closer to the black-hole center.

"Quick!" Jack said to Charlie as he stepped onto a blood-covered step. His stomach clenched—it was warm. "Grab my belt so I don't go in too."

"Oh, Jack, please be careful!" Gia called from above.

With Charlie steadying him from behind, Jack gripped one end of the railing and thrust the other toward Lyle as he swirled by. The far end struck the surface, splashing blood into Lyle's face. He whipped his arms about blindly, slapping his hands on the surface, grasping only air. Jack leaned farther out and felt a tearing pain in his right flank but kept trying to steady the railing against the current and push it closer to Lyle. He hoped he hadn't popped his stitches.

And then one of Lyle's flailing arms made contact. His fingers clutched the wood, then wrapped around it.

"You've got it!" Jack said, feeling himself tilting toward the pool by the extra pull on the railing. Over his shoulder he said to Charlie, "And I hope you've got me."

"Don't worry," Charlie said, then raised his voice. "Get both hands on it, Lyle!"

Lyle did just that, and then Jack and Charlie began hauling him in.

But the pool didn't seem to want to give him up. The maelstrom turned faster and the level began to drop as a loud sucking sound echoed from the center. It took all of Jack and Charlie's combined strength to hold onto the railing, but they were losing this tug of war. Jack tried to put more of his back into it but the pain in his side worsened. He shifted and that caused his feet to slip on the blood.

No! With the speed of that whirlpool now, if he went in too they'd both be lost.

Gia cried, "Jack!"

He heard a thumping behind him and then a slim arm wrapped around his neck, pulling him back.

With Gia hanging on as ballast, Jack and Charlie were able to pull Lyle clese enough so he could grab Charlie's hand. Jack tossed the railing into the pool and helped Charlie drag Lyle out. As his brother lay gasping and retching on the steps, Charlie placed his hands on him and bent his head. He seemed to be praying.

Jack slumped back against Gia. "Thanks."

She kissed him on the ear and whispered, "You saved him."

"And you saved me."

As Jack watched the level of the blood fall, he noticed something.

"Look at the walls," he said. "They're dry… and no stains."

"Not quite," Gia said, pointing over Jack's shoulder. "What about those?"

Jack saw them too. Halfway up the pecan paneling… oddly shaped blotches, evenly spaced around the room. They reminded him of—

"Crosses!" Charlie cried. "Praise God, my prayers have been answered! He's driven the evil from this house!"

Jack wasn't so sure about that.

He watched the current slow and stop as the sucking center of the maelstrom stretched and lengthened into a line. An orange concrete floor slowly appeared as the blood rushed down through the large crack in its center.

"I'll be damned," Jack said. "It split the floor wide open."

"No," Charlie said. "That already there. It cracked in the Friday night quake."

Jack saw Lyle uncoil his blood-soaked body from its exhausted slump into a sitting position.

"The floor wasn't there a couple of minutes ago. I swear, the floor was gone when I was in there."

"We believe you," Jack said.

The remaining blood seemed to evaporate, leaving the concrete dry and unstained.

Lyle moved down a couple of steps and poked the toe of his shoe against the orange floor. Apparently satisfied with its solidity, he stepped onto the concrete and walked around in a tight circle that did not cross the large crack.

"What happened here?" he said to no one in particular. "Why? What does it mean?"

Jack thought he had an answer, one he didn't like. If he was right, he wanted Gia far, far away from here.

"We'll try to figure it out later, Lyle," he said, then turned to Gia. "Let's get out of here."

"No, wait," Gia said, rising and moving past him down the stairs. "I want to see those crosses."

"Gia, please. This isn't a healthy place, if you know what I mean."

She gave him one of her smiles. "I know what you mean, but this involves me."

"No, it doesn't. It—"

"Yes, it does," Lyle said.

Jack gave him a hard look. "Would you mind staying out of this, Lyle?"

"I can't. I'm in it up to my neck. And Gia's in it too. She's the only one who's seen the little girl. Doesn't that say something?"

"It says she should get the hell out of here."

Gia stepped out onto the floor. "I just want to look at these crosses, okay?"

"No," Jack muttered, rising and following her. "Not okay. But I don't seem to have much say in the matter."

Jack joined her where she'd stopped before one of the glistening red cross-shaped stains on the cheap paneling. The upright part ran about two inches wide and maybe ten inches high; the eight-inch crosspiece flared upward at each end and was set high, almost at the top of the upright. Jack counted eleven of them ringing the cellar wall, maybe six feet apart and about five feet off the floor.

"What a strange kind of cross," Gia said. "And they're the only things in the room still wet."

"Not the only thing," Lyle said. His clothes and dreads were still drenched in thick red blood. "I've got to go change and take a shower." He started to turn away, then swiveled back to them. "That's known as a tau cross, by the way. Named because it looks like the T in the Greek alphabet; it's also the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet."

Jack stared at him. How did he know all this stuff?

"Tau…" Charlie said. "I remember reading in the prophet Ezekiel how the faithful of God would all be signed on the forehead with the letter tau" He looked around, nodding. "Yes, this definitely shows that we were saved by the hand of the Lord."

Jack took a closer look. "But the cross piece doesn't quite make it all the way up." Each showed a little nubbin of the upright on top. "Not quite a capital T."

As if on cue, all the bloody crosses faded away.

"Look!" Lyle cried, holding out his arms. His clothes were clean and dry, and not a trace of red on his skin or hair. "The blood! It's gone! As if it never happened!"

"Oh, it happened," Jack said, pointing to the banister railing on the floor. "And now it's time to go."

"No, you can't," Lyle said. "We need to talk about this. Everything that's been happening here since the earthquake—"

"'Everything'?" Jack said. "You mean there's more?"

"Yes. Lots more. And I believe it's all connected to Gia. Maybe even the earthquake."

Jack glanced at Gia and saw her startled look. He turned back to Lyle. "Look, I know you just had a bad experience, so—"

"Listen to me. It's all starting to fall into place. We've been living here almost a year now and in all that time we've experienced not one strange thing." He looked at his brother. "Am I right, Charlie?"

Charlie nodded. "True that. But since Friday night it been one thing top another."

"Right. All the weirdness started Friday night when Gia stepped into this house. The instant she crossed the threshold we had an earthquake, for Christ sake!"

"I crossed with her. We entered together, if you remember. Maybe it's me."

Jack knew it was him, but didn't want to go into that now. He wanted Gia out of here.

"But you're not the one who's seen the little girl. On any other day in my life I'd say Gia's arrival with the earthquake was pure coincidence, but not today. Not after what I just went through. And she's the only one who's seen this little girl. I'm telling you, I feel it in my gut: that child is connected to what's been going on, and Gia's connected to the child. I want to know how."

"So do I," Gia said. "I mean, that is, if it's true. Because I saw a hand sticking out of that pool. It was right in front of you three but none of you could see it. So either I'm crazy or I'm connected. Either way, I want some answers too."

"Okay, fine," Jack said. He knew Lyle was wrong, but could see from the way this conversation was going that he wasn't going to get Gia home any time soon. "We'll discuss it. But not here. I don't think this house is a healthy place for Gia. There's got to be a restaurant or someplace where we can get a booth and hash this out."

Charlie turned to Lyle. "How about Hasan's up on Ditmars?"

Lyle nodded. "That'll do. On a Tuesday night we can have our pick of the tables. But first I want to take a shower."

"Why?" Jack said. "You look perfectly clean."

"Maybe, but I don't feel clean. You three go ahead. It's a easy walk. I'll catch up with you."

Jack nodded absently. Lyle's theory was beginning to bother him. Could Gia have been the trigger? The possibility, remote as it was, shot a gout of acid from his gut into his chest.

11

Hasan's turned out to be a small Middle Eastern cafe and restaurant. The orange awning over the natural wooden front sported English and Arabic. The walls inside were white stucco, trimmed with red and green stripes. A widescreen TV was tuned to some Arab CNN-wannabe channel.

The owners, a smiling middle-aged couple with thick accents, greeted Charlie with the deference earned by a regular customer. The place was only a quarter full and, as Lyle had said, they had the pick of the tables. At Jack's nudging—he didn't want anyone eavesdropping—Charlie chose one in a rear corner. It had a marble top and chairs with woven straw backs.

Jack went into the men's room and took off his shirt. He checked his bandage and found blood starting to seep through. The wound ached but didn't seem too much worse, given how he'd mistreated it. He slipped back into his shirt and packed a couple of paper towels over the bandage.

Lyle arrived a few minutes later, his dreads still wet from his shower. The waitress had brought a Diet Pepsi for Charlie, a Sprite for Gia, and a couple of Killian's for Jack and Lyle.

"I suppose I should tell you about the Otherness," Jack said.

Gia frowned. "Do you think you should go into that?"

"Well, it should explain why I think if anyone triggered the strangeness in that house, it was me instead of you."

Somewhere in the back of his head he heard a voice mutter, It's always about you, isn't it. Not true. Most times he didn't want it to be about him, but this time he did. Because he refused to accept Lyle's alternative that Gia had triggered the manifestations. Or maybe he was afraid to accept it. He didn't want Gia involved.

"I know, but it sounds so…" She rubbed a hand over her face. "What am I thinking? I was going to say it sounds so far out. But after today…"

"Right," Lyle said. "After today you're going to have to go some to be too far out for us. I think we left 'far out' in the dust. Or rather, the blood."

Jack found Charlie staring at him. "You said 'Otherness'? What that mean?"

Jack noticed that the events in the cellar seemed to have scared some of the hip-hop out of the younger Kenton.

The waitress came with the menus.

"Why don't we order, then talk," Jack said.

Gia looked at him. "You can't be hungry after that."

"I'm always hungry."

The menu was bilingual—English on the left, Arabic on the right. Throughout the word vegetable was spelled "ve-gitible." Hasan's offered salad, falafel, hummus, tahini, baba ganoush, fatoush, lebneh, fried calamari, tajin eggplant, and tajin calamari.

Tajin… was that like Cajun?

Lots of kababs—lamb, veal, chicken, and kofta, whatever that was.

Jack nudged Gia. "What are you going to have?"

"I'll have a little hummus and a pita. That's about all I can stomach right now. How about you?"

"I'm thinking about the special."

Gia looked and gasped. "Tongue with testicles? Jack, don't you dare!"

"You know I always like to try new—"

"Don't. You. Dare."

"Okay. Just for you, my dear, I will forego that epicurean delight." He'd had no intention of dining on a dish that sounded like a sex act anyway. "I guess I'll just settle for a lamb kabab."

Once their orders were in, Jack leaned over the table.

