"Jeez, if it isn't you, it's Gia."

"I'm not telling you to quit. You're too good a customer. I'm telling you to get your money out of those fahkaktah fahkaktah gold coins and put it to work for you." gold coins and put it to work for you."

"You need a social security number to open a brokerage account, Abe."

"So? You've got all those false ident.i.ties, and I know some of them have social security numbers."

"Dead folks' numbers."

"Fine. You convert some of those ducats and Krugerrands into dollars. You use a dead man's number to open an account with my broker. You let him make trades for you. He makes you twenty percent a year."

"No thanks."

"Jack! How can you say no thanks to doubling your money in less than four years?"

"Because I'd have to pay taxes on those profits."

"Yes, but-".

"No buts. I'd have to. And sitting back and letting them take their cut is saying it's okay. And saying it's okay..."

Jack couldn't do that. Once he crossed that line, even under another ident.i.ty, he'd... belong. He'd have joined them. And they'd know him.

"But you wouldn't be saying okay. It'd be the fake guy with the dead man's Social Security number."

"Same thing, Abe."

Abe stared at him a moment, then sighed. "I don't understand you, Jack."

Jack smiled. "Yes, you do. And Parabellum just ejected another casing."

"Oy!"

As he watched Abe wipe the glob away, he said, "Any word on who might've done Benny?"

Abe shook his head. "Nothing. But if you should want my opinion, and I'm sure you do, I say it looks to me like Benny might've tried to set a match to the wrong building."

Jack had a sinking feeling he knew what building that might have been.

He remembered Alicia telling him how two people she'd hired to get involved in her will problems had wound up dead. Did Benny the Torch raise the tally to three?

Only one way to find out.

Alicia had just hung up with the hospital lab-no results yet on Hector's cultures, but the little guy was hanging in there despite more fever spikes;-when Raymond's voice came over the intercom. "That fellow named Jack to see you," he said. "He doesn't have an appointment but says it's important." A faint murmur in the background, then: "Check that-he says it's 'urgent.'"

Alicia's first instinct was to send him away. He'd blown her off two days ago, so as far as she was concerned, they had nothing left to talk about.

But the word "urgent" got to her. It wasn't one she'd a.s.sociate with Jack. If he said this was urgent, he probably meant it.

Oh, h.e.l.l. "Send him in."

A few seconds later, Jack slipped past the door and closed it behind him.

"Did you hire Benny the Torch?"

He hadn't sat down, hadn't even said h.e.l.lo. But the name "Benny" made Alicia disregard all that.

He knows! But how could he?

"What are you talking about?" was the. best her startled brain could come up with.

"He was found dead this morning. Someone burned him alive last night. Any connection between him and what you asked me to do?"

"Oh, no!" she gasped. "Not again!"

Jack dropped into the chair. "Okay. That answers my question."

She felt his stare as she fought a surge of guilty nausea.

That twitchy little man... burned alive...

Finally he said, "I thought you weren't going to go running off looking for somebody else. I thought you were going to think about it."

"I didn't have to look," she said. Her voice sounded dull and far away. She felt as if she were listening to herself from another room. "I already had his name. My G.o.d... I killed him..."

"You didn't kill him. But I think you may have a point about the short life span of people who get involved in this. Everyone but you. And that's what I don't understand."

"I do," she said, shaking herself and forcing herself to focus. "I read the will yesterday."

"About time. And it clears up all the mysteries?"

"No. Not by a long shot. But it does explain why I'm still alive."

Her mind flashed back to yesterday, and the crawling sensation as she read that man's words, as she tried to fathom what he'd been thinking when he'd drawn it up.

"Which is?"

"Thomas is not next in line for the house."

Jack's eyebrows lifted as he nodded slowly. "Very interesting. And who is?"

"Not who. What. Greenpeace."

"The nature folks?" He laughed. "The ones who sail around ramming whalers?"

"The same."

"No wonder your brother-"

"Half brother."

"Right. No wonder he's ticked. Your father'd rather give the house to an environmental group than him. The two of them must have had one h.e.l.l of a falling out somewhere along the way."

Alicia remembered the date on the will-only weeks before that man had died. Was that when he'd cut Thomas out-or had he always been out?

"I wouldn't know. As I told you, I've had no contact with either of them since I left for college." And wish it had remained that way And wish it had remained that way. "And as for that man being 'green'... that's almost laughable. I don't think he ever gave a single thought to the environment in his life. He had... other interests."

Jack frowned and leaned forward. "Then why did he-?"

