“How much?”

  She blinked and said, “Pardon?” His smile was as thin and red as a paper cut.

  “How much? Fifty? Twenty-five? Ten? Are you a ten-buck-a-fuck whore yet, Velvet, or is that coming in the next couple of years? Is that your career path?”

  She stood up, opened her mouth, and sprinted for the kitchen while he was still waiting for her retort. She grabbed Robby’s big black-handled Ginsu knife and gasped in deep scared breaths, as she waited for him to come around the corner.

  From the other room he said, “Come on, Velvet, I’m not going to hurt you. Come on out.”

  She firmed up her grip on the knife and jammed herself in the corner between the coffee machine and the sink.

  “You get the fuck out, right now!” she yelled.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” He sounded relaxed as hell. Something made a metallic click in the other room. She froze and thought, It’s the heating, the central heating, that’s all. Goddamn old buildings, they creak all the time, maybe he knocked something off the table, maybe his knee popped, maybe my knee popped, oh god, maybe it was a—

  He came around the corner in one long, graceful step. Over the top of the gun, his eyes were cool and calm.

  “Drop the knife, Velvet,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She had never in her life had a gun pointed at her, never. Funny how it made things happen deep in her guts, funny how her eyes kept coming back to the sleek silver gun and the big black hole pointing at her. I need to remember what kind of gun it is, in case they ask me later, she thought. It’s big. It’s a big fucking gun.

  Her hand was trying to drop the knife. She wrapped her left hand around it, too. Lenny’s eyes stopped looking quite so calm.

  “I mean it. No joking around, Velvet, put the fucking knife down or I’m going to blow a hole right through you. Don’t be stupid.”

  The knife wriggled out of her hands and clanged noisily on the tile floor, spun away out of her reach underneath a cabinet. The silver tip of it winked up at her. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, and settled for holding them up.

  “Come on out here,” he told her, and flicked the gun just a fraction of an inch. “Come on, I’m not going to hurt you. Let’s go.”

  She didn’t remember walking from the kitchen to the couch, but the shock of leather on her legs was like a wet towel. Lenny settled in the magenta chair again, gun resting comfortably on his knee, still pointed right at her.

  “You like hockey?” he asked conversationally. She shook her head and swallowed hard. “Me neither. Too much violence.”

  He wanted her to laugh, but she couldn’t. Her arms ached from holding them over her head.

  “Simon says put your arms down, Velvet. Relax. Nothing’s going to happen here. Why don’t you tell me what you told the paper?” He grinned that college-boy-innocent grin again. “I already paid for it, didn’t I?”

  She swallowed and said, “Just what I already told you, I swear.”

  “I don’t think I believe that.”

  The headache was coming back, stomping iron boots along the inside of her skull; orange juice and coffee boiled in her stomach. She wondered if he’d believe her if she said she had to go to the bathroom.

  “Would you please just tell me who you are?” she asked wearily. God, she was tired, her whole body ached, her throat throbbed. “Please?”

  He dug in his jacket and took out a black leather wallet, flipped it open and slid it across. The plastic identification card in the top said FBI in big blue letters. Under it, he flashed his college-boy smile. His name was Garrick James.

  “Now you know. Have you ever seen this man?” he asked, and dug in the pocket of his preppy jacket for a black-and-white photograph. He slid it over the table toward her. She took a quick glance at it.

  “No,” she said, and then took another look. Her hesitation was too long.

  “Yes.” He said it for her. “Okay, where? Where’d you see him? Who was he with? Burt Marshall?”

  The photo glared at her. She swallowed hard.

  “I never saw him.”

  He sighed and took the picture back. She kept staring at the coffee table where it had been, as if it had left a scorch mark.

  “Velvet, please, I’m not the enemy here, I promise. I’m trying to help you, but you’re making it pretty damn hard. You do understand that if you’ve seen this man, if you have any knowledge of what he’s doing, he’ll stop at nothing to kill you? I can protect you, if you’ll just level with me.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, was it?” she asked. “Burt, I mean. Somebody really did kill him.”