"Let me start at the beginning. It may take a minute or two, but a little patience will pay off. It began last summer when a crazy Hindu sailed a boatload of creatures called rakoshi to the West Side docks. They were big and vicious and they threatened someone I care very much about." He glanced at Gia and their eyes met. They'd come so close to losing Vicky, and Jack himself had barely survived. "But they could be killed, and I killed them."

Not all of them. One still survived, but Jack decided not to go into that.

"I thought that was that. It was the strangest occurrence of my life until then, but I put it behind me and moved on. But then, last spring, I learned that the origin of those creatures was not exactly earthly."

Lyle said, "We're not heading for UFOville, are we?"

"No. This is weirder. While looking for a missing wife I fell in with some strange people who told me that the rakoshi had been 'fashioned'—that was the word—of everything bad in humans. Something took human lust and greed and hate and viciousness and distilled it into these creatures without any leavening factors. They were human evil to the Nth."

"You talkin' demons," Charlie said.

"They'd fit the description, I guess."

"And the 'something' you said did this. You talkin' Satan?"

"No. I was told it's called the Otherness."

"Could be just another name for Satan."

"I don't think so. Satan's a pretty easy concept to grasp. He was thrown out of heaven because of his pride and now he spends his time luring souls away from God and stashing them in hell where they suffer for eternity. That about right?"

"Well, yeah," Charlie said. "But—"

"Fine, then." Jack didn't want to get sidetracked here. "But I've had the Otherness explained to me a couple of times and I still don't have a handle on it. Apparently two vast, unimaginably complex cosmic forces have been at war forever. The prize in this war is all existence—this world, other realities, other dimensions, everything is at stake. Before you start feeling important, I was told that our corner of reality is just a tiny piece of that whole, and of no special importance. But if one side's going to be the winner, it's got to take all the marbles. Even our little backwater."

"Don't tell me," Lyle said, his tone bordering on disdain. "One of these forces is Good and one is Eeeevil."

"Not quite. That would make it easy. The way I understand it, the side that has our reality in its pocket is not good or evil, it's just there. The most we can expect from it is benign neglect."

"'Thou shalt not have false gods before me,' " Charlie intoned.

"It's not a god. It's a force, a state of being, a…" Jack spread his hands in frustration. "I don't know if we can grasp anything that vast and alien."

"Does it have a name?" Lyle said.

Jack shook his head. "No. I've heard someone refer to it as the Ally, but that's not quite right. It will only act on our behalf to keep us in its possession. Other than that it doesn't give a damn about us."

"And the Otherness is… what?" Lyle said. "The other side?"

"Right. And it doesn't have a name either, but people who seem to know about these things call it the Otherness because it represents everything not us. Its rules are different than ours. It wants to convert our form of reality to its own, one that'll be toxic for us—physically and spiritually."

"That Satan, I tell you!" Charlie cried. Lyle rolled his eyes. Charlie caught it and pointed to Jack. "He just nailed Satan dead on, bro, and you know it. Why don't you stop frontin' and cop to it?"

To head off a looming argument, Jack said, "Well, the Otherness could have been the inspiration for the idea of Satan. I've heard it described as vampiric, and it sounds to me as if its idea of reality would create a hell on earth. So maybe…"

"But what does all this have to do with this afternoon?" Lyle said.

"I'm getting to that. This past spring I learned the hard way that the elements in the Otherness responsible for creating the rakoshi wanted my head for killing them. They missed me but a few people and a good-size house vanished from the face of the earth."

"Ay, yo, I remember readin' 'bout that," Charlie said. "Someplace out on Long Island, right?"

Jack nodded. "A little town called Monroe."

"Right!" Lyle said. "I remember trying to think up a way to take credit for it, or at least come up with a way-out explanation that would buy me some PR. But about half a dozen mediums in the city beat me to it." He looked at Jack. "You're telling me that was you?"

"I didn't cause it," Jack said. "I just happened to be on the scene. And I wasn't the only one there. Both sides were represented. On the Otherness team was a guy calling himself Sal Roma. Not his real name—he'd stolen it. He seemed pretty tuned in to the Otherness, like he was its main agent here. His name has popped up a couple of times since then, once I think as an anagram."

"An anagram?" Lyle said. "That's interesting. Means there's a good chance his real name is hidden in those letters. I've read that ancient wizards used to operate under aliases for fear that someone who knew their True Name could have power over them."

"I think this guy's just playing games. But if I ever learn his True Name, I'm going to find him and…" Jack stopped himself. "Never mind."

Charlie said, "You gotta personal beef with this Roma?"

The thought of Kate made the old pain new. "You could say that."

Jack glanced at Gia. She smiled her sympathy and took his hand under the table. They'd talked a lot about this in the past month or so. Gia believed. She'd seen the rakoshi, so she'd been well down the road to acceptance when he'd explained all this to her. But even after what they'd seen today, the Kenton brothers probably thought he was nuts.

He took a breath. "But back to the big hole in Monroe: Sal Roma and some nasty sort of pet of his were there for the Otherness; the anti-Otherness side was represented by a couple of guys who looked like twins. I was caught in the middle, and the twins were ready to sacrifice me for their purposes—which showed me firsthand how unbenign this so-called Ally power is. Things got kind of complicated, but the upshot is, I walked away and the twins didn't."

"You know," Lyle said, "this is all really fascinating, but what's it got to do with our house?"

"I'm getting to that. I've since learned—or at least I was told—that I've been drafted into the service of the anti-Otherness."

"Drafted?" Lyle said. "You mean you don't have any say about that?"

"Not a thing, apparently. My guess is that because I'm somewhat responsible for the demise of the twins, I'm supposed to replace them. But if the Great Whatever that drafted me thinks I'm going to go trotting about putting out Otherness-started fires, it better think again. I don't know about my predecessors, but I've got a life."

"What you mean, 'Otherness-started fires'?" Charlie said.

"Not sure, but I've got an idea that most of the strange things that happen in this world—what people like to call paranormal or supernatural—are really manifestations of the Otherness. Anything that terrifies, confounds, and confuses us, anything that brings out the worst in us makes it stronger."

Charlie banged his fist on the table. "You talking 'bout Satan, dawg! The Father of Lies, the Sower of Discord!"

"Maybe I am," Jack said, wanting to avoid a theological argument. "And maybe I'm not quite so sure of as many things as I used to be. But I'm pretty sure that I'm tagged as anti-Otherness, and because of that, I'm the one who triggered everything that's been going on in your house."

Jack looked around the table and found Lyle staring at him. "You're telling me you triggered that earthquake?"

"Either that, or it's all pure coincidence. And I've been told no more coincidences in my life."

Lyle's eyes widened. "No more coincidences… that means your life's being manipulated. Now that's scary."

"Tell me about it." Jack's gut crawled every time he thought about it. He looked at Gia. "So can you see now why I don't want Gia near that house?"

"Oh, yes," Lyle said, nodding. "Assuming what you've told us is true—and so far you haven't struck me as schizo—then yes, definitely. And as much as I hate to say it—because I've always thought they were such a lame joke—we seem to be dealing with a bona fide ghost Would something like that be related to this Otherness of yours?"

Jack felt himself bristling. "First off, the Otherness isn't mine. I did not come up with the idea, it was pushed on me, and I'd be a much happier man if I'd never heard of it. Second, no one's handed me a book or a manual and said, 'Here, read this and you'll know what you're dealing with.' I'm piecing this together as I go along."

"Okay. I misspoke. I'll rephrase: Why should we think this ghost is related to the Otherness?"

"Maybe it's not. But then again, maybe all the violent deaths in Menelaus Manor somehow created a focus of Otherness. Maybe that focus was concentrated in the fault line beneath the house. When I crossed the threshold I hit a trip wire and… boom."

Lyle shook his head. "I still think that little girl's connected to Gia." He turned to her. "Did she look at all familiar to you?"

Gia shook her head. "Not a bit. If she is a ghost…" She shook her head. "I've never believed in ghosts either, but what else can you call her? If she is one, I think she may have died in the sixties. She looked dressed to ride a horse, so her clothes don't date her, but she kept singing a song—"

"'I Think We're Alone Now'?" Lyle said.

"Yes! You heard it too?"

"Yesterday. But I didn't see her."

"Well, it's a sixties song—late sixties, I think."

"Nineteen sixty-seven, to be exact," Jack said. "Tommy James and the Shondells on the Roulette label."

Lyle and Charlie stared at him in surprise. Gia wore a wry smile; she was used to this.

Jack shrugged and tapped the side of his head. "Chock full of useless information."

"Not so useless this time," Gia said. "It gives us an idea of when she might have been killed."

"Killed?" Charlie said. "You think someone killed her?"

Gia's face twisted. "You didn't see her. Her chest had been cut open." She swallowed. "Her heart was gone."

"That could be symbolic," Jack said, giving her hand a squeeze.

He wished to hell Gia had never come within miles of Menelaus Manor. This was all Junie Moon's fault. And his for agreeing to drive Junie to her medium. If they'd stayed at that damn party…

"After all the blood we just saw?" Lyle said. "If that's symbolism, it's way overboard."

"Tell them about Sunday night," Charlie said.

Lyle looked uncomfortable as he told them about the shape in the shower, the blood-red water flowing into the drain.

A real Psycho moment, Jack thought.

He described the writing on the mirror before something shattered it. Then…

"I'd seen blood on Charlie's chest on Friday and Saturday nights. Maybe seen isn't the right word. Had visions? Hallucinated? But Sunday night was different. I was the one with blood down my front then, and when 1 pulled up my shirt it looked like my chest had been cut open. I…" Lyle looked at his brother. "We both could see my heart beating through the hole."

"Dear God," Gia whispered.

"It lasted only a second, but if whatever's there thought that would scare us off, it was wrong. Sleep's been pretty hard to come by since then, but we're staying. Right, bro?"

Charlie nodded, but Jack didn't pick up a truckload of enthusiasm there.

"You think that's what it's trying to do?" Jack said. "Scare you off?"

"What else? It's sure not trying to make friends. And it doesn't seem to want to hurt us—"

Jack had to laugh. "You damn near drowned less than an hour ago!"

"But I didn't. Maybe I wasn't supposed to. Let's face it, if it wanted to kill me, it had its chance Sunday night. It could've smashed my head instead of my bathroom mirror."

"That's a point," Jack said. "But maybe you're not the one it's interested in. And the question remains: Why now? You've been in that house for almost a year, you said. Why should this thing wait for my arrival on Friday night to start manifesting herself?"

"Not just your arrival," Lyle said. "Gia's too."

Jack looked at him. "You're just not gonna drop that bone, are you?"

