Enemy within

4

The frog person was explaining Rule 174 of The Securities Act, and Marlene was drawing tiny linked roses on her yellow pad, as she had done when bored, starting with her days at Holy Family parochial school in Ozone Park, Queens, and continuing through Sacred Heart, Smith, Yale Law, and the district attorney's office. Had she kept all of them, she could have run a garland from New York to San Diego, for she was often bored, in the way good soldiers are bored between battles. Rule 174 governed the quiet-period phase of the complex train of events that places a private company's stock before the public, the so-called initial public offering, the IPO, which, Marlene believed, is what the nineties had instead of really good rock and roll.

Marlene was not interested in the quiet period, or any other period within the purview of the Frog Person, who was the man from the underwriters, Kohlmann Mohl Hastings. His name was Foster Amory, and Marlene had uncharitably focused her resentment at the whole process upon him, for he was the man responsible for Sherpa-ing the Osborne International IPO up the stormy rock face of infinite wealth. His eye fell upon her and she shot him a glare that made him look away. Marlene felt a pang of guilt. It was not his fault that her colleagues had turned into appalling greed-heads overnight. Or that he really did look like a frog.

The general purpose of Rule 174, Marlene gathered through the roses, was to prevent firms about to unleash stock from hyping the stock. Were it not for this rule, some unscrupulous businesspeople might tell lies about their firm's prospects or tell things to some people they did not tell to everyone. The Frog Person now paused, and his song was taken up by William Bell, Osborne's general counsel, more of a bird than a frog: a crane or a stork. He had sandy hair, watering blue eyes, and glasses that he had constantly to push back on his long, pointed, redtipped nose. Marlene called him Ding-dong Bell, although he had never been anything but nice to her and was not notably nuts, except about this IPO, a pathology he shared with everyone else around the table except, apparently, Marlene.

He was going on about Rule 135, which comprises a long list of forbidden sorts of press statements. Marlene let her mind drift, for she herself would not willingly talk to any journalist, nor did she own any financial secrets. She completed a rose border and idly looked around the table. At its head, Lou Osborne, the CEO, seemed his usual rockhewn self as he listened very carefully, indeed, to the people who were going to make him a multimillionaire. Osborne was a former Secret Service agent who had taken early retirement a decade or so ago and built this firm into the fastest-growing general-service security and investigations operation in America's fastest-growing business. He had done this largely by picking up smaller firms and integrating their operations into Osborne's own, making limited partners of the owners rather than spending any hard cash. Marlene's firm, an outfit specializing in services to women, had been the first of these. Her former partner, Harry Bellow, was now Osborne's VP for investigations. Harry was there next to Osborne, his baggy cop face interested but blank. She caught his eye and received a tiny wink. Harry was not entirely corporate yet; as a former NYPD detective, he did not take suits all that seriously, but he was a lot more corporate than Marlene was. Moving along the table, there was Marty Fox, VP security, shaven-headed, with the hard face of one of the better Roman emperors. He was a former FBI agent, an old buddy of the boss's, and he thought Marlene should be working for him, since she also handled security. Marlene did not agree, and since she was a partner, too, and had Harry's vote, he could not force the issue. Then came Deanna Unger, the chief financial officer, about ten years Marlene's junior and the only other woman in Osborne's top management. A cat-faced blonde in an Armani suit, smart, ambitious, she was always reasonably cordial to Marlene, but clearly preferred to play with the boys. Sisterhood had stopped being powerful. Marlene suspected that Unger thought the VIP operation was fluff. Finally, on Marlene's right there was a wiry, small man in his mid-fifties with pale blue eyes and pencil-lead pupils that never seemed to expand. Oleg Sirmenkov was VP for international operations. He had spent most of his professional life running security at Soviet consulates in the United States, and at the embassy in D.C., which was how Osborne had met him. It tickled Osborne to have a former KGB colonel working for him, and it apparently tickled Sirmenkov, too. A man who laughed a lot, and loudly, so that you hardly noticed that the laugh never got all the way to those funny eyes. Next to Harry, Oleg was Marlene's favorite VP.

"Are you as bored as I am?" she asked out of the side of her mouth.

"Not bored in the least, I assure you," replied Sirmenkov sotto voce. "I am fascinated. But I have been to some very boring meetings. This is the Kirov by comparison."

Bell was now droning into Section 11, which laid out the liabilities for making false statements or phony claims in the prospectus. The only document that could be given to prospective investors was the prospectus itself. Any documents that Osborne used in the road show had to be taken back, lest they violate Section 5.

