Danny smiled at me, benevolent and amused, his eyes a little sad. It was the look you give a kid who believes his dog died because God wanted it that way.

"I love you, man," he finally said. "I envy your mind. I always have." Danny studied his reflection in his gleaming silver knife. "I wish I thought more like you, Kevin. When I came up with the name, I was thinking in terms of beyond the grave."

"Morbid, bro," I said. "As usual."

Danny shook his index finger at me. "But true." He stood. "We got time before the food gets here." He grabbed his wine. "Come upstairs. I'll give you a tour of the empire. Explain a little more."

Outside, only a few feet to the right of Santoro's, Danny unlocked a windowless metal door, first by punching a code into a keypad, then by turning three different keys in three separate locks. He led us up a brightly lit, narrow staircase carpeted in a deep maroon.

His front door opened into a high-ceilinged room with white walls and a gleaming blond wood floor. To our left was a small kitchen area, the walls and floor tiled in chessboard black and white. Stainless steel appliances shone like surgeons' equipment atop the granite counters. In the wall to our right a huge black pocket door sealed off Danny's bedroom. Seven cherubs carved in a panel of blood-red wood writhed in wicked, twisted contortions over the doorway.

"Something else, isn't it?" Danny said. "It was here when I moved in."

"I can't tell if they're fucking or fighting," I said. "It's disturbing."

Danny laughed. "That's what I love about it. I can't tell if that's agony or ecstasy on their faces, if they're in Heaven or Hell. Betcha they can't tell, either."

"Maybe they're in between," I said, "trying to get one way or the other."

I walked farther into the room, toward what I took to be Danny's workstation, a sprawling, patchwork construction of desks and shelves covered with monitors, hard drives, and an assortment of devices I didn't recognize. Danny followed me, hovering over my left shoulder.

The whirring and blinking hardware, no doubt expensive and complicated, impressed me. But it was the enormous painting hanging over the workstation that had caught my eye. It had to be ten feet tall. Twice, maybe three times the size of the original. I stood beneath it, awed and repulsed.

"Saturn," I said. "Devouring his young. Goya."

"I paid a fortune for it," Danny said. "Gave the artist, this girl I ran with for a while, a nice bonus, compensation for the two weeks of nightmares that painting gave her. It's funny. She dumped me right after she finished the painting."

I stared up into the inhuman, crazed blue eyes of a naked, muscle-roped wild man, his white hair flying, a small, headless figure clutched in his withered fist. The cannibal god's chin dripped with blood, the blood of his own children.

"It's monstrous," I said. "Why would you want that watching over you?"

"It reminds me not to be afraid," Danny said. "Fear. That's why Saturn murdered his own children. Fear of the future. Fear of the unknown. Frightened people are capable of awful things.

Believe me, I know. I used to be one of those people. I'm not anymore. He's not watching me.

I'm watching him. Caught in the act."

"I thought the problem with fear," I said, "was what it kept you from doing."

"A common misconception," Danny said. "A guy like bin Laden? Everyone thinks hatred motivates people like that. Or that he's so courageous because he takes on the American Zeus.

But that's all bullshit. Bin Laden's just another wannabe god hiding in a mountain cave.

"I don't care what he says on those tapes. He murders because he's afraid, of the future, of worlds and people he'll never understand and never be part of. We call them terrorists because they cause terror, but it oughta be because that's all they feel. The War on Terror? It should be the War of Terror. It's about who feels it more, them or us." He sat in his black leather office chair, turning in it to face me. "So there it is." He raised his hand. "Sorry for the lecture. As you can imagine, there's no talking to Al about this stuff. He's not much of a thinker. And I spend most of my time either with him or alone."

"No apology necessary. You wanna come guest lecture in my class?" I said, touching one of the hard drives. Its warm metal shell vibrated under my fingertips. "All this gear, all these ideas. Is this when you tell me you work for the CIA? That you're really fighting the War of Terror?"

"Nonsense," he said, turning in his chair. "The feds don't pay nearly enough."

Danny tapped his mouse and six different monitors flickered to life. "Stereos and baby monitors isn't all I do," Danny said. "Some of my work is more . . . complex."

