Crisscross

Richie took a few shots of the pair in flagrante delicto, as they say, and was about to show them to the wife when he realized he might be sitting on a gold mine. Normally putting the squeeze on a nun would be like trying to buy a whale steak from Greenpeace, but this nun was one of the honchos in the fund-raising project. That was how she'd got so tight with Mikey boy in the first place. Lots of cash flowing through that lady's hands, and those photos was a way to tap into that stream.

So Richie told wifey that her hubby was going exactly where he said he was—showed her photos of him entering and leaving the St. Joe's basement on the nights in question—and said he'd found no impropriety.

He put the squeeze on Mikey as well. Usually he had a rule: Never use nothing against the client. That was a no-no. Had to keep up the reputation, keep up the referrals from satisfied clients.

But Mikey wouldn't know that the guy who was milking him had been hired by his wife.

Because another rule was keep it anonymous. Never let the cow see your face or, worse, learn your name.

So Mikey Metcalf became the second cow in this particular pasture.

Up until a couple of months ago, Richie had maintained a perfect score on the anonymity meter. Then one September night he'd come home from Hurley's and smelled something funny. He raced up to his third floor and found out some guy'd poured acid over everything in his filing cabinet. The guy got away by running over a neighbor's roof.

Only explanation was that one of the cows had found out who he was. Richie had burned his gallery of photos—hated to do it but it was evidence if anyone hit him with a search warrant—and moved his sideline to his office. He'd been looking over his shoulder ever since.

He was puffing a little by the time he reached the wall of the zoo. A hot dog pushcart tempted him but he forced himself to keep moving. Later.

Call the nun first.

Kind of fun to have a nun on the hook. Back in grammar school the penguins—nuns dressed head to toe in black in those days—had always been after him, whacking him on the back of the head or rapping his knuckles whenever he acted up. Not that he'd been damaged for life or nothing. That was a crock. Truth was, he couldn't think of a single time he hadn't deserved what he got. That didn't make them any less of a pain in the ass though.

The nun thing had got to be a game after a while. A badge of honor. If you hadn't got hit you was some kind of fag.

He guessed this was sort of like payback.

He chose a public phone at random and licked his lips as he dialed the convent. He knew Sister Margaret Mary would be over at the school until three or three-thirty, but wanted to shake her up a little.

And he knew just how to do that.

8

"Got him!" Margiotta said.

Jensen had insisted he do the search for Jason Amurri in Jensen's own office. He didn't want anything they found becoming water-cooler talk around the admin floor. So Margiotta had pulled up a chair beside Jensen's desk, swiveled the monitor, moved the keyboard, and gotten to work.

"About time."

"This guy's one reclusive SOB." Margiotta shook his head. He had close-clipped black hair and dark brown eyes. "Only someone with my enormous talents could have dug him up. A lesser sort would've come up with jack shit."

Jensen decided to humor him. "That's why I called on you. Show me."

Margiotta rose and swiveled the monitor back toward Jensen. He pointed to the screen.

"You want to know about his father, I came across tons. Tons. But as for Jason himself, this is the best of what I found. It ain't much—like I said, he's pretty much a recluse—but I think it's enough to give you an idea who he is."

On the screen was a paragraph from a news article about one Aldo Amurri. Jensen had never heard of him. It mentioned he had two sons, Michel and Jason. Michel, the older one, lived in Newport Beach on the shore. Jason lived in Switzerland.

"That's it?"

"Did you read about the father? Check him out. That'll tell you something about this Jason guy."

Jensen scrolled back to the beginning of the article and began reading. He felt his mouth go dry as he learned about Aldo Amurri, father of the young man Jensen had booted out on his ass.

He knew he couldn't keep this from Luther Brady. Eventually he'd find out. Brady always found out. So it was better if Jensen broke the news himself.

But Brady was going to be pissed. Royally pissed.

9

The phone was ringing as Jack stepped into Gia's place. He'd just picked up Vicky at the bus stop. When he saw Mount Sinai on the caller ID he snatched up the receiver. God, he hoped it wasn't bad news. He'd talked to Gia just a couple of hours ago and—

"Is Vicky home?" Gia's voice.

"She's right here. Is anything—?"

"Then come and get me. Please get me out of here."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Really. Dr. Eagleton released me but the hospital doesn't want me going home alone. I know it's only been one night but I'm so sick of this place. I want my home."

Jack knew it was more than that. Gia skeeved out—her verb—in hospitals.

"We're on our way."

They grabbed a cab on Sutton Place, zipped up Madison into the low One Hundreds, then west over to Fifth Avenue. Mount Sinai Medical Center had a view of Central Park that the Donald Trumps of the city would kill for. Jack and Vicky found a very pale Gia perched on a wheelchair inside the front door. Jack guided her into the cab, and off they went.

Ten minutes later they were stepping through the front door on Sutton Square.

"Oh, God, it's so good to be home!"

Jack followed her down the hall. "Now you're going to be a good girl and take it easy like the doctor said, right?"

"I feel fine, Jack. Really, I do. Whatever was going on has stopped. I slept straight through the night and haven't had a hint of a cramp since."

"But you lost a lot of blood and didn't you say you're supposed to take it easy?'

"Yes, but that doesn't mean putting myself to bed."

"It means staying oft your feet and that's exactly what you're going to do." He led her to the big leather chair in the oak-paneled library and seated her in it. "Now stay there till bedtime."

He knew Gia would never do anything to jeopardize the baby, but he also knew that her high energy level made it difficult for her to sit still.

"Don't be silly. What about dinner?"

"I can make it!" Vicky cried. "Let me! Let me!"

Jack knew a Vicky dinner would mean more work for Gia than if she were doing it all herself. But he had to play it carefully here. Didn't want to step on little-girl feelings.

"I was thinking of takeout."

Vicky wouldn't let it go. "Let me make it! Please, please please!"

"Gee, Vicks, I already ordered Chinese for tonight." Jack knew it ran a close second to Italian on her favorite foods list. "You know, egg rolls, wanton soup, General Tso's chicken, and even a doo-doo platter."

Her eyes widened. "You mean apu pu platter?"

"Oh, yeah. Right. You know, with ribs and shrimp toast and even a fire." She loved to singe her spareribs in the flame. "But if you'd rather cook, then I'll call and cancel. No problem."

"No, I want a pu pu platter. I can cook tomorrow night."

"You're sure?"

Vicky nodded. "A pu pu platter, right?"

"Right. I've got an errand to run and after that I'll bring home the doo-doo."

Vicky giggled and ran off cheering.

Jack turned and winked at Gia. "The usual broccoli and walnuts in garlic sauce, I presume?"

She nodded. "You presume correctly. But where can you get a takeout pu pu platter?"

"I don't know, but I'll find one, even if I have to get a can of sterno and jury-rig one myself." He leaned over and kissed her. "You're sure you're all right?"

"The baby and I are fine. We just had a little scare is all."

"And you're going to follow doctor's orders, right?"

"I'm going to take a shower in my own bathroom to wash off the hospital and then I'm going to sit right here and read a book."

"Okay. But make it a quick shower. I've got some errands to run."

"Fix-it errands?"

He nodded. "Got a couple of them going."

"Nothing dangerous, I hope. You promised—"

"No danger. Really. One is just finding a missing guy for his mom. And I'm arranging the other so that the guy I'm fixing won't even know he's been fixed. No danger, no chance of bodily harm. It will be no-contact poetry."

"I've heard that before. You say 'piece of cake' and next you show up with a purple face and choke marks all over your throat."

"Yeah, but—"

"And you couldn't even go visit your father without starting some sort of war."

Jack held up his hands. "Sometimes these things take unpredictable turns, but the two fix-its running now are as straightforward as they come. No surprises. I swear."

"Oh, I know you believe that, but lately every time you start one of these jobs it seems to turn nasty."

"Not this time. See you in a couple of hours. I'm keeping my cell phone off for the rest of the day." When he saw her questioning look, he said. "Long story. But I'll be checking in lots." He waved. "Love ya."

She smiled that smile for him. "Love you too."

10

"You're looking better today," Jensen said as he seated himself on the visitor side of Luther Brady's helipad-sized desk.

Jensen wished he had an office like this—high ceilings, rich wood paneling, a rosette of skylights above, and a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows facing uptown with a magnificent view of the Chrysler Building. The paneling was all walnut except for a pair of chromed steel doors embedded in the south wall. That was where Brady kept a monument to his biggest secret, the one known only to him, Jensen, and the High Council: Opus Omega.

The Acting Prime Dormentalist and Supreme Overseer was a handsome man of average height with broad shoulders and a head of long wavy brown hair that he let trail over his collar. A few years ago Jensen had noticed gray creeping into that brown, but it hadn't lasted long. Today he wore one of his

Hickey-Freeman or Dolce & Gabbana suits—he never wore a uniform—that he donned for public appearances. He was Dormentalism's public face and as such needed to cut an impressive figure. Luther Brady wasn't simply the Church's leader, he was its peerless PR man too.

Jensen had to admit he did a great job in both roles, but especially the latter. When he appeared on TV he was the soul of rationality, generosity, and selflessness. The MVP of the Altruism Bowl.

"Better?" Brady frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You looked tired yesterday."

Brady paused a beat, then said, "Not surprising, considering the effort it took to keep that low pressure area to the north during Sunday's rally."

Jensen remembered watching the weather reports all week, preparing for the almost certain probability that it would rain on the rally. And then, during Saturday night and early Sunday morning, the front had slid north. Jensen had written it off to good luck, but now Brady was telling him…

"You did that?"

"Well, not alone. I had a couple of HC members helping me. I probably could have done it on my own, but I had to give my address at the rally some attention. As you know, we Fully Fused may be superior beings, but we're not gods."

No, we're not, Jensen thought with a spasm of guilt. Some of us aren't even superior beings.

Brady looked apologetic and added, "I would have asked your help but I didn't want to distract you from your security duties."

Thank Noomri you didn't, Jensen thought. His sham fusion would have been revealed.

Brady leaned back in his chair. "As I'm sure you know, I spent Sunday night in the mountains, to be alone with my xelton and recharge my spirit. I needed the rest."

Jensen nodded. Brady spent a lot of Sunday nights at his place upstate in the woods.

"You must come with me sometime." Brady's eyes unfocused as he smiled. "I've moved The Compendium up there and was reading it again. It thrills me every time."

The Compendium… the most wonderful, amazing, magical book Jensen had ever seen or read or imagined. He longed to see it again, touch it, flip through its pages. In his darkest moment of faltering faith in the goals and beliefs of the Church, Luther Brady had shown him The Compendium and all doubts had vanished like smoke.

Jensen wanted to say, Yes, yes, invite me to see The Compendium again, but Brady's next words stopped him.

"After reading The Compendium we can float together above the forest. It's so peaceful to watch the wildlife from above."

Jensen's tongue felt suddenly thick and dry. Levitate? His heart fell. No… that would never do. But he had to look upbeat.

"I look forward to it."

"But let's put that aside." Brady straightened in his chair. "What did you want to see me about?"

Here goes, Jensen thought.

He recited the facts: Someone had tried to join under a false name. He turned out to be Jason Amurri, son of Aldo Amurri.

"Unbelievable! Aldo Amurri's son!"

"You've heard of him?"

"Of course. He's a very wealthy and important man. We could suffer a lot of bad press because of this. And we may have lost a well-heeled contributor to boot. Does the son have any money?"

Jensen licked his lips. "Some."

"How much?" The words sounded more like a threat than a question.

Jensen showed him the printout of the financial breakdown Margiotta had found on the Internet.

Brady went livid, right up to his dyed hairline and no doubt beyond. Jensen had known the boss would be mad, but not this mad.

"I didn't know any of this at the time," he said. "How could I?"

"You took a man worth two-hundred-million dollars and kicked him out the door!"

In addition to being the Church's APR and SO, Brady was also its CFO, and as such he was always on the prowl for cash to fund Church projects—one Church project in particular.

Were Jensen not Grand Paladin, were he not in a position to know about Opus Omega, he might have been disillusioned. But knowing about the Opus changed everything, and explained the Church's need of a constant stream of cash.

"All I knew was that he'd given us a false name and address and was causing a violent scene in his first Reveille Session. That fits the criteria for instant UP. Criteria you laid down yourself, I might add."

Brady gave him a brief, hostile look, then swiveled his chair toward the windows. Jensen let out a breath. He'd done everything by the book; that, at least, was in his favor.

Brady stayed turned for a good minute, giving Jensen time to reflect on how far he'd come from Nigeria to be sitting here with such a powerful man.

He'd been born Ajayi Dokubo and spent his earliest years in a poor village in southwest Nigeria near the Benin border; his people spoke Yoruba and sacrificed rams to Olorun. When he was five his father moved the family to Lagos where Jensen learned English, the official language of Nigeria. At age nine his father uprooted them again, this time to the U.S. To Chicago.

His old man survived long enough to see to it that his son became a U.S. citizen, then wound up the victim of a fatal mugging. Jensen survived a turbulent, fatherless, rough-and-tumble adolescence that landed him in trouble with the law. A Southside cop, an ex-marine named Hollis, had given him a choice: Join the army or go to court.

He joined up just in time to be sent to Iraq for the first Gulf War where he killed an Iraqi in a firefight and liked it. Liked it too much, maybe. Killed two more and that would have been okay except that the last one was trying to surrender at the time. That didn't set too well with his lieutenant and he was given another choice—honorable discharge or face charges.

So he returned to the streets again, this time in New York City. Being black, with no education, his options were few. So it had to happen: He got in with a rough crew that was dealing drugs, boosting and fencing electronics, smuggling cigarettes, the usual. Because of his size, Jensen became their go-to guy when strong-arm stuff was called for. Mostly it was punch-ups, maybe breaking a leg or two. But then came the day they decided someone needed killing.

Jensen had been game. So he'd found the target in a bar and cracked his skull with a pool cue. His mistake had been being so public about it. He was picked up for the murder but the cops had to release him when the witnesses developed amnesia.

Coming that close to a jolt in the joint had shaken him to the point where he decided it was time to turn his life around.

He'd lived by his wits for most of his life, never looking to rule the world, just to be comfortable without doing a nine-to-five grind. Now he was willing to get on the treadmill. But he needed direction.

He found it when he saw Luther Brady on Oprah!—his girlfriend at the time never missed that damn show—and the more Jensen listened, the more he knew Dormentalism was what he'd been looking for.

To seal the deal with himself to leave his old ways behind, Ajayi

Dokubo changed his surname lo a simple one he'd picked out of a phone book: Jensen. He never used his first name, treated it as if it didn't exist. He became Jensen—period.

As for Dormentalism, it didn't turn out to be what he'd originally thought, but it was indeed what he'd been looking for.

He might have screwed that up too if not for Luther Brady.

He still remembered the day he'd been called into Brady's office and confronted with his arrest record. He'd expected to be declared UP, but instead—because of his military experience, Brady said—he was made a TP. Brady went even further by paying his tuition to John Jay College of Criminal Justice where he earned an associate degree in security management. Jensen was still attending part time, working toward a BA.

In the five years since Brady had appointed him Grand Paladin, Jensen had taken the job personally. Luther Brady had had more faith in him than he'd had in himself. He couldn't think of anything he wouldn't do for the man.

"Well, what do we do?" Jensen said.

"'We'?" Brady's eyebrows levitated a good half inch. " 'We' are doing nothing. You, however, are going to get this Jason Amurri back here."

That wasn't going to be easy. They hadn't exactly parted buddies.

"And don't," Brady added, "let on that we know who he really is."

"How am I supposed to do that? I can't call the Ritz Carlton and get his room without knowing he's Jason Amurri."

Brady jabbed a finger at him. "I don't care. Beg, plead, go to his hotel and offer him a ride on your shoulders if you have to, but I want him back here tomorrow! Get to it. Now."

Jensen stewed as he made the trip back to his office. How the hell was he going to—?

The application! Maybe this turkey had left a working contact number.

He rummaged through the papers on his desk. Yes! Here it was, with a 212 area code.

He buzzed What's-Her-Name. "Get in here."

When she did, all buttoned up in her uniform and looking scared, he handed her Amurri's application and gave her a new version of the situation. A mistake had been made and had to be rectified. "Jack Farreli" had been declared UP and ejected in error. Apologize and persuade him to come back for another meeting.

She hurried out but returned a minute later.

"He doesn't have his phone on," she said with a trembling lower lip. For some reason his secretaries never seemed to like to tell him things he didn't want to hear.

"Then keep calling, you idiot!" he shouted. "Call every five minutes until you reach him, and then do the selling job of your xeltonless life!"

Why was it so damn near impossible to get good help these days?

11

Jack found Russ Tuit in an agitated state. He let Jack in, then started stomping around the apartment.

"Can I say, 'What the fuck?'" he shouted, waving a thick, oversized paperback in the air. "Can I just?"

Jack shrugged. "Hey, it's your apartment." Then an unpleasant thought struck. "You're not having trouble with the disk, are you? Yesterday—"

"The disk is fine. No, it's this English Lit course I'm taking. I just had to read 'Ode on a Greek Urn' by Keats and I just got to say, 'What the fuck!'"

"It's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' I believe, but if it'll make you feel better, sure. Be my guest."

"Okay. What the fuck?" He flipped through the pages till he found what he wanted. "Listen to this: 'More happy love! More happy, happy love!'" He tossed the book across the room to where it bounced off the wall, leaving a greenish scuff—the same green as the book cover. It joined half a dozen similar marks in the vicinity. "Is this guy kidding? It sounds like the Stimpy song!"

"And you sound like Ren."

"Do you believe the shit they want us to read? Now I remember why I dropped out and went into full-time hacking. This is worse than prison, man! This is cruel and unusual!"

"Speaking of hacking," Jack said, "the disk is ready, isn't it?"

"What? Oh, yeah. Sure." Simply mentioning the disk seemed to calm him. "Got it right here."

He picked up a red three-and-a-half-inch floppy and scaled it across the room.

Jack caught the little thing and said, "This is it?"

"All you'll need. Just make sure you put it in the floppy drive before you start the machine. That way my disk'll be in control of the startup."

"What do I do?"

"Nothing. You don't even have to turn on the monitor. The disk'll bypass any password protection. It'll disable any antivirus software he's got—Norton, McAfee, whatever—and introduce HYRTBU. All you've got to do is wait maybe ten minutes till the hard drive stops chattering, then pull out the disk—Jesus, make sure you don't leave it there—turn off the computer, and buy yourself a beer. His files are toast."

Jack stared at the red plastic square resting in his palm. "That's it?" It seemed too simple.

Russ grinned. "That's it. That's why you pay me the big bucks. Speaking of which…"

Jack dug into his pocket, saying, "But how will I know if it worked?"

"If you don't see him tossing his rig out a window, you'll see him down at his computer guy's place the next day asking what the fuck's going on."

Jack nodded. He planned to be watching.

But before all that he had to track down a take-out pu pu platter.

12

"Your cousin called," Sister Agnes said.

Maggie froze. She had just entered the convent's central hallway and now she felt unable to breathe.

So it begins.

Had she done the right thing in hiring Jack? She'd know soon enough. She'd either be free of this human leech or her life's work would be shattered by shame and humiliation. Either way, it had to be better than this awful in-between state of constant fear and dread.

"Maggie?" Agnes said, her brow knitting with concern. "Are you all right? You're white as a sheet."

Maggie nodded. Her words rasped over a dusty tongue. "What did he say?"

"He said to tell you your Uncle Mike has taken a turn for the worse and he'll call you back around four. I didn't know you had an Uncle Mike."