"I have no idea. None of this makes any sense. The way things are worded... I don't know much about law, but I can't imagine this being a typical last will and testament. I mean, it's almost as if he expected this kind of violence in connection with the house."

"Why do you say that?"

Alicia leaned over and pulled the will from her shoulder bag. She had no trouble finding the pa.s.sage-she'd underlined it.

"Just listen to this: 'If Alicia dies before she can take possession of said house, or if she dies after she takes possession of said house, said house shall be deeded to the international environmental activist group known as Greenpeace with this message: This house holds the key that points the way to all you wish to achieve. Sell it and you lose everything you've worked for This house holds the key that points the way to all you wish to achieve. Sell it and you lose everything you've worked for.' " She slammed the doc.u.ment down on her desk. "Can you tell me what the h.e.l.l that's supposed to mean?"

"Can I see it?" Jack said, leaning forward.

Instinctively Alicia reached for the will, to grab it and put it away. She didn't want anyone knowing about her family. But she stopped herself. She had to trust someone, and Jack was all she had right now.

She pushed the will toward him. "Knock yourself out."

She felt her jaw clench as she watched Jack scan the page. She was on edge and knew it. Ready to take a bite out of somebody. She'd thought she was free of that man, but even from the grave he was managing to make a mess of her life.

"You know," Jack said, nodding, "this really does sound like he expected trouble." He looked up at her. "Your brother ever been jailed?"

"No."

"Drug problem? Violence?"

"Not that I know of." Thomas had problems, but not those.

Jack began flipping though the rest of the will. "Then why...?" He stopped and stared. "What's this? Poetry Poetry?"

"Yes! Can you believe it?"

Jack began reading. " 'Clay(ton) lies still, but blood's a rover.' "

"That's from Alfred Housman," she said. When he shot her a look, she added, "I looked it up."

"I only know John Houseman."

"The original reads 'Clay lies still.' He added the 't-o-n." lies still.' He added the 't-o-n."

"So what's this mean? That your bro-half brother is a 'rover?' He's a wanderer? Has a wandering eye? What?"

"I couldn't say." It had baffled her too.

"Wait," Jack said. "Here's another: 'Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?'"

"That's from someone named Robert Bridges. I looked up the poems to see if anything else in them helped, but found nothing."

"It's crazy."

"That's exactly what Thomas's lawyers are saying. They're using all this weirdness as evidence that he wasn't competent when he changed the will."

"And when did he do that?"

"According to the date there, shortly before he died."

"Well, whatever his state of mind, he was sure as h.e.l.l determined to see you got that house."

"I'm not so sure," she said. "It seems to me he wanted to keep it away from Thomas more than anything else."

"Can you think of anything important enough about that house that your half brother would kill for? What could your father have left behind that he wants so bad?"

"I don't know. I don't know Thomas. I can't explain him. I don't even want to try."

"All right, then," Jack said. "Your father. He seems to be at the root of all this. Who was Ronald Clayton? What did he do?"

Alicia closed her eyes and swallowed. He wanted her to talk about that man... who he was... what he did...

If you only knew...

Jack was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with Alicia-sitting so pale and silent on the other side of the desk-but then her eyes popped open and she began to talk.

"People called him brilliant," she said in a flat tone as she stared past Jack's shoulder, almost as if she were reading from a TelePrompter somewhere behind him. "His field was physics, and at various times in his life he was attached to the departments at Princeton, Columbia, and NYU, doing basic research. Somewhere in there he worked at Bell Labs and IBM. He followed the money. I suppose he did have a brilliant mind, but he was utterly ruthless: He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it and to h.e.l.l with anybody else. His son is no different."

Jack realized he'd never heard Alicia refer to Ronald Clayton as her father. "He" or "him" or "that man," but never "my father."

Had she been abused by him? Her brother? Both of them?

"Doesn't sound like you had a great relationship with him."

Her voice got colder and even flatter.

"Ronald Clayton was sc.u.m, a lower lifeform without conscience or scruples. I don't care that he left me his house. I don't want it. I don't care what he left behind in his house. I don't want anything that man touched. I'd be happiest if all traces of him were wiped from this earth. That was why I wanted you to burn the house. That's why I... I..."

She seemed to have run out of words.

Jack too was speechless. Alicia's feelings for her father went beyond anger, beyond rage. She loathed loathed the man. And not simply because of his character faults. the man. And not simply because of his character faults.

What in G.o.d's name happened in that house? Was it physical? s.e.xual?

Jack watched her closely, hoping she wasn't about to cry. He never knew what to do with a crying woman-or man, for that matter. Gia he could take in his arms and hug. But Alicia? Uh-uh. She was flying a Gadsden flag at full mast.