Oh, the road show. Marlene was to be one of the stars of the road show. Marlene knew famous people; despite what Deanna might think, Osborne felt Marlene's operation gave the firm some unusual shine. It might not have brought in as much as Harry's corporate investigations, or the security and training stuff that Fox did, but glamour sold, which was why insurance companies hired actors who had played doctors to appear on TV for them.

Bell finished, and the Frog from Kohlmann started on the schedule for the road shows, during which the principals of Osborne would visit big institutional investors and tell them why they should buy stock in a firm of private dicks. There was an actual script for this, and a director the Frog had brought along, a kid who looked about seventeen and the only person in the room besides Marlene and the CFO who had hair more than three-eighths of an inch long, who was now talking about setting up rehearsals. The task was to fake enough sincerity to carry the investors along with the illusion that it was a sure thing that big was better in security, and the whole dangerous-world line of malarkey. Everyone seemed enthusiastic about this but her, like kids talking about putting on a high school play. She wondered why. The lure of show biz? The prospect of immense wealth? Briefly she longed to be part of it, to submerge herself in a group mind for once. But the inner watcher, ever alert, tugged her away, and she looked at them, as from a distance, and felt the exhaustion rise up, although she kept her face pleasantly neutral throughout.

The meeting ended. Marlene grabbed up her doodles and left the conference room without indulging in any of the postconference chitchat normal on such occasions.

Sirmenkov fell into step with her. "What is it, Marlene. Why everyone happy but you? You look like dog died." He paused. "Did dog die?"

"No, dog live," said Marlene, a little miffed at having revealed this much. "Dog in office."

"So why is this frowning? You don't want to get rich as God in heaven?"

"Oh, I don't know, Ollie. I'm just generally pissed off these days. I'm not made for sitting in meetings and telling lies and ordering people around. I need action. Don't you? Don't you want to go and torture a dissident once in a while?"

Sirmenkov looked pained and mimed delicacy. "Please, Marlene, that was another directorate entirely from us. We are being guards only, like yourself."

"So you love all this, right?"

"I confess, I do. I am a late convert to capitalism, you know. I have of convert… hm, what is this word… rvrenyeh…" He made an expressive gesture with his hands to his heart, thrusting outward.

"Zeal?"

"Just so, zeal. I love this stuff. I wish very much to be extremely rich."

"And you think that will solve all your problems?"

"Those to do with money, surely." He laughed, showing gold teeth.

"I wonder. You ever see a movie called The Treasure of the Sierra Madre?"

"Of course I see, many times. Also I read in school. Is book by B. Traven, socialist hero. Very popular with former regime. Ah, you mean how lust for gold destroys men. Yes, but only stupid men, as in film."

"Right, but I was also thinking about wasted effort. I guess I can't believe that this market is going to get all excited about an IPO from a security company. It's not exactly high-tech."

"But is, Marlene! But is-we are extremely high-tech. And we expand into Internet security very fast. Marty will tell you-he has all those boys down there with the long hair and the T-shorts."

"Shirts. Still, I think everyone is going nuts over a long shot. Also, suppose it works. I don't know. I spend a lot of my time with very rich people, mostly people who've made their pile off dumb luck and flash. I don't find them a particularly happy bunch. You won't believe this, but a lot of rich people take drugs and drink too much, and screw up their marriages, and are mean to their kids."

He chuckled and rolled his eyes. "Marlene, you break my little heart. Now, believe me, honestly, you only say this because you have American guilt. Is from being rich all your life: you say, 'Oh, money is nothing.' But if you see only poor, poverty, your whole life, the way people, I mean intelligent people, how they live in other countries, filthy flats, cold, rotten clothings, bad food, then you don't think is something wrong with rich. You will see. Somehow, you will learn to like."

"If not, you haf vays, right?"

After the tiniest pause, a booming laugh. "Oh, Marlene, you are amusing woman, I tell you the truth. Seriously, though, you should not worry the IPO will fly. It is good time for it."

"You mean the market?"

"I mean events. Events make market."

"What kind of events? By the way, do you want to get lunch?"

"No, I can't, I have big meeting with Lou and… some others. Another time? Tomorrow, maybe?"

"Sure. What kind of events?"

"Events in world. Is dangerous place, like the man said. And how is your charming daughter? We have not seen her so much as before."

