I named this page "Meth" for "Methuselah's Legacy". A pretty good picture and rundown on the drug can be found here.

The last hour of Rodney Moorhen's short and brilliant life began during a sudden and torrential downpour that slowed freeway traffic to a bumper-locked nightmare and sent late shoppers in the city's downtown core scurrying for cover around the steel and green glass tower that housed the exclusive Outriggers Club.

Two levels underground in the dimly-lighted parking garage, a fire-engine red '85 Mercedes sat on its rims, air still hissing from slashed tires. Moorhen, a tall, sallow man with heavy horn rim glasses, nervously scratched an unruly mop of curly hair as he contemplated the damage.

First Van Peebles and Sea-Gen and now this.

He polished his glasses with his shirttail. Putting the smeary lenses back in front of his myopic eyes didn't make things look any better.

God, who would do this stuff?

Van Peebles, given all that had been happening, was a likely candidate. But hadn't the man been upstairs in the club the whole evening? With that urbane Sea-Gen thug Setterly? Perhaps Van Peebles had snuck down here while Setterly earnestly extolled the advantages of "going with a progressive, fast-paced outfit like Sea-Gen" on "this thing".

No matter who was responsible, the message was clear. Moorhen was meant to take warning, go contritely upstairs and sell out the tiny research outfit he ran out of the old family home on Queen Anne Hill. And with it, the most incredible discovery in history.

The family fortune could be restored with one signature. He could almost see the surprise and delight on his sister's face when she found out. Perhaps Alice would even move back into the family home. Maybe paying off the mortgage would make it their home rather than J.J. Hudson Moorhen's mansion and perhaps that would make it right with Allie.

Moorhen's lip quivered and he angrily wiped his mouth.

Why could he never face hostility or disapproval without wanting to cry?

He took a ragged breath and squared his shoulders. There would be no sale. Not to Sea-Gen, not to anybody. Not the KAG.

Which was the name he had given the unborn child of his brilliant intellect.

KAG.

Pronounced just the way it was spelled, and never far from his fevered mind. Someday soon he would spring it on an unsuspecting world. The KAG would be his gift to all mankind, not something to be exploited by Rusty Setterly or his twin-ugly Gus Genovese. Or anyone else for that matter.

It was at that moment he thought he saw a furtive movement in shadows near the Outriggers private elevator.

He looked around quickly, searching the dark corner for the source of the elusive flash of white. But there was nothing untoward, and he eventually went back to considering his ruined tires.

Perhaps it would be best to go back up to the club and phone for help. But that would likely mean another shouting match with Van Peebles. Or, almost as bad, another earnest, high-pressure pitch from Setterly to "let Sea-Gen carry the ball on this one."

"Hi, there, you got a problem, too?"

The throaty contralto startled Moorhen, and he spun around to face one of the classiest women he had ever seen. Right off the cover of Vogue, a shimmering houri in the dim light of the garage, every line of her short but perfectly-sculpted body proclaimed breeding, intelligence, sensitive wholesomeness and a host of other qualities that left Rodney feeling like his hands were 10-pound hams hanging a foot out of his sleeves.

"Uh, yeah," he stammered, "got a flat. Ah, two flats. Ah, right there. Uh, four, I guess." He gestured awkwardly at the tires.

"So do I," she said, her voice cool and composed. He caught the scent of perfume, slightly spicy and wonderfully understated.

"You... you got a flat tire?" he stammered.

"Yes, up there," she smiled, gesturing with a $100 manicure at the elevator doors.

"In the club? You have your car in the club?"

She laughed, exposing pearly white and perfectly straight teeth.

"No, silly, I'm talking about my boyfriend. The guy who thinks he's my boyfriend."

"Your boyfriend has a flat tire?" Rodney asked, trying not to look at the woman's breasts under her skin-tight designer dress that glittered like scarlet fish scales.

"No, my boyfriend is the flat tire," she giggled as she placed a slim hand on his arm in a gesture that was so natural, so absolutely right for the moment, that Rodney suddenly felt he had known her all his life.

"I'm Beth Mable," she said, "what's yours?"

"Mine?"

"Name, silly. What's your name?"

"Rodney, ah, Moorhen. Friends call me Rod."

"Can you be my friend, Rod?"

The way she said his name sent a shiver down Rodney's back.

"Sure. Sure you... I mean, I can."

God, was there any way he could avoid making such a complete fool of himself?

"Bueno. Then listen, friend, I sure could use a little help," Beth said, stepping closer to the bemused young man.

"Help?"

He sounded so priggish, so stupid, so inane.

"Uh, huh. I really need a guy to help me get home, comprende? Could you do that? Help me?"

"I was just going to go back inside and call a cab," Rodney offered, waving one of his hams at the elevator door.

