For lifelong drug addicts, the reactions of the remaining four were remarkably quick. Three switchblades snicked open. One of the men whipped a revolver from the back of his waistband, swinging it at Remo’s face.

  Remo concentrated first on the gunman.

  “Here’s another PSA for you,” Remo began.

  As the young man’s finger tightened on the trigger, Remo’s hand flashed out. With a quick tug, he pulled the man forward, steering the barrel of the gun into the open mouth of another junkie. With a muffled pop, the gun took off the back of the startled drug addict’s skull.

  Clouding eyes wide, the dead man joined the first body on the concrete floor.

  “Guns don’t kill people,” Remo concluded to the startled gunman. His voice was cold. “I kill people.”

  As the gunman tried to take aim a second time, a slap from Remo steered the barrel of the weapon deep into the man’s own forehead. He collapsed with a life-draining sigh.

  Beside Leaf, the last junkie tried to run. Remo snagged him by the scruff of the neck, flinging him back absently.

  Soaring backward, the drug addict hit the foundation wall at supersonic speed. Every bone in his body was crushed on impact. As the gelatinous body slipped to the floor, the cracked concrete veneer revealed a man-shaped silhouette.

  With a horrible sinking feeling, Leaf realized that he was alone. He dropped his knife and threw up his hands.

  “I surrender!” he pleaded.

  “That’s not how this works,” Remo replied, voice hard. “What happens now is I ask you questions in exchange for mercy points. Each question answered truthfully brings you a step closer to the mercy you don’t deserve. Each lie erases a single mercy point. Understand?”

  Leaf had fallen to his knees. Tears welled up in his bleary eyes. He knew that he was minutes away from death. And in those moments that he now knew would be his very last on Earth, Leaf had another realization—in its intensity much like the one he’d had back in his parents’ garage so many years ago.

  Life was worth living.

  “Please,” he begged, sniffling.

  Remo ignored him. “The girls in Florida…”

  Leaf sucked in an involuntary mouthful of air. Guilt flooded his fearful eyes.

  “The ones you mutilated and hung from a tree,” Remo persisted. “Give me the who, how and why.”

  Given the surroundings, Remo expected to hear that they’d been influenced by the Cabbagehead movie that depicted a similar scene. Since Quintly Tortilli had said that this group was involved only in the Florida murders, Remo assumed that Leaf and his cohorts were part of some larger gang that got off on mimicking the violence depicted in the low-budget films. But Leaf Randolph’s response surprised him.

  “We were paid.”

  Remo blinked. “Paid?” he said.

  “Yeah.” Leaf nodded. “This guy called me on the phone one night. Told me what we should do and where we should do it.” He glanced at his dead compatriots. His frightened eyes grew sick. He closed them, hoping full disclosure would buy him some of Remo’s promised mercy points.

  Remo’s thoughts were beyond Leaf and his companions. He was right back to his own suggestion to Smith that this was a scheme to enrich Cabbagehead’s backers.

  “You recognize his voice?” he pressed.

  “No. He said he knew about me, is all.”

  “If he paid you, how’d you get the money?”

  “He mailed it here.”

  Remo glanced around. The place was a shambles. Empty fast-food wrappers and dirty laundry were spread everywhere, interspersed with a multitude of used needles.

  “I don’t suppose you filed the envelope?” Remo asked.

  Leaf bit his lip. “That was weeks ago. I tossed it somewhere. But my mom’s come to clean once since then. I guess it could still be here.” Leaf hugged himself for warmth. “Weird about that Cabbagehead flick that came out after. It was like seeing myself on screen.”

  Remo turned back to him. “You didn’t know about the movie beforehand?” he said.

  Leaf shook his head. “No way. When those other ones happened—like that family in Maryland—I thought, wow.” He tipped his head. “You think someone got paid there, too?”

  As he leaned his head to one side in a questioning pose, Leaf’s exposed neck was too tempting an invitation to refuse. Remo dropped his hand against the drug addict’s throat.

  A short, meaty buzz, and Leaf’s head thudded to the floor. His body joined it a split second later.