"Still charming," said Marlene shortly, somewhat thrown by the abrupt change of subject.

"Good! You should bring her around more often. I enjoy to speak Russian with her. She has for some reason a Petersburg accent. I tell you, that is a remarkable girl. Please say I send regards." Another golden smile and he slipped away down a side corridor.

Marlene went back to her office. This was four times the size of the one she had occupied as a minor bureau chief in the DA and approximated the scale and luxury of those given to assistant DAs in television dramas. It was really the best office in the place next to Lou's, which caused no little resentment among some of the other VPs. But Osborne had reasoned that the VIPs who made up Marlene's clientele deserved nothing less. She had furnished the office in institutional teak, simple and uncluttered, the Architectural Digest effect of which was quite undone by the clutter that Marlene spread around her-papers, books, CDs, magazines, clippings, and in the corner, on a dog bed, an immense, black, wheezing Neapolitan mastiff. There were three windows along one wall, from which she could look down thirty-two floors to Third Avenue. On another wall she had hung a big Red Grooms lithograph of a street scene in lower Manhattan, Lafayette and Spring to be precise, and a framed length of tan silk, upon which her daughter had calligraphed a Chinese poem, "Quiet Night Thoughts," by Li Po. Or so she said. It was supposed to be calming to contemplate. Marlene sat in her chair and contemplated it-and was not calmed. The other two walls exhibited material that Marlene would not have hung had she been in charge, but Lou had insisted, more or less in return for the nice office and the suppression of any bitching about the dog. This material comprised her diplomas, framed photographs of Marlene with famous clients, and laminated newspaper articles about some of her more legal exploits-shootings, rescues, notable cases. Most clients thought it was impressive and a little scary. Marlene thought the wall a souvenir of a ridiculous and somewhat disgraceful life.

She ordered a tuna sandwich and a Coke and began work. VIP operations had something over 150 clients, scattered around the world, nearly all people with famous faces and subject to the less attractive aspects of fame. Several hundred employees were occupied in advising these people about their security, and in some cases actually guarding them. Marlene had discovered that the skills she had learned in parochial school were just those needed in big business: neatness, punctuality, disciplined focus, Christian forbearance, a good memory for small facts, a pleasant mien, and a willingness to punish transgressions instantly and nearly without thought. She was good at the work. VIP ran like a clock. Marlene took no shit at all from the clientele, who seemed actually to enjoy being mildly abused; Marlene supposed that it was something of a relief from the interminable adulation that was their ordinary lot.

The morning passed into afternoon. Marlene read reports and project estimates, took and made calls, held meetings. She told her staff about the IPO meeting, as it touched on blabbing, and resisted with some irritation their attempts to wheedle more details out of her. In fact, she didn't have the details, having drawn roses instead of writing them down. There came a moment just before four when she was alone. She told her secretary to hold calls and to order a company car and driver, locked the office door, and opened a closet. She slipped out of her skirt and heels and into a baggy orange coverall that had CIAMPI amp; SONS PLUMBING printed on the back in square white letters. Over that she donned a yellow slicker with traffic glo-strips on the back. She put her feet into rubber knee boots, tied her hair into a red bandanna, and slapped a white hard hat on her head. From the closet shelf she took a clipboard heavy with greasy forms and a four-cell flashlight.

"I'll be at Kelsie Solette's apartment," she told her secretary.

"Are you going to be in her show?" said the young woman, eyeing the outfit. "I thought that was beads and fringes and piercing."

"No, but after I get done there, I figured I would hang around a construction site and talk trash at guys walking by."

"A lot of body insults, I hope," said the secretary, a plump woman. Marlene walked out, making a disgusting noise with her mouth in reply.

The rock star Kelsie Solette lived in the Daumier, a Fifth Avenue hotel that had recently been turned into condos buyable for something like a million dollars a room. Marlene had the driver drop her off a block away from the entrance, to get some rain on her outfit. She entered through the service entrance on Fifty-eighth and rode the service elevator to the seventeenth floor. No one stopped her or asked what she was doing there. At the door marked 1702, she knocked, waited. The door clicked and opened wide; a pretty young man with long hair, a scruffy beard, ragged jeans, and a black Tainted Patties T-shirt stood in the doorway. Tainted Patties was the name of Ms. Solette's band, Marlene recalled. She waved her clipboard. "Gas company." The young man registered Marlene, assessed her as a nonentity, and turned away, leaving the door open. Marlene entered the apartment and followed the youth into the living room.