Lyle shrugged. "I can't help it. I still think it's connected to Gia."

"Can we stop with the 'it' business?" Gia said. " 'It' is a 'she.' A little girl."

"But do we know that for sure?" Lyle said. "Maybe it can take on any form it wants. Maybe it's chosen to look like a little girl because it knows that's what'll get to you."

Gia blinked. Jack could tell she hadn't considered that possibility. Neither had he. Uneasiness crawled through his gut. Maybe Gia was involved after all.

After a heartbeat's pause, Gia shook her head. "I don't buy that. I think she's limited in what she can do and she's trying to tell us something."

"What?"

"That back in 1967 or thereabouts a little girl was murdered in your house and she's buried in the basement."

Silence at the table, everyone staring at Gia.

She stared back. "What? Look at what we've got." She ticked off her points on her fingers. "A little girl with a hole in her chest, singing a song from 1967, leaving a trail of blood to a basement full of blood, that drains away through a hole in the floor. Open your eyes, guys. It's all right there, staring you in the face."

Lyle gave a slow nod. He glanced at Charlie. "I think we need to learn more about our house."

"How we do that?" Charlie said.

"How about that old Greek who sold us the place? I didn't pay much attention at the time, but didn't he go on about how every time the house has changed hands, he's been involved? What was his name? I remember it was a real mouthful."

Charlie grinned. "Konstantin Kristadoulou. Can't forget no mouthful like that."

"Right! First thing tomorrow I'm going to call Mr. Kristadoulou and set up a meeting. Maybe he can shed some light on our ghost."

"Include me in that meeting," Jack told him. "I've got a stake in this too."

More than you can imagine.

"Will do," Lyle said.

Gia leaned forward. "But what about tonight? Where are you sleeping?"

"In my bed."

She shook her head. "Aren't you…?"

"Scared?" He smiled and shrugged. "A little. But I figure it must be—"

"She."

"All right, she must be trying to tell us something. Maybe she wants us to do something, then she'll go away. How can I find out what that is if I'm not there?"

Sounded logical enough to Jack, but he thought he spotted something in Lyle's eyes as he spoke. Working on another agenda, perhaps? Jack wondered what it could be.

He'd worry about that later. Right now his first imperative was to escort Gia back to Manhattan and convince her to stay there. Bad enough to feel that the Otherness had painted a bull's-eye on his back; the possibility that Gia might be targeted too dragged a coil of concertina wire through his gut.

First his sister, then Gia and their unborn child… was that the plan? Crush his spirit—destroy everyone he loved or mattered to him—before crushing him?

Listen to me. Sound like a raving paranoiac.

Hey, everybody! I'm so important, there's a cosmic power out to get me and everybody close to me!

But… if he had indeed been drafted into the supposed shadow war, it might be true.

Jack felt the breath leak out of him. He had to find a way to get himself discharged, even if it was dishonorable.

But first-first-first: place Gia out of harm's way.

12

"Like I told you before," Fred Strauss said, his voice halfway to a whisper. "He's a ghost, a fucking ghost."

Eli Bellitto lay in his hospital bed and stared at the flickering polychromatic beacon of the TV screen in his darkened hospital room.

"Who's a ghost?" Adrian said.

Strauss sat at the right foot of the bed, Adrian at the left. The big man had propelled himself into the room in his wheelchair. His left knee was braced and straight out before him. Even in the dim light Eli could see the pair of ugly purple swellings on his bare scalp. His long arms hung at his sides, almost touching the floor.

"The guy who clobbered you and stabbed Eli," Strauss said, his words clipped with impatience. "Haven't you been listening?"

Adrian's short-term memory hadn't quite recovered yet and he'd been having difficulty following Strauss's excuses for coming up empty in his search for their attacker. Even Eli found his repeated questions annoying.

Adrian shook his head. "I have no memory of it. I remember having dinner last night, and after that… it's all a blank. If it weren't for my knee and this pounding headache, I'd think you both were having me on."

Adrian had regained some of his recent memory—at least now he accepted that this was August instead of July—but he'd made this same statement at least half a dozen times since his arrival. Eli wanted to throw something at him.

I'm the one who's suffered the real damage! he wanted to shout. You just got a knock on the head!

He clenched his teeth as a new gush of magma erupted in his groin. His left hand flailed about, found the PCA button, and pressed it; he prayed he hadn't already used up this hour's morphine allotment.

What a day. An afternoon from hell. A nurse, a three-hundred-pound rhino in white named Horgan had come in and insisted he get up and walk. Eli had refused but the woman would not take no for an answer. She may have been black but she was a Nazi at heart, leading him up and down the hall as he clung to his rolling IV pole, his catheter snaking between his knees, his half-full blood-tinged urine bag dangling from a hook on the pole for all to see. Agony enhanced by humiliation.

And then Dr. Sadiq had visited, telling him that he had to walk more, and how tomorrow they'd be removing his catheter—Eli's buttocks clenched at the thought of Nurse Horgan dragging the tube out of him, and that caused another eruption of pain. Dr. Sadiq said he anticipated discharging Eli tomorrow morning.

Not soon enough as far as Eli was concerned. As long as he could take this PCA unit with him.

"In other words," Eli said to Strauss as the morphine took effect, "once we trim away all your excess verbiage, we are left with the simple fact that you've failed us."

The detective spread his hands. "Hey, I can only do so much. It's not like you two've given me a whole lot to work with."

It frightened Eli to know that his attacker was still unidentified.

He knows me, but I don't know him.

He could be in the hospital now, pretending to be visiting someone else, but all the while waiting for Strauss and Adrian to leave so that he can come in and finish the job.

If only they had his name. The Circle could take it from there. With their connections they'd make short work of him.

"Did you bring me his number?" Eli asked Strauss.

"Yeah." He fished a piece of paper out of his pocket "Got it here."

"Dial it for me."

"You're kidding. It can't be traced and he doesn't—"

"Dial it now!"

Shrugging, Strauss punched the number into the bedside phone and handed Eli the receiver. After four rings, Eli heard a disembodied voice say the client he'd called was not available. He handed the phone back to Strauss.

"Leave the number on the nightstand."

"Waste of time, I tell you. Guy doesn't keep his phone on."

"I'll keep trying. Who knows? I may get lucky."

Eli wasn't sure exactly what he'd say, but the phone number was his only link to the man who'd violated him.

"Hey," Strauss said, pointing to the TV screen. "Isn't that—?"

Eli shushed him and turned up the volume when he recognized the Vietnamese child's face. He missed the introduction as the scene cut to a dark-skinned woman reporter on a crowded sidewalk, a scene obviously shot earlier in the day.

Her name was Philippa Villa and she was doing man-on-the-street interviews about how, in the wake of little Due Ngo's recent abduction, people thought child molesters should be treated.

Child molesters! Why did everyone assume that the child was going to be sexually molested?

As each bloated visage from Manhattan's multihued lumpen proletariat flashed onto the screen to mouth predictably banal comments about capital punishment being "too good for them," Eli's anger grew. These ignoramuses knew nothing of the Circle's exalted purpose, and were casting them as perverted lowlifes. They were being egged on by this reporter, this Philippa Villa. The Circle had a powerful link within the media. Eli would see to it that this woman's career came to a screeching halt.

He was about to change the channel when the reporter's grinning face filled the screen.

"And if you think the folks we've just seen are tough, you should have heard one woman who did not want to appear on camera. I wrote down what she said: 'The guy who snatched that little boy should be castrated—'"

Eli stifled a moan as he relived the moment when the blade of his own knife sliced into his tenderest flesh.

"'And after that he should have his hands cut off so he can never touch another child, and then his legs cut off so he can never stalk another child—'"

He saw Strauss lean back, as if trying to distance himself physically as well emotionally from the TV.

"'—and then his tongue ripped out so he can never coax another kid into his car, and his eyes put out so that he can never even look at a child again—'"

He saw Adrian wince and run a trembling hand over his face.

"'—I'd leave his nose so he can breathe in the stink of his rotten body.' "

Eli felt the PCA button crack under his thumb. He hadn't realized he'd been pressing it so hard.

Forget the reporter. Eli now had somebody else he would much rather ruin. If he could find her.

"Did you hear that?" he said to Adrian and Strauss. "Did you hear what that woman said about us?"

"Not us," Strauss said. "She knows nothing about The Circle. And besides—"

"But she thinks she does. She thinks she knows our intent. She knows nothing of our purposes and yet feels free to mouth off in public and accuse us of being child molesters. Are we going to stand for this?"

"I don't see that we have much choice," Strauss said.

"There are always choices."

"Really? And what are they here?"

Strauss's unruffled attitude irked Eli. "Find this loudmouthed woman and teach her a lesson."

"I think you're overreacting, Eli," Strauss said.

"Easy for you to say!" Eli hissed. He wanted to shout but was wary of raising his voice. "You're not the one with the stab wound or the concussion!"

"Finding this woman won't make you feel any better."

"Oh, it will! I guarantee you, it will!"

Eli was well aware that he was overreacting, but he'd been hurt and he was in pain, and Strauss had given him no target for retribution, offered scant hope of providing one in the foreseeable future. Finding and ruining this woman would provide a much-needed outlet for his pent-up fury.

"How am I supposed to find her? She hasn't committed a crime."

"Contact Gregson."

"Gregson's with NBC. This was on—"

"Gregson will know what to do." Eli felt his anger bubbling over. Did he have to lead Strauss by the hand? Did he have to do everything! "If you can't find our attacker's name, then get me this woman's name! Do something, damn it!"

13

Charlie closed his Bible. Tried to read 'bout the tau cross in Ezechiel 9:4 but it wasn't happening. The words broke up into jumbles soon as they hit his brain.

Maybe it was the music. The jiggly beat of Point of Grace's "Begin With Me" was pumping through his headphones. Righteous lyrics, but the high-gloss arrangement and funky vocals were distracting tonight. He popped them out of his portable CD player and slipped in "Spirit Of The Century" by the Blind Boys Of Alabama. As their traditional harmonies soothed his head, he lay back on his bed, closed his eyes, and prayed for peace.

But no peace tonight. He kept on seeing his brother splashing like a drowning cat in that pool of blood, kept hearing Jack's voice telling 'bout the Otherness…

Where was Jesus in all this? Why this happening?

Charlie figured it for a test. But of what?

My faith?

He knew his faith was strong. Powerful. So powerful he wondered how he'd got through his pre-conversion years without it. It was like oxygen now. If someone stole it from him, he knew sure he'd die in minutes.

But what says I'm the target of this test? Maybe it Lyle… a test of his faith in nothing.

