"What"s his name?"

"Theotocopolos. Theo"ll do."

"Okay," Croyd said. "You just hired subtlety."

"When you go to sleep you turn into a different person, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, if that happens before the job is done, that new guy"s still got a contract with me."

"So long as he gets paid."

"We understand each other."

They shook hands, Croyd rose, left the booth, crossed the room. Moth-sized snowflakes swirled in as he departed. Mazzucch.e.l.li reached for a fresh toothpick. Outside, Croyd tossed a black pill into his mouth.

Wearing gray slacks, blue blazer, and bloodclot-colored tie, his hair marcelled, shades silver, nails manicured, Croyd sat alone at a small window table in Aces High, regarding the city"s lights through wind-whipped snow beyond his baked salmon, sipping Chateau d"Yquem, hashing over plans for the next move in his investigation and flirting with Jane Dow, who had pa.s.sed his way twice so far and was even now approaching again-a thing he took to be more than coincidence and a good omen, having l.u.s.ted after her in a variety of hearts (some of them multiples) on a number of occasionsand hoping he might fit the occasion to the feelings, he raised his hand as she drew near and touched her arm.

A tiny spark crackled, she halted, said, "Yike!" and reached ; to rub the place where the shock had occurred.

"Sorry-" Croyd began.

"Must be static electricity," she said.

"Must be," he agreed. "All I wanted to say was that you do know me, even though you wouldn"t recognize me in this incarnation. I"m Croyd Crenson. We"ve met in pa.s.sing, here and there, and I always wanted just to sit and talk a spell, but somehow our paths never crossed long enough at the right time."

"That"s an interesting line," she said, running a finger across her damp brow, "naming the one ace n.o.body"s certain about. I bet a lot of groupies get picked up that way."

"True," Croyd replied, smiling, as he opened his arms wide. "But I can prove it if you"ll wait about half a minute."

"Why? What are you doing?"

"Filling the air with neg-ions for you," he said, "for that delightfully stimulating before-the-storm feeling. Just a hint at the great time I could show-"

"Cut it out!" She began backing away. "It sometimes triggers-"

Croyd"s hands were wet, his face was wet, his hair collapsed and leaked onto his forehead.

"I"m sorry," she said.

"What the h.e.l.l," he said "let"s make it a thunderstorm," and lightning danced among his fingertips. He began laughing. Other diners glanced in their direction.

"Stop," she said. "Please."

"Sit down for a minute and I will."

"Okay."

She took the seat opposite him. He dried his face and hands on his napkin.

"I"m sorry," he said. "My fault. I should be careful with storm effects around someone they call Water Lily."

She smiled.

"Your gla.s.ses are all wet," she said, suddenly reaching forward and plucking them from his face. "I"ll clean-"

"Two hundred sixteen views of moist loveliness," he stated as she stared. "The virus has, as usual, overendowed me in several respects."

"You really see that many of me?"

He nodded. "These joker aspects sometimes crop up in my changes. Hope I haven"t turned you off."

"They"re rather-magnificent," she said. "You"re very kind. Now give back the gla.s.ses."

"A moment."

She wiped the lenses on the corner of the tablecloth, then pa.s.sed them to him.

"Thanks." He donned them again. "Buy you a drink? Dinner? A water spaniel?"

"I"m on duty," she said. "Thanks. Sorry. Maybe another time."

"Well, I"m working now myself. But if you"re serious, I"ll give you a couple of phone numbers and an address. I may not be at any of them. But I get messages."

"Give them to me," she said, and he scribbled quickly in a notepad, tore out the page, and pa.s.sed it to her. "What kind of work?" she asked.

"Subtle investigation," he said. "It involves a gang war."

"Really? I"ve heard people say you"re kind of honest, as well as kind of crazy."

"They"re half-right," he said. "So give me a call or stop by. I"ll rent scuba gear and show you a good time."

She smiled and began to rise. "Maybe I will."

He withdrew an envelope from his pocket, opened it, pushed aside a wad of bills, and removed a slip of paper with some writing on it.

"Uh, before you go--does the name James Spector mean anything to you?"

She froze and grew pale. Croyd found himself wet once again.

"What did I say?" he asked.

"You"re not kidding? You really don"t know?"

"Nope. Not kidding."

"You know the aces jingle."

"Parts of it."