It was decorated in the bland but heavy style that newly rich people buy from fashionable decorators: huge, cold, promo paintings, oversize furniture done in expensive fabrics, large, complex Italianate floor lamps, "collector" pieces-a Shaker sideboard, a Louis XIV breakfront in antique white. The living room was dominated by a huge entertainment center consisting of a TV half the size of a highway billboard, a high, black rack of stereo equipment with speakers as tall as a man and thin as a deck of cards. The Tainted Patty sat on a couch in front of the TV and began thumbing the remote.

"Where's Ms. Solette?" Marlene asked.

A jerk of the head. "Bedroom."

"Peter Filson around?"

"Somewhere, I guess. I don't know." Flick. Flick.

Marlene went through a dining room, where the remains of a takeout feast from the previous evening stood congealing on a long mahogany table, and into the kitchen.

There she found a large man fussing with a coffeemaker. He had a low brow, from which arose a profusion of oily black curls that descended aft to his neckline. He had on a black silk shirt, which was open, showing a well-cut bodybuilder's chest and abdomen, black slacks, and black Nike sneakers.

"You Peter Filson?"

"Yo. Hey, you know how to work this thing?"

"You're missing a part. The thing that holds the filter."

"Maid didn't come in today. I don't know what the hell I'm doing here." He abandoned the project. "I'll call out."

"Mr. Filson, do you know who I am?"

The man looked at her dimly. "Power company?"

"I'm Marlene Ciampi." Nothing. "Osborne International? Security? We've been trying to get in touch with you."

Light, though flickering. "Oh! Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry. She wanted you to, you know, check out the system, like because of that guy, and she's been getting more of these letters."

"Uh-huh. Mr. Filson…"

"Hey, call me Pete. Listen, can I just call up for coffee? We got in at like five this morning."

"Be my guest, Pete."

After the call Filson said, "So, like, what do you guys do? I mean Kelsie's already got me, so…"

"Pete, how do you know who I am?"

"How do I…?"

"Yeah, you're standing here talking to a woman in a jumpsuit and a hard hat who says she's with a big security agency. I haven't shown you any ID. I just walked in here, unannounced. That kid in the living room let me in."

"Yeah, Billy the drummer."

"So I could be anyone."

Filson frowned now. "They're supposed to check everyone downstairs and call up."

"Right, Pete, but they didn't, because I came in through the service entrance. I just pounded on the door there and a janitor let me in." Marlene was starting to sweat a little because the apartment was overheated, and she always found the labor of conversing with extremely stupid people more exhausting than violent exercise. She took off her hard hat and slicker and placed them on a counter along with her clipboard.

After a moment's puzzled frowning, the man said, "Well, yeah, because you got that stuff on. He thought you were from Con Ed or whatever."

Marlene stared at him. "That's great, Pete. Look, is Kelsie up?"

"Yeah, I heard her yelling at the dog. You want to see her?"

"I do." Marlene left the kitchen, and he called after her, "Hey, I ordered you some coffee, too, and like Danish and stuff?"

The bedroom was large and dim and smelled strongly of stale perfume, marijuana, and tobacco. A king-size four-poster bed was on one wall, and in it sat the star, stroking a Lhasa apso dog, smoking, and watching a large-screen television with the sound off. The dog started yapping when Marlene entered.

"Oh, shut the fuck up, Jeepers!" Kelsie Solette cried. The dog, undeterred, wriggled from her arms, dropped off the bed, and prepared to defend her territory. "Who the hell are you?"

Kelsie Solette had a pinched hillbilly face, saved from indistinction by enormous cornflower eyes. The thick mascara of last night smudged her pasty cheeks, and her thin blond hair was arranged in gelled spikes, her trademark look. She sported a dozen or so earrings, a nose ring with a three-carat canary diamond in it, and a row of pearls stuck through her left eyebrow. She was wearing a black T-shirt with iridescent sequins sewn on it in a swirling pattern.

"I'm Marlene Ciampi."

This took a few seconds to register. "Oh, yeah. The security lady. Cool. That's a whacked look. Where'd you get the outfit?"

"From my father. He's a plumber. Look, Ms. Solette-"

"Kelsie."

"-Kelsie, I've just been talking to your bodyguard-"

"Yeah, Pete's great, isn't he?"

"Well, actually, no, not as a bodyguard he isn't. I just walked in here on the strength of dressing like a utility worker. You basically have no security at all. Jimmy Coleman could walk in here anytime and slit your throat."

