"Why don't you just buy him a d.a.m.n Xbox or something?" Buddha growled.

"What's an Xbox?" Princess asked excitedly.

"Thanks a lot, Buddha," the dark ma.s.s squeaked sarcastically. "Maybe your wife could give me some shopping tips. Like where to pick up a bargain, you know."

"Hey! That was low, man."

"Enough already," Cross snapped, calling a temporary truce in what he knew to be an endless war.

JUST BEFORE daybreak, the Shark Car backed into what was once a garage.

The gang elder's arm emerged from the shadows, a paper bag in his hand.

"Almost twenty G's," he said, very quietly.

"My share."

"I still don't see why you can't be more righteous about that, brother. I mean, I got to set up the whole scene for us to cash, am I telling the truth?"

"No," Buddha told him. "You pa.s.sed on that chance. I offered you, right? Just hold your hand steady and I'll do it for real. You know I can-you were there when I did it with Horton's cigarette a few years ago."

"A man died behind that."

" 'Behind that' was right. He wanted to stand behind Horton, make sure the game wasn't fixed. Not my fault."

"I ain't saying it was. Just saying like it was, man. A man should get paid for the risks he takes. I mean, Horton, he didn't get hit, but the boy still ain't right."

"I already gave you the chance to split the take. Standing offer. Next time, just hold up the card and I'll put a hole in it. Now, that would be fifty-fifty. But you wanted to play it safe. Think of it like buying insurance."

"What I need insurance for if you never miss?"

"Calms your nerves," Buddha said. "Ask Horton. But anytime you want to cancel the policy ..."

Five seconds of silence gave Buddha the answer he expected. The Shark Car slid away from the empty garage bay as silently as its namesake.

CROSS SAT in a working-cla.s.s living room, facing a man and his wife. On the mantelpiece was a large color photo of a young boy and his dog.

"I still can't believe they would do that. Our own government," the man said. He was in his early thirties, a man who had worked hard at hard jobs all his life. "I fought for them in the desert. I did everything they asked, every d.a.m.n time. And now I'm a cop. I spend every night riding around in parts of Chicago that people shouldn't even have to live in. If I'm not an American, who the h.e.l.l is?"

His wife leaned against him, as if the touch of her body would give him emotional support. She was a short, red-haired woman, a couple of years younger than her husband. Years ago, his high-school sweetheart. Once, she would have been called pretty, but recent events had aged her.

"It won't bring our Bobby back, Bill. It wouldn't change anything...."

"Yeah, it would. You know it would, Ginger. He has to pay for what he did. I just can't believe our own government is protecting a creature like him."

"Really?" Cross said, pointing at a small TV monitor he had brought with him. He pressed a b.u.t.ton, and tape started to roll. The patched-together montage was a review of the only known facts: Their son had been kidnapped. The child's body was found ten days later, carelessly dumped behind an abandoned factory which had outsourced all its production. The unmistakable marks of torture on the child's naked body turned the autopsy shots into the worst kind of kiddie p.o.r.n.

"Profilers" had contributed such a generalized portrait that it would fit at least 10 percent of the city's population. The local police had checked the s.e.x Offender Registry and found numerous individuals they wanted to talk to ... but more than half weren't at the addresses they had supplied.

What the monitor did not show was a detective standing before a uniformed patrolman. The detective would have been called handsome by anyone who failed to notice his ice-cold eyes. Even if his hands had not been scarred, even if his nose had not obviously been broken and reset several times, the detective's body-balance would have revealed him as a skilled martial artist to any true pract.i.tioner.

Nor did the monitor show that same detective later speaking across a table to a gentle-looking, well-dressed man. Or the detective smiling a cobra's grin, speaking with a faint Irish brogue as he told the man across from him, "Well, you know how the game is played. You should know by now. The more you put on this stack"-his hand touched a single piece of paper to his left-"the more we can take off this one." The stack of paper to the detective's right was about half a ream thick.

What the monitor did show was headline after headline, as members of an international ring trafficking in children-live and on film-were exposed, imprisoned, and, in one case, shot and killed when attempting to grab the arresting officer's weapon. Internal Affairs had cleared the officer after a thirty-minute investigation.

"You know what that slime got in exchange for informing on a whole bunch of others just like himself?" the man said to Cross. "Ten years. And, for a bonus, he won't even have to serve it in Protective Custody. The feds changed his name and got him plastic surgery. He's doing time, but in what they call a Level One prison. He couldn't be in a safer place-n.o.body wants to be sent away from that country club to a real prison."