  Leather squeaked as he shifted. When she looked up, he’d put the gun in a shoulder holster under the preppy jacket.

  “Yes. Somebody really did. You’re lucky they didn’t kill you, too. Maybe they just didn’t get to you in time.”

  Even though the hockey game was muted, a dim whisper came from the TV set, a roar as somebody scored or somebody bled. She stared blankly at the screen.

  “Robby thinks it’s the wiseguys,” she said.

  “Robby’s probably right. Where’d you see this guy, Velvet?”

  The roar on the TV was loud enough that it was audible even through the muting. She looked up at the screen. The cameraman was confused, the picture shaking unsteadily. She couldn’t figure out why he was panning the crowd.

  “At the dry cleaners. Elegance. Highland Park.”

  After a stunned silence, Lenny repeated, “Elegance Dry Cleaners. Burt Marshall owned part of it.”

  “Yeah. The Arab guy from the picture, he was there, and this creepy little asshole named Mr. Julian—”

  She forgot to finish. The cameraman had managed to get his shot stable, a crowd shot; the picture jerked unevenly as he pulled the focus, shocked confused faces, a blur of motion—he pulled back agair

  Velvet screamed.

  A burning man plunged down the steps of the arena, arms waving, bright enough to fuzz out the TV picture. People piled out of his way, mouths open, eyes wild.

  Velvet fumbled for the remote, but Agent James got there first, found the mute button. Screams exploded into the cool air of the apartment, ringing, echoing. Over them, the announcers.

  Not sure what we’re seeing here

  My god, Jim, it looks like that man is on fire. Yes, he’s definitely on fire. As you can see, Security is right behind him

  Anybody see how it happened? When did it start? He’s fully in flames now, folks, pushing a hot dog vendor out of his way

  Agent James looked over at Velvet, his face tight and pale, and said, “I guess it’s a little late for damage control now.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Robby

  It was a good thing that Mark had arrived to act as bank, because Kelly hadn’t bothered to show. Robby brushed past him on her way to the beer stand, passed him three thick wallets, and made sure he had them before she continued on her way. Of all of them, he was the only one with an actual pickpocketing conviction.

  He had a tendency to cockiness that made her nervous. This time, he caught her eye and winked, an absolute violation of common sense and every rule. She swept her eyes blankly on and decided to tell Jim, once and for all, that she didn’t want Mark to bank for her. No matter what.

  Two drunks were arguing ferociously near the beer stand, drinks sloshing as they gestured. One of them demonstrated high sticking with his forearm. Robby ducked the struggle and continued on. Ahead, a weaving couple of teenaged girls giggled and gossiped in line. The brunette had an open purse and a vacant look, but Robby decided against it; the blonde looked too intelligent and only a little drunk. She passed them up for a party of business people still dressed in wrinkled, beer-spotted suits and lightened two pockets and two purses, a heavy enough haul to make her immediately turn and scan for Mark.

  He caught the signal and started in her direction, a loose easy walk. He’d lost most of his stiffness over the last year, but there was something about him, something that made cops’ eyes turn in his direction even when he was innocent. He was a bad choice for bank, she felt it in her bones. Something would happen.

  He brushed past her, and she passed two of the wallets over—Jim could have taken three without breaking a sweat, but two was the limit of Mark’s agility—and watched helplessly as Mark fumbled the second one. It fell to the concrete floor with a meaty smack that sounded like a bomb explosion to her. As Mark bent down for it, she kicked it with the side of her foot and sent it sailing away into the crowd. When he straightened up, she fixed him with a glare.

  He knew better than to try to pick it up. He’d always known better than that.

  He mouthed, Sorry, and moved on. She blew out a shaking breath and decided to take a break. The hockey game sounded as if it had reached a fever pitch of excitement. She ambled through a short dark tunnel and paused on the crowded landing, thinking about lifting the wallet that stuck half-out of the blue jeans in front of her.