""Golden Boy ain"t got no joy,"" she recited. ""if it"s Demise, don"t look in his eyes. . ."-that"s him: James Spector is Demise"s real name."

"I never knew that," he said. Then, "I never heard any verses about me."

"I don"t remember any either."

"Come on. I always wondered."

"Sleeper waking, meals taking." she said slowly. ""Sleeper speeding, people bleeding."" P> "Oh."

"If I call you and you"re that far along. . ."

"If I"m that far along, I don"t return calls."

"I"ll get you a couple of dry napkins," she offered. "Sorry about the storms."

"Don"t be. Did anyone ever tell you you"re lovely when you exude moisture?"

She stared at him. Then, "I"ll get you a dry fish too," she said.

Croyd raised his hand to blow her a kiss and gave himself a shock.

Breakdown

by Leanne C. Harper

The pair of bodyguards left Giovanni"s first. Behind their dark gla.s.ses they immediately began scanning the street, looking for trouble. At a wave from the man on the right, another bodyguard preceded Don Toma.s.so, head of the Anselmi Family, onto the street. The don had to be a.s.sisted in walking. He was an old man, bent and in obvious pain, but his old-fashioned black suit had been hand-tailored and pressed into sharp creases. He surveyed the street as well, swiveling his shaking head from between his hunched shoulders like an aging turtle. The red and green neon of the restaurant"s sign alternately revealed and hid his weathered face.

Don Toma.s.so"s black Mercedes limousine was doubleparked directly in front of Giovanni"s entrance. Surrounded by his men, the don approached his car with his head held as high as possible in defiance to any unseen observers. A dark BMW pulled up behind Toma.s.so s Mercedes. He nodded in recognition at the driver before ducking his head and climbing into the limousine. One of the bodyguards followed him. The others moved back to the BMW Both cars were in motion before the doors of the BMW were shut.

Lit by a dull orange streetlight, two children played on the sidewalk in front of a brownstone half a block down the street from the restaurant. The boy had just tossed the baseball to the younger girl when the Mercedes exploded, followed instantly by the BMW"s destruction. The fireb.a.l.l.s bloomed and met as pieces of the cars and bricks from the nearby buildings crashed back to earth.

Rosemary Muldoon continued to watch the flames on the oversize video screen in front of her. She said nothing until the tape ran down into static. She sat immobile in the carved black walnut chair at the head of the long table, but her hands clutched the chair"s arms until her knuckles were white.

Chris Mazzucch.e.l.li got up from the chair beside her to pull the tape from the VCR. Rosemary glanced around her father"s library, where strategy meetings for his Family, the Gambiones, had always taken place. She had left almost everything in the penthouse the same, only bringing in some high-tech equipment such as the video and her computer to help her run the empire she had inherited.

Right now, the room felt very empty, as if even her father had abandoned her.

When Chris came back to the conference table, he laid the tape down and stroked her dark brown hair. As his hand cupped her face, Rosemary roused herself.

"Only two of us left now. Don Calvino and I. Three dons dead in a matter of weeks, and we don"t even know who"s destroying us. All we know is who they are using." Rosemary shook her head. "The Five Families have never faced a threat like this. We"re not prepared to fight on this scale. We"ve lost most of the drugs in Jokertown. Harlem has stopped paying our portion of the numbers. We"re getting hit from the top and the bottom. They took over our biggest drug factory in Brooklyn."

"We"ve got to get prepared. You"re the only active don left. I talked to Toma.s.so"s capos; they"re all with us just like the others. I only wish I could point them in the right direction. Right now, I"m just trying to keep business going so we have the money to survive and fight back. Calvino tried his hand at negotiating. So far, it doesn"t seem to have worked. We had both of the remaining dons covered at all times. That"s how we got this tape." Chris picked it up and tossed it into the air. "Remotely controlled explosives, EE., we a.s.sume. They were probably within sight of the cars to make sure they got Don Toma.s.so."

"So they knew about the kids." Rosemary glanced up at "Probably." Chris shrugged. "So far they haven"t been particularly careful about civilian casualties. They"re terrorists."

"They"re b.a.s.t.a.r.ds." Chris nodded and Rosemary knew he was already working out the details of backtracking the explosives. One of the things she had learned in the last few months of working with him was that he was superb at taking her objectives and desires and accomplishing them through his position as her front man to the Families. She had known she would never be accepted as the head of the Gambiones by the capos. They required a masculine figurehead. So Chris ran things in public, and she, Maria Gambione, pulled the strings. Except that it had not worked out quite like that. Chris could almost read her mind. He had the practical experience she lacked. They made a great team. Without him she would never have pulled it off.