"Distant relative."

She went to her room and waited for Agnes to leave the hallway, then she darted out to a public phone two blocks west. The convent didn't allow sisters their own phones, and she couldn't discuss this on the common line in the hall, so she hurried to the one the blackmailer had sent her to the first time he'd contacted her.

It was already ringing when she arrived. She grabbed the receiver.

"Yes?"

"I thought you was going to stand me up," said that nasty, grating voice. God help her, she hated this faceless monster. "I wouldn't have been too surprised, considering how you shorted me on the latest payment."

"I don't have any more!"

Jack had told her to say that, but it was true. Her meager savings were almost gone. She'd told Mike and he'd helped her as much as he could without raising his wife's suspicions. He was being blackmailed too. But although he'd be damaged if those pictures got out, he'd survive—his marriage might not, but he'd still have his career. Maggie would be left with nothing.

"Yes, you do," the voice cooed.

"No, I swear! There's nothing left."

Now a snarl. "But we both know where you can get more!"

"No! I told you before—"

"It won't be hard." Back to the cajoling tone. "You've got all that cash coming in to the building fund. I'll bet a lot of the poor suckers in your parish don't ask for no receipts. All you gotta do is siphon off a little every time some comes through. No one will know."

I'll know! Maggie wanted to shout.

But Jack had told her to string him along, let him think she was giving in—but not too easily.

"But I can't! That's not my money. It's for the church. They need every penny."

The snarl again. "And how many pennies do you think they'll get when start tacking up photos of you and Mr. Capital Campaign Consultant all over the parish? Huh? How many then?"

Maggie sobbed. She didn't have to fake it. "All right. I'll see if I can. But there's not much coming in during the week. What little we do get comes in on Sundays."

"I ain't waitin' till next week! Get me something before that! Forty-eight hours, or else!"

The phone went dead.

Maggie leaned against the edge of the phone booth and sobbed.

How in the world had she come to this? Never, not once, not for an instant since the day she'd joined the order had she ever even dreamed of becoming involved with a man.

If not for Serafina Martinez, none of this would have happened.

Not that she blamed the child in any way. But knowing that Fina and her sisters and brother would be forced to leave St. Joe's had compelled her to search for a benefactor.

And about that time she'd been getting to know Michael Metcalf. Bright, handsome, charming, and he was working to make St. Joe's a better place. Their positions in the fund-raising campaign put them together time and again. They became friends.

One day, out of desperation, she mentioned the Martinez children after one of the fund-raising meetings and asked if he might help. His immediate agreement had stunned Maggie, and as they continued seeing each other at the meetings, and at increasingly frequent tête-à-têtes about Fina and her siblings, she felt herself longing to touch him and be touched by him.

Then one night, when they were alone in the church basement—in the deserted soup kitchen—he'd kissed her and it felt wonderful, so wonderful that something broke free inside her, demanding more… and they made love right there, beneath the floor and aisles and pews of St. Joseph's Church. Beneath God's house.

Maggie had awakened the next morning ashamed and utterly miserable. Bad enough she had broken her vow of chastity, but Michael wasn't just a man, he was a man with a wife and children.

That had not been enough to stop her though. Being with Michael had lit a fire in her that she could not extinguish. A whole new world had opened for her and she thirsted constantly for him.

Seven times… she'd sinned seven times with him. And there would have been more if the arrival of that envelope hadn't shocked her back to sanity. Black-and-white photos, grainy and underlit, but her ecstatic face was clearly identifiable as she writhed under Michael. She'd vomited when she saw them, and nearly passed out when she read the note with its threats.

She'd called Michael who told her he'd been sent the same photos with a similar demand for payment.

Maggie closed her eyes, remembering those photos. To see herself in the act, doing what she'd been doing…

It still shocked her that she'd been capable of such a thing. She'd turned it over and over in her mind, trying to understand it, trying to understand herself.

Maybe because she'd joined the convent directly out of high school. She'd been a virgin then—no experience with men, certainly not with men interested in her as a woman—and had remained so until Michael Metcalf came along. She'd found herself mesmerized by this kind, generous man. He'd awakened yearnings she'd never realized she had.

And God forgive her, she'd surrendered to them.

But never again.

Now she and Michael saw each other only at fund-raisers, and occasionally at Mass where he'd pass Maggie some cash to help her with the payments. But he could give her only so much.

She prayed that even that would end soon.

She turned and walked back toward the convent, speaking softly to God.

"Lord—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—deliver me from this trial, I beg you. Not just for my own sake, but for St. Joseph's as well. I have strayed, I know, and I am ashamed. I've repented, I've confessed my sin. I've done penance. Please forgive my one deviation from the Path of Your Love. I will never stray again. Never. Absolve me of this and let me go on serving you with love and devotion. But if I must be punished, let it be in a manner that does not reflect ill on St. Joseph's.

"I beg You to guide Jack so that he may end this threat to the parish and to myself without causing harm or sinning on my behalf."

Self-loathing choked her into silence. It was all her fault. No one else to blame. Yes, Michael was complicit, weak, and she perhaps was not his first dalliance, but she should have been strong enough for both of them. She had the Calling, not Michael.

If a few weeks from now she was still a member of the convent and the good name of St. Joseph's remained unsullied, she would know that God had heard and forgiven her.

If not…

13

A hand touched Jamie Grant's shoulder and she started. A quick glance in the streaked mirror behind the Parthenon's bar showed it was only Timmy Ryan.

"Hey, jumpy tonight."

Jamie shrugged.

Timmy leaned in closer, elbows on the bar, and spoke in a low tone. "Listen, Schwartz's got his kid brother along tonight. In from Duluth. We figured we'd have the usual fun with him if you're up to it."

Jamie didn't move her head. Instead she fixed her eyes on Ryan's reflection in the mirror. He had a Jay Leno situation going with his chin; he wore a dark suit, wrinkled, a striped tie, loosened, and a toothy grin, capped. He spent his days as a copywriter and his nights as a Parthenon regular, like Jamie and Schwartz, and Cassie and Frank, and about half a dozen others.

She took a sip of her Dewar's and soda. "I don't know if I'm up to it, Timmy."

She was feeling edgy. She could have sworn she'd been followed here. This comfy little bar in the West Sixties had been a nightly refuge for years. Had it been invaded? Had some Dementedists infiltrated the irregulars?

She hated to think so. A good neighborhood tavern like the Parthenon was a place to be nurtured and cherished. She liked the feel of the bar's mahogany under her elbows, the give of the leather on the chairs and stools and booths, the drama and pageant of foam rising in a draft pint of lager or stout, the smell of what's been spilled, the rattle of the cocktail shaker, the murmur of conversation, the green glow of a football game on the TV screen.

Where everybody knows your name… more than a theme song, it was the foundation of what made a tavern work. But Jamie didn't need everybody knowing her name to feel at home here, just a nod or a wave from a few of the regulars as she stepped through the door sufficed. And few things were better than Louie timing the preparation of her Dewar's and soda—her "usual"—so that it was homing in for a three-point landing on the bar as she slid onto her usual stool.

Maybe she liked the place too much, maybe she spent too much time here. She definitely knew she drank too much.

Which always reminded her of an old Scottish proverb: They talk of my drinking but never my thirst.

And that pretty much nailed the situation. A thirst for something more than ethanol in all its various and wondrous permutations drew her to the Parthenon. If getting a load on were the sole objective, she could do it quicker and far cheaper by staying home with a bottle. She came for the embrace of kindred souls—who also just happened to like to consume ethanol in all its various and wondrous permutations—and for the camaraderie… a potion far more potent and alluring than distilled spirits.

Timmy draped an arm over her shoulders. It felt good, a spot of warmth on this chilly night. She and Timmy had had a fling a few years ago—Jamie had flung with a number of regulars at the Parthenon—but nothing serious, just someone to be with now and then. Some nights the thought of going home alone to an empty apartment was simply too much to bear.

"Come on, Jamie. Been a while since we heard a pinkie story. They're always good for a laugh."

"Tell you what," Jamie said, putting on a smile. "Pay my bar tab tonight and you've got a deal."

"You're on. After Frank finishes yakking about that new Lexus of his, I'll bring the kid over. So put on your thinking cap."

He gave her shoulder a squeeze and moved off, leaving her alone.

Alone…

She didn't want to be alone tonight, but not for the usual reasons. Those Dementedist threats—of course, they never said they were Dementedists, but who were they kidding—and now this feeling of being shadowed were getting to her. Maybe she and Timmy could hook up for the night… just for old time's sake.

She'd never liked the emptiness of her apartment—that was one of the reasons she spent so much time at the office—but she'd never feared being there. Maybe she'd just spend the night here at the Parthenon… entertaining the troops.

Always good for a laugh…

Yeah, that's me all right. Jamie the Joke Machine. Quick with the quip, the bon mot, the laugh-aloud girl, the—

Christ, I hate my life.

The Dementedism stories had been the first thing in years to fire her up, but now she sensed it turning on her. How could she enjoy writing pieces that kept her looking over her shoulder? She'd expected some negative fallout, but figured she could handle it.

Well, you're sure doing a bang-up job handling it tonight, Jamie.

She signaled Louie for another hit of Dewar's, then stared at the stub of her right pinkie. What tall tale could she come up with tonight? Yesterday she'd given that PI—what was his name? Robinson? Robertson? Something like that—the outboard motor story. But she'd already used that here at the Parthenon. Had to come up with something new.

Only Jamie knew the real story… how she'd lost most of that finger to the love of her life.

Never should have married Eddie Harrison. Her mother had known her college sweetheart was bad news and had warned her, but did she listen? No way. So right after she got her journalism degree she married him. It looked like a good situation at first, but it took him only a few years to morph from sweetheart to lushheart. And one night during year five he almost killed her.

Eddie was such a sweet guy when he was sober, but the booze did something to him, made him mean, frayed his temper. Jamie had been a stringer back then, doing most of her writing at home. On the fateful night, for some still-unknown reason, the clicking of her keyboard set him off and he demanded that Jamie stop typing. When she told him she had a morning deadline and had to finish, he flew into a rage, went to the kitchen, returned with a carving knife, and tried to cut off her hands. Lucky for her he was so drunk he couldn't manage it, but the slashing blade did manage to connect with her pinkie. As she knelt on the rug, bleeding and moaning and trying to dial 911, Eddie carried the severed end to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. Then he passed out.

The next day he was all anguish and remorse and contrition and full of promises never ever to drink again. But Jamie was not getting on that merry-go-round. She packed up, moved out, pressed criminal charges, and filed for divorce—all in one day.

And hadn't had a long-term relationship since.

She'd seen enough depressed people in her forty-three years to know she fit the clinical picture. She spent every waking moment riding depression's ragged edge. But she wasn't into pills. Her self-prescribed therapy was work. Filling the hours with relentless activity staved off the down feelings. And she produced an amazing amount of copy—for The Light, for various magazines under a pseudonym, even a chapter in a soon-to-be-published journalism textbook. If she got into a pill situation—started on Prozac or Zoloft or one of those—and it did its job, would the lifting depression take the writing drive along with it?

She couldn't risk that. She'd found a formula that kept her from tumbling into the abyss: days spent either writing or researching; evenings here at the Pantheon, just a few blocks from her apartment, drinking and kibitzing with the regulars; and nights of exhausted sleep.

Jamie wasn't so sure about the sleep situation tonight, though.

She glanced around, looking for unfamiliar faces. There were always some. No secret that she was writing a derogatory series about the cult—she refused to call it a church—but did they have any idea that she might have discovered something that would embarrass the hell out of them and set their whole organization on its ear?

Might... that was the key word here. She hadn't confirmed her suspicions yet, and so far she'd been stymied in finding a way to do so.

But if the Dementedists knew of her suspicions, no telling what they might do. She'd have to—

She jumped as someone tapped her shoulder. Timmy again. Damn it, she was edgy.

Timmy introduced Schwartz's brother, who looked barely thirty and nothing like Schwartz. After a little small talk Timmy pointed out Jamie's short pinkie and said something about wait till you hear this… You just won't believe it. Schwartz and Cassie and Ralph and the others were gathered in a semicircle around her and Little Brother. She had an audience but no material.

What the hell, she thought. Wing it.

"Well, it was years ago, back in 1988, when I was in the Karakoram to—" She noticed the kid's perplexed expression, mirrored in the other listeners. Christ, was there anyone left who knew their geography? "That's a mountain range. I was in a mountain-climbing situation, preparing to tackle the Abruzzi ridge of K2—which the locals call Chogori—and I was looking for an ice ax…"

14

"I'm gonna get it from ya! Yes, I am! Yes, I am!"

Clancy growled as he gripped the rawhide toy in his sharp little teeth and tried to pull it away from his former master.

Kneeling on the floor, Richie Cordova was amazed that the little terrier still had this much play in him. He had to be ten years old, the equivalent to seventy in a man. Or so they said.

Every so often Richie got this urge to see Clancy and play with him. The divorce agreement granted him visitation rights, but supervised.

Supervised! It still rankled him. What'd the judge think he was going to do, run off with the pooch? Hardly.

The worst part was that he had to visit Clancy in Neva's apartment. She was such a slob. Look at the place. Nothing where it should be and it stank of cigarettes.

A place for everything and everything in its place, Richie always said.

"Neva!" he called.

Her scratchy voice echoed from the kitchen. "Yeah?"

"C'mere a minute, will you?"

She took her sweet time traveling the ten feet or so to the living room. She stood in the archway, wearing a housecoat and puffing a butt.

"What?"

"Don't you ever clean this place? It's a dump."

Her face reddened. "I clean it just fine. I dare you to find a speck of dust."

"I ain't talking about dirt. I'm talking about straightening things up. Everything's tossed every which way. And you've got mail on that table and keys on this table, and—"

"Cram it, Rich. You're allowed to come here to visit Clancy, not bust my chops."

"I don't think Clancy should have to live in all this clutter."

Shit, he loved this little dog! He never should have allowed Neva custody.

"Clancy's doing just fine. Aren't you, baby?" She bent and slapped the side of her leg. Immediately Clancy forgot about Richie and ran over to her. She scratched his head. "Aren't you, snookums?"

"And I don't think the secondhand smoke is good for his health."

Neva glared at him. "Up yours, Rich. Don't you remember why we split? Not some other man or some other woman: you. You and your neatnik ways. You and your need to control. You make Monk look like Oscar Madison. Everything has to be just so, and yet you walk around—or maybe I should say waddle around—looking like the Goodyear blimp."

Richie said nothing. He wanted to kill her. Slowly.

This wasn't the first time. Every goddamn time he came here it was the same thing: He wound up wanting to wring her scrawny neck. He couldn't think of anyone else on earth who could piss him off this way.

"You still studying those horoscopes every day?" she said. "What a laugh. A guy who wants to control everything and everyone around him thinks his life's being controlled by a bunch of stars a zillion miles away. It's a riot."

"You got no idea what you're talking about. I use them for guidance, that's all."

"Stars are pulling your strings. Ha! You believe in flying saucers too?"

Hauling himself to his feet took a lot out of him. He had to lose some weight soon.

"You're pushing it, Neva."

"Yeah, well why not? You pushed me around for five years. About time someone pushed back."

"Neva…"

"I ain't afraid of you, Richie. Not anymore."

"You should be." Feeling like he was about to explode, he took a step toward her. "You really—"

Clancy bared his teeth and growled. The sound pierced him.

You too, Clancy?

"Fuck the both of you."

Richie Cordova turned and left his ex-wife and his ex-dog to wallow in their shit hole.

15

After picking the lock to Cordova's office, Jack slipped a slim, flexible metal ruler between the door and the hinge-side jamb. He held the ruler against the plunger as he pushed the door open. Without letting the plunger pop, he replaced the ruler with the short length of duct tape he'd stuck to his sweatshirt. He let the outer inch of the tape stick out free in the hallway, then closed the door.

Okay. He was in. First thing he did was pull on a pair of latex gloves. Next he flicked on his penlight and stepped through the reception area into the office where he went directly to Cordova's desk. Neat as could be—even the paper clips were lined up like soldiers in review. A single photo on the desk: a terrier of some kind.

A dog… he kept a photo of a dog on his desk.

Jack knelt and found the computer's mini-tower on the floor at the rear of the kneehole. He noticed a CD drive, probably a burner for backup. One CD could hold a ton of blackmail photos. He pulled out Russ's HYRTBU disk, inserted it into the floppy slot, then pressed the on button.

As the computer whirred to life, Jack began exploring the office. Cordova wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but you didn't need an Oxford degree to know to store a valuable backup off premises. Not just to protect against theft, but fire as well.

Jack started with the file cabinets. Just for the hell of it he checked for a folder labeled backup but didn't find one. So he combed through every drawer, every hanging folder in both cabinets but found no backup disk. Unlike the file cache Jack had found in Cordova's home office last September, these contained no blackmail material. Nothing but PI records. So he did a little floor crawling, looking for something taped to the underside of the furniture. Nope.

He thought he'd struck pay dirt when he found a padded envelope be-hind the radiator, but it contained only cash. Money he d squeezed from his victims, no doubt. Jack was tempted to take it, just for spite, but he couldn't let Cordova know someone had been in his office. The success of this whole fix-it depended on that.

He went back to the computer. The cooling fan was running, but the hard drive was silent. Russ's disk had done its job. Maybe.

Jack removed the disk and pocketed it. He felt weird leaving the place without knowing for sure that he'd accomplished what he'd come for. Of course he could turn on the computer and, if it wasn't password protected, open a few files to check, but he might unknowingly leave some sort of trace that could make Cordova suspect someone had been here.

Better to trust Russ and leave clean.

He returned to the hallway and locked the door behind him. Then he yanked the duct tape free of the jamb. The tape would leave a little adhesive behind, but that couldn't be helped. Unless Cordova got down on his hands and knees and checked the plunger with a magnifying glass, he would never know.

Time to head back to the Ritz. He needed his beauty rest. He was expecting an important call in the morning.

WEDNESDAY

1

Jack spent an uncomfortable night at the Ritz Carlton. Not because there was anything wrong with the twelfth-floor park-view room—it was superb. The front desk manager hadn't blinked when Jack had declared that he didn't believe in credit cards and laid down three of a kind of Maria Roselli's thousand-dollar bills as an advance on his stay. But despite all the comforts he kept thinking he should be at Gia's place, watching over her, ready to jump should anything happen. By reminding himself that the Ritz was only a few blocks from Sutton Square—closer than his own apartment—he managed to drift off to sleep.

He was up early, and showered and dressed before he called Gia to make sure she was okay. She was. No surprise there. If something had gone wrong, she had his room number and would have called.

At eight-thirty room service delivered his breakfast and he turned on his Tracfone. Four minutes later, as he was digging into a pair of deliciously runny eggs Benedict—Gia would have made a face—the phone rang.

"Mr. Farrell?" said a woman's voice.

"Speaking."

"Oh, I'm so glad I finally contacted you. I've been calling this number since yesterday."

Jack smiled. Bet it drove your boss crazy that no one answered.

"Who are you and why are you calling me?" Jack knew the answers, but Jason wouldn't. "If you're selling something—"

"Oh, no! My name is Eva Compton from the New York City Dormentalist Temple. I'm calling from the Grand Paladin's office and—"

Jack let out a little gasp. "Dormentalist? I have nothing to say to you people! You threw me out!"

"That's why I'm calling, Mr. Farrell. What happened yesterday was a terrible mistake. Please come back to the temple so that we can rectify this unfortunate error. We're all terribly upset here."