  A hand grabbed her arm. She looked up into Jim’s chalk-pale face.

  “What’s wrong?” She had to shout to be heard over the screaming of the crowd. He pointed. Directly down the stairs, toward the ice.

  A man wrapped in white fire staggered down concrete steps, arms waving helplessly. People bobbed backward from him in waves. He missed a step and fell face forward, sliding down several risers and leaving a trail of burning flesh behind.

  He was still moving. Oh, God, he was still moving. She watched as he clawed his way upright and smashed into the plastic screen around the ice, smearing it with oozes of blood and flaky black skin—and then the plastic slumped with him, as if it were tired of holding him back.

  He slithered over the barrier and crawled onto the ice. Hockey players veered off to one side of the rink, like birds wheeling. The man crawled, or slid, another foot or two.

  The ice bubbled. He was still burning.

  She realized that her hands had gone to her mouth, turned to bury her face in Jim’s chest. His arm went around her. She could feel him shaking.

  Somebody on the P.A. yelled, “Be calm, everybody please stay calm, there’s no cause for alarm, stay in your seats.” Nobody listened. Jim tugged her back down the tunnel, forced her into a run. She heard the rumble of feet behind her.

  They attained the safety of the bathroom alcove as a wave of people erupted from the tunnel, shoving, screaming, blind with panic. A young black man fell only a few feet away, curled into a ball. Robby couldn’t see the kicks that hit him, only the blood. He crawled toward them, far enough that she could grab his hand and pull him into the relative peace of the alcove.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jim kept saying, over and over, like a prayer. “Jesus Christ.”

  The black man, sitting at Robby’s feet with blood streaming down his face, said, “Man, I hope somebody got that on tape.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Martin

  Martin was having a dream about chickens when suddenly, without any warning at all, one of them blew up with a BANG that sounded as big as the world. He jerked upright in his leather chair, blinked, and saw the massive shadow of Agent Jennings standing in the doorway. The door was just swinging back from its impact with the wall.

  “Agent Carling,” Jennings said urgently. “Ma’am, you’d better come see this, now.”

  Carling had been napping as well, but her eyes were clear and her movements precise when she got up to follow him. There were fabric wrinkles on her cheek where it had pressed against her suit sleeve. As he stood up, Martin realized he had one hell of a crick in his neck.

  Jennings had a hockey game on TV—at least, it looked like a hockey game, a big ring of ice, plastic walls to protect the crowd from flying pucks and sticks, a huge crowd of people. Only the people were emptying out in a stampeding frenzy. The hockey players circled at the far end of the rink, swooping in confused Brownian motion near the goal. A knot of uniformed security stood on the ice to one side, near the wall, around—

  “What the hell is that?” Carling put her finger on a bright spot of white in the screen.

  “Watch,” Jennings said, and turned the sound up.

  Jim, I’m not sure what we’re seeing now—the crowd is panicking, running for the exits—I think that’s—yes, that’s the paramedics coming down the aisle now—Jim, can you—camera two, can you focus on—yes, thanks. There you see the paramedics approaching, and there’s the man who’s down. You can still see the fire on his back, my God, he’s still burning, it’s unbelievable—

  “They didn’t catch the beginning of it,” Jennings said. “Just started showing him when he came down the stairs burning.”

  “Where is it?” Carling demanded.

  “Dallas. Dallas, Texas. Stars versus the Mighty Ducks.”

  On the screen, the picture froze and blacked out, replaced almost immediately by a slow-motion image of a man wrapped in flaring white flames, staggering like a movie monster. A vendor in a blue and white apron fell backward, mouth open in a silent O of astonishment, spilled popcorn a white halo around his head.

  Okay, folks, here’s the original picture we had of this terrible tragedy—looks to me like he’s already fully on fire here—could this be some kind of publicity stunt gone wrong, do you think?

  Greg, I certainly hope that’s not the case. As you can see from the slow motion, he continues to go down the stairs—sorry about the picture quality—and people are beginning to realize something’s wrong—some of them must think it’s a special effect because they aren’t moving—Greg, what is that, do you think? There, hanging off of him?