All the images looked live. Two I recognized: the sidewalk in front of Santoro's and the hallway leading up to the apartment. The four others captured people's apartments, the screens blinking back and forth from living rooms to kitchens to bedrooms. On three of the screens nothing much happened. A baby slept in a crib, an older couple watched TV, a woman read in an easy chair, holding a glass of cold white wine. I could see the beads of condensation on the glass. Sudden motion on another screen caught my eye. I stared, trying to believe what I was seeing. The scene was shot in profile.

A naked woman, about forty or so, her bottle-blond hair tied back in a ponytail, perched on the edge of a bed giving a nude, standing man a vigorous blow job. Her enormous, obviously fake breasts quivered as her entire upper body pistoned up and down. The recipient of her efforts stood with his buttocks clenched and his fists pressed hard into his fleshy hips like Superman atop a skyscraper.

My brother's fucking with me, I thought. He's called up some Internet porn site as a joke. But the scene looked awful real.

"You want sound?" Danny asked, wiggling his fingers above the keyboard. "A close-up of those tits?"

I forced my eyes away from the screen. "No thanks. What is this? Who are these people?"

"I'll tell you who that woman isn't," Danny said, tapping his fingertip on the woman's thigh. Her legs needed a shave, but her hero didn't seem to mind. "She is not Superman's wife. She is, in fact, his sister-in-law. Her name is Denise. She's visiting from Red Hook. She and her husband just moved into a new condo of their own out there. They had Park Slope Chad, here, and his wife, Sharon, over to dinner just the other night."

I was deeply confused. "So, you're doing some kind of PI work on the side?" Chad dropped his head, his shoulders and ass started to shake. "Turn this shit off. Please."

"Sure thing," Danny said. "Every episode ends the same, anyway." He tapped some keys and the couple disappeared, replaced on the screen by an aerial map of Park Slope. One street featured a blinking red dot. "There's Chad's wife, Sharon. Same place, same time as always."

"Doing what?" I asked. I tried not to care, but part of me was fascinated. "These people, they don't know they're being watched, right?"

"Whadda you think?" Danny rocked back in his chair. "Sharon's pumping iron, in theory, at a women-only gym."

"In theory?"

Danny shrugged. "Rumor has it it's more of a singles club. Private lounges, fancy showers. You get the picture."

"I do." I tilted my chin at the screen. "I'm surprised you don't."

"I haven't figured out whether it's worth anything to me." Danny checked his watch. "Time for steak. We better get back downstairs."

"So wait," I said. "Denise's husband, he hired you to catch her in the act with Chad?"

"Nope." Danny powered down his monitors. "You know where they live? Sharon and Chad? In Grandpa O'Malley's old brownstone."

"You're kidding."

"I shit you not," Danny said. "It's the same building. Tell you what else, when Santoro drops whatever he's got planned on Chad and Sharon and their marriage implodes? I'm gonna snatch that building up. Mom grew up in that place. It oughta be in a respectable family, not with those cretins."

"I thought you couldn't afford to walk the street around here."

Danny stood, patted my shoulder. "I got some things working."

He led me out of the apartment, speaking over his shoulder as we walked down the stairs. "You see what I mean about fear and awful things? Those sad, terrible people? Disgraceful. If they would show some nerve and tell each other how they really felt, what they really wanted, they wouldn't have to shame themselves. They might not lose that beautiful house."

"Maybe that's part of the excitement," I said as we headed down the stairs. "The risk of losing everything, the thrill of breaking the rules, of maybe getting caught."

"Yeah, sure," Danny scoffed. "That's why I became a junkie. For the excitement of losing everything from my shoes to my heartbeat. There's no risk, no thrill in cowardice. If Chad's wife walked in on that blow job, he'd drop a turd right there on the bedroom floor." He opened the door out onto the Brooklyn night. "You wanna really walk the line? Try telling the truth."

NOT THIRTY SECONDS AFTER we sat back down, a blank-faced waiter arrived at our table, a huge plate in each hand. After setting down the steaks, he refilled our wineglasses, generously overpouring the deep purple pinot noir. My steak, a porterhouse, was enormous and served blood-rare, exactly the way I liked it. It steamed in the center of its bone-white platter in a pool of its own hot blood.