"You're upset? You're upset? I've never been so humiliated in my entire life! You Dormentalists are awful, heartless people and I want nothing to do with any of you. Ever!"

With that he thumbed the off button and glanced at his watch—8:41. Jack made a mental wager that they'd call back in twenty minutes.

He lost. The phone rang at 8:52. Jack recognized the accented bass voice immediately.

"Mr. Farrell, this is Grand Paladin Jensen of the New York City Dormentalist Temple. We met yesterday. I—"

"You're the rude man who kicked me out!"

"And I'm so sorry about that. We made an error—a terrible error—and we'd like to rectify it."

"Oh, really." Jack drew out the word. He wasn't going to let Jensen off the hook easily. "You said I was a phony, that you ran a check on my name and found out I didn't exist. So why are you calling a man who doesn't exist, Mr. Jensen? Tell me that?'

"Well, I—"

"And why are you calling me 'Mr. Farrell' when you say that's not my name?"

"I-I don't have any other name to call you. Look, if you'll just come back, I'm sure we can—"

"You also said you don't allow lies in Dormentalist temples—only truth. If that's true, why do you want me back?"

"Because… because I was too hasty." Jack could almost hear him squirm. "After you left I did some investigating and learned that your RT made several errors. Errors which would rightfully upset anyone."

"I'll say!"

"I promise you she's being disciplined. She'll be sent before the FPRB and—"

"The what?"

"The Fusion Progress Review Board. Her behavior will be reviewed and appropriate disciplinary measures taken."

Electroshock therapy, I hope, Jack thought, remembering that hapless mouse.

He figured it was time to waver, but not before twisting the knife.

"Well, that's encouraging, but what about you? You didn't even give me a chance to speak. Are you going before this FPRB?"

"Well, ah, no. You have to understand, Mr. Farrell, that the Church i& under constant assault, and sometimes we get jumpy. I realized that you had volunteered your real name but I wouldn't listen, so I discussed the matter with Mr. Brady."

Time to be impressed. "Luther Brady? You discussed me with Luther Brady himself?"

"Yes, and he was very upset that you'd come to the Church for help and we'd turned you away. He wants to meet with you personally when you come back."

Bump it up to breathy-voiced awe: "Luther Brady wants to meet with me? That's… that's…" a little catch in the voice here "… wonderful! When can I come back?"

"Anytime you wish, but the sooner the better as far as we're concerned."

"I'll be right down."

"Excellent! I'll have somebody meet you at—"

"Not just 'somebody,'" Jack said, unable to resist one last turn of the blade. "You. I want the Grand Paladin himself there to bring me in."

Jack heard Jensen swallow, then say, "Why, of course. I'd be happy to."

Oh, yeah. I'll bet you're just dying to be my escort to Luther Brady.

Jack considered asking Jensen to bark like a dog but canned it. He grinned as he ended the call.

Finding Johnny Roselli was turning out to be fun.

2

Grand Paladin Jensen took up most of the elevator cab. Jack managed to squeeze in beside him and find a way to stand without rubbing elbows with his black uniform, but that was it. The two of them pretty much maxed out the space. Gollum might have been able to make it a threesome, but that was iffy.

As Jensen pressed the 22 button, Jack decided to go into chatty mode.

"All the way to the top, huh?"

Jensen nodded, staring at the doors. "That's Mr. Brady's floor."

"The whole floor?"

Another nod. "The whole floor."

"I'm really looking forward to meeting him. Will he be waiting for us?"

Jensen had the look of a man trying to be cool while a Doberman sniffed his crotch.

"He's expecting us."

"Do you have a first name, Mr. Jensen?"

"Yes."

Jack waited a few seconds. When it became obvious Jensen wasn't going to volunteer anything else, Jack said, "And that would be…?"

Jensen kept staring straight ahead. "That would be a name I don't use."

Yessiree, the size of a GE double oven but less personality.

"And speaking of names," Jensen added, finally looking at Jack, "what do we call you?"

Before Jack could answer, the cab stopped but the doors didn't open. He noticed that the floor indicator read 21.

"Are we stuck?"

"No, merely being cleared through."

Jack checked the upper corners and spotted a mirrored hemisphere front left. Security camera. Seemed like Luther Brady didn't like drop-in company.

The cab began moving again, then stopped on twenty-two. The doors slid open onto a hallway with a gleaming parquet floor and walnut-paneled walls. Ahead a pair of doors stood open revealing a large sunny space. A young, gray-uniformed receptionist sat behind a black desk to the right.

"We're expected," Jensen said.

She nodded knowingly. "Of course. Wait here and I'll announce you."

But Jack kept going, like a moth heading for the light, ignoring calls from Jensen and the receptionist. He strolled through the doors into a high-ceilinged room clad in the same walnut paneling. He squinted in the light from the skylights and windows. To the left he noticed a pair of chromed steel doors sliding shut across a recess that contained what appeared to be a giant sphere.

A familiar-looking man rose from a huge desk by the windows. Jack knew him from TV, usually in a tape clip associated with a sound bite. But he hadn't seen that expression before: Luther Brady was furious.

"I tried to stop him, Mr. Brady," said the breathless receptionist behind him, "but he wouldn't listen."

The anger flashed out of Brady's face as quickly as it had come. He was smiling now as he came around the desk and started toward Jack.

"Quite all right, Constance," he said, dismissing her with a left-handed wave. He thrust out his right hand as he approached Jack. "Our guest, it would seem, has a rather unpredictable nature."

Constance left, shutting the door behind her. Jensen remained, standing with his feet apart, his hands clasped in front of him. Like some dark stone idol.

"I'm so sorry," Jack said. "I didn't mean to barge in. It's just that, well, the thought of meeting Luther Brady himself, in person, it… well, it just blew my manners out the window. Really, I apologize."

"Quite the contrary," Brady said. "It is I"—a quick glance at Jensen here—"we who should be apologizing to you for the way you were treated yesterday."

"Don't give it another thought." Jack clasped Brady's hand in both of his and gave it a hearty shake. "This is such an honor, sir."

Brady's supercilious expression indicated that he agreed.

"But you have me at a disadvantage, sir. You know my name but I don't know yours." He laughed. "I certainly can't call you 'Jack Farrell' now, can I."

"It's Jason… Jason Amurri."

"Jason Amurri," Brady said slowly, as if rolling an unfamiliar sound over his tongue.

You're good, Jack thought. Very good.

No doubt Brady and Jensen knew all about Jason Amurri by now, but Brady was putting on an excellent show.

Ernie's job had been to find a rich recluse in his thirties, someone who didn't get his pictures in the pages. He'd been justly proud of coming up with Jason Amurri.

Ernie had said Jason was the younger son of shipping magnate Aldo Amurri—not Onassis class, but up there—with a personal fortune somewhere in the couple-of-hundred-million neighborhood; nice neighborhood, but due to become lots nicer when he inherited Daddy's company. Unlike his older brother, Jason was anything but a jet-setter. He was a recluse who'd spent much of the past ten years on the continent, mostly in his chateau in Switzerland. As such, he was not paparazzi fodder and so there was almost no public record of what he looked like.

All perfect for Jack.

Brady was milking his act. "I must say, Jason Amurri is a rather nice name. Why would you hide it?"

"Well, it's kind of embarrassing." Jack wished he knew how to blush on demand. "I've read articles that say that, you know… that the church is only after… you know… money."

"May their xeltons never know union!" Brady's features darkened with anger. "The Dormentalist Church has so many enemies, but not one of them will confront us on the issues—whether or not our members lead better lives because of their association with the Church, or whether or not we make the world a better place with our good works. Why not? Because they know they'd lose the argument. So they attack us with innuendo, hinting this, insinuating that, knowing we can't fight back, that we can't open our records without breaking the sacred pact of trust between the Church and its members."

No doubt about it, Brady had the gift. Even Jack found himself wanting to believe him.

"In my heart I think I knew that, but I just, well…" He put on his best guilty expression and looked away. "I have some money behind me and I didn't want that to be a factor or influence anyone. I just wanted to be treated like a regular Joe."

Brady laughed and clapped a hand on Jack's shoulder. "You will be. We all start out as regular Joes here. It's on the Fusion Ladder that the men are separated from the boys."

Jack shook his head despondently. "I don't know… that Reveille Session was so upsetting. That poor mouse…"

Brady's grip tightened on Jack's shoulder. "I realize that some of us are more sensitive than others, and since you've already had one bad experience…" He paused, looking thoughtful, then directed his gaze over Jack's shoulder. "What do you think, GP Jensen? Should I handle this myself?"

"Oh, I don't see how, sir," Jensen rumbled from behind Jack. "Your schedule is so full as it is. I don't know where you'll find the time."

Sounded as if he was reading it off a teleprompter.

"You know what?" Brady turned away from Jack and walked to the windows where he struck a wide-legged, hands-clasped-behind-the-back pose as he stared out at the city. "I'm going to make time."

"I don't understand," Jack said.

Brady turned and focused the full wattage of his pale blue gaze on Jack. "I am going to take you through the Reveille process myself."

Jack feigned a weak-kneed wobble. "No! I can't believe this!"

"Believe it." Brady moved closer. "With my guidance I can have you through the RC level and into an FA uniform in no time. But first you must tell me why you wish to join our Church. What do you think we can do for you that you can't do for yourself? What are your goals?"

"Well, I'd really like to become a more effective person. I'll be facing major responsibilities before too long and—"

"What sort oi responsibilities?" Brady made it sound like a casual conversational query.

Jack cleared his throat. "Well, uh, my brother and I will be running the family business soon." He didn't expect Brady to ask what business that was; he wasn't supposed to be interested in that sort of thing. Besides, he already knew. "It's a major responsibility and I don't know if I'm, you know, ready for it."

Did that sound ineffectual enough? He hoped he hadn't overdone it.

Brady laughed. "Well then you've come to the right place! The Dormentalist Church is all about maximizing personal potential. Once your xelton half is fused with its Hokano counterpart, the world will be yours for the taking. There will be no task too difficult, no responsibility so great that you cannot handle it with ease!"

Jack grinned. "If I can achieve only a fraction of that I'll—"

"A fraction? Nonsense! With me guiding your Reveille, we'll awaken your sleeping xelton and have you on the path to Full Fusion in no time!"

Jack forced a little laugh and shook his head. "I've got to warn you. I'm a very closed-in, uptight person. You may have your work cut out for you."

Brady's expression became serious. "You forget that you are dealing with someone who has achieved Full Fusion. There is nothing I cannot do. We will conduct your Reveille right here in my little domain where no one will disturb us. It will go quickly, I promise you."

"I hope so."

Probably the first true thing Jack had said since his arrival.

3

Luther Brady arranged to meet with Jack tomorrow morning to restart his Reveille Sessions, gave him his "personal" phone number that he could call any time, then told Jensen to show him around the temple.

Jensen acted cool about it but Jack could tell he thought he had better things to do than play tour guide tor some rich twit who wanted to be more effectual.

Jack made a trip to one of the rest rooms and used the break to put in a quick call to Cordova's office. Knowing he was probably being watched, he kept the conversation brief and oblique. In response to "Is he in?" the receptionist said she was expecting her boss around ten-thirty. A late-night investigation, you know.

A late-night investigation into the bottom of a beer glass at Hurley's, you mean.

Okay, that gave him about an hour.

The tour turned out to be about as interesting as a limited warranty statement. The whole damn building seemed little more than a collection of classrooms and offices. So far Jack wasn't seeing what he wanted: the place where the temple kept its membership records. He'd been thinking that if they were computerized and if he could persuade Jensen to give him his e-mail address, he could have Russ hack into the system and locate the whereabouts of Johnny Roselli.

Only two of the upper floors turned out to be interesting. The twentieth couldn't be accessed without a special swipe card. Here was Celebrityland. The entire floor had been converted to luxury suites for high-visibility visitors—the actors, rock stars, scientists, politicians, and so on who'd joined the Dormentalist fold.

But the twenty-first floor was altogether different. At the end of a short hallway lay a large open space with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides.

"This is the Communing Level," Jensen told him. "FAs can come here at any time of the day or night to meditate with their xelton and, if they're far enough along toward fusion, its Hokano counterpart."

Canned patter if Jack had ever heard it.

He looked around and saw about a dozen people scattered throughout the space, most in chairs facing the windows but a few sat on the floor with their limbs folded into something resembling the lotus position.

Not a bad spot to commune with your inner xelton, or your inner coleslaw, or inner anything. The 180-degree view was spectacular. The south wall was taken up by a row of booths.

"What are those for?"

"For those FAs who wish to commune in privacy."

Privacy? Jack doubted that. Privacy seemed a rare bird in the temple. He'd spotted video pickups everywhere Jensen had taken him.

He heard a latch click and saw someone step out of one of the booths and walk their way. His hair looked oily, face unshaven, and he was dressed in raggedy clothing. Looked like a squeegee man. As he passed, eyes averted, Jack caught his scent: major BO.

He also caught sight of a long nose with a bulbous tip.

Could it be?

"I didn't know you had homeless Dormentalists," Jack whispered as the raggedy man passed.

Jensen glared at him with a scandalized expression. "All Dormentalists are productive citizens. That man isn't homeless, he's a lapser."

At first Jack thought he might be referring to some sort of subsect, then remembered seeing the term on one of Jamie Grant's summary sheets. Couldn't remember what it meant, though.

"Lapser?"

Jensen sighed as if everyone should know this. "A Lapsed Fusion Aspirant. He engaged in LFP behavior and this was the punishment meted out by the FPRB."

"The same people dealing with my RT from yesterday?"

Jack congratulated himself. He was starting to get with the lingo.

"Exactly."

"That's his punishment? Sack cloth and ashes?"

"So to speak."

Just to be sure of that nose, Jack wanted another look at this seedy guy before he hit the elevators. He hurried after him.

"Wait," Jensen said behind him. "You can't—"

But Jack kept going. He couldn't let on that he recognized him—no way Jason Amurri would know Johnny Roselli—so he had to try a different tack.

He came abreast of the guy and said, "Excuse me?"

Yeah, that was the nose, and those were Maria Roselli's eyes flashing toward him, then quickly away. He'd found Sonny Boy.

Now what?

Jack was about to ask him his name, just to be absolutely sure, when he felt a big hand close around his arm.

"What do you think you're doing?" Jensen said.

Jack looked after the retreating Johnny Roselli who hadn't even broken stride.

"I just wanted to ask him what he did wrong."

Jensen shook his head. "He's not allowed to tell you, I'm not allowed to tell you, and you're not allowed to ask."

"Why not?"

"Because when you see someone dressed like that, it means they've been declared SE—a Solitarian Exile. He has to wear clothes he found in a trash heap and may not bathe or shave for the term of his punishment. He's an outcast, an untouchable who may not speak or be spoken to by another Dormentalist unless it's a Paladin or a member of the FPRB."

Jack made a face. "How long does that go on?"

"In his case, four weeks. He has about a week left."

"What's his name?"

Jensen's eyes narrowed. "Why do you want to know?"

"Just curious. I might want to look him up after he's no longer an SE and ask what it was like not to bathe for a month. Must be awful." Jack smiled. "Although not as awful as for someone who has to live with him."

Jensen didn't seem to find any humor in that. "If you see him afterward, he can tell you all about it himself, if he so desires."

Jack knew an opening when he saw one.

He'd finished the first half of the Roselli job: He'd established that Johnny was here instead of wandering around Uganda or some such place as a Dormentalist missionary. And though he looked like an SRO hotel regular, he seemed healthy enough.

To finish the job he now had to get in his face and tell him to call Mama. That would mean finding out where he lived, which might involve getting into the membership files.

So Jack jumped on the segue Jensen had presented.

"Ah, yes. Confidentiality. I'm really impressed with how seriously you take that here. I assume your membership records are computerized."

"Of course. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, you know, hackers, disgruntled employees. I'm a very private person and hate the thought of someone snooping through my file in your computer."

"Not to worry. We have state-of-the-art security and virus protection. Only Mr. Brady, myself, and the Overseers have full access."

"Excellent." He glanced at his watch. He needed to be up in the Bronx soon. "Oh, look at the time. I have a couple of family matters to attend to, so—"

Jensen held up a hand. "Before you go, Mr. Brady wanted me to register you for an EC."

"I love old comics!"

Jensen's face showed an instant of confusion. "It's an Entry Card that will pass you through the front entrance without signing in. It's highly unusual for an RC to be issued one, but Mr. Brady feels we owe it to you."

"Oh, you're too kind, but that isn't necessary."

"Oh, but we insist. Our pleasure."

Jack did not want this. It meant having his picture taken and entered into the computer. But how could he refuse without compromising his credibility?

Damn.

4

Jensen watched Jason Amurri sit for his photograph. He appeared upbeat about it, but Jensen sensed an undercurrent of unease.

Why? This was a unique privilege—one that Jensen had been against, but he'd been overruled—so why wasn't Amurri happy?

Just one more thing about this guy that didn't add up. He was supposed to be some kind of rich loner, but he didn't move like a guy who'd grown up deciding which silver spoon to put in his mouth. And his eyes… they didn't miss a thing. Jensen was sure he'd spotted some of the video pickups, maybe all of them, but he hadn't asked about them.

Of course he might have expected them as part of the security system, but wouldn't a guy so hooked on privacy have made some sort of squawk?

Then again, maybe Jensen was wrong. Maybe Amurri hadn't spotted the pickups.

Still, he was getting an itch about this guy—no red-flashing alarms or anything like that, just a feeling that something wasn't quite what it seemed.

He wouldn't tell Brady yet. The boss saw dollar signs when he looked at Amurri and would brush off Jensen's suspicions. So right now he'd keep them to himself and have Margiotta do a little more digging. And maybe have Peary follow him again.

Scratch an itch and sometimes you find a chigger.

5

A large Dunkin' Donuts coffee in one hand, the Post in the other, Richie Cordova elbowed his office door open and breezed through the reception area.

"What've we got today, Eddy?"

"New client at two."

He stopped in mid-breeze. "That's it?"

"Afraid so."

He shook his head. Christ, things were slow.

In his office he dumped his weight into the chair behind his desk, set down the coffee and paper, and pulled a bag containing a pair of glazed chocolate donuts from the side pocket of his jacket.

He hadn't been able to resist. Damn. He had everything else in his life pretty much locked down the way he wanted. His appetite was the only thing not under control.

Maybe tomorrow.

He hit the power button on his computer and gobbled one of the donuts while it warmed up.

He'd had a dream last night about that nun. A hot one. Must've been because he'd talked to her during the day. He knew what Sister Golden Hair looked like in her birthday suit and she was nothing great—sure as hell nothing like the faked-and-baked babes in the shots he downloaded from teen-lust.com—but she wasn't bad, and she was real. And he'd been there, watching in real time as he snapped shots. Last night he'd had that pale, hot little body sweating over him instead of Metcalf.

Richie entered his password and went directly to his photo files.

Photo-wise, he was moving away from film to digital. Eventually he'd be all digital, but old habits were hard to break. Photos of any kind had stopped being worth much in court these days. Too easily faked. Hell, even negatives could be faked. But things were different in the good old Court of Public Opinion. A compromising photo could still mess up a reputation.

Even if you came out and swore on a stack of Bibles that the pictures were fakes, those images stuck in people's minds long after the explanations had faded away.

He opened the SIS folder and double-clicked one of the jpeg files within. But instead of an image of Sister Maggie in a clinch with her fundraiser pal, he found only a string of flashing capital letters.

HOPE YOU REMEMBERED TO BACK UP!

Where was the photo? He closed that file and opened the next. Same message.

"Oh, my God!"