  Hands on hips, Remo surveyed the grisly scene, a troubled frown across his dark features.

  There hadn’t been a lone group of killers. In spite of Tortilli’s source, Remo assumed this would be the case. But now this seemed too organized to be the work of any of the dolts he’d seen at Cabbagehead. Something was going on here. Something that somehow seemed bigger than either he or Smith had originally suspected.

  Turning on his heel, he headed back up the mossy stairs to the backyard. On the flickering television, the warm pastel colors of Tipsy and Doh reflected against the dull plastic surfaces of the many scattered syringes.

  . . .

  As Remo reached the sidewalk out front, a thought occurred to him.

  “Dammit,” he muttered suddenly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Quintly Tortilli was standing next to Remo’s car, a cigarette hanging desperately from his lips.

  “I probably should have asked how much they got paid,” Remo said. “Oh, well. Let’s go.” He rounded the car.

  Tortilli stayed on the sidewalk.

  “You did more than talk, didn’t you?” he said knowingly over the roof of the car, an excited gleam in his eye. “You kacked them, didn’t you?”

  Remo popped the driver’s-side door. “Remo leaving,” he warned. “Is bad director coming, too?”

  “No way, man,” Quintly Tortilli said, shaking his head excitedly. “You’ve got real-live dead bodies piled back there and you expect me to leave? I only get to see fake violence in my line of work. This is like a fu—” He caught himself. “It’s like a dream come true.”

  Flinging his cigarette to the mud, Tortilli spun away from the car. He fairly danced down the street, a gangly figure in a soaking-wet leisure suit.

  As Tortilli disappeared around the alley beside Leaf Randolph’s tenement, Remo climbed behind the wheel.

  For a moment, he considered waiting for Quintly Tortilli. After all, the director had already given him a lead. And this was a dangerous neighborhood. On the other hand, Remo would be doing the entire moviegoing public a favor if he abandoned Tortilli and allowed the natural savagery of an area like this to take its course.

  In the end, it was no contest.

  “That movie was really bad,” Remo said in justification.

  He turned the key in the ignition.

  Remo drove off into the mist, abandoning the young auteur to the mercy of the mean streets he loved so dearly.

  Chapter Six

  Polly Schien didn’t like the way the men looked at her.

  There were a lot of them. All dressed in the same bland gray jumpsuits with the same logo on the back—GlassCo Security Windows of New Jersey, Inc. For most of the past week, it seemed as if the offices of Barney and Winthrop had been taken over by the men in GlassCo gray.

  Polly had decided on day one that she could have done without them. This tired thought flitted through her brain for what seemed like the hundredth time as yet another one of the workers passed her desk.

  The black stubble around his mouth cracked into a leer as he glanced at her chest. Even though she’d been wearing turtleneck sweaters the past few days, she still felt naked.

  Polly used one hand to gather the wool more tightly at her neck. It was a move she was all too familiar with.

  “Do you mind?” she demanded angrily.

  “Not at all. Just gimme a time.”

  The comment brought a rough cackle from the other jumpsuited men nearby. Polly’s co-workers—especially the women, but even some of the men of Barney and Winthrop—looked on in mute sympathy.

  It wasn’t a very nice atmosphere. The window people were horrible. Gross. Totally unprofessional. The only one that seemed like a human being was their supervisor.

  He was English. Polly always had a thing for Englishmen. If an American male had had the same pasty skin, unmuscled body, overbite, big nose and awkward hunch as the GlassCo supervisor, Polly wouldn’t have given him the time of day. But on this man the whole package somehow seemed regal.

  It was the accent, of course. Polly knew it was her one true weakness. In Polly Schien’s mind, all you had to do was slap a British accent on a man who was a hillbilly in every other discernible way and suddenly Jethro Bodine became Prince Charles. But she couldn’t think about that right now.

  The rude GlassCo worker wasn’t leaving her alone. He was still standing beside her desk, holding a tube of that special caulking he and his coworkers had been using to further cement the windows in place. For what reason, Polly had no idea. None of the windows on the thirty-second floor of the Regency Building in Midtown Manhattan so much as rattled, let alone popped out of their frames.

