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"I'm not. I swear!"

"Those are the terms. Take it or leave it."

For a moment it looked as if Schaffer might leave it. Then he shook his head.

"You're asking me to bet on a crap shoot—blindfolded. You hold all the aces."

"You're mixing metaphors, but you've got the picture."

"Aw, what the hell." Schaffer sighed and reached into his breast pocket. He handed an envelope across to Jack. "It's only money. Here. Take it."

Without hiding his reluctance, Jack tucked the envelope inside his shirt.

"When do you start?" Schaffer said.

Jack opened the door and stepped out of the Jag.

"Tomorrow night."

5

Jack started back to Manhattan, then remembered he was due to pick up his mail. And since he was already in Queens, why not?

He rented boxes in five mail drops—two in Manhattan, one in Hoboken, one in Brooklyn, and a large box in Astoria on Steinway Street. But he used that drop as a collection point only. Every two weeks his other drops bundled up his mail and sent it to Astoria. Every two weeks Jack hopped the R train and collected all his mail. An easy trip—the drop was only a couple of blocks from the subway stop.

He double-parked in front of the big, brightly-lit window of Carsman's Mail and Packaging Services and trotted inside. He'd chosen Carsman's because it was open twenty-four hours a day. The clerk behind the barred window at the rear barely looked up as he entered, but Jack kept his head turned anyway. He unlocked the box, scooped out the four manila envelopes inside, and was out the door and tooling down Steinway Street in Abe's truck in less than a minute.

In and out, showing up at all odd hours of the night, seeing no one, speaking to no one—the only way to fly.

As he drove he emptied the envelopes onto the seat beside him. At successive stop lights he sifted through the letters. Most were bills for the credit cards he carried under various identities. But one envelope addressed to John L. Tyleski caught his eye. Tyleski was one of his more recent noms de guerre. Jack didn't remember any mail for him before. He tore open the envelope.

Jack smiled. Because of John L. Tyleski's excellent credit record, a Maryland bank had preapproved him for a Visa card.

Damn nice of you people.

Credit cards…Jack hated them. Plastic money left a trail of electronic footprints, a detailed record of every purchase—books, theater tickets, clothing, plane tickets—a diagram of your lifestyle, a map of your existence. The very things he wanted most to avoid.

He'd held out as long as he could, but with each passing year it had become increasingly difficult to get by without them. A man with no credit cards raised eyebrows, and the last thing Jack wanted to attract was a second look. He'd found himself in an odd position: in order to remain invisible, he'd have to become a part of the national credit databases.

So he jumped into Plastic Moneyland with both feet. He now kept four credit card accounts running at once, each under a different name, each attached to a different mail drop. He paid his monthly bills promptly with USPS money orders. He could have used another money order service with equal anonymity, but the idea of using a wing of the very government he was hiding from appealed to him.

Early last year he'd added John L. Tyleski as an additional cardholder to the Amex account of John J. O'Mara.

Tyleski's record of payment since then had been so sterling that a competitor was offering him his own account.

"On behalf of Mr. Tyleski," Jack said, "I wish to thank you very much. We will sign him up first thing tomorrow."

Something deeply satisfying in the predictability of large financial organizations.

And in a few months, John J. O'Mara would request that John L. Tyleski's name be removed from his Amex account, leaving Tyleski as a free and independent entity in the Visa databank.

The timing was perfect. He'd been planning to visit Ernie tomorrow and start legitimizing a new identity anyway. He'd eventually attach that to the Tyleski Visa account.

He smiled as he paid the toll at the Midtown Tunnel. This was shaping up to be a busy week.

Salvatore Roma stood at the window of his suite on the top floor of the Clinton Regent Hotel and gazed at the blazing skyline.

6

He had been staying at the hotel since Monday, preparing for the SESOUP conference. A few of the attendees had arrived today to get in some sightseeing before the conference began. Tomorrow the rest would arrive, filling the hotel. Every room was booked by an attendee, just as he'd planned.

Anticipation bubbled through him, making him almost giddy. All the pieces were falling together perfectly. By this time tomorrow night, the building would be packed with those special, chosen people.

And then it would begin.

After endless waiting, after repeated reverses at the hands of lesser beings, his time had come at last. He'd earned his reward, paid for it with blood and lives—his own—and now he was due to collect. Past due.

All he needed were the proper tools. The people packing this building over the next few days would help provide those. After that, nothing could stop him. And he would grind to pulp anyone who got in his way.

Mine, he thought, gazing at the city and beyond. Mine at last.

THURSDAY

THE 1ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE EXPOSURE OF SECRET ORGANIZATIONS AND UNACKNOWLEDGED PHENOMENA

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

THURSDAY

Registration Desk Open: Noon-8:00 P.M.

Exhibits Open: Noon-8:00 P.M.

3:00-5:00 P.M. : Special Screening of the new independent film, We Are Not Alone

5:00-5:30 P.M.: Welcome Address—Prof. Salvatore Roma, founder of SESOUP

5:30-7:00 P.M.: Cocktail Reception—meet the panelists

9:00 P.M.-??? Films: The Late Great Planet Earth, Seven Days in May, The Day the Earth Stood Still

1

Jack had time, so he walked down to Midtown. It had rained last night as a front pushed through, and the temperature had dropped a good ten or twelve degrees below yesterday's. The breeze had a raw edge to it. Coats were back on, legs were hidden again. Spring seemed an empty dream—

He'd decided to dress like a Midtown tourist today, so he was wearing Nikes and a black-and-purple nylon warm-up over a Planet Hollywood T-shirt. The indispensable fanny pack completed the look. The nylon made an annoying rhythmic swishing sound as he quick-walked down Columbus, which magically became Ninth Avenue once he crossed Fifty-ninth Street. He paused to check out the trays of used paperbacks in the concrete plaza on the southeast corner of Fifty-seventh, then moved on. From there the avenue began its downward slope toward Hell's Kitchen.

At least that was what they used to call it. The presence of the Intrepid Museum and the Javits Convention Center had somewhat revitalized the area, but even so, real estate folks had found a neighborhood called Hell's Kitchen a tough sell. So they'd started calling it "Clinton"—not after the president, but the former governor whose carriage house was still around here somewhere, a leftover from the old, old days when the area was a summer retreat for Manhattan's wealthier folk.

Then the Irish moved in. When the tenements rose, people started calling it Hell's Kitchen. Italians and Greeks and Puerto Ricans followed, successive immigrant waves moving through the same apartments.

The buildings tended to average about five stories in height with brick fronts, some decorative, most just plain red clay, thinly veiled with a steel lace of fire escapes clinging to their faces. Most of the streets, sloping upward on his left and down to the Hudson on his right, were lined with budding trees—Jack had forgotten how many trees grew in Hell's Kitchen. Reminded him in some ways of his own neighborhood before the great gentrification of the eighties.