Just for a moment he thought he saw an expression of -- what was it, apprehension? -- in Beth Mable's eyes. He would wonder about that, off and on, til the moment of death.

"No, don't do that." Her voice was almost sharp. "I'm sorry," she said, dropping her hand from his arm in a gesture of resignation and submission that would have made Moorhen feel like Conan the Barbarian if he hadn't already felt so much like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

"I haven't any right to speak to you like this. It's just that I do so need a friend right now."

"It's... it's okay," Rodney said, "I'll get a cab for both of us."

"Oh, no, not from there. Please. I just couldn't stay by myself in this horrid parking lot, it gives me the creeps. And Len ... ah, Stan ... that's my, um, ex-boyfriend, is in there. Can't we get a cab outside? And you could maybe see me home?"

"Sure. Sure I can," Rodney said. Then, in a gentlemanly gesture that sealed his fate as surely as if he had taken a swan dive into Mt. St. Helens, he offered Beth Mable his arm.

All rough concrete, glass and steel, the buildings of Sea-Gen seemed to erupt from rocky, forested cliffs that bordered Puget Sound between Seattle and the small community of Edmonds. The intent had been to blend the sprawling complex with the promontory of rock, fir, hemlock and pine, so it would appear a natural part of the landscape. Instead it looked like a squat, cementitious wart on a granite finger.

For the three men in an opulent northwest corner office overlooking the Sound, the architect's unrealized dreams were the last thing to be considered. They had a few unrealized dreams of their own.

Sprawling in his $2,500 black leather covered tilt/swivel designer chair, Russell (Rusty) Setterly, holding a phone receiver to his ear, gazed out over the water. He was wearing an expensive track suit with $500 runners and sported a luxuriously thick white towel around his neck. His curly blond hair fell over his forehead in ringlets still wet from a hot shower that had followed a racquetball game in Sea-Gen's very own health club downstairs. Through a careful selection of opponents, he had won. As he always did.

The other two were Gus Genovese, a compact, swarthy man dressed in a conservative grey suit, and a pale, nervous Dan Van Peebles who clearly felt desperately out of place in this beautifully-paneled, softly-lit office, and especially with these men.

"I'd like to, ah, be sure this... thing... was done correctly," Setterly said after a moment, "the, ah, stuff left. No, ah, other stuff, if you know what I mean."

"We didn't leave no prints, man," the voice on the other end said.

What a fucking idiot. Couldn't that stupid coon learn not to say those things on the fucking phone?

"Everything was exactly the way you said, bro," the voice added, helpfully.

"Okay," Setterly said, sighing, "take your, ah, friend there, and go up to Vancouver. As per plan. The Colonial Arms on Hornby. There's a room for you there. Tomorrow morning be in the lobby at 11:00. There'll be a guy there wearing a green blazer and a pork pie hat. He'll have money and instructions for you."

"Pork pie hat?"

"One of those little hats with the funny brims. You'll know," Setterly said, looking at Genovese, who nodded. That was the correct description, just as he'd given it to Setterly.

"Whut you mean 'funny brim'?"

"Jesus, just look for the jacket, okay? Little guy in a green jacket. How many can there be?" Setterly said in exasperation, hanging up the phone. "Okay," he said to the other two, "it's been done."

Van Peebles looked ill. He perched like an ungainly stork on one of Setterly's chrome and leather Danish modern chairs, balancing on his knees a black leather briefcase with a combination lock.

"Jesus, Roddy was my friend. I never thought you'd really do it," he whined, looking away as he caught a penetrating glance from the glittering black eyes of Gus Genovese.

"Look," Setterly said, "Danny, it's just like a chess game, okay?"

That's exactly what it was like. A chess game. He just moved pieces around the board, taking one here, sacrificing a couple there, but always moving for position. It wasn't about individual pieces, it was about position.

"Now," he said, pointing at the briefcase, "are those the copies? Originals back in place, with the other stuff? Yes?"

"Yes," Van Peebles said, studiously avoiding looking at Genovese, "but Jesus, man, I nearly got caught. That little bitch Alice showed up at the house just when I was trying to get my key out, you know?"

"So?" Genovese asked, his voice soft and mellifluous.

"I just said I had to pick up some papers," Van Peebles whined, "She let me in."

"She see anything?" Genovese asked.

"No, no, she didn't. I swear. She didn't go into the place with me. She just waited outside."

"She say anything about her brother?" Setterly asked.

"Christ yes, man. She asked me if I'd seen him. I said no, not for a week or so, and she said she was going to, you know, report him missing."

"You did get the other stuff in where we told you?" Setterly asked.

"Yeah, just like you said, Rusty," Van Peebles said, desperately anxious to please.