"He's in jail," said the singer nervously. "Isn't he?"

"Is he? I heard he went to Rikers on a 240.30, agg harassment two. That's an A misdemeanor. When was that? Four months ago? He could be walking any day. He'll be out and he'll be pissed off, unless you think he's forgotten you. And at least we know about him. I'm more worried about the ones we don't know about. The letters."

Marlene sat down on the edge of the bed. The dog, which had been yapping continuously, a steady, idiotic, nerve-scraping noise, now decided to bite Marlene on the ankle. She trod delicately on its little paw. It yelped and ran under the bed, and then the two of them had to get under the bed and chivy the creature out and calm it, or actually Kelsie did the calming while Marlene sat and tried to control her irritation.

When quiet had been restored, Marlene said, "Look, Kelsie, your manager called us for a threat assessment. We did the assessment and sent it in. No response. Have you read it?"

"No, man. Petey handles that end."

"Kelsie, I'm sorry, but Petey can just about handle ordering coffee. And maybe he can pick you up and get you through a crowd at a club, and scare off a drunk trying to hit on you. But you're under at least one serious stalking threat, and you need serious protection."

"Oh, shit, man! Pete's been with me since the day."

"Fine, keep him around. My point is you need a pro in here. I could have someone assigned today, write up a plan, staff you up…" Marlene stopped. Solette was shaking her head.

"I don't know. You mean like a stranger? Being here all the time?"

"Well, yeah…"

"Uh-huh. No, that sucks. This is my home, you know? I don't want people I don't know hanging."

She's worried about the drugs and the sex, thought Marlene. People leaking stuff to the tabloids. "Our people are very well trained and completely confidential," Marlene said primly.

"I mean, if it was you, that would be different." Solette turned on her for the first time the famous smile, which, helped by a growly voice and a good deal of body language, had generated a sheaf of platinum records and a megahit movie.

Marlene's smile in return was unenthusiastic. "Sorry, I don't do that kind of work anymore. You're a couple of years late."

Solette leaned forward on the bed. "You used to, I heard. You shot a bunch of creeps."

"I did. I gave it up."

"Why? I'd love to shoot Coleman."

"You might think that," said Marlene, "but, believe me, girl, it's not like in the movies. At least it wasn't for me. And eventually I screwed up, and a woman got killed. So I hung up the gun." She waited for this to be absorbed and then added, "Meanwhile, what are we going to do about your problem?"

A buzzer sounded in the apartment. Marlene said, "That's your coffee. Or some nut, one."

Solette was chewing her finger. Now she looked about twelve. "Now you got me all freaked. I have to think about this, talk to people…"

Marlene made the usual arguments at this point, but she could see that they were not biting into the stubbornness that was often associated with the sort of determination that made stars. At last she rose, pulled a card case from her packet, and left it on the dresser. "No problem. There's my private number. You call me anytime." Marlene extended her hand, and the singer took it in one that was bed-warm and unpleasantly moist at the fingertips. Marlene left then, declining the coffee and Danish offered by the feckless bodyguard, feeling vaguely stupid and wrong-footed. The moronic disguise! What was she doing running security checks? She had a dozen people to do things like that. She suppressed a familiar irritation, familiar to people who do work that they are good at and find profitable, but do not truly love.

After Lucy Karp left the settlement at the rail yards, she walked to Holy Redeemer and helped prepare and serve the evening meal. She did this once or twice a week. Formerly, she did the same service at Old St. Patrick's on Mulberry, but she thought they needed her more at HR. The clients were lower on the food chain than the ones at St. Pat's, many of whom had actual homes. Redeemer picked up most of the people who used to live in Penn Station and who now clung precariously to life in the shrinking zone of nongentrified Chelsea and the grates and doorways of the Midtown West Side.

Or so she told herself. As she prepped, stirred, served, she kept looking around, as if for something forgotten. This meal had netted forty or so people, mostly men, but a few women, now eating at half a dozen trestle tables. Paper tablecloths were on the tables and real dishes and cutlery and napkins and slightly wilted overage flowers. The nuns who ran the place believed that the main function of a soup kitchen was not soup per se, but civilization, something a lot harder for the homeless to obtain on the island of Manhattan than mere food. Lucy believed this, too, and acted the part of hostess, making conversation with the insulted and injured, exhibiting good table manners, and feeling, generally, like a complete fool. No one seemed to notice that she felt utterly unsuited to the work, a fraud. She was, she knew, not nearly as good as people believed her to be, was a wretched thing, in fact, selfish, a hypocrite.