  “What time do you get off?” The man leered.

  Beyond him, near the huge gleaming panes of glass that overlooked the busiest city in the world, some of the nearest GlassCo men on ladders paused at their work. They, too, held tubes of the same caulking. They rested them on the top tiers of the collapsible steps as they watched the drama at the desk below. Farther down the line of windows, bright midmorning sun beat in on other similarly dressed workers, still busy at their pointless task.

  “Leave me alone,” Polly said, annoyed. The scruffy man had made advances before, but this day he seemed particularly aggressive. She had already considered a sexual-harassment suit, but dismissed the idea. The guy looked like he drank everything he ever made. Going after GlassCo itself was out of the question. She dared not risk upsetting you-know-who.

  “Edward, would you please return to work? I’d like to finish this morning.”

  The voice came from behind Polly. It was the purest, most flawless upper-crust British accent she had ever heard. The English language distilled. Him.

  The GlassCo worker—whose jumpsuit patch identified him as Ed, not Edward—glanced behind Polly in the direction from which the voice had come. A frown blossomed. Reluctantly, he left the desk. With the party over, the rest of the GlassCo workers turned back to the panes.

  Polly felt her heart trip in her fluttering chest as she heard the precise footfalls on the drab carpet behind her. A moment after he had spoken, he slipped gracefully around before her, a silhouette carving a noble shadow from the flaming yellow sunlight behind him.

  “I am most dreadfully sorry,” Reginald Hardwin purred.

  “That’s al—”

  Polly never finished the sentence.

  He took her hand. Actually took it in his!

  His hands were soft. Not a callus on them. Not like those of the American lunkheads always working out at the gym, pumping iron to prove how macho they were. Here was a real man. Soft skin, yellow teeth and all.

  Polly felt her face flush crimson.

  “This has been a trying week. For all of us.” Still holding her hand, Reginald sat on the edge of her desk. “These creatures that I am forced to work with are oafs.”

  “Oh, they’re not—” She swallowed hard. “They’re okay.”

  Reginald smiled. “You’re too kind.”

  She was disappointed when he released her hand. A moment later, he was back on his feet. As he turned to walk away, Polly Schien leaned toward him.

  “I hope I’m not being too forward, but…” She seemed flustered. “Are you a lord or something?”

  Pausing before her, Reginald smiled sadly. “While the aristocracy has fallen on difficult times of late, things have not gotten so bad for the royals that they must work for GlassCo Security Windows of New Jersey. No, I’m afraid I am just a simple expatriate doing a simple job.”

  “Oh.” Polly seemed embarrassed. “It’s just your use of language. It’s so precise. We don’t get much of that here.”

  “You really are too, too kind.” Reaching out, he brushed her cheek with his velvet fingertips.

  And with that, he was gone.

  The GlassCo men finished whatever it was they were doing half an hour later. They—along with Reginald Hardwin—left ten minutes after that.

  Polly cursed herself inwardly the entire time they were cleaning up and climbing aboard the elevators. “‘Are you a lord?’” she muttered sarcastically after the gleaming elevator doors closed on her Prince Charming for the last time. “Was that the best you could do? Dammit, how stupid can I get?” She slapped herself in the forehead.

  Her one chance at landing a real man, and she’d blown it. Horribly.

  Polly had been unable to approach him as he was packing to go. She was too embarrassed. Now that he was gone, she replayed the moment over and over.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  The embarrassment lingered for a time, but as the minutes wore on, it was rapidly eclipsed by anger.

  Her mother used to say that no opportunity was a lost opportunity. Maybe she could still turn this around. Maybe he’d think it was funny. Maybe the two of them could laugh about it over dinner at her place.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Before his elevator had reached the lobby, Polly Schien had made her decision.

  One of the workers had said that GlassCo was located over in Jersey City. She had a few Jersey phone books on her desk. Finding the right one, she scanned the business white pages for GlassCo.

