"Danny, I . . ."

My brother tapped his finger on the photo. I looked.

"That puddle there?" he said. "On the floor? That's piss. We go back, that stain is probably still there. They stuck his face in it." He moved his finger to touch one of the adults. "The motherfucker that hurt that kid? I bit his leg so hard I drew blood."

"Danny, what do want me to say? Jesus, this is gonna give me nightmares."

"Say you believe me."

"Of course I do," I said, one hand over my eyes. "Of course. I did when you took me to Bloodroot."

"Look at me when you say it. I need to know your heart is in it. And I'll know if it's not."

Above the paper all I saw was his eyes, the same eyes as the ones in the photo. No shame in them, only an animal fury barely restrained by bitter patience.

"They fed us each others' diseased shit to test their vaccines," Danny said. "Because it saved money on hypodermics. Shooting heroin was a step up for me."

"I believe you, Danny! I believe. Fucking Christ." I didn't want to hide my eyes again so I covered my ears. "Stop this."

"Funny, I often had the same thought." He wiggled the lighter at me until I took my hands away from my head. "Overpowering feeling, isn't it? Like hysteria, like madness. That need to make it all go away."

I grabbed the lighter from him and struck a flame. I held the fire to the bottom edge of the paper.

The flame raced in both directions for the corners, acrid chemical smoke rising into my eyes. But I couldn't look away from the photo. It didn't matter. It wasn't like I'd ever forget.

"See the black kid?" Danny said. "Third from the left? Look quick, before he's gone." I found him on the page. Fire crawled up his shins. "See the bandages on his hands? Infected fingers."

The flames climbed into his lap. "He wore the tips down to the bone trying to claw his way out of our room. The nurses poured alcohol on his hands. That was their idea of first aid. You wouldn't believe the screams."

The fire consumed the boy's ruined hands and scampered up his chest toward his throat. I looked up at my brother. The flames threw light and shadows across his face, racing for his fingertips.

He didn't seem to notice or care.

"It's over now, right?" I asked. "We're at the end of this?"

"In my sleep I still hear that boy," Danny said, "scratching at the walls." He tossed the last of the burning photo into the gutter, spit on it. "The end? It's gonna take a lot more than one little fire.

But don't you worry; we're gonna get there."

I heard the front door creak open. "Boys?" My mother. "Everything okay?"

"Outstanding," Danny said. "Sorry to make you wait. Kevin and I had some catching up to do."

He smiled at me and raised a finger to his lips. "Shhhhhhhhh."

EIGHTEEN.

DANNY AND I STOOD OUTSIDE WHITESTONE'S OFFICE DOOR AT half past midnight, dressed in the same clothes we'd worn to the Curran family reunion. Having spent half the night watching the history building from the trees, we knew we had almost an hour until any security guards made it back to this floor. Our only worry. Danny had seen no alarms or cameras on Whitestone's floor. Apparently, the history department of Richmond College ranked low on Al Qaeda's hit list. Everywhere else in the building, I was our excuse for being there.

With a gloved hand, Danny slipped a key into Whitestone's lock.

"Where'd you get that?" I asked.

"Remember that laser pointer? Digital technology, baby. It can do anything." Danny turned the key and opened the door. "God bless America."

"That brownstone's an expensive fucking building," I said. "And you know I got nothing to offer, moneywise."

Danny eased the door shut behind us. "Except for your fat payday from Santoro."

"Will that be enough?" I asked.

"Maybe," Danny said. "It's not like there's ever a shortage of work."

"Whoa, whoa . . ." I said.

"Listen, Santoro has his own reasons for those sex videos to hit the streets," Danny said. "I don't particularly care what they are. But when the dirt goes down, I know he'll give me a line on that place, first dibs."

I bared my teeth in a grimace. "So you haven't actually brought this up with Santoro."

"Of course not," Danny said. "You think I'm gonna ask him for a favor without a couple of solids already in my pocket?"

"Bavasi?"

Danny looked at me, exasperated. He sat at Whitestone's desk, twirling a silver disc on his finger. He turned his attention to the PC. "Trust me."

"What choice do I have?" I said.

He tapped the mouse. The computer awoke, washing Danny in the bluish light of the monitor.

"He'll have a password," I said.

Danny scoffed. "So? Passwords were obsolete ten years ago. They're an illusionary comfort that's sole purpose is to get you trusting the wrong people. Don't be fooled."

"Okay, what should I do?"