For as surely as Charlie believed in the healing love of Jesus, so Lyle believed in nothing beyond his five senses. Maybe God was offering Lyle a chance to see how there was more to life than his senses, that life extended beyond the body, that each human body was home to an eternal soul that was gonna be judged when its life on earth was done. Maybe this gonna be Lyle's chance to change, to accept Jesus as his personal savior and see his name written in the Book of Life.

But… if this was the work of God, why was He hiding His hand?

Because that the way He wishes it.

Don't go second guessin' the Lord, Charlie reminded himself.

But where did Jack and Gia fit in? Pretty plain that neither of them were saved. Gia had faith in Jack, but in what else?

And Jack? He a mystery. What he'd said the other night about value for value still hung with Charlie. True that. The way things should be, but weren't… especially not in how he and Lyle had been earning their daily bread.

Jack's outlook didn't seem to be as earthbound as Lyle's, but his talk of the Otherness and the Ally power, of two cosmic forces in eternal conflict… that had Charlie a little shook. Where was God in all that? It didn't even give the God of the Holy Bible the props of being denied. Instead He got bypassed, left and forgotten like an old store by a freeway with no ramp.

And when Charlie had tried to point out that this "Otherness" was just another disguise for Satan, Jack had flipped it 'round, hinting that maybe the idea of Satan had come from awareness of the Otherness.

Charlie rubbed his eyes. He still hadn't answered his question: Who was being tested?

He reopened his Bible. All the answers were here. Have faith and Jesus would guide him to them.

But as for leaving Lyle and breaking up the team, that'd have to wait. Yeah, he promised Reverend Sparks, but if God was gonna go testin' Charlie's faith, he couldn't very well turn his back and geese outta here. And if God testing Lyle, then Charlie wanted to take his brother's back, help him to salvation any way he could. That what brothers was for.

14

Lyle stuck his head into Charlie's room and found him in his usual position, lying on the bed, reading the Bible with gospel playing through his headphones. He waved to catch his attention.

"I'm heading for bed," he said when Charlie took off the headphones.

"Kinda early, yo?"

"Yeah, but there's nothing but that old stuff on the tube. Can't bring myself to watch any more of that."

Charlie held up his Bible. "Gotta extra one if you interested. Great comfort to me, and bro, you look like a dawg who could use some comfort."

Lyle waved him off—not ungently. "Thanks, but I think I'll pass."

"Okay, but you gotta standing offer." Charlie sat up on the edge of his bed. "Strange 'bout the TV. If we think this girl die in the sixties, why's it stuck in the eighties?"

Lyle had been pondering that one too.

"I don't know," he said. "And at the moment I'm too tired to care." He yawned. "You'll be ready to go back to work tomorrow?"

Charlie stared at him. "You gonna be ready to give value for value?"

"What's this? You've switched from quoting scripture to quoting Jack?"

As Lyle started to turn away, Charlie gripped his arm and looked up at him, his eyes searching his face.

"Has what gone down the past few days made you change your mind 'bout a power greater than you?"

Lyle glanced away. An old argument, this one, but now the parameters had changed.

"I'll admit I've encountered a number of phenomena for which I have no rational explanation." He saw Charlie's eyes light and so he hurried on before he could speak. "But that doesn't mean that no rational explanation exists. It simply means that I haven't the information to explain them."

Charlie's face fell. "Ain't you ever givin' in?"

"Surrender to irrationality? Never." He smiled, hoping to soften the impact of his words. "But it has made me afraid of the dark. So I hope you don't mind if I leave a bunch of lights on."

"Go ahead," Charlie said, readjusting his headphones. He held up his Bible. "But this is the only light I need."

Lyle waved and turned away thinking how comforting it must be to believe that the answers to all questions could be found in a single book.

Envying the peace that must bring, he waded down the hall through a sea of turmoil. He'd hidden the uneasiness gnawing at the base of his throat. His home had turned unpredictable, a minefield of dread possibilities. The events of the day had left him jumpy and unsettled, but exhausted as well. Yet the idea of lying down and closing his eyes bordered on the unthinkable.

At least in this house. One night in a motel would do it—allow him a solid eight hours of sleep so he could return in the morning refreshed and ready for anything.

But he was not leaving his home.

Lyle glanced at his alarm clock as he entered his bedroom. It read 3:22. Still running backward. The real time was somewhere around 10:30. Lyle realized he was more than exhausted. He didn't feel well. He hoped the blood in that pool hadn't been contaminated… blood carried all sorts of diseases these days. But then, it hadn't been real blood, had it. Some sort of psychic or ectoplasmic blood…

Listen to me, Lyle thought. I sound like I've been listening to my own jive-ass line so long I'm starting to believe it.

But there'd been nothing jive ass about what happened this afternoon. That had been the furilla, as Charlie liked to say.

He rubbed his skin. He'd taken another shower when they'd got home after dinner, and still didn't feel as if he'd washed off the taint of his blood bath. It seemed as if it had seeped into his skin—no, through his skin and into his bloodstream. He felt changed somehow.

The past few days had changed his perspective. Any brightness only served to make the shadows look deeper. So you stepped around them. Trouble was, there seemed to be lots more shadows, so you did a lot more stepping around. Let that get out of hand and pretty soon you spent your whole day stepping around shadows.

Being in a spot where you feared you had only a couple of minutes to live had to change you some. Lyle had been sure he was going to drown in that blood this afternoon. But he hadn't, and he'd emerged from that crimson baptism with a new appreciation for his life, and a determination to make the most of everything he had.

And what he had at the moment was a ghost.

Pretty ironic when he thought about it: A devout skeptic who earns his daily bread by faking the existence of ghosts winds up owning a haunted house. The stuff movies of the week were made of.

But the fact was he'd chosen this house because of its morbid history, so if any place had a better-than-average chance of being haunted, it was Menelaus Manor.

So… how do we make the most of the situation? If this ghost is a lemon, how do we, as the cliche goes, make lemonade?

The obvious answer had struck Lyle in the restaurant. If these manifestations were truly the doings of the ghost of a child who had been murdered and buried in the house, and if she was trying to tell them something that would bring her killer to justice, or wanted to show them her burial place so forensic science could track down her killer, then she had a willing—no, an enthusiastic ally in Lyle Kenton.

Not merely because satisfying her needs offered a good chance that she'd go back to wherever she came from and leave the house in peace…

… but think of the publicity!

If he could find the body… and if the body led the police to her killer…

Psychic Ifasen Contacted by Spirit of Dead Child to Bring her Killer to Justice!

Not a news show or talk show in the world that wouldn't be begging him for an appearance. Hell, even Oprah would want him. But he'd be picky, accepting only the most prestigious venues with the largest viewership. He'd get a book deal, detailing his exploits among the spirits.

And his clientele! Everybody who was anybody would want to see him. He and Charlie would be set for life. They'd charge ten—no, twenty-five K for a private sitting, and have those sitters' limos lined up around the block and backed up all the way across the Triboro Bridge.

It would be like winning a fifty-million-dollar lottery.

With that wonderful fantasy dancing in his head, he stood in the middle of his bedroom and softly called out, "Hello? Anybody there?"

Not that he was expecting a reply, but he had to try to break through this knot of tension winding about him.

A chill rippled over his skin. Was it his imagination or did the temperature just drop? He sensed that he was no longer alone in the room. The degrees continued to fall. He might have welcomed it had he known his air conditioner was behind it. But the unit was off. And this was a different kind of cool… clammy, seeping to the bone.

Something was responding to his questions. He spread his arms in a gesture of openness.

"If you've got something to say, I'm lis—"

A drawer in his dresser slammed closed.

Lyle jumped and backed away. As he watched, another drawer slid open, then slammed closed. Then another, and another, faster and faster, harder and harder until Lyle feared they'd splinter and shatter.

Lyle caught movement to his left as Charlie, wide-eyed with his Bible clutched in both hands, edged into the room; he saw his lips move but couldn't hear him over the cacophony.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

"What was that all about?" Charlie whispered into the echoing silence.

Lyle rubbed his bare arms against the pervading chill. "I haven't—"

He stopped as he saw a dark line appear in the dust on the dresser top. They could well afford a cleaning service, but didn't like strangers in the house who might see something they shouldn't. So they did the work themselves, but not nearly so often as needed.

Maybe that was going to turn out to be a good thing.

Lyle stepped closer and motioned Charlie to follow him. He pointed to the letters forming slowly in the down of dust.

Where

"Look," he whispered. "Just like on the mirror Sunday night."

is

Charlie pointed to the growing string of letters. "She can sing a song, why don't she talk?"

the

Good question, Lyle thought. He shook his head. He had no answer.

"Look like the spirit writing we fake," Charlie said, "only a thousand times better."

nice

"Because this isn't fake."

Spirit writing… all it took was a fake thumb tip equipped with pencil lead, but now he was witnessing the real thing.

The sentence ended with a question mark.

Where is the nice lady?

Lyle heard Charlie breathe, "Gia. You was right. They connected."

"She went home," Lyle said in a voice that was perhaps too loud.

Why?

"She doesn't live here."

Will she be back?

"I don't know. Do you want her to come back? I'm sure she'll come if we ask her."

She is nice

"Yeah, we like her too." He glanced at Charlie. "Who are you?"

Tara

Lyle let out a breath. She had a first name. That was a start, but he needed more.

"'Tara' what? Do you have a last name?"

Portman

Tara Portman… Lyle closed his eyes and balled his fists. Yes!

"Why are you here, Tara? What do you want?"

Mother

"You want your mother?"

Lyle waited but no answer appeared. He felt the chill drain from the air, the tension uncoil from the room.

"Tara?" he called. Then again, louder. "Tara!"

"She gone," Charlie said. "Don't you feel it?"

Lyle nodded. He did. "Well, at least we know who she is. Or was, rather."

Lyle closed his eyes and realized he wasn't as tense as he'd been a few moments ago. He was no longer dealing with a nameless, violent entity. Knowing the name of the being that had invaded their house made her less threatening. She'd been someone, and something of that someone remained. He could deal with what remained.

He could help her. And she could help him.

"Right," Charlie said. "We got her name. Now what we do with it?"

"First thing we do is get hold of Gia and see if the name Tara Portman means anything to her."

15

"Tara Portman," Gia said, rolling the two names through her brain for maybe the dozenth time. "I've known an occasional Tara and a couple of Portmans, but can't for the life of me recall a Tara Portman."

They'd returned directly from the restaurant in Astoria—no stop at Menelaus Manor per Jack's insistence—and settled down for a movie. Gia had found Stepmom on one of the cable movie channels and declared tonight her turn to pick. Jack grumbled and groaned, saying anything but Step-mom, but finally gave in. He turned out to be a poor loser, editorializing with gagging and retching sounds at the best parts.

