He smiled, and I realized that my answer seemed to be enough-even if I didn't know what the hell the question was.

We spent the second day at the Animal Kingdom, riding rides, seeing parades, and touring the animal treks. Louis seemed to know more about the wildlife than the cast members who minded the Komodo dragon, naked mole rats, and fruit bats.

I bought him a stuffed bat at the gift shop, and Louis grinned his little gap-toothed grin.

"Thanks, Dad. You're awesome."

I felt a little spring in my step. Yep, I was about fifty pounds lighter. Funny how something so simple made me feel so great.

"Hey, Louis?" I asked.

"What?" answered my perfect son.

I gazed into his intelligent little face before answering, "Chicken butt."

Louis tilted his head to one side, and for a moment I thought he wouldn't get it. There wasn't any logic, rhyme, or reason to it. It was just funny to say that when someone said, "What?" At least, it had been when I was a kid.

Louis burst into a fit of giggles, and I realized that no matter how supersmart he was, we could both laugh about the business end of a chicken. I was having a great time.

We were just about to get on the Kali River Rapids when an overwhelming sense of familiarity hit me. There was something about the man running the ride that screamed in my head. But he didn't look like anyone I knew. Tall, muscular, and rugged-looking, the blond man looked exactly like the actor Daniel Craig. That was odd. Why would Daniel Craig be working there? In fact, I was feeling a little threatened by his attractiveness. I'd never had the "all-man" look. I was more the boyish rogue.

"Coney?" Gin gasped, and the rest of us turned to look at him.

He smiled. "I guess my own family doesn't recognize me." He finished shoving our backpacks into the middle tube so they wouldn't get wet.

My jaw dropped open as Paris said, "Hey, man! You look so different! How could we recognize you?"

Coney laughed and said, "Tell you what: I'll meet you at Wolfgang Puck's in Downtown Disney for dinner at eight." We barely had time to nod in agreement as he shoved our raft away. We were soaked by the very first wave, but all of us still had that look ofshock on our faces. I got water in my mouth; it was still open.

When we got off the ride he was gone.

Soaked to the skin, all ten of us kind of waddled back to the bus to the hotel. We managed to clean up and head out to Downtown Disney while Gin filled Diego and Todd in on our strangest relative.

"He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from an Ivy League school. And he's a carny," Liv explained.

I watched as Diego's eyebrows arched in surprise. It was true. In fact, the last time I saw Coney Island Bombay was at the family reunion last fall. His head was shaved bald, he had a beard, and he was covered in tattoos. In spite of the way he looked, Coney was a good guy. The carny lifestyle seemed to suit him. He traveled the country in a tricked-out RV, wealthy housewives fell all over him to satisfy their carny sex fantasies, and he wintered in Florida. In between all that, he read things by Jean-Paul Sartre, Nietzsche, and John Stuart Mill . . . just for fun.

In fact, he always reminded me of Doc Savage; supersmart, muscular frame, laid-back philosophical attitude, all that. Well, except for the assassin part. Doc always rehabilitated the criminals he caught. He wasn't big on the death penalty.

Upon entering Wolfgang Puck's, we found him immediately, sitting at a table in a blue silk shirt and tan linen slacks that made him look like he was about to order a martini shaken, not stirred. After we made introductions and were seated, Paris blurted out the big question.

"Dude! You look so different! What happened?" Coney leaned back, taking a very manly drink from his expensive scotch, and smiled.

"I'm kind of going through a new phase."

The waitress arrived with coloring books and crayons and took our drink orders.

"But the tattoos?" Liv asked.

"They were never real. Missi developed a special semipermanent ink that, with a certain solvent, could be erased from the skin completely. I'm kind of done with them. Taking a philosophical sabbatical here."

"At Disney World?" I asked, feeling a little like an idiot.

Coney smiled, and I thought what a handsome, self-assured man he was.

"It's what I know. I like it. I do this every now and then." He looked at the kids, then me. "So, you've changed a bit too."

I nodded. "Yeah. It was a surprise to me as well. But Louis is awesome." I realized I was grinning like an idiot. I was proud of him.

We talked for a long time, through dinner, dessert, and more drinks. Looking at the end of the table I could see that the kids were getting pretty tired. Diego and Todd noticed it too, because they volunteered to take them back to the hotel so that all of us cousins could hang out. Gin and Liv kissed their husbands and waved as they left.

"We should get out of here," Coney said, throwing a couple of crisp hundred dollar bills on the table. "How about a nightcap?"

Gin, Liv, Paris, Coney, and I headed across the bridge to Pleasure Island. We settled at a table in one of the clubs and continued talking. Then a bunch of songs from the eighties came on, and before we could respond Gin and Liv ran squealing to the dance floor.

"So, what brings you here?" Coney asked.

Paris popped another Mickey Mouse shaped pretzel into his mouth. "A job. From the Council."

