It was a new idea. Rob thought about it. "Are there any?"

"My very question to Gary."

"And Gary is?"

"Katie's dad, my brother-in-law. He's also the number three guy at the FBI office in Albany, New York."

"You know somebody everywhere, Ed. It's amazing."

"Well, my older sister deserves most of the credit for my acquaintance with Gary. He especially urged me to keep out of the Lady Luck Casino Royale, the least savory establishment on the boardwalk. It's a money-laundering operation for a Colombian drug cartel, and under investigation by New Jersey's Casino Control Commission. I think the Lady Luck has earned a visit from you. You want to fight crime? We fight crime."

With the flick of a button Edwin cut off Barbra in midcroon. He revved the Mazda's engine and tapped a rhythm on the steering wheel, humming and singing an old TV theme song: "Batman, Batman, Batman!" Rob leaned back in the bucket seat and laughed.

It was more than a three-hour drive to the Jersey shore, and Edwin insisted on taking time out for a proper dinner outside Wilmington. The autumn evening had closed in by the time they reached Atlantic City. The neon casino signs stained half the sky with their glow. As they drove through the tawdry tourist area looking for the motel Rob said, "And people come here for fun?"

"They say the beach can be nice. Not my cup of tea, though-too developed."

"It's not a place for kids." For Rob that was the ultimate condemnation.

Edwin had selected a motel from the AAA guidebook. It was too far from the casinos to be first class, a fact Rob entirely approved. The room had cable TV, two double beds, and an instant coffee machine in the John. "I'm beat,"

Edwin yawned. He slung his overnight bag onto a bed. "Early start tomorrow, okay?"

Perhaps because of the unaccustomed quiet-there were always noisy residents in the dorm at the Open Door Center- Rob slept deeply. He found himself in a perfectly familiar place: the basement of the house in Fairfax. He realized he was asleep and dreaming, but doing the weird stuff too. Somehow the inner domains were connected-not continuous, but hooked up in some ways. You learn more every day, Rob thought. Maybe this is the only way I can access my subconscious self. And that's why this is the basement. When I'm upstairs, I'm awake.

The silly symbolism delighted him, and he set out to enjoy it. To deliberately guide a dream along was a new experience, and this was a particularly friendly setting for it. He moseyed over to the furnace and had a look at the air filter. Maybe a new one next month. He admired the cross-brackets he had installed between the ceiling joists, to correct a sag in the dining room floor above. The sump pump seemed to be doing fine too.

The basement had never been livable because it was so low. Over by the sump pump Rob had to duck his head under the ceiling beams. Since he was six feet tall, that meant the floor would have to be lowered more than a foot to bring the basement up to code. Such a major renovation would have been a gross overimprovement to the Fairfax house. But this house is me, Rob realized. Here, I could do it. I could do anything.

He sat on a cobwebby old crate and considered this. All major home improvements are rooted in the basement, as Rob well knew. And there were things he didn't like about himself. Anyone who could think or do some of the things Rob had, only this year, could use some renovation. I could make myself into a happier person, a better person, he thought. The equivalent of installing ceramic tile flooring and a whirlpool tub.

Ah, but there was the problem. He would be a different person. It would be like letting Julianne railroad him into becoming President. Just as with real houses, any changes had to be carefully worked into the existing building.

He was sitting, chin on hand, staring at the floor and thinking all this, when he noticed the crack in the concrete foundation slab. Rob jumped up and fell to his knees to examine the place closely. It was a very straight deep crack. Here under the low place it was rather dark, but Rob traced the crack with his fingers. It turned a right angle, and then another. It was a trap door.

The flashlight, in Fairfax, hung on its own recharging unit near the dryer.

Rob fetched it and shone the beam on the door. There was no bolt-very dangerous in a house with kids! But there was a crude handle, just a loop of leather protruding from the crack. Rob grabbed it and pulled. If there's a sub-basement, then the sump pump shouldn't be on this level at all, he thought. The jerks who sold and installed that pump are going to hear about this!

The door rose easily on well-oiled hinges. The space beneath was utterly black, swallowing up the feeble flashlight beam. But how deep could it be?

Rob put the flashlight in his pocket, sat on the edge, and then hung by his hands. "Gosh, it goes down a ways," he said aloud, and dropped.

It was a very long ways, at least twenty feet. Rob landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle a little, on a coarse dirt floor. At least the space was dry. There was only the smell of damp, no standing water. When he pulled out the flashlight and pushed the button nothing happened. He must have broken the bulb when he came down.

"It wouldn'ta worked here anyway."

The hoarse whisper was electrifying. Rob's heart seemed to turn right over in his chest. He couldn't see anybody. Only a faint yellow light trickled down from the single light bulb in the basement above. He stood up with difficulty and gasped, "Who's there?"