"You gonna eat that?" Danny asked, already chewing. "Or stare at it all night?"

"This thing is a miracle," I said, picking up my knife and fork. "I hate to defile it."

"Then send it back. We'll save it for Al. He's got no problem defiling things."

I set my silverware back down, plucked a warm roll from the basket. It steamed when I broke it open. I set both halves on the edge of my plate. I had to ask. "What was that? Upstairs."

Danny took a big gulp of wine before he spoke. "Look, I had some help getting back on my feet after rehab. I'm not exactly qualified for straight work, you know?" He waved his knife over the dining room. "Santoro, who owns this place, he's a man of varied interests, business and otherwise. In this neighborhood and beyond. He's a man of considerable . . . influence. Reach.

Much of that influence comes through information."

"Which you gather by spying on people," I said. "Jesus, Danny."

"I help a little. Slip in an extra camera here or there on a job, when he asks. Watch who he tells me to watch."

I kneaded my fingertips into my temples. "Danny, this is fucked up. You steal people's secrets."

"What? Nobody's watching you?" Danny said. "Every store, bar, bank, and restaurant has cameras. Every dressing room, tollbooth, gas station, ATM, and half the intersections you drive through. Fucking Starbucks is filled with cameras. You probably got them at school. Most of your life is lived in front of a camera, Kev. And do you really know when you're being watched and when you're not? If you ask, will they turn the cameras off for you? And you, you're just goin' about your all-American business. It's a violation. Illegal search and seizure, that's like, what, amendment two? Three? You taught me that."

"But that's what you do. Watch people that don't know it."

"No, it's not. People who live outside normal society surrender its protection." Danny gulped his wine. The waiter floated over and refilled his glass. "I promise you, everyone I watch is into Santoro for something. I don't waste my time peering into the lives of innocents. I got respect for people."

"That lady? Those old people?"

"They look innocent enough," Danny said, "but not one of them is." He tipped his knife toward me. "Nobody is. That's why they need to be watched." He slid a huge slice of steak into his mouth. Blood ran down his chin. "Besides, the pay is extraordinary. Cash. Tax-free."

"Fuck that," I said. "It's gross and it's gotta be illegal."

"I never said it wasn't either of those things," Danny said. "But after you've been where I have, seen what I've seen, those words don't mean a whole lot anymore. No offense, Kev, but school's out." He tapped the point of his knife on the edge of my plate. "Now eat that glorious steak before it gets cold. You can worry about the ethics of it later."

WE WALKED OVER TO the park after dinner; both of us had eaten too much and we didn't get very far, nor did we talk much. I didn't know what to say. What could I tell Danny about what he was doing that he didn't already know? That Mom and Dad wouldn't like it? That I'd tell? Those threats had never worked before; they wouldn't work now. I considered threatening to not see him again, not until he got away from Santoro, but it would have been empty and Danny would know that as sure as I did.

We sat on a bench, on the street side of the stone wall bordering the park. The street was quiet. I tried shoving aside what Danny had told and shown me, to not let it ruin the evening. If I was going to help him, I had to hang on to him. I threw one arm over the back of the bench and gazed down the road at the columned facade of the public library.

I had good memories of our grandfather taking us there when we were young. We walked over together, the three of us leaving Dad asleep on the couch and Mom and Grandma snapping green beans in the kitchen, Danny and me throwing acorns at each other the whole way. But once we entered the library, the foolishness ceased. Grandpa insisted on reverence, even more than at church. The library was Grandpa's cathedral.

Inside, Danny usually grabbed a random book and snuck off to nap on one of the leather couches. He always woke up with a red blotch on his cheek, like he'd been slapped. I disappeared into the stacks, wandering from shelf to shelf, searching for any book that fed my most recent obsession. In grammar school I began with dinosaurs, then moved to whales then sharks and then on to the ocean herself. In junior high, I turned to Egypt, Rome, Greece and Sparta, the empire of the Moors. To the barbarians whose names rolled off my tongue like an ancient spell: Celts, Gauls, and Visigoths. I absorbed the Inca, the Maya, and the Aztecs. I imagined windswept African deserts, or emerald European valleys, or dark, wet South American rain forests where I surveyed a long-hidden ruin. In high school, I discovered America and it stuck.