He opened more files and felt his mouth grow progressively drier as the same words popped up time after time. He moved to other folders, but all his jpegs carried the same message. He tried a couple of doc files and they were the same! Every goddamn file on his computer had been wiped clean and replaced by the same sneering message!

He was on his feet, hands clamped against the sides of his head. "This can't be! This can't fucking be!"

Eddy poked her head through the doorway. "Something wrong, Richie?"

"My computer! Someone's been in here and sabotaged my computer! Wiped out everything!"

"How is that possible?"

He went to the two windows and checked the contacts. No sign of tampering. And both were locked from inside.

"I don't know. I—" He jabbed an index finger at her. "You must've forgot to turn on the alarm."

Eddy shook her head and looked offended. "Not a chance. I put it on as I always do. And it was still armed this morning when I opened up."

"Bullshit!" he said as he charged her way. She had to back out of the doorway to allow him through. "If that's true, how did he get to my machine?"

Same story with the sealed window in the reception area. What was going on?

"Maybe he didn't," Eddy said. "Maybe he—what do they call it?—hacked into it. I've heard they can get into government computers, so why not yours?"

Richie didn't know much about hacking, but he knew one thing for sure: "A computer's got to be turned on before you can hack it, and I turn mine off every night."

He returned to his office.

Eddy said, "Well then, I don't know what to tell you besides the alarm was set." She frowned. "And then you've got to ask yourself, why anyone would want to sabotage your computer? I keep all the correspondence and billing records on mine. If someone wanted to hurt your business, they'd go after my machine, wouldn't they? And mine is fine."

Richie couldn't answer that. And suddenly he was thinking about the envelope.

"Okay, okay, we've wasted enough time jawing about it. Get the number of that computer place down the street. Call him and tell him I've got an emergency here and need him ASAP."

"Will do."

As soon as the door closed, he went over to the radiator. The envelope was still there. He yanked it out and checked the money—all there. He dropped it back into its hiding place and stumbled back to his chair.

Maybe no one had broken in after all. That was a relief. He'd moved his computer here for the security system. Rudimentary but better than nothing, which was what he had at the house. And since it came with the rent here, a hell of a lot cheaper than installing one.

He grabbed the Post and fanned to the horoscope page.

Gemini (May 21-June 21): Win points by accepting additional responsibilities. Extra hours ensure future financial security. If you are in negotiations, you know by now that the other side may not be taking things as seriously as you are.

Well, he was always in financial negotiations, and that nun bitch didn't seem to be taking things as seriously as she should, but nothing here about bad luck or watching your back. Cusp guy that he was, he read on to the next.

Cancer (June 22—July 22): Being in the right place at the right time is your style today. You get recognition for a job well done. Balance job responsibilities with social ones. Celebrate, even if you have to invent a reason.

No warning here, either. But he liked the being in the right place at the right time part. That never hurt. No help, though, on what had happened to all his files.

He glanced at the screen where the words still flashed:

HOPE YOU REMEMBERED TO BACK UP!

Richie jabbed the off button and the screen went dark. "Fuck you!"

He had remembered to back up. He had a copy of every file in a safe place.

6

Jack found a small neighborhood no-name bar and earned a lot of stares as the only white face in the place. The available drafts were various Buds and Millers so he ordered a bottle of Corona—no lime—and a bar pie. He took it to the front window where he had a good view of Cordova's office across Tremont.

Traffic was thick on the sidewalks as well as the street where every third car seemed to be a black Lincoln Continental or Town Car with a livery sticker.

The Corona was good, but he barely tasted the pie. Good thing, because the backroom microwave oven had left the crust as gummy as the stingy layer of cheese. Hard to tell where one left off and the other began.

Not that he cared. He was eating simply to keep from being hungry later. Knowing that his face now resided in the Dormentalist computer had filched his appetite. Didn't want his photo anywhere.

But he hadn't been able to do anything about it. He'd considered pushing the privacy-nut persona a little further but had had a feeling that wouldn't wash with Jensen. The big guy was no dummy, and Jack sensed he could be trouble.

Maybe he was already trouble. He'd had him followed again. The same guy who'd tailed him yesterday had tried to dog him again today. Jack had lost him easily in the Rockefeller Center mob and then headed straight up here to the Bronx.

Jack read the tail as a sign Jensen might not be completely sold on his Jason Amurri persona. Maybe just his nature: He didn't seem to be a trusting guy in the first place, and no doubt a big part of his job was sniffing out trouble and heading it off at the pass. But beyond that, he appeared to have a chip on his shoulder where Jack was concerned. Probably hadn't liked looking bad in front of his boss.

So Jack had let them take his picture. Now what to do about it? He'd have to think of something. Maybe Russ could handle it, although Jack sensed he might be leery about serious hacking, considering how it could screw up his parole.

Checked his watch. Almost noon. Cordova had probably fired up his computer by now. Jack wished he could have been a fly on the wall when he'd opened his first file, then watched the growing horror on his face as he realized he'd been wiped out.

He was halfway through the pie and three-quarters done with his Corona when he spotted Cordova sidling out onto the sidewalk with his computer tower cradled against his big belly. As he started moving uphill, Jack gulped the rest of his beer and headed for the door.

It took him longer than he liked to weave through the lunchtime crowd—it looked like Sidewalk Sale Day, with more clothes and electronics and miscellaneous merchandise displayed outside the stores than in—and when he got to the street, Cordova was gone.

"What the—?"

Had he jumped into a cab? Jack was about to launch into a litany of self-excoriation when he noticed a sign just a few doors to his left: Computer Doctor.

"Let's hope," Jack muttered as he dodged across the street.

He stopped before the front window and pretended to be looking at the display of monitors and keyboards and various gazillion-megabyte hard drives. A quick glance up showed Cordova standing at the counter, waving his arms at the white-coated clerk.

Jack let out a long breath and retreated to the far side of the street to watch and wait.

7

"I've got your diagnosis already," said the clerk after Richie had explained what had been happening.

Richie wanted to wipe that smug grin off his pimply face—preferably with a barbed-wire washcloth. His white coat hung loose on his narrow shoulders; he had a shaved head and lots of earrings. Lots. Richie stopped counting at six.

"Yeah? What?"

"Your computer caught a cold."

What was this asshole up to? "How do you know that? You ain't even hooked it up yet."

A wider smile as the geek hooked his thumb under the name tag of the white coat. It said Dr. Marty.

"The doctor knows. And you've come to the right place. Where better to take a computer with a virus than to the Computer Doctor?"

"Virus?" Richie had heard of those. "How'd I get that?"

"Do you have antivirus software?"

"No."

Dr. Marty rolled his eyes. "Do you go on the Internet?"

"Well, yeah." This clown better not ask where.

"Ever download anything—programs, patches, files?"

"Yeah, sometimes."

Lots of times. Richie didn't know what a patch was, but he'd downloaded a ton of picture files of tight young bodies going hot and heavy at—

"Then that's where you probably picked it up. That or through e-mail."

"So it doesn't mean someone came into my office and put this in my machine?"

"You mean physically uploading it into your machine?" Dr. Marty laughed. "Hardly! This is the twenty-first century! You opened your computer's door and it breezed right in off the Internet."

Well, that was a relief. Sort of.

Dr. Marty then went on to explain something called the HYRTBU virus that causes exactly what had happened to Richie's machine.

"Can you fix it?"

"Of course. I'll install some antivirus software and run a diagnostic."

"How long's that gonna take?"

"Give me a couple of hours. Leave your number and I'll call when it's cleaned up." He shook his head. "Won't be able to retrieve any of your files, though. They're dead and gone. HYRTBU takes no prisoners."

"That's okay. I've got backup."

Dr. Marty gave him a thumbs-up. "My man!"

"Hey, no chance of this HYRTBU thing messing up my backup?"

"Can't. Not if you're backed up on CD. That's ROM and you can't—"

Richie had heard all he needed to hear.

"Great. I'll be waiting for your call."

8

Jack straightened as Cordova came out. Instead of returning to the office, though, he began walking in the other direction.

A good sign. Jack was pretty sure Cordova's backup wasn't in his office; maybe he was heading for it now.

Keeping to the opposite side of the street, he followed—a whole three blocks to the local Morgan Bank branch. He followed Cordova inside, saw him pick up one of the clerks and follow her back into the rear section.

Jack nodded. Heading for a safety deposit box.

He noted the bank hours: the lobby locked up at three. Great. It would take time for the Computer Doctor to clean up Cordova's machine—too long to allow him to retrieve it, hook it up, restore all his files, and get back to the bank before closing.

So a good chance he'd leave the disk in the office overnight.

And then? Jack would break in again tonight and reintroduce HYRTBU, but what about the backup disk? He could simply steal it, but that would tip Cordova to the fact he'd been invaded.

Jack decided he could live with that if he had to, but he much preferred to leave fatso raging at the gods, believing it was all due to the dumping of the truckload of bad karma he'd been amassing.

Which meant another trip to Russ to find out how he could wreck the backup CD with no one the wiser.

But first he had to visit Beekman Place.

9

"You've seen him? He's well?"

Maria Roselli's dark eyes danced in her puffy face as she beamed at Jack.

Esteban had announced him and Benno the Rottweiler had greeted Jack at the door. She'd offered tea again but he'd declined.

"He looks healthy," Jack said. Couldn't say he'd looked clean, but he hadn't seemed malnourished. "Looks like he's working on a beard."

She frowned. "Really? He tried that once before and said the itching drove him crazy." She waved her hand. "But that's neither here nor there. What did he say when you told him to call his mother?"

"I didn't get to that. It seems he's, um, being punished."

"What?" Her hand fluttered to her mouth. "Whatever do you mean?"

"I don't know what he did, but he's not allowed to talk to other Dormentalists and they're not allowed to talk to him."

"Isn't that silly? I can't believe Johnny allows himself to be humiliated like that. He should just get out of that place."

"That would be up to him. Since I'm pretending to be a Dormentalist wannabe, I can't talk to him in the temple. So I'm working on finding out where he lives. I'll catch up to him outside the temple and give him your message."

"How long do you think that will take? Another day, perhaps?"

Jack shrugged. "I'd like that, but don't count on it."

"But you've accomplished so much so soon."

"Pure luck."

A lucky coincidence. There it was again: the C-word. Was this situation being manipulated? It didn't seem so, but one of those old ladies with a dog had told him there'd be no more coincidences in his life.

He rose and looked down at Maria. "Are you sure you don't know Anya Mundy?"

"That woman you mentioned the other day? I believe I told you no."

"Yeah, you did, didn't you." He sighed. "If I'm lucky again, I'll catch sight of Johnny and follow him home. In case that doesn't happen, I'll work on getting a peek at member records."

Jack liked the former course better. Tomorrow he'd try hanging out on the Communing level at about the same time he'd been there today. If Johnny Roselli was a creature of habit, Jack might be able to create his own coincidence.

Out front, Esteban smiled and held the front door open as Jack exited. As he started walking toward First Avenue he realized he hadn't seen Gia all day. He had a few minutes. Why not pop in?

10

Gia smiled as she glanced through the peephole. Jack. Just the tonic she needed.

She pulled open the door. "Howdy, stranger." He grinned. "Hey, it hasn't even been twenty-four hours."

"I know." She pulled him inside and threw her arms around him. "But it seems like a week."

As they hugged she felt some of the day-long tension uncoil within her. It had been a long, long morning and she was only partway through the afternoon. She'd intended to work on her latest painting today—a new angle on her Fifty-ninth Street Bridge series—but had found herself too weak to stand at the easel for any length of time. Still feeling that blood loss, she guessed.

But even if her energy had been at its usual high level, she doubted she could have done much. She felt too down in the dumps to paint, and not just because of the blood loss.

She'd almost lost the baby. Dr. Eagleton had reassured her that everything was fine, but that didn't mean it wouldn't happen again. She'd miscarried her first pregnancy, the one before Vicky. Who said this one wouldn't wind up the same way?

This baby may not have been planned but he was here—she didn't know that he was a "he" but couldn't help thinking of him that way—and she couldn't wait for the day she could hold him in her arms and look into his little face. She'd felt his first quickening two weeks ago and he'd been kicking up a storm ever since. Especially so since the bleeding, which was wonderfully reassuring.

But still she couldn't help feeling that a sword was hanging over her.

"How're you doing?" Jack said.

"Fine. Great."

Truth be told, she was feeling a little dizzy, but she wouldn't tell Jack that. He'd be all over her, hiring a housekeeper, insisting she stay in bed… She didn't want to deal with that.

"You look like a ghost."

"It's going to take me a while to build up my blood count. Dr. Eagleton's got me on extra iron." Which wasn't sitting too well with her intestines.

Concern was writ large on Jack's face. "Why don't we sit down?"

I thought you'd never ask.

"Sure. If you want."

They moved to the cozy living room, decorated in old English aunt style because the townhouse was still listed in the name of Vicky's aunts Grace and Nellie. Those two dear old souls were no longer among the living, but no one but she and Jack knew that.

"Thanks for taking care of Vicky," she said as she sat down.

"First of all, you never have to thank me for doing anything for Vicky. Anything."

"I know. I just—"

"And second, she took care of me. She's one amazing kid."

"That she is."

They snuggled together on the couch, but she sensed the tension in him.

"You've got to go, don't you."

He nodded. "Regrettably, yeah. Gotta see a man about a disk."

She hugged him closer. "Okay, but be careful."

"I'm always careful."

"No you're not. That's why I worry."

And she did. Always.

11

"You want to wreck a CD?" Russ said. He was wearing the same T-shirt and jeans as on Jack's last two visits. "Easy. Stick it in a microwave and cook till it's all cracked like an old mirror."

Jack had started the digi-head talk as soon as he'd arrived—before Russ could start bitching about his latest reading assignment. The six-pack of Sam Adams Jack had brought along further distracted him from academic matters.

"But, Russ, the idea is to make it unreadable without the owner knowing it's been tampered with."

"Oh, well, that's a different story." He sipped his beer. "I'm assuming we're dealing with a CD-R here and that's a good thing, because they're more easily ruined than the commercial kind."

"I thought a CD was a CD."

"In a way, yes. They both use a laser beam to read ones and zeroes from the disk, but—"

"What about music?"

"Same thing: ones and zeroes. Binary code, my friend."

'Wait a minute. You mean when I'm listening to, say, Jack Bruce doing his bass runs on 'Crossroads,' it's just a series of ones and zeroes?"

"Exactly. The music was translated into binary code that's inscribed on the disk, and the player translates it back."

Jack shook his head in wonder. "I always thought…"

And then he realized he hadn't really thought about it. He put the CD in the slot and hit play. He hadn't needed to know anything more. Until now.

"Let me give you a quick course in CDs and CD-Rs. They both have a single, uninterrupted spiral track, half a micron wide, running from the inside toward the periphery."

"The opposite of a vinyl record."

"Exactly. On a full CD, that track is three-and-a-half miles long. A commercial CD codes its ones and zeroes with bumps and lands: The bumps are ones and the lands—the flat parts—make up the zeroes. The laser reflects off the bumps onto an optical reader that sends them straight to your computer if they're data or to a digital-analog converter if music. All this at 450 rpms."

"Yow. Complicated."

"The tracking makes it even more complicated, but we won't go there."

"Thank you."

Russ smiled. "That's the commercial CD. The homemade CD-Rs use a slightly different technology. Instead of bumps and lands, they take a stronger laser and heat up a series of spots on a dye layer in the plastic. The heat changes the spots' reflectivity, creating virtual bumps."

"So where does that leave me?"

"Well, since you don't want anyone the wiser, that leaves out scratching or marking with a pen or dipping in acid. So I can see only two options. The first is to take some sort of X-Acto knife and use it to enlarge the central spindle hole—just a little. Won't take much. Just a small change in the diameter will cause a wobble in the disk as it's doing its 450 rpms, and that wobble will cause the tracking system to mess up, which will mean the laser's reading bumps and lands off multiple tracks—they're only a micron and a half apart—which will completely confuse the optical reader. The result will make Jabberwocky read like Dick and Jane"

He made a dramatic flourish with his free hand while he drained his beer bottle.

"But the data's still there, right?" Jack said. "So if someone could fix the spindle hole, they could get their data back."

"If they knew the hole had been tampered with, and if they could make a perfect restoration. Both highly—highly—unlikely."

"But not impossible."

Russ sighed. "No, not impossible."

"What's the other option?"

"Bring along a hot plate and heat up the disk just enough to give it the slightest warp. A sixteenth of an inch, even less, will do it. The laser beam will reflect all over the place, hitting the optical pickup only by chance."

"But what about—?"

"Fixing the warp? Never happen."

He popped the top from another Sam and offered it to Jack who waved it off.

"You're sure?"

Russ gave a vigorous nod. "Once warped, that plastic will never be perfectly flat again, the tracks in the dye layer will never line up just right again."

Jack liked it. Just his thing: simple and low tech.

"You wouldn't happen to have a hot plate sitting around, would you?"

12

Maggie moaned with relief in the dark kitchen as she removed the red hot crucifix from her thigh. She'd thought the pain might become easier to take with successive burns, but this had been the worst. And the day-long anticipation of the coming agony had been almost as bad as the pain itself.

Five now. Only two more to go. Another on Friday, and then the final—fittingly—on Sunday, the Lord's Day.

A different kind of pain pushed a sob past her throat. She looked down at her blistered thighs and prayed.

I'm doing this penance, Lord, not just for myself, but for Fina and others like her. I can make a difference in their lives, Lord. So please guide Jack. Let him destroy those pictures so that I can remain in Your service, and in service to Your children.

That's all I ask, Lord: To sin no more and be allowed to go on giving in Your name.

13

Jack leaned against the brick divider between an Italian restaurant and a bodega. He pretended to watch the uptown crawl of the rush-hour traffic on Broadway, but his real interest was the subway exit to his left on the other side of Eighty-sixth Street.

He'd adopted his John Robertson identity and called Jamie Grant to arrange a meeting. He had some questions. When she said people were watching her, he figured she wasn't being paranoid. The last thing he needed was someone from the Dormentalist temple to see them together. He told her to hop any of the Broadway line trains to Eighty-sixth Street, and gave her some tips on how to lose a tail in the subway.

And here she came, dressed in a loose jacket and matching blue slacks, with her cell phone in her hand.

She hit the sidewalk and walked east as planned. Jack stayed where he was, watching the rest of the Morlocks climbing to the surface. Three of them—a lone woman and two men—followed Grant east. Jack trailed them through the twilight.

The woman stopped at a Chinese take-out place and the two men turned uptown on Amsterdam.

The plan had been for Jack to call her if he spotted a tail. He stuffed his phone into his jeans pocket and came up behind her.

"Looks like you lost them," he said.

She jumped and turned. "Oh, shit, Robertson! It's you!"

"You think I was a PS or something?"

"That's what we Dormentalists call a purse snatcher." She smiled. "Cute. Where'd you come from?"

"Been following you. But I'm the only one."

"At the moment maybe, but not earlier. There were two of them. They were on me from the minute I stepped out of The Light."

Jack gripped her arm and turned her west. "We want to go this way."

"It's the oddest thing. They don't hide what they're up to. Almost as if they want me to know I'm being followed."

"They do. Serves two purposes: They find out where you go and who you meet, and they put you on edge, keep you looking over your shoulder. Surveillance and harassment, all in one neat little package."

"But that move you told me—you know, stand by the doors and pop through just as they're closing? Worked like a charm. And so simple."

"The simpler, the better. Fewer things that can go wrong."

She grinned in the fading light. "After I ducked out I stood there on the platform and gave them the SD salute through the windows."