"Okay," Setterly said, satisfied. "Take the other briefcase and get the fuck out. We'll be in touch if we need you. But stick around where we can find you this time, understand? We have to go looking for you again, you're not a happy camper."

Van Peebles nodded miserably and, picking up a briefcase identical to the one he'd been holding, shuffled quickly across the thick grey carpeting. As the heavy oak door closed slowly, Genovese grabbed the briefcase Van Peebles had left.

"Looks okay," he said, surveying the contents.

"Like you can tell," Setterly grinned.

"I said, it looks okay."

Setterly walked over to the bar. The sensor picked him up as he got within three feet and soft lights came on. He poured a 25-year-old scotch for himself, bourbon for Genovese.

"You're a pretty high roller, old buddy," Genovese said, putting the heavy crystal glass on the table. "I just hope to hell you know what you're doing."

"Hey, hey. Coaster," Setterly said, moving Genovese's glass onto a heavy cork coaster. "That's real wood."

Taking a sip of smooth scotch, he sat down across the black walnut table from his old friend, sinking luxuriously into the expensive leather chair. "I know what I'm doing," he said, "I took biology, remember?"

"I remember you spent most of that time in bed with what the hell was her name?" Genovese smiled.

"Lilly Elaine."

"Yeah. Her."

"Well, I was in classes enough to understand this shit," Setterly said, glancing at the lab notes in the briefcase. Genovese was right. They looked pretty good. Jesus, it was going to work out after all. Setterly's relief was almost palpable. They had the notes, Rodney Moorhen was hanging dead in the Tara Sands Inn. Once the Sea-Gen team got this stuff analyzed, they could make their big announcement.

"Jesus, it was close, though, wasn't it?" Genovese said, smiling.

Setterly wasn't too fond of this particular smile on his old friend's face. He'd seen it a couple of times before and it had never worked out well for the recipients.

"Yeah," he said, "but close only counts in horseshoes. How good is that guy they sent to Vancouver?"

"I hear he's the best," Genovese said. "He'll clean it up and there'll be nothing to link any of this to us. It's gonna look like two genetics companies were working on the same idea and we got there first because we were bigger and had more money. It's the American way. What everybody expects."

"The guys in Vegas?" Setterly asked.

"They expect results and damn soon," Genovese said, "but if you're right, there's nothing to worry about. We'll give them all the results they can handle, right?"

"Right," Setterly responded, a worm of worry still inching through his mind. The plan had gone so smoothly it was almost a worry in itself. So far nobody seemed to have even found Moorhen's body. God, what if he were to walk into that room? He'd see the body, probably all black by now and bloated and...

"I just wonder why the hell it was necessary to send those two to fucking B.C. to get rid of them?" he asked, swallowing tasteless saliva. "Doesn't that complicate things unnecessarily?"

"Vito doesn't want loose ends," Genovese explained. "If any more bodies turn up around here it might start to look like things are connected. This way, well, they'll probably never be found anyway. If they are, who's going to connect something in fucking Canada to a sick fuck hanging in the Tarsands?"

"I guess," Setterly said dubiously.

"You got a problem with it, talk to Vito."

Setterly shrugged and shook his head. If there was one thing he really didn't want to do, it was talk to Vito.

"So why the bullshit with meeting in the lobby and everything?" he asked instead. "Why couldn't I just give him the room number and he could go straight up?"

"I dunno," Genovese said, "maybe he prefers to meet them in the lobby first so he can scope them out. No surprises in the room that way, capice?"

"I guess. He's pretty professional, right?"

Genovese finished his drink, flicking imaginary dust off his lapels.

"Not to worry," he said, picking up the briefcase, "the guy will call you when he's taken care of things. Name is Bartholomew Biggs. They call him Biggs Bart behind his back."

"Oh," Setterly said, "I get it. Kind of a play on Big Bart because he's small, right?"

"Yeah. It sort of works on a couple of levels," Genovese said. "You need him for anything else, he's yours. I've gotta hit the road. Business in town. I'll drop this stuff off at the lab on my way out. We can get together later for some ball at the Outriggers. If you can tear yourself away from your own little setup here."

Genovese thought the health club in Sea-Gen was probably a little much. $560,000 all by itself, if he recalled correctly. Still, if they got results, the guys in Vegas probably wouldn't mind.

The door closed softly behind Genovese and Setterly was left alone with the ocean and rocks outside his floor-to-ceiling windows and his worries. He didn't like Genovese's use of the word "your" in describing his "set up" at Sea-Gen. Like Genovese was distancing himself from the operation.