The children's section bored me. The librarian arched her eyebrows as my grandfather checked out the adult books on my favorite subjects. I could tell he was proud of me. I had an exploratory mind, he said. As we checked out, Danny stood off to the side, rubbing his red cheek and yawning.

"I miss that library," I said.

"Do you?" Danny asked. "I got so sick of it. The same shit every Sunday, church and the library.

I couldn't stand it."

"I miss it," I said. "I loved it in there." I thought about work. I hadn't even read a new book about American history, from a library or anywhere else, in a couple of years. Somewhere along the line, long before Whitestone had gotten on my case, I'd just lost interest.

"Come back over to Brooklyn one day," Danny said. "On a Sunday, even. I'll take you there."

He smiled. "I never even notice it and I'm on this street all the time."

"I'd like that, but it's tough getting here without a car," I said. "It takes forever."

"I'll have Al drive you over," Danny said. "We'll get a pizza after." He leaned forward, his eyes trained on his shoe tops. "I'll tell you what, though. I probably slept better in that library than I ever did at home." He looked up at me. "There's something I want to talk to you about. I need help with something."

I braced myself. "Anything."

"You're the only one around that'll understand." He wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingers. "My nightmares are back. They came back soon as I cleaned up again."

I blew out a long breath I hadn't known I was holding, running my fingers through my hair.

Danny's constant nightmares had plagued him his whole life. As a child, he could go hardly two weeks without one. At least in my mind, the dreams played a big part in his turning to drugs.

They were the only answer. It was his best solution, to sleep while he was awake. Sleep though the night was about the only thing I could do that Danny couldn't.

When the nightmares came, he awoke sweating, gasping, and falling out of bed. They'd leave him jumping at the slightest sound and afraid of everyone and everything. Nothing Mom and Dad tried, guidance counselors, talking to friendly doctors, sleeping pills, nothing helped him.

The only thing that settled him was talking through them with me.

I never asked him questions, never wanted him to feel crazy or guilty for something so obviously beyond his control. Our talks never stopped the dreams from coming, but they helped get him through the day after. I wished I could do more, but was pleased to help even a little bit.

Sitting with him on that bench, I again felt guilty for leaving him alone for those three years. In my brain, I knew it was stupid. He had walked away from me. When his heart stopped, he was living under a bridge. How would I have ever found him? But the thoughts in my brain did nothing for the cold hole in my gut. I reached for the only answer I had, pushing aside my worries about his career in voyeurism.

"Tell me," I said. "The most recent one." I stood and stretched. "Tell it to me walking. Like we used to. We'll go back to Santoro's. Pretend we're walking back to Grandpa's after the library."

Turning, Danny peered into the dark woods behind us, as if making sure there was no one, or nothing, behind us to overhear.

"Trust me," I said.

"Not where anyone can see us," Danny said, walking toward the park entrance.

Danny started his story as we passed under a stone bridge, where it was so dark I could only hear his breathing and his footsteps.

"A hospital," he said. "A hospital and children but not a normal hospital. No recovery rooms, no beds, no nurses' desks, or gift shops, or elevators even."

"Same as always."

"Pretty much. The white walls, the tile floors, the rusty stains from the leaking water pipes. The stains, they run from the ceiling to the floor and they're wet and red and spidery, like veins." He looked up into the shadowy leaves over our heads. "And the water is always running. I can hear it gurgling and hissing in the pipes." He spread his hands. "And there's one door. A huge, puke-green metal door, huge like for a giant. With one barred window, way up high, a yellow light glowing behind it. That's the window the doctors watch us through.

"But now, sometimes," Danny said, "and this is what's different, now I can see something through the window. A nose with big, black-rimmed glasses on it. I can see the glasses but not the eyes. And the doorknob turns and clicks, like they're making sure it's locked.

"There are children in the room with me. A big white room full of children. Filthy children, young-five, six, seven years old. They're everywhere, moaning and crying."

"Fucking awful," I said. Danny didn't hear me.

We passed under a light pole and I saw his eyes had glazed over. His jaw had gone slack. He was back in that room and he hadn't taken me with him.