We filled Coney in on everything. When we finished he leaned back in his chair and had another drink of his scotch.

"His name is Garth Stone, eh? Haven't met him yet. How are you going to approach it?"

Paris and I looked at each other and shrugged. "We kind of thought we were lucky just to get this far," Paris answered.

Coney looked toward the dance floor, where Gin and Liv were dancing. I followed his line of vision and was horrified to discover that all the moves I thought were cool in the eighties actually must have made me look like a spastic heron with rickets. "Karma Chameleon"

was playing, and I realized that at my fiftieth high school reunion, a bunch of ugly old people would be dancing to it and saying how timeless the music of our generation was. I shuddered.

"You said they don't know about the job?"

Coney nodded toward our sisters.

I shook my head. "Paris and I would be smoked if they knew. They think we're here to bond with the kids."

Actually, Paris and I had toyed with the idea of getting Gin and Liv involved. But no matter how we looked at it, it just seemed to be a really horrible idea.

"Here's what I know," Coney said to us once the waitress laid down a new round of alcohol. "You'll never find him on his day off.

The younger kids-interns-they run around the parks on their days off. I speak from some level of experience when I say that a thirty- or forty-something assassin won't do that. And since this zookeeper knew you were coming, Garth will be on the lookout.

I'd suggest you deal with the costume."

"The costume? What do you mean?" Parisasked, sipping his Manhattan. I guess I never really noticed before that he drank as if he were Angie Dickinson. Then I remembered he had a Pink Cadillac at dinner and decided I needed to talk to him about that later.

"I'd rig his costume to kill him," Coney suggested. "It's the only way I can think of to get the job done without doing it directly."

"How would you do it?" I asked.

Coney rubbed his chin. "I'd undo the lining of the neck on the headpiece and put about three wraps of det cord around the inside.

Install the detonator and attach the wireless device. Ensure that it's turned on, and then close it back up. Use your cell phone to trigger the explosion. If you do it right everything will happen inside the costume, and with a muffled pop he'll just fall over."

We looked at him, blinking like those toads that need their eyes to swallow.

"You've thought about doing this before, haven't you?" I asked.

Coney smiled. "Oh, only about a thousand times. Those costume guys can be real dicks to us ride jockeys."

Gin and Livjoi ned us, and we spent another couple of hours laughing about the family. It was a definite source of amusement.

The night ended with us getting a group photo of our heads superimposed on StarWars StarWars characters. Paris was Luke Skywalker, Coney was Han Solo, and I had to be Chewbacca. characters. Paris was Luke Skywalker, Coney was Han Solo, and I had to be Chewbacca. Huh. Huh. Maybe it was a metaphor for the way things were going. Maybe it was a metaphor for the way things were going.

After this there was only one assassin left to take out. The trip made me realize how important Leonie and family were to me. I was pretty confident the Council would give us a lot of time off. Five hits in less than one month was the stuff of legend to the Bombays. Then I could sort everything out. Yes, things were definitely looking up.

Chapter Twenty-three.

Male Muppet: "Mah nah mah nah." "Mah nah mah nah."

Female Muppets: "Doo doo, de doo doo!" "Doo doo, de doo doo!"

Male Muppet: "Mah nah mah nah." "Mah nah mah nah."

Female Muppets: "Doo doo doo doo!" "Doo doo doo doo!"

Male muppet: "Mah nah mah nah." "Mah nah mah nah."

Female Muppets: "Doo doo, de doo doo, de doo doo, de doo doo doo de doo doo doo doo doo!" "Doo doo, de doo doo, de doo doo, de doo doo doo de doo doo doo doo doo!"

-Sesame Street

Of course, things looked different in the cold light of morning than they had the night before. At least, this was what Paris and I thought as we stood in front of the costume department in the Magic Kingdom.

How did we find it? It wasn't easy. There were no maps to show the secret employee hideouts. And the slight hangover from the night before didn't really put Paris and me in the best mood. Eventually Paris managed to find a bribable cast member. The one-hundred-dollar bill and the elaborate story he gave Snow White about how he plannedto propose to his girlfriend by surprising her in costume helped.

The entrance to the costume warehouse was cleverly disguised as a wall and we weren't exactly sure where to find the door. We'd convinced the family to stop for a snack while Paris and I surveilled the place. After an eternity (do you know it is nearly impossible to eat a batch of french fries very, very slowly? I was so hungry I practically ate my own fingers in the process), the wall opened and Buzz Lightyear popped out. Within seconds he was mobbed by kids, and we had our answer.

Because we had no way of getting det cord, Coney volunteered to set us up. When we got back to our rooms that night, a comatose Louis slung over my shoulder, we found a Disney bag filled with everything we needed.

I nudged Louis awake, against his will, and handed him over to Todd with the lie that he wanted to sleep with their son, Woody.