What she really wanted to do, all the time, and exclusively, was study languages. She accepted helping the miserable as an obligation of her faith and envied the nuns who appeared to take positive joy in it. Envy was, of course, a sin; but pride was a worse one, and she knew she drooped with pride; it oozed disgustingly from every pore. Unique in the world, as everyone kept telling her. People at the lab, scientists visiting from all over, from Europe, Asia, astounded scholars, all wanted a chance to peer into her brain, a waiting list a yard long, as for a particle accelerator or a radio telescope; it held, they thought, the secret of language. No wonder it swelled a girl's head. A good thing, too, she was an ugly geek, or she would have become some monster of ego, like a rock star, cut off from God. But, no, the whole point was that this muttering, filthy derelict across from her was also unique, just as loved by God. Why couldn't she, even for one instant, pull her mind away from the boil of three dozen languages and the lure of the other three thousand, word and nuance, idiom and tone, and the bottomless mystery of grammar? And there he was.

Lucy felt her face color as it always did, and she was ashamed, as she always was, and turned away to refill a tray of bread from the bin in the kitchen. When she came back to the dining area, he was among the guys, talking it up, spreading light and laughter. She paused by the doorway to spy on him. Tall, nearly six feet, and thin, dressed in his winter costume, a cheap, fake-fleece denim jacket and jeans, and his red muffler and Broncos wool cap. Nothing special to look at, most people would have said-a bony, mobile face, a long nose, pink at the tip from the chill outside, dirty-blond, ear-length hair, and blue-gray eyes that made her want to wet her pants when he looked at her. And looking, she thought, as she always did, stupid, stupid, although that did not keep her from making calculations, seventeen minus twenty-six was… so when she was twenty-five, he'd be… no, stupid!

Lucy had never had a big crush before. She went to a girls' school; she didn't have a social life to speak of, a couple of close friends, all as geeky as she, a social status at school so low that people speaking to her at lunch had to be disinfected by trained technicians before they could speak to anyone else. The people she met up at the lab where she spent the rest of her spare time just wanted to talk about her Wernicke's Area or stem affixes in Old Slavonic.

David Grale. How often had her pen, poised to take down some flaccid fact in chemistry or American history, slid into those lovely characters and outlined them, made them 3-D, shadowed and crosshatched them, adorned them with vines and ivy, placed them in hearts, before she'd ripped the sheets into tiny, tiny pieces, as she quaked with shame! And did it again.

He was talking to a man called Airshaft-so-called because some malformation had placed two symmetrical, squarish dents in his temples-and with Ralphie and Desmondo, from the yards. As she stepped forward and put out the new bread, Ralphie caught sight of her and waved, and then David Grale looked up and smiled and motioned her over.

She smiled back in a controlled, sophisticated way and started to stroll casually over, whereupon a schizo sitting at the table she was passing jerked back his chair, tripping her, and she went headlong onto the floor. She was considering crawling under one of the tables and closing her eyes until everyone left, and later inventing a story about narcolepsy, when she felt a hand on her arm, and it was he helping her to her feet, a concerned look on his face.

"Are you okay?" Grale asked.

"Yeah, fine. My feet are too big." She laughed harshly, blushed crimson. Perfect.

He sat her down with the other men, leaned back in his chair, waved his hand elegantly, and called out, "Marcel? Another round of cognacs, if you please." And to Lucy: "The service here is terrible lately. You should have seen it in the old days. Champagne flowing like water, the glittering crowds, the true sweetness of life… all gone."

Lucy said, "Ah, yes, the baroness was saying much the same thing just the other day. The caille en sarcophage were overdone. As for the Kool-Aid… barely drinkable. And it's so crowded that no one comes here anymore. Sad, really."

"True. Still, the floor show remains amusing." Grale turned in his chair toward the kitchen doorway. "There's an indefinable appeal about a man carrying a bus box that makes you completely forget Fred Astaire. There's nothing in theater quite like it, don't you find?"

"Except two of them carrying a coffee urn."

Desmondo said, "You guys are nuts," and stood up. "I got to go help a guy put stuff out. You coming, Ralphie?"