An old Labrador retriever limped into the living room. "Good boy, Duke," the man crooned softly, patting the dog's silky head.

"He still grieves for Bobby," the woman said. "He still waits for him to come home from school. Every day."

"No. He knows, Ginger," the man said to her. "h.e.l.l, he took a bullet trying to protect him, didn't he?"

The man's mind saw only what he had been told by brother officers. As the kidnapper tried to haul the boy into a car, the Lab sprang at him, tearing at the abductor's flesh before a bullet made him drop the bite. Wounded but undeterred, the Lab crawled after the fleeing car, not stopping until he collapsed from loss of blood.

"If it wasn't for that dog, we wouldn't have had a thing to go on," one CSI team member said to another as the Lab was being loaded into an ambulance.

"Duke had that filthy ... Huh! I was going to say 'animal,' but that's not right. Not fair. How could I even think something like that when Duke's an animal? I don't know what to call a ... thing like him, but Duke not only had a piece of his sleeve, he had his DNA all over his teeth. And it still took them over three weeks-"

"Bobby was ... gone right away, honey," his wife said, patting her husband's hand. "It wouldn't have mattered."

"Matters to me," her husband managed to say before the tears came.

A cheek muscle jumped in Cross's otherwise flat face. Something was clicking inside his criminal mind, but he wasn't sure what it was ... yet.

He patiently waited for the husband to regain his composure.

"That maggot's safe," the husband finally said to Cross. "I'm sorry we wasted your time. I don't even know why McNamara gave me a number for you. But everyone on the force knows Mike Mac's the best cop there is. And that he knows those ... kind of people. But even he doesn't know what name the feds gave Bobby's killer. Or where they've got him stashed.

"Besides, how could you get to him in a prison like that? Stateville, sure-you can get a man done for a couple of cell phones. But in a luxury palace where they'll kick you all the way down to Supermax if you screw up ..."

The man got to his feet and offered his hand for Cross to shake. "I don't expect you to pull it off. I get that. Mike Mac told me the deal: no promises. But if you ever do find out who he is now, just tell me. Get me a mug shot. I'll wait. After all, it's only ten years."

His laugh was bitter enough to make acid taste like honey.

"You won't have to," Cross told him.

"Won't have to ... what?"

"Wait," Cross said, turning to leave.

"YOU ARE certain of this?" The speaker was Corsican, an old man immaculately dressed but without a trace of flash to his perfectly tailored dark suit, worn over a white silk shirt with a black tie. A funeral outfit.

He was seated at a table for two inside Red 71, facing Cross. A lifetime of survival had taught the old man a great deal. He looked into the eyes of the man so physically close to him, but all he could see reflected in the irises of those eyes was the message that, whoever you might be, life-your life-meant nothing to him.

Whoever pays him first, the old man thought to himself. Aloud, he said: "There was little time, unfortunately. How such filth could have learned ... Ah, it is not important, n'est-ce pas? But know this: he is hated by many. I will not lie. Some hated him for what he was, but others, they actually did business with him. And now they rot in prison. In most cases, this hatred would be an advantage. But it was because this creature is so hated that he is now so protected."

"I know."

"And yet you-? Ah, that, too, it is of no importance. I am an old man. My mind rambles. Pardonnez-moi."

Cross's only response was to light a cigarette.

"How much will you require as an advance?"

"Not how I work. The total gets deposited. You know with who. When the job is done, the money gets released to me. I don't get it done, it gets returned to you. Every dime."

"We have a contract," the old man said. He did not offer to shake hands.

AT THE top of the stairs, the old man gave his two bodyguards a meaningful look. He had expected they might be searched. Instead, some kind of human beast had simply pointed a banana-clipped rifle at them. He held the rifle in one gigantic hand, as another might hold a pistol.

The monster gestured toward a pair of what might have once been sofas. His message was clear: Only the old man could go downstairs. His bodyguards could stand; they could sit; they could reach for whatever weapons they might be carrying-it was all the same to him.

The old man had long ago learned to mask fear with anger or disgust. "On s'ca.s.se! C'est une baraque de dingues!" he barked, deliberately moving out of that den of horrors before his bodyguards could bracket him properly. Sending the message that, once inside that place, you were unprotected, no matter who or what you brought with you.

As the three men walked through the mini junkyard surrounding Red 71, a piece of concertina wire twisted. Only the dogs reacted to the call-and-response mimic of Delta blues, which had morphed into "Chicago style" with the journey north and the switch from acoustic to electric. In that below-human harmonic, it sang: "Baraque de dingues."

There was a pause. Then: "Reste."