"The Shadow Fist is causing us trouble, but I didn"t think that it had the organization to accomplish all of this. On the other hand, we know they are working with the Immaculate Egrets and the Werewolves from Jokertown. Together, they"re giving us a lot of trouble. But a bunch of gangs. . ."

"With the right leader..." Rosemary spread her hands. "With the right leader anything"s possible. But we would have heard something about him. How could they keep him under that sort of deep cover?" Chris shrugged. "I"ll check it out, but I won"t hold my breath. I had another idea. Think about Toma.s.so"s murder. Those cars would have been under twenty-four hour guard by teams of his most trusted men. How the h.e.l.l did they plant those bombs?"

Chris pulled a chair out and sat down backward. "How?" Rosemary had learned not to get too impatient with Chris"s occasional use of Socratic method. As in law school, it taught her much.

"Aces, again. Just like Don Picchietti. Who else could pop in and out without being seen? n.o.body really knows how many there are or who they are or what they can do. What if some of them decided that wearing funky costumes and being altruistic was silly? Jokers, too. Look at the Werewolves. Get back at the nats.

That"s a pretty fierce army we"re talking here. Look at where the action is going on most of the time. Jokertown. Maybe it"s because we control it and they"re trying to get us, or maybe it"s because the jokers have decided that they want their own piece of the action." Chris had leaned forward to emphasize his point. "If these guys aren"t all aces, they"ve got some working for them.

And I think that"s the way to go. If we don"t get our own aces, we"re going to get slaughtered. We can"t compete."

"I like that. I could use the district attorney"s office to get volunteers. A little steering of their efforts and a number of our troubles could get solved.

We"ll get higher-quality aces that way too. Pity a lot of the big names are still on that WHO tour." Rosemary nodded, more enthusiastic about this plan than she had been about anything in some time. "Good. Can you pull in anyone?"

"To be honest, I already have. We"ve got a detective named Croyd doing some checking for us and a heavy name of Bludgeon who"ll come in handy in a fight.

"Course they won"t be as "high quality" coming from the criminal element like me." Chris straightened and looked down his nose at her, trying to hide his grin.

"They"ll do. The criminal element isn"t all bad." Rosemary reached up and pulled him down to her to kiss him.

Bagabond walked down the crowded East Village street trying not to be impatient with C.C. Ryder"s window-shopping. It seemed as though every ten feet the spike-haired redhead saw something she just had to have-as long as she didn"t actually have to go in and talk to anyone about it. Bagabond was about to suggest going back to the songwriter"s loft when she heard a bayou-accented voice behind her.

"Hey, y"all, que pasa?" The teenage hyperactive body encased in a tiger-striped leotard with gold-lame sneakers belonged to Jack"s niece Cordelia. She bounced out of the restaurant she had been about to enter and grabbed both Bagabond and C.C. Ryder by the elbows to guide them into the Riviera with her before either could muster a protest. C.C. quickly shrugged her off when they were inside, but neither woman put up a struggle when Cordelia immediately got them a table.

Bagabond had learned it was useless to resist unless one wanted an excessively hurt teenager on her hands.

"So, y"all seen Rosemary"s television appeal to aces yet?" Cordelia opened and shut her menu with the same movement. "Gonna join up, Bagabond?"

"Haven"t been asked." Bagabond chose to take her time with the menu. "What about you?"

Glancing up over the top of her oversize menu, Bagabond was surprised to catch the expression of revulsion on Cordelia"s face. For possibly the first time she had stopped Cordelia cold in her tracks.

"I, uh, don"t do that anymore." Cordelia opened her menu again and stared at it fixedly. "I could hurt somebody y"know. I"m never going to do that again. It"s not right."

"I"m not sure it"s a good idea. Ace vigilantes are not what we need in this city," C.C. looked from Cordelia to Bagabond before excusing herself.

"So, you seen Jack lately?" Cordelia followed C.C."s progress to the rear of the restaurant intently before turning to Bagabond with wide, innocent eyes.

"Yeah. He asked if I"d seen you. Ever think of calling your uncle once in a while?" Bagabond"s irritation was evident in her rough voice.