"Sit and stop waving that damn flashlight around," Danny said. "We're gonna have jets landing in the quad."

I plopped down into the same chair I'd occupied that afternoon. Danny fed the disc to the computer. He clapped his hands. "All right. This'll take about three minutes." He picked up the desk lamp, turning it over and pressing his finger into the underside of the base. "Audio? Done."

Okay, so he'd put a microphone there. That made sense. "The phone?"

"That mike'll hear both sides of any phone call in this room," Danny said, "plus every conversation. It doesn't listen as much as it absorbs. It's complicated."

Too complicated for my simple brain, I guessed, since Danny didn't offer any explanations.

Instead he steepled his fingers, fluttering the tips against one another. He hummed some song I knew but couldn't place, bobbing his head. I tapped my flashlight against my knee in time with Danny's head. Right before I asked about the song, the computer ejected Danny's disc. Danny waggled his tongue at me. "Lick it up/Liiiiiick it up," he sang. "Man, their middle period is totally underrated. That's a wrap. Drinks are on me." The head bob returned. "It ain't a crime to be good to yourself. "

Standing, Danny dropped the disc into his jacket pocket.

"You'll tell me," I said, "if there's anything about me on there?"

In truth, it was Kelsey I wanted to know about. Was she on next semester's schedule? Was her letter of resignation already in Whitestone's files? But I didn't ask. She'd tell me her decision about Chicago when she was ready.

We left the office and Danny locked the door behind us. He held up the key. "Want this?"

"I better not. I might use it."

We headed down the stairs, Danny leading the way, augmenting the red glow of the emergency exit signs with his flashlight.

"So you'll tell me, right?" I asked again. "If those files you copied say anything about me?

Anything that might come in handy the next time Whitestone's giving me shit?"

When we hit the bottom of the stairs, we hid the flashlights in my schoolbag and I unlocked the door with my faculty key. Outside, Danny tossed the key to Whitestone's office into a trash can.

We headed for the parking lot, having not yet encountered a single security guard.

"I didn't copy any files," Danny said. "I planted a spy program in his computer."

"Don't tell me we have to get in there again. You threw away the key."

"Whitestone's Internet hookup is wireless, right?"

I nodded. The whole campus had gone wireless.

"With that program in there," Danny said, "I can access everything he does, every file he has now or gets or creates in the future. All from my own computer in Brooklyn. I can e-mail his shit, print it, change it if I really wanted. Basically, I made his computer an extension of mine.

Think about what schedule you want for next semester."

I waited at the passenger-side door as Danny slipped into the driver's seat. He reached across the car and let me in.

"Goddamn," I said. "I didn't know that kind of shit even existed."

Danny started the car. "Dude, technology-wise, I'm on the same level as Israeli military intelligence. All it takes is cash and a certain morally casual attitude." He turned as he backed us out of the parking space. "You wanna know the best part?"

"Do I?"

"You do, you're like me, you have a deep appreciation for irony."

We headed down Campus Road, passing in and out of the glow of the streetlamps.

"All this fancy computer shit I use?" Danny said. "I order it off the Net. God bless America."

WHEN WE HIT THE EXPRESSWAY and headed north, I figured Danny was taking me home. That was fine with me; I didn't need him to keep his promise to buy drinks. What I really wanted to do was take a quick shower and call Kelsey. I needed some company; no, if I was going to be honest, I needed her company. But then Danny turned the wrong way at the Bay Street exit and I knew I'd have to wait. I protested weakly, telling Danny of my plans.

"Give me another hour," he said. "Maybe less. We gotta talk to Al real quick. He called when we were in the office."

I rolled my shoulders and looked out the window. I hoped Kelsey had told me the truth when she said not to worry about the time.

"So, loverboy, you get a drawer yet?" Danny asked. "C'mon, don't pout. We're having fun."

"A what?"

"A drawer in her dresser for your stuff," Danny said. "That's the next logical step."

"I haven't asked and she hasn't offered," I said. "It's weird. We seem to be doing everything backward."

"Doesn't matter," Danny said. "You pass through the drawer stage no matter what direction you come at it from. You gonna give her one?"

I said nothing, keeping my gaze fixed on the passing mix of sagging, tumbledown houses and gated, graffiti-stained storefronts.

"Has she even been to your place yet?" Danny asked. He sighed. "Of course not. That money's sitting in a shoe box under your bed, isn't it? Spend some, pretty the place up for her. Go out on a limb and buy a bed."

"And who's got a drawer set aside for you?" I asked.