  It wasn’t there. Nor was GlassCo listed anywhere in the Yellow Pages.

  She had already decided on a course of action. There was no turning back now. Boldly, she picked up her phone, stabbing in the number for information.

  “Yes, hello. In Jersey City. The number for GlassCo?”

  An electronic voice told her that the number had been disconnected.

  Polly slowly replaced the phone.

  Her face a puzzled frown, she slumped back in her chair, trying to think of a possible explanation for why the GlassCo company would just up and disappear.

  As she stared out the windows her dream man had refurbished, the late-morning sunlight seemed to take on a brighter, more dazzling hue. It was as if the rays had broken up and taken flight, soaring brilliantly toward her.

  Polly didn’t have time to think about the beauty of it. The split second after she’d noticed the breathtaking optical illusion, shards of glass from the exploding windowpanes ripped mercilessly through her face and chest. Her body was shredded to pâté. The shock wave followed, picking up the raw meat of Polly’s corpse and flinging it backward.

  Heavy desks were thrown through cubicle walls. At the same time the plastique on the windows was detonated, dull explosions at the interior of the building blew the debris back outward.

  The offices of Barney and Winthrop, as well as the entire thirty-second floor of the Regency Building, were wiped out in a matter of seconds. Dust and powdery glass exploded through the gaping holes all around the building.

  Glass panes above and below the blast zone separated from their frames. They broke away in sheets, like ice sheering from the side of a massive glacier. And as the Manhattan skyline trembled, enormous deadly shards soared down toward Madison Avenue.

  . . .

  Thirty-two floors below, Reginald Hardwin replaced the retractable silver antenna of his portable detonator with a single crisp slap of his palm.

  “‘Are you a lord?’” he mocked. “Daft bint.”

  The other trucks had already gone. His was the last.

  He watched in satisfaction as the windows around the thirty-second floor began separating from the building.

  As the huge slabs of deadly glass began raining on Manhattan, Hardwin climbed quickly behind the wheel of the final GlassCo truck.

  “And we did it all in one take,” his smooth-as-butter English voice commented proudly.

  On the sidewalk beside him, a smartly dressed woman was impaled through her upturned face by a sheet of glass.

  While numerous screaming pedestrians met similar ends, Reginald Hardwin drove calmly away from the scene of carnage.

  . . .

  In a dingy apartment in Queens, a solitary figure watched the news replay the shaky footage of the events in nearby Midtown Manhattan.

  Video cameras were ubiquitous these days; a tourist visiting New York had caught some of the initial blast.

  At the sound of the explosion, the camera whipped up the side of the Regency just in time to film the windows blow into empty air. The glass rushed out, seemingly in tiny fragments. Catching sunlight, the fragments fell like pixie dust onto the crowd far below.

  The news edited out much of the resulting gore. A little blood here, a staggering pedestrian there. And a lot of screaming and running.

  In his tiny room, the man smiled. Behind him, a ragged American flag had been slung across the water-damaged pressboard wall. On a rusted hook next to the door hung Alice Anderson’s green Girl Scout beret and sash. Dark circles indicated where the merit badges had been removed.

  “And Act One goes off without a hitch,” Captain Kill announced proudly to the squalid room.

  Leaving the TV on, he focused his attention back on his typewriter. He scrolled another sheet of crisp, clean paper into the carriage.

  As the television murmured softly in the background, the sound of two-fingered typing clacked slowly and methodically, rebounding against the stained walls of the tiny apartment.

  Chapter Seven

  Harold W. Smith watched the aftermath of the explosion in Midtown Manhattan on the small black-and-white television in his office at Folcroft Sanitarium.

  The old TV sat at the edge of his gleaming high tech desk, the sole modern intrusion in the otherwise Spartan office. Hidden within the depths of the onyx slab on which the television rested was a computer screen, angled so that it was visible only to whoever sat behind the desk. The familiar alphanumeric arrangement of a keyboard was buried at the edge of the slab. Smith’s gnarled fingers drummed swiftly away at the keys.