"Single digit?"

"You got it. They deserved no less. You should have seen their faces." She looked around. "Where's this bar you told me about. I need a GDD."

"A gin and…?"

"A goddamned drink."

14

A couple of blocks and a couple of turns later they were stepping into a place called Julio's.

It reminded Jamie a little of the Parthenon—not in looks but in ambiance. The same laughter, the chatter, the air of camaraderie. She liked the FREE BEER TOMORROW… sign over the bar, and the dead, desiccated plants hanging in the front window were a unique touch. Robertson was obviously a regular here. Half the people in the place waved, nodded, or called hello as he entered.

"So you're 'Jack' to your friends?"

He nodded. "You can call me that if you want."

"Maybe, if we become friends."

He smiled and pointed toward a rear table. "We can talk over there."

She noticed that he seemed more relaxed here than he'd been in her office. Almost a different person. He'd gone from somewhat uptight to loose and friendly. Maybe it was the clothes situation. He'd been wearing a shirt and tie and jacket before. Now he was more casual. And not bad looking. She liked the way his jeans and burgundy golf shirt fit, liked the way the sleek muscles of his forearms moved as he absently drummed his fingers on the table.

Soon after they were seated—he with his back against the wall, she with her back to the room—a muscular little Hispanic with a pencil-line mustache came over. Robertson introduced him as the eponymous proprietor. He left with an order for a pint of Rolling Rock and a Dewar's and soda.

"I like this place," she said. "It's got personality."

He nodded. "Yeah. But not too much. Julio's gone to some lengths to keep it from becoming a yuppie hang."

Jamie glanced around at the crowd—mostly working-class types with a sprinkling of yups.

"He hasn't been entirely successful, I see."

"Well, he can't bar them from wandering in, but he does nothing to attract them. Somehow he's managed to maintain the place's original flavor."

"What is it about places like this?" she wondered aloud. "You know, bars, taverns, pubs. Empires rise and fall, religions come and go, ideologies and political philosophies wax and wane, but the tavern remains a fixed star in the human social firmament. Even when pursed-lipped, tight-assed self-righteous ninnies try to eradicate them, taverns keep popping back up."

"Sort of like GB," he said.

"Hmmm?"

"That's how we Dormentalists refer to Gopher Bash."

That threw Jamie for a moment, then she remembered: that game where you take a mallet and keep hammering a plastic gopher back into its hole only to have it pop up out of another.

She laughed. "Exactly like GB."

"Kind of appropriate then that it's found in so many bars, don't you think?"

Jamie smiled and nodded. "I like you, Robertson."

"Call me Jack."

"Okay, Jack."

He was kind of on the young side for her, but who knew? Some guys dug older women. She wondered if he had any plans for the rest of the night.

Julio brought their drinks then. They clinked glasses.

Jack said, "Cheers."

"FOTD."

Jack paused, then smiled. "First of the day?"

"Uh-huh." She took a sip of her Scotch—ohhh, that tasted good—and looked at him.

"So, I gather from your acronym mania that you're officially into the Dementedist situation now."

"Officially I'm an RC. I suppose that makes me a member." He drank some beer. "What do you know about Luther Brady?"

"The APD and SO? I know he graduated from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1971 with an accounting degree. I don't know exactly how he got involved with Dementedism. At the time it was just another hedonistic California cult, although a fairly popular one. Before you know it, it's incorporated and on its way to becoming the behemoth it is today."

Jack shook his head. "A Hoosier CPA getting cozy with a California cult. How does that happen?"

"Beats me. But I doubt Dementedism would still exist or even be remembered if he hadn't. The guy's an organizational genius. Took the reins from Cooper Blascoe—left him titular head but without any power—and made all the decisions."

"But who is he?"

Jamie shrugged. She knew what he was asking but couldn't help much.

"I tried to interview his folks but his father died in '96 of a stroke and his mother's in a nursing home with dementia. I tried to hunt down a few people who might have known him in college but you know what the class sizes are like in those state diploma mills. Found a couple of fellow accounting majors who remembered him but hadn't been friends with him. I don't think he had any friends. I get the feeling he still doesn't have any. For more than thirty years now, this so-called church has been the focus of his life. Eats, drinks, and sleeps Dementedism. Christ, he even lives there."

"Really? Where? On the twenty-second floor?"

"Yeah. I hear he's got quite a setup there."

Jack nodded. "The view is amazing."

Jamie stared at him. "You were up there?"

A smile. "Yep. Brady invited me up for a little chat this morning."

"You apply for membership on Monday and by Wednesday you're having a tete-a-te?te with the SO? Do you see a dunce cap on my head? Do you see a birth certificate with yesterday's date on it? What kind of hayseed do you take me for?"

"No kind. I worked il so lie thinks I'm someone else—someone he wants to be chummy with."

"Like who? And how did—?"

He shook his head. "Sorry. Trade secret."

"If that's true, then you are one amazing motherfucker."

He wagged his finger at her. "Now, now. No sweet talk." Another quaff of beer, then, "By the way, how many RCs does Brady handle personally?"

Jamie's turn to laugh. "Luther Brady? Doing the Reveille Tech thing?" She shook her head. "I'd have to say none. If you met him, you should know that."

Jack shrugged. "He's offered to take me through the Reveille process himself. Starting tomorrow."

Jamie felt a flare of anger. "That does it. You almost had me with the bit about meeting Luther Brady. You should have quit while you were ahead." She snorted. "Hardly anyone under Overseer rank—except maybe for the GP—even sees him with any sort of regularity. So the idea of him acting as your RT is…"

The words ran out as Jamie saw the matter-of-fact look on Jack's face. He didn't care if she believed him.

Could it be true?

John "Jack" Robertson was either the best undercover operator she'd ever met, or the biggest liar.

He cleared his throat. "What's with that big sphere hidden away in his office?"

"The globe?" she said, feeling her skin tighten. "How close are you two?"

"Well, I'm not number one on his speed dialer, but I get the feeling he'd like to be number one on mine."

"But he showed you the globe?"

"No. I caught just a glimpse of it as I walked into his office—before the sliding doors closed it off. So it's a globe?"

"That's what I've been told. I interviewed a DD—that's a Detached Dementedist—who used to work on the temple's cleaning crew. She got a good look at it once when Brady forgot to close the doors. Told me it's about eight feet high with all the seas and continents in relief, but dotted with all these red-and-white lightbulbs and crisscrossed with lines that aren't latitude and longitude. She figured Brady wanted it cleaned—why else would he leave the doors open?—so she started dusting it. Brady came in and threw a screaming fit. He pressed some button in his desk that closed the doors, then threw her out."

"Really." Jack's eyes narrowed. "You've got to figure the lights are temple locations. But they're no secret. Why would he throw a fit because she saw them?"

"Obviously it's more than just a map of the earth. And Brady did more than throw a fit. He had this poor girl declared a lapser and had her brought before FPRB. She was so upset she quit, which means an automatic DD situation."

She watched Jack as they sat and sipped in silence. He seemed to recede.

"You're figuring how you can get a look at that globe, aren't you."

He nodded. "My curiosity is, as they say, piqued."

"But you're there to find a missing member, right?"

"Yeah, but unanswered questions tend to nag me."

"Any luck finding him?"

Jack nodded. "Spotted him yesterday, but couldn't speak to him—he was in lapser mode."

Jamie laughed. "I wonder if he got caught looking at the globe too."

"Could be."

"At least you know where he is. He could have been one of the unaccounted for. There's a certain number of Dementedists who simply vanish every year."

"Missionaries, right?"

"So we're told. But nobody hears from them again. Ever."

"Ever is a long time. They could resurface in a few years."

"Yeah. So could the Titanic."

But someone had resurfaced—at least Jamie thought he might have. She was still trying to confirm his identity.

She rattled the ice in her glass. "I could use another DS. Another RR? I'm buying."

He shook his head. "I've got an errand to run."

"At this hour?"

"It's the only hour for this particular errand. A hot date with a hot plate."

"Pardon?"

"Just kidding." He rose. "I'll get you a cab."

Jamie hid her disappointment. She was pretty good at it. Plenty of practice.

"That's all right. I think I'll hang in here awhile." She didn't feel like heading down to the Parthenon. Her Dementedist shadows would be waiting. "I kind of like this place."

"Great."

As he slipped past her she gripped his arm. "You figure out what's going on with that globe situation, you'll tell me, won't you?"

"Sure. Least I can do for all the backgrounding you've given me."

She watched him go, and thought about the fellow she thought—hoped—she'd discovered. She was going to need help nailing down his identity. Maybe Jack…

No. She had to keep this to herself. Besides, she didn't know yet how far she could trust John "Jack" Robertson. For all she knew he might be a Dementedist plant, trying to lure her into a bad situation.

Listen to me, she thought. Completely and thoroughly paranoid.

But still, she didn't know enough about him to trust him with what might turn out to be a major coup. Not yet.

15

Jensen stepped out onto Tenth Avenue and headed for his car, leaving John Jay College behind. He'd had trouble focusing on tonight's Police Science 207 lecture. His thoughts kept veering toward Jason Amurri. Something off-kilter about that guy. Maybe he should have listened more closely to the lecturer—the subject had been Investigative Function, and he sensed this Amurri needed some investigating.

Jensen climbed in behind the wheel of his Hummer and sat there without starting the engine.

Nothing seemed right in his life lately. Shalla, the woman who'd been living with him for eight years, had walked out last summer, saying he spent too much time at the temple. Well, maybe he did. Still, he missed her.

Lately, without her to come home to, he'd been spending more time than ever on the job. He felt he owed it to the Church and to Brady, and not just for the nice salary they were paying him.

He owed them because he was a fraud.

When he'd reached the top of the Fusion Ladder, Jensen had had to face the devastating realization that he was a Null. Somewhere along the way his xelton had fallen into a coma from which it would never awaken, and so Jensen hadn't achieved any sort of fusion, let alone Full. Everything he'd experienced climbing the FL had been Sham Fusion, a form of Null self-delusion: He'd wanted fusion so badly he'd imagined it happening.

But he couldn't tell anyone. It would pull the rug out from under his status in the Church. The HC might let him go back to being an ordinary TP, but no Null could be Grand Paladin.

He found it hard to hide his pain with Brady and the High Council members as they sat around and traded stories about their Full Fusion powers. Jensen couldn't remain silent—they'd wonder why—so he was forced to make up tales of levitating or leaving his body.

Fortunately no one was required to demonstrate their powers. Luther Brady had made it clear from the outset that exhibitionism would not be tolerated. But that didn't lessen the deep ache Jensen felt as he listened to them.

He'd even gone through a period of doubt where he'd questioned the whole Fusion process. What if he wasn't the only Null hiding his Sham Fusion? What if some members of the HC were also Nulls and not admitting it? What if, just like Jensen, they were concocting far-out tales to cover the truth.

Those had been dark days. He'd even gone so far as to suggest at a meeting with Brady and the HC that they all levitate together. The shocked looks from the HC—every one of them—had worsened his suspicions.

Brady had abruptly adjourned the meeting and taken Jensen to his private quarters. He'd pulled a book from a special cabinet and placed it before him. To Jensen's astonishment, the title, The Compendium of Srem, was in Yoruba, his native tongue. He opened the cover and flipped through.

And then another shock as Brady began translating one of the passages.

"You speak Yoruba?" Jensen remembered saying.

Brady shook his head and smiled. "Not a word. When I look at these pages I see English. If I'd been born and raised in France, I'd see French. Whatever your native tongue, that is what you see."

Jensen had wondered about that. He'd learned English young—an almost-native tongue in his case. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on memories of his early English classes, forcing that language to the front of his brain, pushing the Yoruba back, then opened his eyes.

For an instant the text swam before him in English, then transformed into Yoruba.

It wasn't a trick. But how—?

"Look here."

Brady directed him to the end, to a strange illustration of Earth crisscrossed with lines and dots.

The drawing rotated on the page.

Jensen had stared in wonder, trying not to believe, but the look and feel of this book, its uncanny lightness, the odd textures of its binding were all so strange, so unlike anything he had ever encountered in his life, that he'd had no choice but to believe.

Brady then explained what the drawing meant, told him about Opus Omega. And in that great project Jensen had seen a possibility of salvation. All who aided in the completion of Opus Omega would be saved when the Hokano world fused with this one. More than saved, they would be like gods in the new world.

Perhaps if he helped Luther Brady with this project, his Null status wouldn't matter. When the worlds merged, he might be transformed along with all the Fully Fused members of the Church. In the end, when it was over, he could join them as a godlike being in the remade world.

And so he'd become a partner in Opus Omega, doing whatever necessary to speed it along.

Jensen sighed and turned the ignition key.

But he was still a Null, with no guarantee of a future. He would go on living the lie, but he would make up for it by continuing to be the most devoted GP the Church had ever known.

Part of that effort meant keeping a close watch on Jason Amurri.

16

Richie Cordova sliced into the thick filet mignon still sizzling on the platter. He smiled as he inspected the purplish meat inside: black and blue, just the way he liked it.

He took a bite: as good as it looked.

He'd heard this place grilled a mean steak, and they weren't kidding.

Kind of upscale for the neighborhood—which meant downscale for just about everywhere else—but it seemed to be doing okay. Just down the street from his office all these years and he'd never tried it.

Richie refilled his glass from the bottle of Merlot he'd ordered and toasted himself.

He had a couple of reasons to celebrate tonight. First off, his horoscope had told him to, even if he had to make up an occasion. Fortunately that hadn't been necessary. He'd received a cool thou in the mail today from a new cow. The first of many, if he had anything to say about it. Next was the successful restoration of his computer files.

He'd had a few sweaty moments there in the office. Sure, he'd had a backup CD. He burned a new one every time he added new material and broke the old one into half a dozen pieces—too many copies lying around could only lead to trouble—but he'd never checked to see if the files had been properly recorded. What if something had been wrong with his disk burner? What if he'd only thought he'd copied the files, and when he tried to restore them, they'd all turn out blank?

So he'd chewed a fingernail while waiting for the contents of the CD to pop up on the screen. But when they did, and when they proved to be perfect copies of all his lost files, he'd almost got up and danced. Almost.

By the time he'd restored all his files it was well past closing time at the bank. Rather than drag the disk along to dinner, he'd left it back in the office with the money. His original plan had been to run them up to the safety deposit box in the morning, but now he was having second thoughts.

Something wasn't right.

No matter how hard he'd tried, he'd been unable to come up with an explanation beyond simple bad luck for what had happened to his computer. The computer guy had had a good explanation of how the virus had gotten into his system. Matter of fact, he'd informed Richie that the new antivirus software he'd installed had detected a total of thirteen different viruses on his hard drive. Thirteen! That was why it had taken a couple of extra hours to get his computer back to him. But he promised he'd disinfected all the files and programs. The hard drive was clean.

Richie had to admit that it was running faster and smoother now.

So okay, his computer had been a sewer of viruses. And he hadn't found a single scrap of evidence that someone had broken in. Plus the horoscopes hadn't even hinted at foul play.

So why this bad feeling? Why this gnawing suspicion that he'd missed something? Why the prickly feeling at the back of his neck that something bad might go down tonight?

His horoscope had said being in the right place at the right time was his style today. Suddenly he knew that the right place for him was his office and the right time to be there would be right after dinner. The right place for his backup CD and his money—a pretty fair amount of cake in that envelope—was safe at his house, under his pillow.

Richie turned his attention back to the steak. He felt better already.

17

Jack closed the door to Cordova's office behind him.

The duct tape was back on the alarm plunger, the pick gun and the HYRTBU disk were in his pockets, the brand-new hot plate was under his arm, his flashlight was in his latex-gloved hand and lighting his way through the dark reception room.

So far so good. No one had seen him come in, no one else on the second floor.

The idea of searching for the backup disk in the receptionist's desk vanished almost before it arrived. Right, like Fat Richie would leave his precious blackmail photos where someone could dip into them.

No, if it was anywhere, it was in the boss's lair.

Jack laid the brand-new hot plate on Cordova's desk. What a job finding one. He'd figured someplace like Macy's would carry them in their kitchen section, but no. Not a one. He'd finally found a selection at a chefs supply shop. Of the two single-coil models, he'd noticed that one was made by Acme. Remembering a certain coyote's bad luck with that brand, he'd bought the other.

Jack squatted in the kneehole of the desk and slipped Russ's HYRTBU disk into the floppy drive. He turned on the computer and crossed mental fingers. If Cordova hadn't had antivirus software before, he surely had it now. But Russ had promised that his disk would slip past any protective program and reinsert HYRTBU. He'd better be right.

As the box beeped and the hard drive rattled to life, Jack went through the desk first, being careful to replace everything in the exact position he'd found it. Cordova might be a fat slob, but that didn't carry over to his home or office.

No luck.

He moved to the file cabinets. A lot of stuff in these. He knew from his last trip here that going through them would take a while—a long while. He hated the thought of pawing through every one of those folders again, so he decided to leave the cabinets till last.

He searched the furniture as he'd done last night—under the cushions, the undersides of the seats and drawers, between the desk and the wall. Nada.

And then a d'oh! moment.

The computer—what if Cordova had left the backup disk in the CD drive?

Jack quickly hit the eject button. The tray popped out, looking like a coffee-cup holder—an empty one.

That left the file cabinets. What made the prospect of rummaging through them again so daunting was the possibility that Cordova had taken the disk home with him. But why would he? In fact there were good reasons not to take it to Williamsbridge—like losing it along the way, for instance.

But he'd never thought of Cordova as smart. Crafty and devious, yes. But no brainiac.

He was about to pull open the top drawer on the first cabinet when he heard a noise at the outer door—a key rattling in a lock.

Cleaning service? Receptionist? Cordova? Shit!

Jack turned off his penlight and squeezed back against the filing cabinets as the lights in the reception area came on. He pulled his Glock from its holster at the small of his back—he knew Cordova had a carry permit—as he listened to the beeps of someone punching a code into the alarm keypad. Then with a gut-spiking jolt he noticed the hot plate sitting on the desk. He did a quick tiptoe out from hiding, grabbed the plate, and ducked back out of sight just as the office overheads came on.

Back pressed against the wall, he waited. He couldn't see who it was but from the wheezy breathing figured it must be the Fat Man himself.

What the hell was he doing here? He was supposed to be back in Williamsbridge, either drinking in Hurley's or at home, just like every other night.

Jack hadn't turned on the computer monitor, but Cordova might notice the glowing power light or hear the hard drive. He held his breath, waiting. When he heard a grunt on the far side of the room, he chanced a peek.

Cordova's arm was in mid-reach behind the radiator. He pulled out the padded envelope Jack had seen last time, checked inside, and smiled.

The disk—he must have put it with the money. Good thing Jack hadn't found it, otherwise Cordova would go on a rampage and find Jack in the process.

Ten seconds later the lights were out and the outer door was closing.

Jack remained where he was for a few heartbeats, wondering what to do. He needed that disk, had to get it away from Cordova before he returned it to his safety deposit box, otherwise three days of work would go up in smoke, and Sister Maggie would still be on the hook.

Jack retrieved the HYRTBU disk, turned off the computer, and moved toward the door.

Time to improvise.

Jack hated to improvise.

18

Jack gave Cordova enough time to travel half a block, then stepped out onto the sidewalk. As expected, Fatso was heading for the subway station, waddling along and playing it cool with the envelope tucked casually under his arm, like it held nothing more valuable than a home remodeling contract.

Jack stayed close behind, looking for an opportunity. He was going to have to take him before or after his ride home. Too much light on the train itself. Jack didn't want to show his face.