  Uh, Jim, I don’t think we should go into that right now. That looks like the remains of a sports jacket he’s wearing, wouldn’t you say? Maybe a business suit?

  The slow-motion footage cut back to real-time and the jittery motion of a hand-held camera, as it panned the faces of hockey players pressed against plastic, staring. The camera panned down to a team of paramedics working feverishly on a lump of red and black, no more fire, just meat.

  Carling said quietly, “The cat’s out of the bag, gentlemen. We’re out of time.”

  On the screen, announcers continued a feverish play-by-play.

  Uh, Jim, perhaps we’d better update our late-tuning viewers. Folks, we’re at Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas, where the Stars-Mighty Ducks game has just been tragically interrupted by a man who appeared to burst into flames—

  That’s right, Greg, he appeared to burst into flames at the top of the stairs and run down toward the ice, collapsing near the bottom and sparking a panicked rush for the exits—we have people wounded in the crush—we don’t know the condition of the man who caught on fire—Greg, what exactly do we know right now?

  Uh, Jim, the score of the game stands at 2 to 1 in favor of the Stars—

  Carling said tightly, “Jennings, get us on a plane.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Paolo

  “Coors Light,” Paolo whispered in the direction of the waitress’s apron. She leaned over to hear better.

  “Sorry?” She cupped one shell-pink ear toward him. He stared down the expanse of her cleavage. Pale skin, thin blue veins showing through. He liked that.

  “Coors Light,” he repeated louder. She nodded and stalked away toward a yelling table of drunks half-out of their business suits. The floor was crisp with peanut shells and sticky with spilled beer, like bad peanut brittle. He’d always liked peanut brittle, he thought, and munched contemplatively on a dry unsalted pretzel stick. Pralines, too. The kind that turned to raw sugar on his tongue.

  There were plenty of hookers working the bar, but Velvet wasn’t one of them. He’d been to her place, but it was a wreck, trashed. No sign of her in any of the usual hangouts, no word on the street about her. None of the other girls had heard from her or about her.

  He nibbled his pretzel and felt the pressure of anxiety in his stomach. He didn’t have any other leads; there were no other hangouts. If she didn’t show here, she didn’t show.

  And he’d have to explain to Ming where Velvet had gone. That wouldn’t be pretty at all.

  A beer thumped down on the table in front of him, sweating with cold. He slid the money across the table so he could watch the waitress bend over again, then forgot her as soon as she walked away. Velvet had skin like that, pale and pretty, and everything else, too.

  Nobody in the room competed.

  He sucked down beer and stared blankly at the big-screen TV; the table of drunks had started screaming and throwing peanuts at it. One of them stood up on his chair, leaned slowly left, and toppled over on the guy next to him.

  He couldn’t see what they were so upset about, except that the hockey game had stopped. The players were skating around in tight circles at the far end of the ice, hands on their hips, shaking their heads. There were a bunch of people who didn’t look like players on the ice, too, near the edge; one of them was tying down. Great. A fan jumped the wall and had a heart attack, or got slammed, or something. Who cared?

  The picture fuzzed out and was replaced with blurry footage of a guy on fire staggering down the steps, while hockey fans scrambled back from him in human waves. Paolo sat riveted, beer half-raised to his lips, staring.

  One of the drunks threw a beer bottle at the TV, but it missed by a mile and pegged a big burly-looking guy in the back of the head. He had a table full of friends who looked like linebackers. They all had Marine haircuts.

  “Turn it up!” somebody screamed, and the crowd in the bar took it up like a chant. The bartender messed with a remote control, and the sound buzzed and whispered until it finally competed with the shouting in the room.

  Appears that security reacted very quickly to deal with this potential threat to the fans and players—as you can see, three of them arrive very quickly after the man is down and begin trying to beat out the flames with their coats—also, as we clearly see in the tape, helpful fans tried to help the victim by pouring drinks on him as he passed—