"Behind you."

Rob whirled and half-fell backwards until his back hit a dirt wall. The space down here must be very small, only a deep slot or chute cut into the clay soil: an oubliette. When the speaker stepped forward into the light he was only an arm's length away. Rob recognized him instantly. He last saw that face glaring out of Courtenay MacQuie's bathroom mirror. This is only a dream, he said to himself. A nightmare. I'll wake up any minute. Still he had to bite his lip to keep from screaming.

"You think you're so smart," the tramp with the face of a madman said.

"I'll show you. I know something you don't."

"What? "Rob whispered.

The old Rob grinned at him, a grimace full of glee and hate behind the jungle of hair and beard. "I'm not gonna say. You'll have to go ask him."

Somehow this spiteful answer increased the horror fivefold. Rob's breath sobbed in his throat. Then he thought, the vicious bastard, he's doing this to me. Sure this is a dream, but it's also a vision. He is me-but I am him.

It's my power he's using to terrify me. Nothing can hurt me here. Here, I don't need a flashlight. "Light!" he commanded, and the light came, a cone of sunshine as if a skylight had been let into the basement ceiling.

Rob's eyes watered in the glare but he could see now a rusty cast-iron pipe running down one corner of the space here. Of course-the sump pump! He could have shouted with relief and joy. He scrambled, panting, to escape.

The pipe was six or eight inches in diameter, easy to climb. Rob was almost at the top when he suddenly woke. Edwin was drawing the curtains, and the dawn light poured in across Rob's face.

"If that didn't wake you I was going to turn on the TV," Edwin said. "No way I was going to touch you. Tell me that was just a nightmare, okay?"

Rob sat up, panting. "Oh my god, yes. How did you know?"

"I'm glad we're moving on this containment thing." Edwin spoke naturally, but Rob could see it was an effort. "You were right. It's getting dangerous. It looked like heat lightning, I guess, around your head and pillow. Saw it when I came out of the John, and it almost scared me spitless ... Tell you what. I always run before breakfast. You come too. We can go down the beach."

"All right." Rob flung the sweaty covers aside and stood up. The pain in his ankle was a surprise. He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed to look at it. The joint was only a little swollen. "Maybe I'll just walk, okay?"

"Sure-but how'd you do that? Was it last night?"

"I fell, just now. It was good you didn't touch me." He got up more carefully and tottered to the bathroom.

The tide was all the way out, uncovering a very wide beach of clammy gray sand. It was so early, nobody was around except for one girl with a Labrador retriever. The wintry wind whipped the waves into cat's paws, and the seagulls had to flap hard to make any headway. Rob turned north to walk into the wind, with the ocean on their right. He sucked in a deep cleansing breath. "If this doesn't blow the cobwebs away, nothing will."

"Cold, isn't it?" Edwin agreed. He wore a faded green warm-up suit. "Like it's blowing straight from the North Pole. Look, let's walk to those rocks there. Then I'll run. You can either wait, or walk on, or go back."

"Fine. How far do you go?"

"Oh, three or four miles. Just enough to keep the cardiovascular system rolling around nicely."

Rob smiled at his airy tone. "NASA will appreciate it."

Edwin laughed. "I sure hope you were getting weird just then. I don't want to be obvious."

They came to the rocks, and Edwin jogged on. Rob sat down to rest his ankle and watch Edwin recede up the beach. Rob's coat-the same old dark blue toggle coat, threadbare but thoroughly dry-cleaned now-hardly seemed to strain the wind. He shivered under its blast.

This has got to work, this blackjack stunt, he told himself. Otherwise I'll move to-to Saskatchewan, or Tierra del Fuego, someplace unpopulated. I will not put people in danger. He thought about total solitude. So many of his problems would fall away into unimportance, if only he didn't have to deal with other people. But becoming a hermit necessarily meant never seeing Julianne and the kids again. So Rob knew he had no choice. He had to try.

He got up and began to walk back to the motel.

They were finished with breakfast and ready to start by ten. Rob felt the first doubt when he saw Edwin's laptop computer. "Do you think they'll let you bring that into a casino, Ed?"

"Sure, why not? I'll just explain that I'm a postdoc gathering statistics for research."

It sounded reasonable to Rob, who had never done this before. It was still early enough that there was little traffic when they drove to the casino.

Atlantic City endured far more than its fair share of snack joints, T-shirt shops, and souvenir stands. Beyond the main streets the town seemed stunted and poor. All the juice of civic life was sucked up by the casinos. They dominated the boardwalk, huge gaudy establishments, the Trump Plaza and the Sands and Bally's Park Place, frosted with more neon than Rob thought possible. The Trump Taj had neon in the shape of a dome, the Trump Castle had neon outlining its turrets and parapets, while the Grand confined itself to awnings and arches picked out in lights.