Ralphie got up, too, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. They dumped their dirty dishes in a big rubber box and left, followed by Airshaft, who left his lying there. The diners drifted out of the hall. Lucy and Grale sat and talked quietly and inconsequentially, making small jokes and allowing many long silences. It was her favorite time in her entire present life that was not connected with linguistics. Then, as usual, Grale said he had to indulge his only vice, looking up in mock fear as he did so, bobbing his head, as if he expected a celestial censure. It was still dripping outside, so they leaned against the wall under the overhang of the basement entrance, looking out onto Twenty-eighth Street. He smoked, and she smoked to keep him company, although it was not a habit, and she did not really enjoy it after the first aromatic flare.

"So what's the language of the week, Lucy?"

"Gaelic."

"Say something in it."

"You're the most wonderful man in the whole world and I lust after you, body and soul, and may God forgive me," said Lucy in Gaelic.

"Wow! What does that mean?"

"If you don't shut the door, the cat will escape and eat the chickens."

He laughed. "And why Gaelic especially?"

"Oh, we're doing this big project with Harvard linguistics, and Berkeley, too. They want to take me sequentially through the whole Indo-European reach, from Ireland to modern India. They think it'll tell them something about linguistic affinities. Like the closer the languages, the shorter the time to learn, and also they'll be studying my brain in the MRI while I do it." She shrugged. "I sort of wanted to get more into African languages, but they're paying, so…"

A cloud had passed over his face. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Oh, sorry-a little distracted. Tell me more about this project."

"No, really… what's wrong?"

"Ernie Whalen. I'm starting to get a little concerned about him. Actually a lot concerned."

"Jingles? What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing, as far as I know. It's just that I haven't seen him in three days. He's not in his usual flops, and people don't recall having seen him. Not even Airshaft, and they usually hang with the same group. So…"

"You think something might have happened to him?"

Grale flicked away his cigarette, shook his head. "I don't know. It's a dangerous lifestyle. Funny. These guys, our guys-people think they're all the same, but they're just as different from each other as straight people. I mean except for the actual crazies. Desmondo's an entrepreneur. If he were white, and educated, and laid off the crack for a while, he'd be down in the Alley running a dot com."

"Ralphie would be vice president for public relations."

"Right. Real Ali would be a professor of comp lit at NYU," said Grale, laughing.

"What would Canman be? An artist? Or an engineer?"

Grale frowned. "Oh, Canman. You still hanging around with him?"

"I saw him today. He seemed worse than usual. Nasty."

"He's always nasty."

"Not like this. He's scared. I think it's the killer. He's thinking about leaving, going down to the tunnels."

"Is he?" Grale sighed. "Maybe he'll find peace there." A thin smile. "Sometimes it's hard to love them the way I should. I am further from perfection than I would wish."

"Oh, stop it! You do more than anyone else."

"But it's never enough. The poor you have always with you, always, always, always." He lit another cigarette. "Sorry. I'm tired. I just have walked ten miles today. I'm really worried about Jingles."

"What, you think…?"

"It's a possibility. This guy, whoever's doing it, he can't, you know, be a stranger, like those kids a couple of years back who were squirting lighter fluid and setting guys on fire. Nobody's seen any strangers around and, believe me, I've asked. I'm starting to think the worst."

"You mean it's one of the guys?"

Grale nodded. "It could be. And it can't be one of the nutcases either. If it were, they'd be walking around with blood all over them, holding the knife and talking to the Martians. No, this bastard is smart, and well-organized, with a grudge against the world and a place to hide. And he gets around, too. There's been one in Chelsea, one up in Clinton, and one under the old highway near the West Village. You're shaking your head, but you got to admit it's a possibility."

"It can't be Canman," said Lucy vehemently. She thought of the man in the paper house that afternoon, the look of fear and rage on his face, the long, shining, sharp blade in his hands.

"I know it's hard to believe someone you like would do horrible stuff like that," said Grale, "but I mean, face facts. You said yourself he was nervous. Maybe that's why."

She was about to protest, but as she looked in his face, she saw he had that look on, what she secretly called his St. Francis face: guileless, kind, humorous, utterly sweet. Irresistible.

"What should we do?" she blurted instead. "Not the cops…"

"No, of course not. I'll go find him and talk to him."

He doesn't like you, Lucy thought, but said only, "What if he goes into the tunnels?"

"Oh, that's okay," said Grale easily. "I know the tunnels. I have lots of pals in the tunnels. And look, don't worry. I can't believe he's the one either. But maybe he's scared because he saw something. I'll find out."