THE NEXT morning found Cross at the same table, sipping from a gla.s.s of vile-looking liquid as he read a newspaper headline: SERIAL KILLER IN MYSTERY SUICIDE!.

The name "Mark Robert Towers" appeared in the typescript beneath, cluttered with vague phrases such as "Perhaps the most prolific serial killer of all time." There was more, all generic versions of the same theme: authorities investigating, isolation-cell safety, speculation about "final remorse."

None even so much as hinted at any possibility that the suicide had been of the involuntary variety.

Perhaps the TV coverage ...

Cross stood up and walked over to the wooden counter which was always standing sentinel at the bottom of the stairs leading down to the poolroom. The elderly man behind the plank counter did not look up as Cross joined him and changed the channel on the TV set.

The announcer was saying: "Mark Robert Towers, who had recently confessed to a string of murders throughout the country, was found hanging in his special isolation cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Although rumors persist that Towers was himself a homicide victim, the authorities will only say that the matter is still under investigation. What is clear, however, is that Towers had no contact with other inmates, as numerous threats on his life had been received...."

Cross moved his thin lips in a gesture some might mistake for a smile.

CROSS ENTERED the bas.e.m.e.nt of a tenement. With the aid of a pencil flash held in his teeth, he quickly located the telephone junction box. He lightly touched each pair of connectors with a wandlike device held in one gloved hand. When the wand rewarded his efforts with a greenish glow, he attached a pair of alligator clips, both wired to a handheld phone.

When he heard a dial tone, Cross held a small tape recorder to the mouthpiece and pushed a b.u.t.ton. The recorder played a series of tones.

The number he just "dialed" rang.

"Allo," a man answered.

"C'est fini," the recorder's voice said. Unhurriedly, Cross disconnected the clips, pocketed everything, and left, as ghostlike as he had entered.

As he exited the building through the bas.e.m.e.nt door, the pa.s.senger-side window of the Shark Car sitting across the alleyway zipped its side window down and up again: All Clear.

IT WAS the same newsreader, on the same channel Cross had watched in Red 71. The broadcast was coming into the War Room. The blond man yelled over to Wanda, "Get me ..."

"Already on it," she replied.

AS THE members of Unit 3 evaluated the information that was pouring over their terminals about the serial killer's suicide-"Or was it murder?"-the Shark Car slipped through the city.

"He's here," Wanda said.

"Still wearing his special little coat?" Percy said, his voice heavy with suppressed anger.

"No searches," the blond man warned. "We're fully operational now."

"Fully rogue operational," Percy reminded him.

"We can do it," the blond man answered. "And once we bring ... whatever the h.e.l.l it is ... once we bring it in, we'll be properly acknowledged, don't worry about that."

"Maybe by the people you work for," Tiger replied. "Me, I'm not on your payroll-I've got my own scores to settle, remember?"

Tracker was silent. Why repeat that which has already been said?

INSIDE THE War Room, the blond man tried to project an air of a.s.surance. "We can make it happen."

"And you want me to take your word for it?" Cross responded, his face a blackboard immune to the blond man's chalk.

In the silence that followed, Cross reached into the depths of his coat. Before Percy could level the MAC-10 he instinctively pulled, Cross held up a pack of cigarettes.

"No smoking in here," Wanda told him, wishing she had made the statement the last time this cold man had paid them a visit-she knew it was much more difficult to reclaim territory once ceded.

"I didn't light it," Cross pointed out. "I just wanted to share tobacco." With that, he offered the pack to Tracker, who was seated behind him. Tracker carefully extracted a single cigarette before he tossed the pack over Cross's shoulder, confident that it would be caught.

"What the h.e.l.l was that all about?" Percy demanded.

"You would not understand," Tracker told him.

"Try me."

"You don't want that," Tracker said.

"You sure?" Percy fired back.

"Stop it!" Wanda snapped. "When this is all over, you-all of you-can do whatever you want, okay?"

"Yes, mistress," Tiger giggled.

CROSS, TRACKER, and Tiger were deep in conversation, with Percy occasionally contributing. The blond man was off somewhere with Wanda. If their absence was a source of concern to those remaining, it didn't show.

"You've got a complete record of their hits?" Cross asked.

"No way we could," Percy said, blunt-voiced. "It's not like they're subtle about who did the ones we know about, but we gotta figure there's bodies that haven't turned up yet. They're probably out making a bunch more while we're sitting here."

"What about that thing ... with the dogs. There's something there; I just can't pull it out," Tracker said.

Cross felt the current just released. "They ever kill cats?"