Only scattered pedestrians out and about at the moment, fair amount of traffic to the right, locked-up storefronts to the left. This wasn't looking good.

He realized he was still wearing latex gloves and carrying the hot plate. He was about to dump both in a trash can coming up on his right when he spotted the dark slit of an alley ahead.

Jack's heartbeat kicked up its tempo as he decided to give this a shot. He broke into a trot and intercepted Cordova just as he came abreast of the alley mouth. He gave the big man a hard shove into the darkness, then clocked him once, twice on the back of his head with the hot plate.

Cordova stumbled and landed on his belly with a whoosh of breath. Jack tossed the hot plate to the side and pounced on his back. Had to be quick now. He grabbed the hair at the base of his neck to hold his head in place. He didn't want Cordova to get a look at him, even in the dark.

"Gimme your wallet, Fatso," he hissed as he pawed at the man's hip.

Cordova seemed dazed, his coarse breaths rumbling in and out.

Jack took the wallet, then felt around front for a gun. When he didn't find one, he grabbed the envelope. Cordova came alert then and fought for it.

"No!"

"Shut up!" Jack shoved his face against the pavement. Hard. "Whatta ya got there? Jewelry, huh?"

"There's cash," Cordova grunted. "Take it. Go ahead, take it all, just leave me the computer disk."

"Yeah, right." Jack wrestled the envelope free. "Like I'm gonna sit here and play games."

He gave Cordova another face slam, then he was up and out of the alley, fast-walking to the first cross street where he turned and broke into a run.

As he opened the padded envelope he noticed the blood on his gloves. Looked like he'd laid open Cordova's scalp with that hot plate. At least he'd found some use for it.

Inside the envelope he found the cash—looked like even more than last night—and a CD jewel box. He snatched it out and stopped under a light. He scanned its gold surface for a label. Nothing beyond Sony CD-R. But this had to be it.

Yes! And though Cordova might suspect that he'd been set up, he'd never know for sure. And he'd never know by whom.

Jack went through Cordova's wallet, transferring the cash and credit cards to the envelope, then he tossed it in the gutter. He inverted his bloody gloves as he pulled them off and stuffed them into another pocket.

He remembered a subway stop on 174th Street, just a few blocks down. He'd catch the next 2 or 5 train and get the hell out of the Bronx.

But the game wasn't over. Not until Jack was sure Cordova didn't have another backup. If he did, it meant extra innings.

THURSDAY

1

Richie didn't remember the last time he'd made it to the office this early. Maybe never. He beat Eddy by ten minutes. Her surprised look at his mere presence escalated to shock when she saw his bandaged face and head. He told her what he'd told the cops last night.

The last thing he'd wanted to do was call 911, but he was bleeding like a pig from the back of his head and knew he needed stitches. He'd been straight with them, told them he'd been caught from behind by a scumbag he hadn't seen coming or going. The only thing he'd held back on was the money in the stolen envelope. Even if he was an ex-cop and getting special treatment, that much cash would lead to too many questions.

The cops found what the jerk had used to open his head: a hot plate. Assaulted with a hot plate! He couldn't fucking believe it.

So they did a search while his head was being sewn up in the ER. They found his wallet—empty, of course—but not the envelope, empty or otherwise.

Not that he'd had any hope of ever seeing it again.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Why'd it have to happen to him, and why when he was carrying a couple of thou? Talk about bad fucking luck.

But it was that backup disk that worried him. He didn't want anyone going through those picture files… it could screw up everything.

And having no backup at the moment was making him nervous as all hell. But he could fix that real quick.

He sent Eddy out for coffee and fired up his computer. He slipped a blank disk into the CD-R drive and ran the copy program that automatically copied everything out of certain folders.

When the program finished, he leaned back in his chair and took a deep

breath. Done. He was protected. He felt better on that score at least. His stomach felt a little queasy, though, and he had a pounding headache that four Advil hadn't touched.

He went to remove the CD from the drive and then thought, Better check the disk, just to be sure.

He opened a file from the CD and stopped breathing when he saw:

HOPE YOU REMEMBERED TO BACK UP!

"No! No-no-no-no-no!"

He switched back to the hard drive and checked a random file.

HOPE YOU REMEMBERED TO BACK UP!

One after the other, the same message. That fucking virus had got back into his system and cleaned him out! Everything was gone!

He started kicking at the computer tower on the floor, but stopped himself after two strikes.

Wait. All was not lost. His files were gone, but the cows didn't know that. They'd already seen what he had… he could still string them along, keep squeezing them till they ran out of juice.

But still, this was a fucking catastrophe.

Feeling sicker than before, he flopped back into his seat. The phone started ringing but he couldn't bring himself to answer it. All that work, all that risk… gone. He still couldn't believe it.

Eddy popped back in then with the coffee and picked up the phone. A few seconds later she stuck her head through the doorway.

"It's the guy from Computer Doctor. Want to speak to him?"

"Do I? Do I?" He snatched up the receiver. "Yeah?"

"Oh, Mr. Cordova," said a prissy male voice he didn't recognize. "This is Ned from Computer Doctor. We just wanted to call and check on how satisfied you are with our service."

Richie wanted to kill him. In fact, he might just go down there now and tear his whole staff into little pieces.

"Satisfied? I'm NOT satisfied! Listen, asshole! The virus you were supposed to kill off is still there! And it wiped out all my files again!"

"Well, sir, if you want to I'll be glad to come up and recheck the hard drive. I'll even restore all the files from your backup."

"Don't bother."

"Really, sir, it will be no trouble at all. And while I'm there—"

Richie knew if he got within ten feet of this geek he'd rearrange his face. Things were bad enough at the moment; he didn't need an assault and battery charge added to the pile of shit his life had become.

"Just forget about it, okay? You've fucked things up enough already."

"Really, sir, I hate the thought of a dissatisfied customer. Just get out your backup disk and I'll—"

This asshole just wouldn't take no for an answer.

"I don't have a backup, you little shit! It was stolen last night! Now what are you going to do?"

"No backup?" the voice said. "Oh, well, then. Never mind."

And then the fucker hung up. He… just… hung… up!

2

Jack stood amid the surging pedestrians on Lexington Avenue and pocketed his cell phone. He smiled as he imagined Fat Richie Cordova pounding his receiver against his desktop, maybe even smashing it through his monitor screen.

Game. Set. Match.

He'd arrange a meet with Sister Maggie later. Now it was time to awaken his xelton.

Jack had dressed in his blue blazer and a tieless, button-down white oxford shirt. He entered the temple, used his swipe card for a free pass through security, then went to the information desk. It looked like an old hotel registration desk.

"I have an appointment for a Reveille Session," he told the uniformed young woman behind the counter, then added, "With Luther Brady."

Her hand darted to her mouth, covering a smile. Jack detected the hint of a giggle in her voice as she said, "Mr. Brady is going to Reveille you?"

"Yes." Jack glanced at his watch. "At nine sharp. I don't want to keep him waiting."

"No, of course not." Her lips did an undulating dance. She really, really wanted to laugh. "I'll call upstairs."

She pressed a button then turned away as she spoke into the receiver. It was a short conversation, and when she turned back, she was no longer smiling. Her face was pale, her expression awed.

She swallowed. "G-GP Jensen will be right down."

Jack figured it wouldn't take long for word to spread that he had Luther Brady as his RT—one, maybe two nanoseconds after he and Jensen stepped into the elevator it would be all over the building. A few more nanos after that it would be spread throughout Dormentaldom.

He'd had a reason for mentioning it. He planned to use his new cachet to allow him access to places that would be verboten to a regular newbie.

Jensen showed up in his black uniform, looking like the megalith from 2001. On the trip to the top floor the two of them started off with an earnest discussion about the weather, but Jensen soon steered the talk toward Jack.

"How was your day, yesterday?"

"Great."

"Do anything interesting?"

Jack thought, You mean after I ditched your tail?

"Oh, tons. I don't get to New York that often, so I did some shopping, had an excellent steak at Peter Luger's."

"Really? What cut?"

"Porterhouse." Jack knew from a number of meals at Luger's that porterhouse was the only cut they served. "It was delicious."

"And then what? Called it a night?"

Jensen wasn't being the least bit circumspect about third-degreeing him.

"Oh, no. I went to an Off-Broadway play someone had recommended. It's called Syzygy. Ever hear of it?"

"Can't say as I have. Any good?"

Gia had dragged him to Syzygy last month and he'd wound up liking it…

"Very strange. Lots of twists and turns in the plot." Jack feigned a yawn. "But it didn't start till ten and I was late getting to bed."

That would jibe with the report from whomever Jensen had put on the Ritz Carlton last night.

Jensen delivered Jack to the twenty-second floor where he found Brady standing near the receptionist's desk. His suit hung perfectly on his trim frame, and not a single strand of his too-brown hair was out of place.

"Mr. Amurri," he said, stepping forward and extending his hand. "So glad you could make it."

"Call me Jason, please. And I wouldn't miss this for the world."

"Very well, Jason. Come in, come in." He led Jack into the office area. "We'll conduct the session in my private quarters and—"

"Really?" Jack said in his best gosh-wow voice.

"Yes, I thought it would offer more privacy and a much more personal atmosphere. But I have one matter to attend to before we get underway, so why don't you make yourself comfortable until I get back."

Jack swept an arm toward the enormous windows. "The view alone could keep me occupied for hours."

Brady laughed. "Oh, I assure you it will be no more than a few minutes at most."

As Brady breezed out, Jack looked around, searching for the ubiquitous video pickups. He couldn't spot a single eye, and then realized why: Luther Brady would not want anyone monitoring his meetings, recording his every word and gesture.

Jack turned away from the windows and faced the opposite wall. The mysterious globe sat behind those sliding steel panels. Jack wanted a look at it. Jamie Grant had mentioned something about a button on Brady's desk.

Jack walked over and examined the vast mahogany expanse. No button in sight. He stepped behind the desk and seated himself in Brady's high-backed red-leather swivel chair. Maybe he had a remote somewhere.

Two rows of drawers formed the flanks of the desk. Jack went through them quickly and found mostly papers and pens and notepads with From the Minds of Luther Brady emblazoned across the top of each page in some fancy heraldic font.

Sheesh.

The only thing out of the ordinary was a stainless-steel semiautomatic pistol. At first glance it looked like his own PT 92 Taurus, then he noticed the different safety, making this a Beretta 92. A box of 9mm Hydra-Shok Federal Classics sat next to it. What made Brady think he needed a weapon?

Coming up empty in the drawers, Jack felt around under the edge of the desktop. There—a smooth nub near the right corner. He pressed it and then heard a motor whine to life, a soft scrape as the panels began to recede.

He rose and approached the expanding opening. Grant's DD informant had been right. A globe of Earth, studded with a scattering of tiny light-bulbs in no discernible pattern. As he watched, the globe began to rotate. The bulbs flickered to life—not all of them, but most. The clear bulbs held the majority, but here and there a red one glowed.

A swirl of odd-looking symbols had been painted on the wall behind the globe. They looked like a cross between Arabic script and hieroglyphics.

Jack stepped closer to the globe and saw a crisscrossing network of fine red lines. They seemed to radiate from the red bulbs, circumnavigating the globe as they passed through each of the other red bulbs and returned home.

At first glance he thought the same was going on with the white bulbs, but a closer look showed that they were positioned at red-line intersections. Not every intersection—only where three or more crossed. Most of the white bulbs were lit, but a few here and there about the globe were dark. Bad bulbs? Or, for some reason, not yet powered up?

Jack stared, baffled. The red bulbs seemed to be calling the shots, the white were secondary players. He focused on the U.S. and noticed a red bulb in the northeast, near New York City. Did the reds represent major Dormentalist temples? Was that the key? He noticed another in South Florida. Was there a big temple in Miami? Could be. He'd have to check.

No, wait. Here was a red bulb in the middle of the ocean off Southeast Asia. No Dormentalist temple there. At least he assumed not.

He backed up for a more encompassing look. Something about the display reached into his gut and scraped the lining with an icy claw… something deeply disturbing here, but he couldn't say what. The reason dangled somewhere in his subconscious, skittering away every time he reached for it.

Jack wrenched his thoughts away from the display and refocused on his immediate circumstances. Right now he should be ducking back to Brady's desk to hit that button again, but he held off. He was here to find Johnny Roselli and give him a message. He'd completed the first half of that task, and was sure he could finish up without setting foot inside this temple again. All he had to do was wait outside for Johnny to leave and follow him home.

But that could take forever. Jack didn't have the time or temperament to stand around and scope the temple door from morning to night, so it would have to be on a catch-as-catch-can basis. Sure, getting a peek at the membership lists would accelerate the process, but that skittish some-thing inside him screamed from the dark that this globe was much more important.

So he stayed where he was, deciding to push his sudden elevated status to the limit.

Jack was still staring at the globe when Brady returned. He froze at the threshold, eyes wide, jaw hanging open.

"What… how…?"

Jack turned. "Hmmm? Oh, I was just looking at this globe here. It's fascinating."

Brady's eyes narrowed as his lips drew into a tight line. "How did you open that?" he said as he stepped toward his desk.

"Oh, it was the funniest thing. I was leaning on your desk there, looking out at the city, when my fingers hit a button under the edge. Suddenly these doors opened and there it was."

Brady said nothing. He reached his desk and hit the hidden button. He was clearly upset but trying to hide it.

Jack said, "Did I do something wrong?"

"My desk is for my personal use."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. But it was an accident." Jack tried an offended look. "You cannot believe that I would rummage through your desk."

"No. No, of course not."

"I do apologize. I have an impulsive nature and it has created difficulties for me from time to time. I'm hoping that Dormentalism will show me how to control it."

Brady seemed to have calmed himself. "No need to apologize, Jason. It's just that I was… surprised to find the doors open. We don't put that globe on display."

"I don't see why not," Jack said as the leading edges of the panels clicked together. "It's so unique. What do all those lights represent?"

"I'm afraid you're not qualified to know that just yet."

"Really? When will I be?"

"When you have achieved Full Fusion. Only someone in the FF state can comprehend the meaning that globe holds for the Church."

"Tell me something about it," Jack said. "I'm dying to know. How about just a hint? What's that globe about?"

"It is the future, Jason Amurri. The future."

3

Except for two paintings—both of big-eyed waifs—the living room of Brady's personal quarters was as spare as his office. One painting was a little boy holding a wilted flower, and the other a skinny little kid in rags.

"Keane kids?" Jack said.

Brady nodded with vigorous enthusiasm. "Yes. They're originals."

Jack had always found them kitschy, and those big sad eyes monoto-nously repetitious. But he supposed some of the old originals might be valuable to someone.

"I know they're not considered real art, but something about them appeals to me. I think they remind me of all the sadness in the world, all caused by fractured xeltons. I look at them and they keep me going, reminding me of the Church's mission."

Jack sighed. "I know exactly/What you mean."

They finally settled down for the Reveille Session—sans mouse. Brady sat on a straight-backed, cushionless chair. Jack leaned forward on the comfy sofa. A coffee table of glossy blond wood sat between them.

"What in your life do you feel guiltiest about?"

Jack had an answer ready but he leaned back and pretended to think about it. After an appropriate pause…

"I suppose it would be having so much more than others."

"'So much more'?"

"Yes. You don't know this, but I'm rather wealthy."

Brady's expression remained bland, barely interested. "Yes, I believe you mentioned something yesterday about having money. But we have many wealthy members."

"Yes, but I'm quite wealthy."

"You are?" Brady scratched his temple, as if this was all news to him, and uninteresting news at that.

"Filthy rich, you might say."

"You don't strike me as the 'filthy rich' type. And do I detect a note of dissatisfaction with having a lot of money?"

Jack shrugged. "Perhaps. Not that it's dirty money or anything like that. It's clean as can be, honestly earned. It's just that… well, I didn't earn it."

"Oh? And who did?"

"My father. And not that I don't get along with him, I do. It's just, well… 'from him to whom much is given, much will be expected'… if you know what I mean."

Brady smiled and nodded. "Ah, he quotes scripture. Luke 12:48, if I remember correctly."

If so, it was news to Jack. He'd remembered hearing the phrase, or something like it, now and again, and it seemed an apropos cliché. Had to admit, though, he was impressed that Brady could quote book, chapter, and verse.

Jack clasped his hands before him. "I know that a lot will be required of me when I take over the family business, and I want to be up to it. But I'm not interested in simply amassing more wealth. I mean, I'll never spend what I already have. So I'd like to find a way to put the wealth that will be flowing my way to better use than investing in stocks and bonds. I want to invest in people."

He wondered if he might be laying it on too thick, but Brady seemed to be lapping it up.

"Well then, Jason, you've come to the right place. International Dormentalism is always reaching out to needy people in the poorest Third World countries. We go in, buy a parcel of land, then establish a temple and a school. The school teaches the Dormentalist way, but more importantly, it also teaches the locals self-sufficiency. 'Give a man a fish and you've fed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime.' That's our philosophy."

Jack widened his eyes. "What a wonderful concept!"

One good cliché deserves another, he thought, and suppressed a smile as he remembered Abe's variation: Teach a man to fish and you can sell him rods and reels and hooks and sinkers.

"Yes. That is the Dormentalist way. You can rest assured that any contributions you wish to make to the Church will go directly toward helping the less fortunate."

"That sounds like a fine idea. You know, I don't think I'll wait till I take my father's place. I'd like to start right now. As soon as we're through here I'm going to contact my accountant."

Brady's smile was beatific. "How kind of you."

4

Luther Brady tapped his fingertips on his desktop as Jensen stood at attention on the far side. He'd known the Grand Paladin's first name once, but had long forgotten it. He wondered if even Jensen remembered.

Not that it mattered. What did matter was Jason Amurri and how he seemed just a little too good to be true.

He wanted Jensen's opinion but decided to have a little fun while he was at it.

"What does your xelton tell you about Jason Amurri?"

Jensen frowned. His answer was delayed, and drawn out when it came.

"It's suspicious. It finds inconsistencies about him."

Watching Jensen's shifting gaze, Brady wanted to laugh at his obvious discomfort talking about the perceptions of his Fully Fused xelton. He should be uncomfortable: Jensen's xelton wasn't FF. In fact, he didn't even have a xelton. No one did!

But no one—not Jensen nor any members of the HC—would admit it. Because each of them thought of himself as the sole Null among the elite FFs. Each hid their Sham Fusion because admitting to Nullhood would mean they'd have to leave their posts in disgrace.

Oh, it was rich to listen to them talk about levitating or leaving their bodies to wander among the planets and stars, almost as if they were engaged in an unspoken contest. And since Luther had made it implicitly clear all along that to exercise one's FF abilities in front of others was bad manners—tantamount to trivializing the wonders of FF by cheap exhibitionism—no one had to back up his or her wondrous claims.

That way, no one could say the emperor had no clothes.

"My xelton feels the same way, but for some reason it cannot pierce through and contact Amurri's. And we know what that means, don't we."

Jensen nodded. "Amurri is probably a Null."

"And that," Brady sighed, "is always tragic. I pity Nulls, but I pity even more the poor Null who's deluded himself into Sham Fusion."

He watched Jensen blink and swallow. He could almost read his mind: Why 5 he saying that? Does he suspect? Does he know?

"So do I," Jensen rasped.

"I'm sure there are members with SF in the temple, but one must restrain one's xelton from piercing their veil. That would be too much of an invasion. And unnecessary because, as you know, sooner or later all Nulls betray themselves." He cleared his throat as if clearing his mind. "But back to our friend Jason…"

Yes, Jason Amurri… after the Reveille Session was over and Amurri gone, Luther realized that he didn't know a damn thing that he hadn't known at the outset. Perhaps the man was just naturally reticent, but Luther had an uneasy feeling that he might be hiding something.