He'd checked his messages before they headed for bed and found an urgent call from Lyle Kenton who'd claimed that the ghost had told them her name.

Lyle had read off what the spirit had written and Jack had copied it down. Staring at the transcription now gave her a chill. A bodiless entity, the ghost of a little dead girl, had mentioned her. She shuddered.

"Well, whoever or whatever it is," Jack said, "it thinks you're nice. At least that's what it says."

Gia was sitting at the kitchen table, the transcription before her. Jack stood beside her, leaning on the table.

"You don't think I'm nice?" she said, looking up at him.

"I know you're nice. And you know my agenda. But we know nothing about this thing's."

"Her name is Tara."

"So it says."

Gia sighed. Jack could be so stubborn at times. "Are you going to be difficult about this?"

"If being protective of you translates as difficult, then yes, I'm going to be very difficult about this. I do not trust this thing."

"She seems to want me to come back."

"Oh, no," he said. "That's not going to happen."

"Oh, really?"

Gia knew he was looking out for her, but still she bristled at being told what she could or couldn't do.

"Come on, Gi. Don't be like that. This is the Otherness we're dealing with here. Responsible for the rakoshi. You haven't forgotten them, have you?"

"You know I haven't. But you don't know for sure it's the Otherness."

"No, I don't," he admitted. "But I think the best course is to assume the worst until proven otherwise."

Gia leaned back. "Tara Portman… how can we find out about her?"

"Newspapers are the best bet," Jack said. "We can hit the Times or one of the other papers tomorrow and search their archives. Start in '67 and work backwards and forwards."

"What about the Internet? We can do that right now."

"The Internet didn't exist back in '67."

"I know. But it can't hurt to try."

Gia led Jack to the townhouse's library where she'd set up the family computer. She and Vicky were starting to use it more and more—Vicky for homework, Gia for reference stills for her paintings. She fired it up, logged onto AOL, and did a Google search for Tara Portman. She got over ten thousand hits, but after glancing at the first half dozen she knew this wasn't going to give her what she needed.

"Try 'missing child,' " Jack suggested.

She typed it in and groaned when the tally bar reported nearly a million hits. But at the top of the list she noticed a number of organizations devoted to finding missing children. A click on one of the links took her to www.abductedchild.org.

She read the organization's mission statement as the rest of the welcome screen filled in, and was dismayed to learn it had been founded in 1995.

"This isn't going to work. She's been gone too long."

"Probably right." Jack said. "But there's a search button over on the left there. Give it a shot."

She did. The next screen allowed searches by region, by age and physical description, or by name. Gia chose the last. She entered "Portman" in the last name field, 'Tara' in the first, and hit enter. The screen blanked, then a color photo began to take shape. Blurry at first, but increasingly sharper as more pixels filled in.

Hair… Gia felt her saliva begin to vanish when she saw that the child was blond.

Eyes… her breath leaked away as blue eyes came into focus.

Nose… lips… chin…

With a cry, Gia pushed back from the keyboard so hard and fast she might have tipped over if Jack hadn't been behind her.

Jack caught her. "What's wrong?"

"That's…" The words clogged in her throat. Her tongue felt like clay. She pointed to the screen. "It's her! That's the child I saw in the house!"

Jack knelt beside her, clutching her hand as he stared at the screen.

"Gia… really? No doubt?"

Her voice was a whisper. "None. It's her."

Jack reached for the abandoned mouse and scrolled down the screen.TARA ANN PORTMAN;

Case Type: Nonfamily Abduction

DOB: Feb-17-1979

Height:5'4"-135cm

Weight: 60 lbs-28 kg

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Blond

Parents: Joseph and Dorothy Portman

Circumstances: Tara was last seen in the area of the Kensington Stables in the Kensington section of Brooklyn near Prospect Park after horseback riding.

Date Missing: Aug-16-1988

City of Report: Brooklyn

State of Report: NY

Country of Report: USA

The photo above is how Tara looked the year she was abducted. The photo below is age progressed to age 18. Posted 1997

The age progression showed a strikingly beautiful teenager, a classic homecoming queen if Gia had ever seen one.

But Tara Portman never made it to her prom. Gia felt her throat constrict. She never even made it to high school.

"I don't like this," Jack said. "Any of it."

Of course not. What was there to like? But Gia had never known Jack as one for obvious statements.

"What do you mean?"

"Abducted kids. First I get involved with one, now you. It bothers me. Too…"

"Coincidental?"

"Right. And you remember what I was told."

Gia nodded. "No more coincidences."

The mere possibility that such a thing might be true sickened her.

"You think Tara and Due might be connected?"

"I don't see how. I mean, there's such a long span between, but then… no more coincidences." He shrugged. "Let's see what else we can dig up on her."

The page listed an email contact and three phone numbers: a toll-free for the Abducted Child network, one for the local Brooklyn precinct, and one for the family.

"Abducted 1988," Jack said. "That doesn't fit with the sixties song, but if that's the girl you saw, we'll worry about the song later."

"That's her."

Gia stared at that nine-year-old face, wondering who could have a soul so dead that he'd want to do harm to such beauty, such innocence?

"Look," Jack said, pointing to the screen. "Posted in 1997, when she was eighteen. She'd been gone nine years and the family was still looking for her."

"Or looking for closure." She looked at him. "Jack, we've got to do something."

"'We'? You and the baby are staying far away from Astoria and that house, remember?"

"All right then, you—you or somebody else has got to find her remains and let her family bury her."

"I'll take care of it," he said. "Just promise me you'll stay away from there."

"Look at her, Jack. Look at that face. How could you believe that child could hurt anyone?"

"Something awful happened to 'that child.' Abducted and killed are bad enough, but who knows what was done to her in the time between? She's not an innocent child anymore. She's not even human. And I don't like that she appeared to you and no one else."

"Look what she wrote for the Kentons: 'Mother.' That's me. A mother of one and mother-to-be of another. She wants her mother and I was the closest thing to one in that house."

"Could be," Jack said slowly. "But I still don't like it."

"Jack, if she was looking for her daddy she might have appeared to you."

"Why isn't she looking for her daddy?"

"Maybe he'd dead, or her folks were divorced, or maybe she was raised by a single mother."

"Or maybe her daddy's involved."

Gia hated that thought but had to accept it as a possibility.

"None of that matters as much as finding her. We can let the police sort out the rest afterwards."

"I'll handle it," Jack said. "I'll be in touch with Lyle tomorrow and see how far he wants to take this. Maybe I can talk him into tearing up his cellar floor."

"And me?"

"You work on your paintings and whatever else you usually do on a Wednesday."

"Yes, Poppa."

He kissed her cheek. "Please, Gia. Stay safe and stay put."

Gia nodded. "Okay."

But she couldn't take her eyes off the Portman family phone number at the bottom of the screen… a 212 exchange… right here in Manhattan…

IN THE IN-BETWEEN

The being that was Tara Portman floats in the darkness between. She knows who she is, she knows who she was, she knows why she is here, she knows who must die.

But after that death—another death in this place of death—what?

Return to nothingness?

No… there must be more. She wants, she needs more.

Knowledge of her old self has awakened memories of the barely blossoming promise of her life before it was ended.

Knowing what she has lost… this is agony.

Knowing all that she will never have, never be… this is unbearable.

The being that was Tara Portman wants more.

WEDNESDAY

1

"It's called what?" Abe said, frowning down at the froth-filled cup Jack had just placed before him on the counter.

"Chai," Jack said. "They told me at the coffee shop it's very in."

"What is it?"

"Gal said it's an Indian thing."

"Indian as in the subcontinent?"

"Right. Told me it was tea with milk, plus sugar and spice and everything nice."

All true. The woman ahead of him at the coffee shop this morning had ordered a chai and he'd asked about it. He'd figured what the hell, try anything once. Anything to give him a break from thinking about Tara Portman and Gia and Duc Ngo, and all the possible interconnections.

"I got you a skinny."

Abe's frown deepened. "A skinny what?"

"It means they use skim milk instead of regular—'cause I know you're watching your waist."

Yeah, Jack thought. Watching it grow.

Abe continued to stare at the cup. It seemed to have mesmerized him. "How do you spell it?"

"C-H-A-I.";

Abe shook his head. "You're pronouncing it all wrong." He repeated the word his own way, hardening the "ch" to a raspy sound that originated in the back of his throat. "Like Chaim or Chaya or Chanukah."

"Not according to the girl who sold it to me."

Abe shrugged. "Whatever. And I should be drinking this why?"

"I read where it's the new fave drink of all the cool, contemporary, contemplative people. I decided I want to be cool, contemporary, and contemplative."

"For that you'll need more than a drink. What's in the other bag you brought in? The one you put on the floor?"

"Never mind that now." Jack lifted his cup. "Let's give it a go. Chai away."

Abe toasted with his. "Lochai."

Jack took a sip, swirled it across tongue, then looked around for a place to spit. Finding none, he swallowed.

Abe's sour expression mirrored Jack's sentiments. "Like an accident in a clove factory."

Jack nodded as he recapped his cup. "Well, now that I've tried chai, I can tell you that I feel cool and contemporary, but I'm also contemplating why anyone would want to drink this stuff."

Abe handed his cup to Jack. "See if you can get a refund. Meanwhile, have you got in that second bag what I hope?"

Jack retrieved the bag from the floor and produced two coffees. "Just in case the chai sucked."

Jack took a quick sip to rinse the chai taste out of his mouth, then settled over the Post, flipping the pages in search of a particular name.

"Have you seen any mention of Carl and Elizabeth Foster, or Madame Pomerol?"

"The psychic lady?" Abe shook his head. "Neither of them made the news today."

Jack closed his paper. "Didn't expect anything so soon." He sipped his coffee, grateful for the familiar flavor. "Come up with any ideas on making me a citizen?"

"Nothing yet, but I'm thinking."

He told Abe his idea about assuming a dead man's identity.

Abe shrugged. "As a plan it's got possibilities, but God forbid a long-lost sister should come looking. What do you do then?"

"I improvise."

"Not good. If that plan's going to work, you've got to find a dead man with no friends and no living family."

"Tall order."

Very tall. So tall it was bringing Jack down.

Abe looked at him. "How do you feel about getting out?"

Jack shrugged. "Not sure. Maybe it's time. I've been lucky. I've mined this vein for years without getting myself killed or crippled. Maybe I should take this as a sign to stop stretching my luck and call it quits. I've had a good run, saved a decent amount of money. Maybe it's time to kick back and enjoy the fruits of my labors."