Whether they bought it or not, Liv and her husband accepted my boy wordlessly and tucked the two kids in together.

Paris and I waited until we heard everyone in the adjoining rooms go to bed before slipping into our Mission Impossible Mission Impossible gear. We'd gotten too far to have Gin and Liv bust us just to borrow aspirin. gear. We'd gotten too far to have Gin and Liv bust us just to borrow aspirin.

As we sat there silently in the darkness feeling like idiots, my mind started to wander. Before this trip I'd never been to Disney World. Sure, I knew it was hailed as the happiest place on earth, but when the plane landed in Orlando, I had thought it would be just like any other theme park.

I was wrong-and I don't admit that very often. Something about the place from the minute we checked into our hotel told me to relax, have fun, that time didn't matter here.

The kids whooped and hollered, and we adults all seemed to have goofy grins on our faces. I started to think that for once, maybe the Bombay family could be like any other family. Maybe we could pretend we were normal people. What would that be like?

Of course, then I remembered that we weren't like any other family on vacation at Disney World. We came here with a purpose other than meeting Mickey Mouse. We came here to kill him.

There were two ways to handle the situation. The Magic Kingdom was technically shut down for the night, but we knew there was a whole crew of employees who worked through the night to scrape gum off the ground, weed the flowers, and basically make it look like there weren't forty thousand people there the day before. We could either disguise ourselvesas maintenance people or sneak in. I didn't want to work that hard-so we donned our ski masks and black clothes for the job.

Breaking into the Magic Kingdom isn't as easy as you might think. But I'd hardly be professionally responsible if I divulged their secrets, so suffice it to say that Paris and I made it into the park and to the warehouse undetected.

I truly admire the way Disney World operates. Paris and I had planned on being there for several hours. That's how it usually works.

We'd have to find the costume, confirm if and when Garth would be wearing it, and dodge staff.

That was why it was such a surprise to find a clipboard hanging from Mickey Mouse's suit listing Garth as the first one to wear it the next day. The clipboard confirmed he would be in Toontown. Damn. Damn. Disney should branch out into the assassination business. They could lure bad guys to the park and take them out and clean up afterward so no one would ever know. Maybe I should talk to Grandma about that-bring them on as a subcontractor. Disney should branch out into the assassination business. They could lure bad guys to the park and take them out and clean up afterward so no one would ever know. Maybe I should talk to Grandma about that-bring them on as a subcontractor.

"That was way too easy," Paris said quietly once we made it back to our room. He pulled off his stealth clothes and climbed into pajamas. I did a cartoon double take. Werethose sock monkeys on his jammies? How did I not notice this before? My amusement at all things Paris was starting to turn into concern.

"But maybe the Fates are cutting us some slack after the bear job," he added as he slid under the covers.

I ran my hands through my hair. "I hope so. I don't want to blow up the wrong guy tomorrow." I looked in the mirror with curiosity. My reflection told me my cool was slipping away.

My hair looked messy, not styled, and my eyes looked tired, not full of fun. This job was getting to me. And I couldn't wait for it to be over.

Paris rolled over in his bed. "We won't. It's all set. Then there's just one more." His breathing began to slow, and I realized he was asleep.

I also realized that I was bone-tired. Maybe I was getting too old for this shit. No No, I told myself, it's just having to kill so many people in so short a time. No one's ever had to do that before in the family it's just having to kill so many people in so short a time. No one's ever had to do that before in the family.

I'd never been the sort of guy who looked for answers in his life. To me, killing people was just something I was good at. I had no qualms about the assholes I took out. It helped that I knew they were inherently bad people. I slept okay at night.

Gin had had a run-in with her conscience when she hooked up with Diego. Taking down your bodyguard boyfriend's client will do that to you. Liv got off on taking out neo-conservatives. Paris didn't seem bothered.

Coney popped into my mind, and I thought that maybe the reason he was so drawn to philosophy was to find a way to make sense of it all. I never had much use for philosophy, unless it helped me score with some chick.

I rolled over and stared at the wall. This line of thought was stupid. Garth, Munch, Dutch, and Lowe were assassins. They didn't have the family tradition we had, and, as I'd learned with each of them, they were stone-cold killers, taking out innocent people. Hell, Garth had taken out a kid for profit! I hung on to that thought for a moment. They were killers.

But so was I. Christ Christ, I thought, I'm getting nowhere with this. Stop analyzing! Just do the job and get the hell out of Orlando. I'm getting nowhere with this. Stop analyzing! Just do the job and get the hell out of Orlando. One more job and our competition would be wiped out. One more job and our competition would be wiped out.

I thought about Coney and his pursuit of answers. Suddenly my shallowness didn't seem so stupid. Life in the Bombay family was definitely better if you didn't try to face all your demons-even if he was a cute rodent wearing red pants and a killer smile.