"Since our xeltons cannot yet contact his," he went on, "perhaps you had better pry a little more deeply into his background."

"I'm already on that."

Brady raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"My, um, PX doesn't think he acts like a rich boy. Doesn't move like one."

"And your xelton knows how the rich move?"

"I agree with my PX. I know people who move like Amurri and they're not rich. They're dangerous."

"But it's not like he showed up claiming to be Jason Amurri. He tried to hide that."

"Yeah, I know. That's the only thing that doesn't fit. But then again maybe he planned it that way all along—gave an obviously phony name and then—"

Luther laughed. "That's pretty convoluted, don't you think?"

Jensen shrugged. "My PX thinks there's more to him than meets the eye."

"I think you give him too much credit."

"Maybe. But if I can find just one picture of Jason Amurri, I'll feel a whole lot better."

"Knowing you, Jensen, if you found one, you'd wonder if it had been planted."

A rare flash of white teeth in Jensen's dark face—he almost never smiled. "That's my job, right?"

"Right. And one you do so well." Time to end this. He waved his hand at Jensen. "Keep checking on him. But if he shows up tomorrow with a six-figure donation, then stop. Because who he really is will no longer matter."

As Jensen walked out, Luther pressed the button under the edge of his desktop. The panels rolled back, revealing the Opus Omega globe.

He'd felt like a stunned fish when he'd walked in earlier and found the panels open with Amurri standing before it. He'd been about to shout for Jensen when he noticed that Amurri made no attempt to hide what he was doing. His lack of furtiveness had allayed Luther's suspicions. And his open curiosity about the meaning of the lights on the globe had seemed genuine.

Obviously he had no idea of the apocalyptic significance of what he'd seen.

Luther's thoughts slipped back to that late winter day in college when he first saw the globe. It had existed only in his mind then. He'd been a frosh, away from his strict Scottish-American home for the first time in his eighteen years, and making the most of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the early seventies. He was into his first tab of acid, with a couple of more experienced guys guiding him through the trip, when the globe had appeared, suspended and spinning in the center of the room. He remembered pointing it out to the others but he was the only one who could see it.

Not a Rand McNally globe, but a battered, pockmarked sphere with brown, polluted oceans and bilious chemical clouds shrouding the land. As he'd watched, red dots began to glow on all the continents and oceans, and then glowing red lines arced out from each to connect with the others, creating a globe-spanning network of scarlet threads. And then black circles appeared at some of the intersections of those threads. Soon after, the black circles began glowing white, one by one, and when all were lit, the globe glowed red, then white hot. Finally it exploded, but the scattered pieces returned and reformed into a new world of fertile green continents and pristine blue oceans.

The vision altered the course of Luther's life. Not immediately, not that night, but in the weeks and months afterward as it returned on a nightly basis, with or without chemical enhancement.

At first he was uneasy, thinking it was a recurring flashback and that he'd really screwed up his head. But after a while he got used to it. It became part of his quotidian existence.

But he was terrified when he first heard the voice. Never during his waking hours, only in his sleep, only during the vision. He began to think he might be schizophrenic.

At first it was an indistinct muttering—definitely a voice, but he couldn't understand a word. Gradually it grew louder, the mutterings progressing to distinguishable speech. But although he understood the individual words, they seemed disjointed and he could make no sense of them.

That too changed and by his senior year he came to understand that this world, the ground on which he stood, was destined to change and merge with a sister world in another space-time continuum. Those here who helped speed the fusion would survive the transition from a polluted planet to paradise; the rest of humanity would not. The voice told him to find the places designated by the white lights, to buy the land there, and wait.

Buy up pieces of land? He was a college student, virtually penniless. The voice didn't say how, but it implied that his future well-being depended on it.

And then, shortly after graduation, the book arrived. He found it on his bed in the apartment he was renting. No mailer, no note saying who it was from… just this weird, thick book. It looked ancient, but its title was in English: The Compendium of Srem. The text was in English as well. He began reading.

The voice stopped with the arrival of the book. Reading it changed his life.

Toward the end of all the strange and wondrous legends the Compendium recounted, he found an animated drawing of his vision globe. The text following the illustration explained Opus Omega.

And then he understood the dream and what he must do with his life.

So Luther went hunting for the locations. By then he had seen the globe so many times he could picture every detail in his mind. He found those places—some of them at least—and when he looked up the deed holders he discovered a startling trend: Many of the parcels were owned by a man named Cooper Blascoe.

A little more research revealed that Blascoe was the leader of a commune in northern California. Luther went out to check on him and what he found, what he learned there, changed his life forever.

For he realized then that the vision and the voice had come from the Hokano world. Cooper Blascoe had stumbled on a cosmic truth; he would provide the means for Luther to fulfill the prophecy of the voice.

Yes, the Hokano world was real, and maybe xeltons were too—who could say for sure?—but the Fusion concept and the ladder to achieve it were all products of Brady's imagination, all designed to aid him in completing Opus Omega.

And now, after decades of struggle, only a few more tasks remained before completion.

Luther stepped closer to the spinning globe and reached out to it. As the ridges of its mountains and flats of its plains and oceans brushed against his fingertips, he closed his eyes. Just a few more locations and his work would be done.

But the final steps were proving difficult. Some of the needed land was terribly expensive, some simply not for sale. But Luther was sure he could overcome all obstacles. All he needed was money.

It always seemed to come down to the same thing: never enough money.

But perhaps Jason Amurri could remedy that, at least in part.

And then the final white bulbs could be lit… and the Great Fusion—the only real fusion in the tapestry of lies he'd created—would begin, joining this world with Hokano.

And in that new, better world, Luther Brady would be rewarded above all others.

5

Gia felt moisture between her legs. She hurried to the bathroom and groaned with dismay when she saw the bright red blood on the pad she'd been wearing.

Bleeding again.

She calmed herself. It wasn't much and Dr. Eagleton had warned her to expect some intermittent spotting for a few days afterward. But this was a little more than spotting.

She'd been tired all morning but noticed an uptick in her ambition level. She'd been planning on trying some painting, but now…

The good news was she wasn't having any pain. Monday night she'd felt as if someone had kicked her in the stomach. Not even a cramp now.

She'd watch and wait. She didn't want to be an alarmist, jumping on the phone for every little thing.

She'd take it slow and easy. Put her feet up and put off painting till tomorrow or the next day. Another thing she'd put off was telling Jack. He'd have a squad of EMTs here in seconds.

She had to smile at the thought of him. He was so confident and competent in so many areas of life, but where this baby was concerned, he was as jumpy as a cat. He cared so much.

Now, if he'd just find a lifestyle that wouldn't cause Gia to wonder every time he walked out the door whether this might be the last time she'd see him alive, he'd make a great father.

6

Dressed in street clothes, Sister Maggie stepped into the dimness of Julio's. Jack had said he wanted to meet with her and she felt this Upper West Side bar would be the least likely place she'd be seen by a Lower East Side parishioner.

She spotted Jack waiting at the same table against the wall and rushed over to him.

"It's true?" she said, clutching the edge of the table in a death grip. "What you said on the phone—they're gone?"

Jack nodded. "Your worries are over. I wiped out his files."

Maggie felt her knees weaken. Blood thundered in her ears as she sagged into a chair.

"You're sure? Absolutely sure?"

"Nothing's absolute, but I'm as sure as I can be without strapping him to a chair and taping live wires to delicate parts of his anatomy."

"That's… that's wonderful. Not what you just said," she added quickly. "What you said before."

Jack laughed. "I gotcha."

She didn't know how to ask this, and felt her face turning crimson. Finally she blurted it out.

"Did you happen to see any of the…"

Jack opened his mouth, closed it, then said, "You know, I was going to say yes, and boy were they hot, but I know it's not a joking matter for you. So the truth: no. He didn't keep hard copies. Why risk leaving evidence around when he could point and click and get a fresh print anytime he needed it?"

"I'm so glad, so glad."

Maggie closed her eyes. She had her life back. She wanted to drop to her knees right here on the bar floor and cry out her gratitude to God, but that would attract too much attention.

"But listen," Jack said, his voice grave. "Here's why I wanted to meet in person. I want you to realize that even though I've wiped out his files, you're going to hear from him again."

The wonderful, airy lightness that had suffused her drained away.

"What do you mean?"

"If I did my job right—meaning he thinks this was all a terrible accumulation of accidents—he'll assume that none of his victims know they've been wiped out. Which means they'll all be thinking they're still on the hook. You can't let him know that you know you're not."

"Okay."

"I'm serious about this, Sister. And you can't let your other half know either."

"Other…?"

"Whoever else was in those pictures with you. Do not tell him."

"But he'll be forced to go on paying."

"That's his problem. Let him fix it. You fixed yours, so—"

"But—"

"No 'buts,' Sister. There's a saying that three can keep a secret if two are dead."

"But we two know."

"No. Only you. I don't exist. Trust me on this, please. This guy's an ex dirty cop, so no telling—".

"How did you learn so much about him so soon?"

"Past research from my first encounter with Mr. Slime."

"I…" She felt a sob build in her throat. "I can't believe it's over."

"It's not. Not yet. Like I told you, you've still got to deal with him, and very carefully. When he calls, tell him you're tapped out and will send him something as soon as you get it. Plead with him to be patient."

"But he wants me to… you know…" She lowered her voice. "The building fund…"

"Tell him you'll try, but it won't be easy. Because of the kind of neighborhood you're in, they watch it like hawks, yadda-yadda. But whatever you do, don't refuse to pay. You're not going to send him another damn cent, but you can't let him know that."

"But I am going to pay you. I promise. Every cent."

"No need. It's all taken care of. Financed by a third party."

Maggie was stunned. First the good news about the blackmail, and now this. But she couldn't help being a little put off that a third party was involved in this, her most private business.

"But who—?"

"Don't worry. You'll never know her and she'll never know you."

A sob burst free as tears trickled down her cheeks. What more proof did she need that God had forgiven her?

"Thank you. Thank you so much. If there's anything I can ever do for you, just say it."

"Well, there is one thing." He leaned forward. "How does such an uptight straight arrow like you let herself get involved in a situation that could ruin her life?"

Maggie hesitated, then figured, why not? Jack knew the bad part; he should know the rest of it.

She told him about the four Martinez children and how they were all going to have to leave St. Joseph's for public school by the end of the year. She explained what a tragedy she thought that would be, especially for naive little Serafina.

Without mentioning his name she told Jack about approaching Michael Metcalf for help.

"And somehow," she said, "I found myself in a physical relationship with him. But the Martinez children are the innocent, unwitting victims. The blackmailer drained away the funds that would have gone to them. But don't worry. I'll find a way."

Jack looked as if he was about to say something but changed his mind. He glanced at his watch instead.

"I've got someplace I've got to be, so…"

Maggie reached across the table and gripped both his hands. "Thank you. You've given me back my life and I'm going to do good things with it." She gave his hands a final squeeze, then rose to her feet. "Good-bye, Jack. And God bless you."

As she turned and started away she heard him say, "Did you hurt your leg?"

She stiffened. The burns on her thighs ached and stung with each step, but she offered up the pain.

"Why do you ask?"

"You're limping a little."

"It's nothing. It will pass."

Maggie stepped out into a new day, a new beginning—a redundancy she'd flag in one of her student's prose, but at this moment it seemed right and true.

Lord, don't think I'm forgetting my promise just because I'm free of my tormentor. Tomorrow, cross number six. And on Sunday, the seventh and last, just as I promised. And also as promised, I will devote every moment of the rest of my life to Your works and never stray again.

She headed for the subway, for St. Joseph's Church, to give God thanks in His house.

Life was good again.

7

Jack thought about Sister Maggie as he loitered in a doorway on Lexington Avenue and kept watch on the temple's entrance. He'd ditched Jensen's tail—he'd put two guys on him this morning—on his way to Julio's. After his meeting with the nun, he'd returned to Lexington and set up watch for Johnny Roselli.

Sister Maggie… he'd had an urge to grab her and shake her and try to convince her to get out and enjoy life. But he couldn't. It was her life, to live her way. His inability to comprehend her choices didn't invalidate them.

Still… he didn't get it. Probably never would.

His thoughts refocused on the here and now when he saw Roselli appear, pushing through the doors and then trotting down the steps of the nearby subway entrance. Jack had to do a little booking to keep from losing him.

He caught up on the downtown platform and followed him aboard a 4 train. Johnny was still in the grungy sackcloth-and-ashes mode and his mind seemed light years away as the car swayed and rattled and yawed along the tracks.

Jack's mind wasn't exactly locked onto the present either. It kept straying back to Brady's office and the hidden globe. He remembered that cold feeling in his gut as he'd stared at the red and white lights and the lines running between…

They rode the 4 down to Union Square where Johnny hopped the L to its terminus on Eighth Avenue and Fourteenth. From there Jack shadowed him into the meat-packing district.

When Jack first came to the city, this area had deserved its name—beef hindquarters and pig carcasses hanging in doorways, burly, cleaver-toting butchers in blood-stained white aprons hustling in and out, back and forth. A different kind of hustle at night: curb clingers in hot pants and microminis—not all of them women—hawking their wares to passing cars.

Creeping gentrification had wrought its predictable changes. Most of the butchers were gone now, replaced by art galleries and trendoid restaurants. He passed Hogs and Heifers, the inspiration for the bar in Coyote Ugly, a charter member of Jack's Worst Movies of All Time Club.

Johnny kept walking west. What was he going to do, jump in the Hudson?

The light was fading, the wind picked up enough to make people turn up their collars. Not the skateboarders, though. Dressed in nothing more than the de rigueur baggy shorts, T-shirt, and backward baseball cap, a bunch of them were doing kickflips and railslides as Jack passed.

Eventually Johnny stopped outside a bar called The Header on the ground floor of a ramshackle building in the far, far West Village. If it called itself a dive, it would be putting on airs. The dozen or so motorcycles lined up out front left little doubt as to the nature of the preferred clientele. A neon Budweiser sign glowed in one of the two tiny windows; a handwritten placard announcing FOOD was taped in the other.

Food? Dinner at The Header… now there was a thought. Tonight's special: ebola quiche.

But Johnny didn't enter the bar. Instead he keyed open a narrow door around the side from the entrance and disappeared inside. A minute or so later Jack saw a third-floor window light up.

He didn't get it. Why a third-floor walk-up over a biker bar? According to his mother the guy was worth millions.

Maybe he'd given it all to the Dormentalists. Or maybe he still had it but had decided to live in poverty. Jack tried to care, but failed. No explaining cult members. Waste of time to try.

And anyway, his job wasn't to make sense of Johnny Roselli, it was to give him a message from his mother. The easiest way would be to knock on his door and tell him, but he didn't like the idea of letting Johnny see his face.

Why not? After delivering the message to call Mama, Jack's job was done. If he were sticking with the Jason Amurri identity, yeah, it would matter: He wouldn't want to risk Johnny spotting him and opening his yap. But Jack had no intention of ever setting foot in the temple again…

Or did he?

He had a feeling he had unfinished business there… business involving Brady's globe.

Jack noted the number on the door, then turned and headed east at a comfortable pace. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed information. They had no listing for a J. Roselli at that address.

Damn. He stopped walking. He might have to show his face after all.

On a sudden whim he called back and asked for a party named "Oroont" at that address. Bull's-eye.

He smiled and said aloud, "Am I good or am I good?"

He let the operator dial for him and a few seconds later he was listening to a phone ring, A man answered.

"Is this John Roselli?"

The tone was guarded. "It was. How did you get this number?"

"Not important. I have a message from your mother. She—"

"You what? Who are you?"

"Someone your mother hired to find you. She's been worried about you and—"

"Listen, you son of a bitch," Roselli gritted, and Jack could all but feel the steam coming through the phone. "Who put you up to this? The GP? Are you one of Jensen's drones trying to trap me?"

"No, I'm simply—"

"Or some dirty WA trying to harass me?"

Be nice if I could finish a sentence.

"Not even close. Look, just call your mother. She's worried and wants to hear from you."

"Fuck you!"

And then the phone slammed down.

Jack tried three more times. On the first he heard the receiver lift, then clatter down again. After that all he got was a busy signal.

Okay. He'd done his job, delivered the message. Johnny apparently had big issues with Mom. Jack was sorry about that but his fix-it skills—thankfully—did not reach into family therapy.

As he kept walking east, heading for Eighth Avenue where he could catch a train, Brady's globe spun into his thoughts again… the red and white lights… the network of crisscrossing lines… so tantalizingly close… he reached for it, stretching…

And then Jack grasped it. But when he realized what he had hit on he instantly wished he hadn't. He stumbled as he felt the world slow around him.

The lights and the lines… he'd seen that pattern before… and now he knew where…

Suddenly out of breath, he stopped walking and leaned against a railing. He wasn't going to be sick, but he wanted to be.

When his heart and lungs dropped back toward their normal tempos, he pushed off and got moving again. He'd planned to stop by Maria Roselli's to tell her he'd contacted Johnny boy, and then drop in on Gia and Vicky to see how his girls were doing. But all that was out of the question now. He needed answers, needed to find someone who might have an explanation.

He could think of only one person.

8

Jamie had been working late—as usual—when Robertson called. His voice had sounded tight and he'd said he needed to talk to her. Now. Something had come up—something big and very strange.

Well, she'd been ready to leave anyway. After she assured him that the line had been checked for taps, he said he'd pick her up in his car, a big, black Crown Victoria. When she'd reminded him about her Dementedist shadows, he told her where to meet him and exactly how to get there.

So here she was at 8:15 walking west through the Forty-second Street tunnel. One of the Dementedist shadows was following her, laying back about fifty feet or so. Where was the other? They usually had a crew of two waiting outside The Light. It bothered her that she didn't know where he was.

Jamie was puffing by the time she reached the Eighth Avenue station. Damn those cigarettes. Had to quit some day.

Instead of heading for one of the train platforms, she rushed up the steps to the street.

Now she was really breathing hard. She spotted a big black car idling at the corner. That had to be Robertson, but he'd told her to wait until he gave a signal. Why? She didn't want to wait with one of those nutcases coming up behind her. She wanted in that car now.

Suddenly the passenger door flew open and his voice called from within.

"Let's go!"

Jamie didn't need to hear that twice. She trotted over and jumped in. The car was roaring up Eighth Avenue before she closed the door.

"We've got to stop meeting like this, Robertson."

Light from passing street lamps flashed against his face. His features looked tight, tense.

"Call me Jack, remember?"

"Oh, right. Hey, tell me, why did you want me to wait by the top of the steps instead of just jumping in and going?"

"I wanted the traffic lights the right color. Not much point in burning rubber just to stop a block away. Now they'll have to find a cab before they can come after us. And they're not going to find us when they do."

"Not they—he. Only one tonight. But he probably got a look at your license plate."

The line of his mouth tightened further. "Might have got a look at more than that. While I was waiting for you a guy I'd seen in Jensen's office when I was getting my Entry Card came out of a deli carrying a paper bag. Coffee and sandwiches, probably. Walked right past the car."

"Think he saw you?"

"Looked at me but didn't seem to recognize me."

"Oh, hell. If they've got your plate numbers—"

He smiled, but even that was tight. "Won't do them much good. And they're in for a pile of trouble if they start hassling the real owner of these tags."

"So this is a borrowed car?"

"No, it's mine, but the plates are duplicates of someone else's. Someone you don't want to mess with."