"Before forty? You'll do what with your time?"

"Don't know yet. I'll think of something. Hey, need a stock boy?"

"Oy!"

"No? Well then how about you, Abe? How do you feel about me getting out?"

Abe sighed. "With fatherhood looming, it's a good thing. Overdue, even."

The remark took Jack by surprise. This was the last thing he expected to hear from Abe.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you're mellowing."

Jack laughed. "That chai must be potent stuff. It's affecting your brain. Me? Mellowing? Never."

"You are. You think maybe I'm blind? I've watched it. A slow process, it's been, but it's happening. Ever since you and Gia got back together. Almost a year now, right?"

"A year ago this month."

"You see? I'm right. Before last summer you were a lobster—a spiny lobster."

"And what am I now? A softshell crab?"

"S'teitsh! Let me finish. Lobsterman Jack kept to his shell. With all his spines sticking out, people kept their distance. Nobody touched him. Such a hair trigger he had. Now…" Abe gave one of his major shrugs, palms turned up, lips turned down. "Now, I should dare say, you've opened a few windows in your shell. You take a longer view. That's the result of the love of a good woman."

Jack smiled. "She's that, all right."

"Until Gia, you never had anyone you cared about. Like a daredevil you were. Completely reckless. Now, you've got someone you want to get back to, someone you know is waiting for you. That changes everything. Makes you more careful."

"I've always been careful. It's essential in my business."

"But you can be too careful," Abe said. "And that's why I'm glad you're getting out. Because having a child will make you way too careful."

"No such thing as too careful."

"In your field of work, there is. I know you, Jack. Once that child is born, it's going to be the center of your world. You'll feel responsible for its welfare and well-being. Beyond responsible. You'll obsess about it. You'll want to be there for it, want to get home safe every night so it shouldn't have to grow up without a father. That's going to push you past too-careful into cautious. Ultimately it's going to make you hesitant in a field where an instant's hesitation can kill you. I'll miss Repairman Jack, but at least Daddyman Jack will still be alive to come around for breakfast, and maybe bring the little one with him."

"You're overstating this just a little bit, don't you think?"

Abe shook his head. "Unless you quit or drastically limit the types of jobs you take on—jobs that will be no fun for you—I don't see you surviving a year after your baby is born."

Jack went silent, thinking about that. Didn't buy it, didn't believe it, but it shook him to know Abe did.

In the long run, though, what did it matter? He was getting out. He was going to become Citizen Jack.

Talk about a bowel-clenching thought.

This life he'd been leading had had more than its share of hair-raising moments, and flying below the radar twenty-four-seven could be exhausting at times, and there were many days he wearied of looking over his shoulder, but damn he loved getting up in the morning without knowing what the day would bring.

Going straight was going to be so strange.

But it would pay the dividend of allowing his child to be able to stand anyplace with anyone and point to him and say, That's my dad.

2

The ride home hadn't been so bad, and getting in and out of the car had been bearable, but the steps… even with Adrian helping him, negotiating the narrow staircase up to his apartment above the store was agony.

Finally he was able to ease himself into a recliner, close his eyes, and catch his breath.

Good to be out of the hospital and free of all those tubes—although his belly still quivered at the memory of Nurse Horgan removing his catheter this morning. Good to be back in his home which, in sharp contrast to the cluttered store below, was furnished in a spare, minimalist style with bare walls, naked hardwood floors, and light, spindly furniture. The recliner was a blatant anomaly; a home needed at least one comfortable chair.

"Here. Take this."

Eli looked up and saw Adrian standing before him with a glass of water and two Percocets in his huge hands.

"You're a good man, Adrian. Thank you. How is your leg?"

He flexed his knee. "Much better. But the headaches are terrible. And I still can't remember Monday night. I remember having dinner…"

"Yes-yes," Eli said, thinking, Please let's not hear that again. "The doctor said you might never remember what happened. Perhaps you should count yourself lucky you don't."

"I don't feel lucky," Adrian said. He crossed his long arms over his chest and hugged himself. Eli wondered if his hands touched in the back. "I feel scared."

Odd to imagine that such a big man could be frightened. But Adrian wasn't a thug. He had a law degree and assisted Judge Marcus Warren of the New York State Supreme Court.

"You're afraid this man is going to attack us again?"

"I'm not afraid of that. In fact I almost wish he would." Adrian balled his hands into giant fists. "I'd love to make him pay for what he did to me. No, I'm afraid that we won't get the Ceremony done in time… you know, before the equinox."

"We will. I haven't missed one for two hundred and six years. I'm not about to start now."

"But what if we don't?"

The possibility spilled acid through Eli's chest. "The consequences for you will be minimal. You'll merely have to start a new cycle of Ceremonies."

"But I've already invested five years."

An initiate had to participate in an unbroken chain of twenty-nine annual cycles before the aging process stopped and invulnerability was conferred. Once the chain was broken, the count went back to zero and had to be started again.

"And that's all you will lose—five years of Ceremonies. Nothing. For me, on the other hand, the consequences will be catastrophic. All the ills, all the injuries, all the aging the Ceremony had shielded me from for the last two centuries will come crashing back at once."

His dying would be long and slow and exquisitely painful. These stab wounds would seem mere pinpricks.

"But after you're gone," Adrian said, "who will perform the Ceremony?"

Eli shook his head. He wanted to ask, Do you ever think of anyone but yourself? But he held his tongue. Adrian was no different from any of the others in the Circle. No more self-centered than myself, Eli supposed.

"No one," Eli said, relishing the growing dismay in Adrian's expression. "Unless the one who attacked us wishes to accept you as an initiate."

Adrian frowned. "I don't understand."

Eli sighed. They'd discussed this already, but Adrian's short-term memory still wasn't up to snuff.

"I believe the one who attacked us is an adept like myself who knows the Ceremony. That is the only way he could harm me."

"Yes," Adrian said. "Yes, I remember."

"But I believe his real purpose is to destroy my Circle. He has a Circle of his own and does not want competition."

"Then I think I should stay here with you," Adrian blurted. "Until you're well enough to protect yourself, that is."

Eli considered the idea and liked it. He could certainly use some assistance for the next few days—he could take care of his dressing changes himself, but help with meals and running errands would be most welcome.

No use appearing too anxious, though. Adrian seemed scared half to death that something would happen to him before the next Ceremony. Nothing wrong with making him sweat a little.

"I don't think so, Adrian," he said. "I'm used to living alone. I don't think I'd do well with constant company."

"I'll stay out of your way. I promise. Just let me stay through the weekend. I'm not going back to court until next week. I can watch over things until then."

Like a puppy dog. Or a huge Great Mastiff, rather. Time to throw him a bone.

"Oh, very well. I suppose I could put up with it for a few days."

"Wonderful! I'll go home, pack a few things, and be back in an hour."

He turned and limped toward the door.

"Wait," Eli said. "Before you go, could you hand me the phone?"

"Of course. Expecting a call?"

"Freddy is supposed to call when he's identified that woman who was quoted on TV last night. I don't want to miss that call." He smiled. "I do hope she's having a nice day, because as soon as I learn her name, her life will go in the shitter."

"I don't like Strauss," Adrian said. "He said things about you last night."

"When?"

"As he was wheeling me back to my room. He said he was beginning to wonder about you, whether you're really as old as you say you are."

"Did he now?" This was interesting.

"He said he did some background on you years ago, and found you were born in the 1940s—I forget the year—to a pair of Italian immigrants."

"Yes, he confronted me with that early on, and I explained to him that it was a false identity. I searched out and contacted a number of poor couples named Bellitto until I found a pair who agreed—for the appropriate sum—to register my name as a home birth. They're dead now and cannot back me up, so I fear you'll just have to trust my word."

"Oh, I do," Adrian said. "Don't get me wrong, I'm just repeating what Strauss told me. He said he could never prove one way or the other whether you were as old as you say you are or just plain crazy—again, his words, not mine. He told me last night that now that you've been wounded, he's starting to lean more toward crazy."

"Is he now," Eli said. "How ungrateful. I believe I shall have to have a word with Freddy."

"Don't tell him I told you."

Eli stared at Adrian. For a bright man he could be so naive at times.

"Why do you think he said any of this to you? He knew you'd tell me. He wanted you to tell me. He's having second thoughts and hopes I will ease his doubts. What he doesn't understand is that I don't care what he thinks. However, his police contacts are valuable to the Circle so I suppose I must confront him and settle this."

"Wait till you're feeling better," Adrian said.

It was so much easier in the old days, Eli thought. I didn't need the Circle. Once a year I'd simply find a wayward child, perform the Ceremony, and go my way. But things have become so complicated these days. With crime detection techniques what they are, one needs backup, connections, networks to safely secure a child year after year.

He needed the Circle as much as the Circle needed him. But they needn't know that.

Eli loosed a drawn-out sigh and rubbed his eyes. "Maybe I should disband the Circle and go it alone. That was how I began… alone."

Eli peeked through his fingers to see if his little speech had had the desired effect. The look of horror on Adrian's face confirmed that it had.

"No! Eli, you mustn't even think that! I'll talk to the others. We'll—"

"No. I shall handle it. I'll give it one more chance. Now, you run off and get your things while I make some calls."

After Adrian was gone, Eli leaned back in his recliner and closed his eyes.

… he could never prove one way or the other whether you were as old as you say you are or just plain crazy…

Sometimes, Eli admitted, I wonder about that myself.

He had memories of his early years in eighteenth-century Italy, his discovery of the Ceremony in a stone vault in Riomaggiore among the Cinque Terre along the Liguorian coast, and then the long trail of hundreds of years and hundreds of sacrificed children, but they were vague, almost as if he'd dreamed them. He wished he could recall more detail.

What if Strauss's suspicions were correct? What if he were no more than a murderous madman trying to turn back the clock, who'd told his mad stories to himself and others so many times he'd come to believe them?

No! Eli slammed his fist against the armrest of the recliner. What was he thinking? He wasn't mad or deluded. It was the pain, the drugs…

… the wound…

Yes, the wound. There lay the wellspring of his doubts. He shouldn't have been wounded at all. That was the legacy of the Ceremony—life and personal impregnability. It didn't make an adept invulnerable to petty injuries like papercuts and such. But a stab wound… the blade was supposed to glance off the skin.

Unless it was wielded by another adept.

Uneasy, Eli took out the number Strauss had given him last night and tapped it into the phone. And just like last night, his attacker was "not available at this time."