"My line of work prohibits enduring romantic relationships," Danny said. "Trust issues." He slid the car into a parking space about a block and a half from the Cargo Cafe. "My clothes go from my back to the floor and on again before they wrinkle. No big deal. Couplehood ain't a priority for me right now." He put the car in park and turned to me. "Listen, bro. Your life is different now, live like it. Take advantage. What's the point of all this otherwise?"

"For the record, the money's not in a shoe box," I said, one hand on the door handle. "It's in a loafer in my closet. And couplehood wasn't on my list, either."

THANKFULLY, A LARGE, NOISY crowd filled the Cargo. I was feeling the need to disappear. The bar was three deep. Under the plate-glass windows along the front of the building, every booth brimmed with patrons sitting jammed shoulder to shoulder or propped up on one folded knee. The tables overflowed with spent napkins, sweaty pitchers of beer, plastic taco baskets, and metal pizza trays. Shirley Manson growled through old boxy speakers suspended in the ceiling corners. The chalkboard above the pool table had a long waiting list.

A waterfront bar with a great view of Manhattan, the Cargo had been my regular haunt when I'd first moved to the neighborhood, not long after I took the job at Richmond. With its proximity to the boat, and thereby Wall Street, the Village, and midtown, its long list of designer drafts and fruit-flavored vodkas, and its early alternative-heavy jukebox, the Cargo hosted a lot of Staten Islanders for whom thirty was a memory but who still saw forty as a curve in the road yet to appear.

The main attraction for me had been the better than average menu; the bar had for months been my kitchen. I'd liked both the food and the chance to float among people my age making something of themselves and their lives. Of course, at the end of the night I took a cab back to my dark apartment while they drove home in Explorers and Pilots back to houses they owned, many of them with husbands or wives. Any survey or census would've called them my peers but I spoke to very few of them.

Talking baseball with the head bartender, a guy who had introduced himself to me as John but who answered to Junior, constituted the limit to my socializing. I could see him behind the bar as Danny and I shuffled out of the way of the entrance.

John wouldn't talk about it but I'd heard stories that he'd mixed it up pretty good with the cops and the Mob over his father's murder and lived to tell about it. And that he'd stolen some hotshot lawyer's girl in the process. I hadn't put much stock in the stories when I heard them. They were too outlandish for a moody but otherwise pretty contented, normal person.

But as I watched John pour out a brace of martinis into chilled glasses, the stories didn't seem so unbelievable. Not because of any new information or perception I had of him, but because of what I'd done myself recently and still planned to do. I'd slipped without any real effort from a normal life into a criminal enterprise. Slipping back aboveground was going to be difficult, if not impossible. My stomach went cold when a woman seated in front of John asked for a splash more martini in her glass, holding her forefinger and thumb an inch apart.

While Danny scanned the crowd for Al, a redheaded waitress blew by, leaving us awash in a cloud of Secret, fried jalapenos, and burnt cheddar cheese. I couldn't place exactly when and why I'd stopped coming to the Cargo. The staff at least pretended to be friendly. The clientele hadn't deteriorated, nor had the prices gone up. Looking out the front windows at the Manhattan skyline, I realized my balcony did offer almost the same exact view. Maybe that had been the reason. A sad one if that was the case.

As if he'd felt Danny's eyes seeking him out, Al stood and gave a lazy wave from a corner of the bar. Danny nodded toward the courtyard entrance. I followed Danny and Al followed us. The three of us found an empty table in the far corner.

Al looked downright bad, his face pale and clammy, his eyes restless and vague. His hair sprung up in all directions. Instead of cologne, I smelled only alcohol. He'd been drinking pretty hard while he waited for us and he made no effort to disguise it. Danny ordered two Guinness from the frazzled waitress, the same redhead from inside. She hurried away.

"And another goddamn double Crown and Seven," Al yelled after her. "Ya dumb bitch. Can't you fucking count? There's three of us here." He turned to us, his mouth hanging open, his hands raised, as if he expected commiseration over the waitress's shoddy counting skills I turned away from him, my face burning with embarrassment. I hoped no one working that night recognized me. I sank lower in my seat. Al kept staring at Danny and me, sucking on the ice from his dead cocktail.

Danny sat back in his chair, his hands in the air. "You wanted this meet, Al. What's up?"

Al rolled his eyes and pushed up out of his chair, tottering as he stood. "Didn't realize I was wasting your precious fucking time. Never fucking mind."