"Who?"

He shook his head. "Trade secret."

That again. But he'd piqued her curiosity. "Would I have heard of him?"

"As a reporter? Oh, yeah."

The way he drew out the oh was enough to make her crazy. Who was he talking about? But she sensed that asking again would be like talking to a statue.

He took a left onto Fifty-seventh and headed farther west.

"Where are we going?"

"We need someplace quiet and private. Any ideas?"

"We're only a few blocks from my place but I think it's got a surveillance situation."

"Wouldn't be surprised, but let's go check it out anyway."

She directed him to her block on West Sixty-eighth.

She pointed right to the front door of her apartment building. "That's me."

Jack jerked a thumb toward his side window. "And there's the Dormentalist stakeout team."

Jamie saw a dark coupe, parked curbside, no lights on inside or out. A man sat alone in the front seat. Her stomach crawled.

"Let's get out of here."

9

Jensen was on his way out of the temple when his two-way chirped. It was Margiotta.

"Finally found a picture of him, boss."

"Amurri?"

"Yeah. You'd better come see. I don't think you're going to like it."

"Be right there."

On the contrary, Jensen thought as he did an about face and headed back across the nearly deserted lobby. I bet I'll like it just fine.

Margiotta's tone had said it all: The photo he'd found did not match the guy who'd been calling himself Jason Amurri.

He did a mini fist pump. Knew it!

His instincts had been right on target. He gave himself a mental pat on the back for his powers of observation, and for plain old gut instinct. He'd spotted Amurri for a ringer from day one.

And now we've got him.

Another chirp from his two-way. Margiotta again.

"Here's something else you won't like, Boss. Lewis and Hutchison just called in. They lost the quail."

Margiotta knew better than to mention names on a two-way. He didn't have to. Jensen knew who he meant.

Noomri's balls! How hard can it be to follow one middle-aged, overweight broad?

"They give any details?"

"No, but they have more to tell. They're waiting till they get here. They should be walking in any minute."

Jensen considered waiting and holding the elevator for them, then giving them hell once the doors closed. He decided not to. He couldn't wait to see the face of the real Jason Amurri.

Margiotta sat in the office, seated before the computer. He leaned back and pointed to the screen.

"There he is."

Jensen leaned in and saw a blurry image of a man in his thirties. He ran a mental comparison and couldn't find one point of correspondence between this man and the one who claimed to be Jason Amurri. Darker hair, darker skin, bigger nose, different hairline…

"You sure this is the real Jason Amurri?"

Margiotta shrugged. "It says it's him, but that doesn't mean it is."

"What do you mean? I thought you said—"

"This is the Internet, boss. What you see ain't necessarily the real deal. Anybody can post anything, true or false. No one fact checks the Internet."

"But can you think of a reason why anyone would go to the trouble of posting a fake photo of Jason Amurri?"

"I can think that a fake Jason Amurri might, just in case we checked. If it looked just like him, I'd check when it was posted. And if it was of real recent vintage, I'd say we couldn't trust it. But this is a couple years old and doesn't look at all like our guy. So I'm ninety-nine percent sure it's legit."

"What would make you a hundred?"

"Finding another with the same face."

"Okay, then. Keep looking. I want to be absolutely sure before I take this to the SO. But for now, put a flag on his pass code. Next time he swipes his way in, I want him detained at the security desk."

Lewis and Hutchison walked in then. Jensen was opening his mouth to begin charbroiling them when Lewis held up one of his skinny hands.

"Yeah, I know, we lost her, but we didn't come back empty-handed."

"It had better be good."

The heavier Hutchison told about tailing her underground and then losing her to a waiting car.

Jensen had to admire the ditch: sweet and simple.

"You are going to tell me you got the tag number, right?"

Hutchison nodded and handed over a sheet of paper. Jensen glanced at it. New York plates. Excellent. A number of Dormentalists worked for the New York DMV.

He passed the sheet to Margiotta. "Run it." He turned back to Hutchison and Lewis. "That still doesn't save your asses. I put you on—"

"There's more," Lewis said. "Just out of pure coincidence, I walked by the car just minutes before Grant jumped in and took off. I saw the driver. Thought he looked familiar but didn't pay much attention. After Grant gave us the slip it clicked and I remembered where I'd seen him before."

"Yeah? Where?"

"Right here. He's that guy the SO's been doting on. What's his name? Am-something."

"Amurri." Jensen felt a huge smile spreading across his face. "Jason Amurri." He turned to Margiotta again. "But he's not Jason Amurri, is he."

"If he's working with Grant, I think we can go a hundred percent on that, no problem."

Jensen rubbed his hands together. "We know who he's not. And before the night is out we'll know who he is."

10

"So," Jamie said. "What's the situation? Why the big rush to see me tonight? I assume it wasn't because of my great looks and sparkling personality."

Jack wore a blue V-neck sweater over a T-shirt and jeans and looked good as he gave her a wan smile.

"You never know."

Right answer, she thought.

After passing her place they'd stayed on the West Side, heading downtown. Jack found a lot in the Forties, in what used to be called Hell's Kitchen, and Jamie noticed how he gave the attendant an extra couple of bucks to park his car where it wasn't visible from the street. Attention to detail—she liked that in a man. There was a lot to like about this fellow.

A short walk brought them to this little bar off Tenth Avenue. She'd already forgotten its name. Dusty and dingy, but only a quarter full, which gave them some space in a rear booth.

With half of a Dewar's and soda making its way through her system, she felt herself begin to relax. But only a little. One thing to suspect your home is being watched; something totally other to spot the guy doing the watching.

"I saw the globe today," Jack said. His bar draft sat before him, untouched.

"Brady's globe?"

He nodded. "Got a good, long look."

If true, it was a hell of a coup. But he didn't sound too happy about it.

"And?"

"Something about the lights and all the crisscrossing lines set my teeth on edge. Didn't know why, but just looking at it struck a sour note. Took me a while to realize that the pattern was familiar. Took me a little longer to remember where I'd seen it before."

"Great! So then you know what it's all about."

He shook his head. "Still don't know that. But I'll show you where I saw it."

He lifted the small plastic shopping bag that had been sitting beside him on the bench. He'd removed it from the car's back seat when they'd parked, but had only shaken his head when she'd asked what was in it.

He pushed his beer aside and laid the bag on the wet ring it left on the table. Then he sat quietly, staring at it.

Jamie felt a rising impatience. What was all the drama here?

"Well?"

"You're not going to believe what I'm going to tell you," he said without looking up. "Sometimes I don't believe it myself, but then I look at this and know it's real."

Sounds like the opening line to a bad horror story, she thought.

"Try me."

"Okay." He reached into the bag and brought out a quarter-folded piece of thick beige fabric, maybe a foot long and a little less wide. As he began to unfold it she realized it was some sort of leather. He flattened it on the table-top between them.

Jamie leaned forward for a better look. She saw a slightly rough surface, dimpled with pockmarks of varying sizes. The larger were a dull, dusky red, the smaller pale and slightly glossy. Connecting them all were a hundred, maybe more, fine lines, mechanical-pencil thin.

"This is what's on the globe?"

Jack nodded. "The reason it took me so long to recognize it was because the pattern was wrapped around a sphere. Even though it was rotating, I never saw the whole design at once. I mean, I would have recognized it if this"—he tapped the design—"included outlines of the oceans and continents, but as you can see, it doesn't. Still it rang a bell somewhere in my head. Took me most of the day to make the connection."

"Okay, so this is the same pattern of lights and lines as on the globe. What's so unbelievable about that?"

"That's not the unbelievable part."

"All right then, what is?"

Jack didn't answer. He simply stared at the leather and gently ran a hand over its surface.

Jamie took another sip of her Scotch. She was getting annoyed.

Her turn to tap the leather. Hmmm… soft. She let her hand rest on it, placing a fingertip in one of the pocks.

"Does this thing get us any closer to figuring out why he keeps the globe situation so secret?"

"No, but—"

"Then what's the point? Where'd you find it? Maybe there's a clue in that. If Brady didn't make this then someone connected to him did. If we can talk to him—"

"She's dead."

She? Dead? Jamie felt her chest tighten.

"How? Tell me she died of a heart attack or something. Please don't tell me she was murdered."

"Wish I could. This is all that's left of her."

Jamie's chest tightened further.

"I don't…"

"This is her skin… from her back."

She snatched her hand back. "You're shitting me, right?"

Finally he looked up at her. She knew even before he shook his head that he wasn't.

"The only reason I'm telling you about this is because I don't know anybody else I can go to who knows more about Dormentalism."

"You mean… you mean a Dormentalist flayed this off her and then sat down and drew on it?"

"Not at all. Take a closer look." He waved a hand over the pocks, the lines. "This isn't a drawing. These are scars. Don't ask me how, but all this was on her back before she died."

"Before? But how—? Where's the rest of her?"

His eyes were leveled at her. She saw pain there.

"Gone."

Jamie didn't know what to say, but she did know her glass was empty and she needed another—needed it big time.

"I'm going for a refill. My turn." She pointed to Jack's almost full glass. "You want a back for that?"

He shook his head.

Jamie made a quick trip to the bar.

John "Jack" Robertson hadn't struck her as a nutcase, but obviously he was. What other explanation could there be?

But he seemed so sincere. Her bullshit meter wasn't even flickering. Did he believe all this?

By the time she sat down with her fresh drink she felt a little more focused.

"Okay, the lady is gone, but while she was living, these marks appeared on her back like some stigmata. Sorry, pal, but I don't believe in the supernatural."

He leaned forward. "Jamie, I don't give a rat's ass what you believe. What I'm trying to get across to you is that we're talking about something bigger than just a money-grubbing cult here. Lots bigger."

She felt her spine stiffen. "Well, if you don't give a rat's ass, why show me?"

"I told you, because you probably know as much as any outsider can about Dormentalism—which may not be anywhere near as demented as you think. Have you found any evidence, any hint, anything that might lead you to think the cult could be connected to something else? Something bigger, something darker, something…" His mouth twisted, as if he didn't want to say the word. "… other."

"No… but I may have found someone who does know."

He leaned closer. "Who?"

Don't, she told herself. Don't say it.

But she was caught in the grip of the moment. This man had challenged her credulity—more like sucker punched it—and so now it was her turn.

"I think I've found Cooper Blascoe."

11

Maggie had known the call would come, but not so soon. And not on the convent phone. Her stomach quivered when she recognized the voice.

"I really can't speak now," she said, looking up and down the hall. She was alone but she'd have to keep her voice down.

"Then just listen. I want to know when I'm going to see the money you owe me."

"Owe you?" She felt a spear of anger jab through her anxiety. "I don't owe you."

"The hell you don't! I'm saving your holy-roller ass by keeping those photos under wraps. So you owe me. And by the way, it's a nice-looking ass you've got there."

Maggie felt her cheeks burn.

"I don't have it," she said, remembering what Jack had told her. "I'll get it for you but I need more time."

"You know where you can get it."

"I'm trying but it's not easy."

"It's easy as pie. Just start skimming a little every day."

"It's closely watched."

"Find a way, sissy, or your pretty little ass and lots more will be plastered all over the neighborhood."

"But that won't be good for you either. You'll get no more from me after that. At least this way you're getting something."

"Don't try to play games with me. You're just a tiny part of my action. I'll cut you loose without a second thought."

Maggie thought she detected a note of desperation in his voice.

"I'm doing my best," she told him, sounding plaintive. "I can't give you what I don't have."

"Then get it! I'm in a generous mood today, so I'll give you till next week."

"Next week?" Would she have to suffer through another of these calls next week? How long before he gave up? "Okay. I'll see what I can do."

"No, you'll do it. By next week. All of it."

And then he hung up.

Her hand was shaking as she replaced the receiver. He'd sounded desperate. A thought struck her like a blow: Was he calling all his victims and trying to squeeze them? That meant Michael would be on his list. She knew Jack had said to tell no one, but… but how could she let someone go on paying this serpent when he didn't have to? She was sure Michael could keep a secret.

She headed for the street to a public phone.

12

Jack leaned back in the booth. He imagined his expression right now looked like Jamie's when he'd told her about Anya's skin.

"Yeah, right," he said. "Now who's playing 'Can You Top This'? He's dead."

Her eyes widened. "Yeah? Says who?"

"Says Occam's Razor."

He frowned. That particular razor had lost its edge lately. Occam's butterknife was more like it.

She flashed a yellow smile. "I can't believe you're such a cynic. How can you possibly have the slightest doubt that he's in suspended animation?"

"Let's see… dead or in suspended animation: which requires the fewer assumptions?"

She shrugged. "Dead, of course."

"Exactly. How does a cult that's supposed to prepare you to be a survivor of doomsday handle the death of its founder?"

"Hide it. Or find a way to explain it. The Scientologists got around it by telling their members that L. Ron Hubbard had 'causatively discarded' his body because it had become an impediment to the research he was doing for the betterment of mankind."

"So, knowing all that, why do you think Blascoe's alive?"

Another shrug. "I agree with everything you've said. You'd expect them to cover up his death, not his longevity. Unless…"

"Unless he's got some terminal illness or is completely off his rocker."

"Rüüght. A dead guru is an embarrassment, sure, but one with dementia is even worse. Doesn't say much about the value of fusing your personal xelton with its Hokano half, does it?"

Jack had been watching Jamie's eyes. She was onto something. Question was, how much would she tell him?

"And you say you've found him."

"I say I think I may have found him. You see, getting kicked out of the temple made it impossible for me to investigate Dementedism from the inside, so I did it from the outside. I've learned that Brady rarely leaves the temple unless it's for a public appearance. And then he's always driven back and forth in a limo. But Sunday nights are a different situation. Sunday nights—at least three out of four as far as I can tell—he drives himself."

"Where?"

"Wish I knew. He and Jensen and the High Council guys keep their cars in a garage around the corner from the temple. I've seen him pull out a number of times and tried to tail him, but always lost him."

"He ditched you?"

"I don't think so. I'm just not very good at it. But I tailed the GP a few times and had better luck with him."

Jack had to laugh. "You've been following him too? That's dedication."

"That's me, all right. Dedicated to a fault."

Jack saw a strange flash in her eyes as she took a sip of her Scotch.

"It's more than professional, isn't it."

She shrugged. "A journalist's credo is impartiality and objectivity. But you might say I have a thing for cult situations. You might say I think they're poisonous, that they prey—sometimes knowingly and sometimes unwittingly—on confused people and exploit their weaknesses."

An idea was taking root in Jack's head. "Were you ever in one?"

"Uh-uh. No way. Never. But my sister Susie was. She died of exposure on a hilltop in West Virginia. You may have read about it a few years back."

Jack nodded. Half a dozen bodies, two males, four females, found stiff and cold by some hikers. They'd been dead since New Year's Eve. It had been all over the news for a day or two, then dropped.

"She and her fellow cultists literally froze to death while standing naked in the cold waiting to be 'taken home.' So yeah, it might be personal, and my articles may have an adversarial edge. I'm looking for dirt, I won't deny that, but my facts are facts and all double- or triple-checked. That's why I follow the Dementedist bigwigs. Because that cult is dirty at the top. They're hiding something."

"Like their founder, for instance?"

"I get a feeling it's bigger than that. But getting back to Blascoe: On two occasions I followed Jensen and one of his TPs to a supermarket where they packed Jensen's car full of groceries. Then he dropped off the TP and headed for the hills—literally. I followed him up 684 and lost him the first time. But then, back in September, I managed to tail him all the way into

Putnam County. Way up in the hills there I saw him unload the groceries at a house in the woods, then leave."

"Maybe it's a relative."

"An old white man with long hair and a scraggly beard came out on the front porch and shook his fist at Jensen as he was leaving. Not exactly the way I'd picture his daddy."

"Blascoe?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. In any pictures I've ever seen of Cooper Blascoe he's been a hale and hearty fellow with this blond mane. This guy was skinny and kind of stooped. I've heard Blascoe had some kind of germ phobia, but this guy looked like he hadn't seen soap and water since the Beame administration."

"And yet…?"

"And yet, something about his hairline, something about his profile…" She shook her head. "I don't know. Somewhere in my brain a circuit closed and lit up a neon sign that kept flashing Cooper Blascoe… Cooper Blascoe... and wouldn't stop."

Jack knew the feeling. His own subconscious had recognized immediately the pattern on Brady's globe, but it had taken his conscious mind a while to catch up.

"How close did you get?"

"Not close enough to be sure."

"You didn't move in for a better look?"

"No. I wanted to but… Want the truth? I was scared. I'm brave behind my keyboard—I'll take on anyone, anytime—but out in the real world… out there, I'm chickenshit." She waggled the stump of her pinkie at him. "Low threshold for pain. Maybe a low threshold for death too—like if I get too scared I'll die."

"What were you frightened of?"

She placed a mocking finger against her temple. "Oh, let's see now. How about being a woman alone at night in deep woods where I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to be? How about I was hot and all scratched up from following Jensen's car on foot and the bugs were eating me alive? Knowing how Dementedists are about security, and this being their chief of security I'd followed, how about wondering whether or not I might be walking into a trap? Like maybe an electrified fence situation or bear traps or Dobermans? How about worrying about Jensen spotting my car in the bushes where I'd ditched it? Can you blame me if all I wanted was out of there?"

Jack shook his head. "Not a bit. Can you find it again?"

She smiled as she nodded. "I might have been scared, but not scared stupid. I made careful notes on a map as I drove back to the freeway."

"And you haven't been up there since?"

"Been meaning to. Been thinking about sneaking up there in the daytime with a telephoto lens and hanging out till I got a chance to snap a few shots. Even drove by the side road a couple of times but…"

"But never left your car." Jack wasn't asking. He knew the answer.

Jamie looked embarrassed as she shook her head. " 'Lacked da noive,' as the Cowardly Lion might say."

"How about if I take you up there?"

From the look on her face he guessed she'd been hoping for just such an offer.

"Great idea. What about tomorrow?" Her words picked up velocity as she went on. "I'll borrow a camera from one of the staff photogs. We should leave in the morning so we can maximize our light hours."

Jack ran his fingers lightly over the pocks in Anya's skin as he thought about Jamie's proposal. Tomorrow looked like a good day for a road trip. But first he needed to drop in on Maria Roselli. Ostensibly to tell her about Johnny, but mostly to give her a grilling. He had a feeling she knew a lot more about the pattern on this thing than she'd admitted.

He refolded the skin. "Okay, let's do it. I'll drop you off a few blocks from your place and let you walk home."

He'd probably never set foot in a Dormentalist temple again, but he didn't want to be seen yet. Always keep your options open.

He noticed Jamie's worried expression.

"Don't worry. I'll follow to make sure you get home safe."

Jamie smiled and held up her hand for a high five. "Awright!"

Jack poked her palm with the tip of an index finger. When she gave him a questioning look, he simply shrugged. It always tended to be an awkward moment. Jack didn't do high fives.

She slid out of the booth. "You know what I might do? I think I might just tap on those watchdogs' car window and ask them how their Hokanos are hangin'."

"What kind of word is 'Hokano' anyway?" he said as he bagged the skin and slipped out to join her. "Made up or from some other language?"

"Probably just made up. The closest I could find was the Japanese hoka no—but they don't put the accent on the middle syllable like the Dementedists do. Means 'other.'"

Jack stood paralyzed as ice crystalized along every nerve in his body.

"What… what did you say?"

"Other. Hoka no means other." She stared at him, concern etching her features. "What's wrong? Are you all right?"

Jack felt as if he'd taken a battering ram to the solar plexus. It was happening again. He was being sucked in again.