Eli broke the connection and simmered. He would put the number into speed dial and keep calling. The man had to turn his phone on sometime, and one of those times Eli would connect. And then they'd talk, and Eli would learn about his attacker, induce him into a slip of the tongue, and then he'd have him.

3

Lyle suppressed a yawn as he went through the preliminaries with a new sitter. Not that he was bored talking about his spirit guide—how could Ifasen feel anything but excitement about communing with his ancient mentor Ogunfiditimi? Lyle was dead tired. He felt as if he'd spent the night completing an ironman triathlon.

Tara Portman or whatever it was had rested easy last night after the spirit-writing display. No noises, no blood, no breakage. Still sleep had eluded Lyle. The mere expectation of noise, blood, or breakage had turned his mattress into a bed of nails.

Charlie, on the other hand, looked fresh and fully rested this morning. That Bible of his, no doubt.

But Lyle's malaise went beyond fatigue. He couldn't pin it down. Not so much a matter of feeling bad as not feeling right. He felt… changed. The world looked and felt different. Shadows seemed deeper, lights brighter, sharper, the air felt charged, as if something momentous was in the offing.

He shook it off. He had work to do.

With the Channeling Room repaired, they'd begun rescheduling sittings. Lyle had adjusted the day's appointments to leave room for the meeting with Konstantin Kristadoulou. He'd called the old real estate agent first thing this morning and set up a meeting at one o'clock. He'd left a message for Jack about the time and place.

But that would be this afternoon. This was now, and Lyle wasn't happy with now. Melba Toomey was a far-from-ideal sitter. Lyle blamed his distracted state for allowing her to slip past the screening process. She would not be a good subject at any time, but especially not as the first of the day.

But she'd paid her money for a private sitting and now faced him across the table in her housedress and flower-decked straw hat, dark eyes bright with expectation in her black face.

According to the information on her questionnaire, Melba was fifty-three and cleaned houses for a living. Not at all typical of Ifasen's clientele, and certainly not the social class he was courting.

Lyle cringed at the thought of how long it must have taken her to save enough for a private sitting. But she'd said on her questionnaire that she'd come to him because he was black—didn't say African-American. Black.

Melba Toomey wanted to know if her husband Clarence was alive or dead; and if he was dead, she wanted to speak to him.

Lyle did his utmost to avoid the class of sitter whose concerns deprived him of precious wiggle room. Melba was the worst of that class: Alive or dead… was there a more black-or-white, yes-or-no proposition than that? It left him zero wiggle.

He'd have to do a cold reading on Clarence through Melba to try and get a grip on what kind of man Clarence was so as to make a roughly educated guess on whether he might be alive or dead.

I'm going to be sweating for my daily bread this round, he thought.

Lyle had placed two potato-size stones on the table, telling her that they were from Ogunfiditimi's birth place and, because Ogunfiditimi hadn't met her before, it enhanced first-time contact if she kept a good grip on those stones. It also kept her hands where Lyle could see them.

To set the mood—and kill some time—Lyle treated Melba to the histrionics, the table and chair tipping, then settled down to business.

Lyle came out of his pseudo trance and stared at her, watching closely. Her features were slightly fuzzy in the dim red light from overhead, but clear enough to pick up what he needed. Body language, visual cues in a blink of the eyes, a twist of the mouth, a twitch of a cheek… Lyle could read them like an old salt reads the sea.

First, some try-ons. She'd mentioned on her questionnaire that Clarence had been missing since June second. He'd start there.

"I'm getting a sense of a state of absence… of separation since… why does early June keep popping into my head?"

"The second of June!" Melba cried. "That's when I last saw Clarence! He went off to work in the morning and never came home. I haven't seen or heard from him since." She worked a used tissue out of her housedress pocket and dabbed her eyes. "Oh, Lord, you do have the gift, don't you."

Oh, yes, Lyle thought. The gift of remembering what you've forgotten you've told me.

"Please keep your hands on the stones, Melba," he reminded her. "It weakens contact when you remove them."

"Oh, sorry." She placed her hands back on the stones.

Good. Keep them there, he thought.

The last thing he wanted her to do was reach for her pocketbook. Because Charlie, covered head to toe in black, should have crept out of his command center by now and be ready to grab it from where it sat on the floor next to her chair.

"I told the police but I don't think they's doing much to find him. They don't seem the least bit interested."

"They're very busy, Melba," he told her.

Her distress sent a shot of guilt through Lyle. He wasn't going to do any more for her than the cops.

Value for value…

He shook it off and formulated another try-on. The first had been just an easy warm-up, to break the ice and gain a smidgen of her confidence. From here it got a little tougher.

Look at her: cleans houses, bargain-rack clothing; he couldn't see Clarence as a corporate exec. She mentioned him going off to work as if it were a routine thing. Good chance he had a steady blue-collar job, maybe union.

Try-on number two…

"Why do I want to say he worked in a trade?"

"He was an electrician!"

"A loyal union man."

She frowned. "No. He was never in a union."

Whoops, but easy enough to save. "But I get the feeling he wanted to be in the union."

"Yes! How did you know! That poor man. He tried so many times but never qualified. He was always talking about how much more money he could be making if he was in the union."

Lyle nodded sagely. "Ah, that was what I was picking up."

Let's see… blue-collar, frustrated… maybe Clarence liked to knock back a few after work? And even if he was a teetotaler or an ex-drinker, the temptation to drink offered a ready fallback.

"I'm getting the impression of a dimly lit place, the smell of smoke, the clink of glassware…"

"Leon's! That awful place! He'd go there after work and come home reeking of beer. Sometimes he wouldn't come home till after midnight. We had such terrible fights over it."

Drunk… frustrated… go for it, but keep it vague.

"I'm led to say that some harm was done?"

Melba looked away. "He never meant to hurt me. It's just that sometimes, when I got him real mad after he came home late, he'd take a swing. He didn't mean nothin' by it. But now that he's gone…" She sobbed and grabbed the tissue to dab at her eyes again. "I'd rather have him home late than not at all."

"I'm losing contact!" Lyle said. "The hands! The stones. Please stay in contact with the stones."

Melba grabbed them again. "I'm sorry. It's just—"

"I understand, but you must hold the stones."

"Got her wallet here," said Charlie's voice in his earpiece. Obviously he'd made it back to his command center with the pocketbook. "Picture of her and some fat guy—I mean, I could be looking at the Notorious B.I.G. here—but no kid pics."

Lyle said, "I'm looking for children but…"

He left a blank space, hoping she'd fill it in. As with most sitters, she didn't disappoint.

"We didn't have any. Lord knows we tried but…" She sighed. "It never happened."

"Not much else goin' down here," Charlie said. "Keys, a lipstick, hey—beat this: a harmonica. Bet it ain't hers. Good shot it's her old man's. I'll get the bag back lickity."

While waiting, Lyle made a few remarks about Clarence's weight problems to bolster further his psychic credibility. The picture he'd formed of Clarence was that of a frustrated, money-squeezed, bad-tempered drinker. An answer to a dead-or-alive question on a guy like that had to lean toward dead. He might have got himself involved in some quick-buck scheme that went wrong, leaving him food for the worms or the fish.

Lyle felt a tap on his leg: Charlie had returned the bag.

Lyle cleared his throat. "Why am I hearing music? It sounds reedy. Could it be a harmonica?"

"Yes! Clarence loved to play the harmonica. People told him he was terrible." Melba smiled. "And he was. He was just awful. But that never stopped him from trying."

"Why do I sense his harmonica nearby?"

She gasped. "I brought one with me! How could you know?"

Preferring to let her provide her own answer to that, Lyle said, "It might facilitate contact if I can touch an object that belongs to the one we seek."

"It's in my handbag." Melba glanced at her hands where they rested on the stones, then back at Lyle. "Do you think I could…?"

"Yes, but one hand only, please."

"We gonna take this poor lady's money, bro?" Charlie asked in his ear. "She ain't exactly our usual breed of fish."

Lyle couldn't give him an answer, but the same hesitancy had been nibbling at him throughout the sitting.

He watched Melba free her right hand, pull her handbag up to her lap, and fish out a scratched and dented harmonica with "Hohner Special 20 Marine Band" embossed along the top.

"This was his favorite," she said, pushing it across the table.

Lyle reached toward it, then stopped as warning alarms rang through his nerve ends. Why? Why shouldn't he touch the harmonica?

After a few awkward seconds, with Melba's expression moving toward a puzzled frown, Lyle set his jaw and took hold of the harmonica—

—and cried out as the room did a sudden turn and then disappeared and he was standing in another room, a suite in the Bellagio in Vegas, watching a fat man he knew to be Clarence Toomey snore beside a blonde Lyle knew to be a hooker he'd hired for the night. He knew everything—the half-million-dollar lottery prize Clarence had won and kept secret from his wife until he'd collected the money, how he'd left home and never looked back.

Melba's cry from somewhere in front of him: "What's wrong?"

Charlie in his ear: "Lyle! What's happenin'?"

The feel of the harmonica in his hands… uncoiling his fingers one by one until…

The harmonica dropped onto the table and abruptly Lyle was back in the Channeling Room, looking at Melba who faced him with wide eyes and her hands pressed against her mouth.

"Lyle! Answer me! Are you all right?"

"I'm okay," Lyle said, for Melba's sake as well as his brother's.

But he was anything but okay.

What had just happened? Was it real? Had he truly been looking at Clarence Toomey or imagining it? It had seemed so real, and yet… it couldn't be.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He didn't know what to make of it.

"Ifasen?" Melba said. "What happened? Did you see anything? Did you see my Clarence?"

What could he say? Even if he were sure it was true—and he wasn't, not at all—how do you tell a woman that her husband is bedded down in Vegas with a hooker?

"I'm not sure what I saw," Lyle said. Couldn't get much truer than that. He pushed back from the table. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut short our session. I… I don't feel well." No lie. He felt like hell.

"No, please," Melba said.

"I'm sorry. I will refund your money."

"Mah man!" Charlie said in his ear.

"I don't care about the money," Melba said. "I want my Clarence. How will I find him?"

"The lottery," Lyle said.

She looked at him. "The lottery? I don't understand."

"Neither do I, but that was the message that came through the clearest. Check with the New York State Lottery. Ask them about Clarence. That's all I can tell you."

If she did that, and if Lyle's vision had been real—a big if—she'd learn about Clarence's big win. She could hire someone to track him down, maybe get a piece of whatever was left.

She wanted to find her husband, but success was going to bring her only a load of hurt.

Charlie appeared, looking at him strangely. He had to be bursting with a million questions, but couldn't ask them while Melba was here.

Lyle said, "Kehinde will show you out and return your money. And remember what I told you: Check with the lottery. Do it today."

Melba's expression was troubled. "I don't understand any of this, but at least you tried to help. That's more than the police have done." She held out her hand. "Thank you."

Lyle gripped her hand and stifled a gasp as a whirlwind of sensations blew through him—a brief period of anger, then sadness, then loneliness, all dragging along for a year and a half, maybe more, but certainly less than two, and then darkness—hungry darkness that gobbled up Melba and everything around her.

He dropped her hand quickly, as if he'd received a shock. Was that Melba's future? Was that all she had left? Less than two years?

"Good-bye," he said and backed away.

Charlie led her toward the waiting room, giving Lyle an odd look over his shoulder.

"Ifasen is not himself today," he told Melba.

Damn right he's not himself, Lyle thought as uneasiness did a slow crawl down his spine. But who the hell is he?

4

Jack will kill me when he finds out.

Gia stood before the flaking apartment door and hesitated. Against all her better judgment she'd gone back to the abductedchild.org web site and called the family number listed on Tara Portman's page. She'd asked the man who answered if he was related to Tara Portman—he said he was her father—and told him that she was a writer who did freelance work for a number of newspapers. She was planning a series of articles about children who had been missing more than ten years and could he spare a few moments to speak to her?

His answer had been a laconic, Sure, why not? He told her she could stop by any time because he was almost always in.

So now she was standing in the hot, third-floor hallway of a rundown apartment building in the far-West Forties and afraid to take the next step. She'd dressed in a trim, businessy blue suit, the one she usually wore to meetings with art directors, and carried a pad and a tape recorder in her shoulder bag.

She wished she'd asked about Mrs. Portman—was she alive, were they still married, would she be home?

The fact that Tara had written "Mother" with no mention of her father might be significant; might say something about her relationship with her father; might even mean, as Jack had suggested, that he was involved in her disappearance.

But the fact remained that the ghost of Tara Portman had appeared to Gia and Gia alone, and that fact buzzed through her brain like a trapped wasp. She'd have no peace until she learned what Tara Portman wanted. That seemed to center on the mother she'd mentioned.

"Well, I've come this far," she muttered. "Can't stop now."

She knocked on the door. It was opened a moment later by a man in his mid-forties. Tara's blue eyes looked out from his jowly, unshaven face; his heavy frame was squeezed into a dingy T-shirt with yellowed armpits and coffee stains down the front, cut-off shorts, and no shoes. His longish dark blond hair stuck out in all directions.

"What?" he said.

Gia suppressed the urge to run. "I—I'm the reporter who called earlier?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah." He stuck out his hand. "Joe Portman. Come in."

A sour mix of old sweat and older food puckered Gia's nostrils as she stepped through the doorway into the tiny apartment, but she stifled her reaction. Joe Portman hustled around, turning off the TV and picking up scattered clothing from the floor and a sagging couch; he rolled them into a ball and tossed them into a closet.

"Sorry. Didn't expect you so soon." He turned to her. "Coffee?"

"Thanks, no. I just had some."

He dropped onto the couch and indicated the chair next to the TV for her.

"You know," he said, "this is really strange. The other night I was sitting right here, watching the Yankees, when I suddenly thought of Tara."

Gia seated herself carefully. "You don't usually think of her?"

He shrugged. "For too many years she was all I thought of. Look where it got me. Now I try not to think of her. My doctor at the clinic tells me let the past be past and get on with my life. I'm learning to do that. But it's slow. And hard."

A thought struck Gia. "What night was it when you had this sudden thought of Tara?"

"It was more than a thought, actually. For an instant, just a fraction of a second, I thought she was in the room. Then the feeling was gone."

"But when?"

He looked at the ceiling. "Let's see… the Yanks were playing in Oakland so it was Friday night."

"Late?"

"Pretty. Eleven or so, I'd guess. Why?"

"Just wondering," Gia said, hiding the chill that swept through her.

Joe Portman had sensed his daughter's presence during the earthquake under Menelaus Manor.

"Well, the reason I brought it up is, Friday night I get this feeling about Tara, then this morning you call wanting to do an article about her. Is that synchronicity or what?"

Synchronicity… not the kind of word Gia expected from someone who looked like Joe Portman.

"Life is strange sometimes," Gia said.

"That it is." He sighed, then looked at her. "Okay, reporter lady, what can I tell you?"

"Well, maybe we could start with how it happened?"

"The abduction? You can read about that in detail in all the old newspapers."

"But I'd like to hear it from you."

His eyes narrowed, his languid voice sharpened. "You sure you're a writer? You're not a cop, are you?"

"No. Not at all. Why do you ask?"

He leaned back and stared at his hands, folded in his lap. "Because I was a suspect for a while. Dot too."

"Dot is your wife?"

"Dorothy, yeah. Well, she was. Anyway, the cops kept coming up empty and… that was the time when stories about satanic cults and ritual abuse were big in the papers… so they started looking at us, trying to see if we were into any weird shit. Thank God we weren't or we might have been charged. It's hard to see how things could have worked out any worse, but that definitely would've been worse."

"How did it happen?"

He sighed. "I'll give you the short version." He glanced at her. "Aren't you taking notes?"

How dumb! she thought, reaching into her bag for her cassette recorder.

"I'd like to record this, if that's okay."

"Sure. We lived in Kensington. That's a section of Brooklyn. You know it?"

Gia shook her head. "I didn't grow up in New York."

"Well, it sounds ritzy, but it's not. It's just plain old middle class, nothing special. I worked for Chase here in the city, Dot worked out there as a secretary for the District 20 school board. We did okay. We liked Kensington because it was close to Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery. Believe it or not, we saw the cemetery as a plus. It's a pretty place." He looked down at his hands again. "Maybe if we'd lived somewhere else, Tara would still be with us."

"How did it happen?"

He sighed. "When Tara was eight we took her to Kensington stables up near the parade grounds. You know, so she could see the horses. One ride and she was an instant horse lover. Couldn't keep her away. So we sprung for riding lessons and she was a natural. For a year she rode three days a week—Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and Saturday morning. On Thursdays she'd have to wait a little while before Dot could pick her up. We told her to stay at the stables—do not under any circumstances leave the stables. And for a year it worked out fine. Then one Thursday afternoon Dot arrived to pick her up—right on time, I want you to know—and… no Tara." His voice cracked. "We never saw or heard from her again."

"And no witnesses, no clues?"

"Not a single one. We did learn, though, that she hadn't listened to us. Folks at the stable said she used to leave for a few minutes on Thursdays and return with a pretzel—you know, the big kind they sell from the pushcarts. The cops found the pushcart guy who remembered her—said she came by every Thursday afternoon in her riding clothes—but he hadn't seen anything different that day. She bought a pretzel as usual and headed back toward the stable. But she never made it." He punched his thigh. "If only she'd listened."

"What was she like?" Gia said. "What did she like besides horses?"

"You want to know?" he said, pushing himself out of the sofa. "That's easy. I'll let you see for yourself."

He walked around the sofa and motioned Gia to follow. She found him standing over a black trunk with brass fittings. He pulled it a few feet closer to the window and opened the lid.

"There," he said, rising. "Go ahead. Take a look. That's all that's left of my little girl."

Gia knelt and looked but didn't touch. She felt as if she were violating someone, or committing a sacrilege. She saw a stack of unframed photos and forced herself to pick it up and shuffle through them: Shots of Tara at all ages. A beautiful child, even as an infant. She stopped at one with Tara sitting atop a big chestnut mare.

"That was Rhonda, Tara's favorite horse," Portman said, looking over her shoulder.

But Gia was transfixed on Tara's clothing: a red-and-white checked shirt, riding breeches, and boots. Exactly what she'd been wearing at Menelaus Manor.

"Did… did she wear riding clothes a lot?"

"That's what she was wearing when she disappeared. In colder weather she'd wear a competition coat and cap. Made her look like the heiress to an English estate. God she loved that horse. Would you believe she'd bake cookies for it? Big thick grainy things. The horse loved them. What a kid."

Gia glanced at Portman and saw the wistful, lost look on his face and knew then he'd had nothing to do with his daughter's death.

She flipped further into the stack and stopped at a photo of Tara beside a trim, good-looking man in his thirties. Their hair and eyes were matching shades of blond and blue. With a start she realized it was her father.

"Yeah, that was me. I was Portman then, now I'm portly man." He patted his gut. "It's all the meds they've got me on. Name an antidepressant and I've tried it. Every one of them gives me these carbohydrate cravings. Plus the only exercise I get is moving around this place." He waved his hand at the tiny apartment. "Which, as you can imagine, isn't much."

"You said you worked for Chase?"

"'Worked' is right. Not a big job, but a solid one. I made decent money. And I was planning on getting my MBA, but… things didn't work out."

Gia flipped to the next picture. Tara standing beside a slim, attractive brunette.

"That was Dorothy," Portman said.

"Her mother."

Portman shook his head. "She took Tara's disappearance harder than I did, which is pretty hard to imagine. They were best buds, those two. Did everything together. Dot never recovered."

Gia was almost afraid to ask. "Where is she now?"

"In a hospital room, hooked up to a feeding tube."

"Oh, no!"

Portman seemed to go on automatic pilot as his eyes unfocused and his voice became mechanical. "Car accident. Happened in 1993, on the fifth anniversary of Tara's disappearance. Ran into a bridge abutment on the LIE. Permanent brain damage. Because of the speed she was going, the insurance company said it was a suicide attempt. Our side said it was an accident. We met somewhere in the middle but it still didn't come near covering her ongoing medical expenses."

"What do you think happened?"

"I don't know what happened, but what I think is between me and Dot. Anyway, I couldn't afford to pay for all the care she needed—I mean I couldn't lose the house because I had to think of Jimmy who I had to raise all by myself then."

"Jimmy?"

"Flip ahead a few photos. There. That's Jimmy."

Gia saw Tara next to a dark-haired boy with a gap-toothed smile.

"He looks younger."

"By two years. He was five there."

"Where is he now?"

"In rehab. Booze, crack, heroin. You name it." He shook his head. "Our fault, not his."

"Why do you say that?"

"Jimmy was six-and-a-half when Tara disappeared. We forgot about him when that happened. Everything was Tara, Tara, Tara."

"That's understandable."

"Not when you're six. And then seven. And then eight-nine-ten, and your family life is an ongoing wake for your sister. Then at eleven he loses his mother. I'm sure he heard the suicide talk. And to him that meant his mother had abandoned him, that her grief over her dead daughter was greater than her love for her living son. He was too young to understand that maybe she hadn't thought it through, that maybe it was the worst day of her life and some crazy impulse took control."