Setterly stood in front of the middle window, staring out over the flat water and thinking vague, heavy thoughts. Truth to tell, he really wasn't cut out for this shit. He wished it over and done with. If he could just project himself a few months into the future and skip all this unpleasant, dangerous, worrisome criminal activity, things would be better. One thing was for sure -- this was his first and last big caper. With the secret from Rodney's lab, Sea-Gen would be bigger than IBM, bigger than Microsoft. It would be huge. He would be huge. He'd never so much as risk a parking ticket again. He sighed heavily and chewed absently on a knuckle.

Out on the Sound another heavy storm front was massing and moving slowly towards the coast.

The heavy oak door closed silently behind Dr. Amos Wisencamp and his $300 shoes sank deep into the thick grey carpet. He glanced at the early-middle-aged man ramrod straight in a Swedish modern steel and leather chair, and sat behind his desk with a sigh. The man, eyes alert and anxious, watched Wisencamp's every move.

Adjusting his reading glasses, Wisencamp opened a thick manila file folder and looked over the electrocardiogram and topmost report.

"It's nothing, Ian," he said, slipping his reading glasses off and polishing them on his lab smock.

The man let his breath out in an explosive sigh and visibly relaxed. Wisencamp matched the sigh and looked out his office window at a particularly unrewarding view of the sky over Elliott Bay. He'd have to move his desk closer to the window to get a view of the bay itself. Something he had been meaning to tell building maintenance for about three years. He made another note of it on his calendar, knowing, even as he did, that he'd forget it again.

"Ian," he said as he capped his pen and set it down on the file.

"What?"

Detective sergeant Ian Wagner Waddel stiffened again at the tone of voice. His face, which had relaxed with the favorable electrocardiogram, betrayed sudden nervousness.

"Do you like my office decor?"

"What?"

"I said, do you like my office?"

"Um, well, yes. Yeah, of course. I like your office. It's nice. So what?"

"How about my painting? Do you like that?"

Wisencamp pointed to a large canvas that hung on the richly paneled wall over a black leather-covered chaise longue.

"It's a Garlinge. I saw it in Ableson's last year," Waddel said.

"Yes, so it is. I'd forgotten what an art fan you are. Remember what it cost?"

Waddel looked as mystified as he felt. But he knew from long experience there was no point in trying to hurry Wisencamp.

"Couple of thousand."

"Yes. Your couple of thousand. Your deductible has to be killing you, Ian. And sooner or later Blue Cross is going to start rejecting your claims."

"What do you mean, couple of thousand?"

Wisencamp pushed the heavy file towards Waddel.

"Ian, it's good that you get regular checkups and look after yourself. No smoking, very light drinking, that's good. But you've been in to see me 23 times over the past two years alone. This makes an even two dozen. Dozen a year on the average."

"I was having chest pains. I told you."

Wisencamp smiled and uncapped his pen again to scrawl a notation on a prescription pad.

"Indigestion. The same indigestion we diagnosed last time. Same drug, too. Axid."

"So what are you saying, Amos? That I'm a hypochondriac?"

Wisencamp spread his hands in an elaborate shrug.

"I don't know from hypochondria. You just seem to be in here a lot. Ian, you've been with me a long time. You're my friend. I have lots of patients, I don't need your money to get by on. I keep expecting Blue Cross to come in here and break my kneecaps."

He raised one hand to forestall a response.

"Look, why don't you spread the wealth a bit? Ian, I'd like to recommend a guy you can talk to."

"I'm not a hypochondriac. I don't come in unless something hurts."

Wisencamp peeled up the top sheet on his prescription pad, wrote a name on the underlying sheet, then tore off both slips and slid them over to Waddel.

"How's the boy?"

"No good," Waddel sighed heavily. "Jon... Jon says it's just a matter of time. That's what they're telling him."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Wisencamp said. "Nobody should be so sick, so young."

"Amos, I know he isn't your patient, but is there anything..."

"I don't think so," Wisencamp said, "I'm sorry, but I forget. Is he your only grandchild?"

Waddel nodded, brushing at a tear.

"Ian, if you want, I could prescribe you something for the next little while."

"No, thanks, but I have to keep going," Waddel said. "I couldn't be a good cop if I'm zonked out all the time."

"Just something to take the edge off," Wisencamp said, "this strain is not good for you. Not good at all."

"I can handle it. I'll come back if it gets too bad."

"Wouldn't hurt to talk to this guy, Ian," Wisencamp said, pointing at the slips, "Frankly, you're under an immense amount of stress and you have a fear of death that's verging on an obsession. I hate to see you this way and it isn't helping your family."

"I told you, Amos," Waddel said as he pocketed the slips and walked to the door, "I don't come in unless something hurts."

The door closed quietly behind him. Wisencamp sighed again and closed Waddel's voluminous file. Waddel was actually in pretty good shape for a middle aged man who didn't really get enough exercise. He dumped the folder into his "to-file" tray and headed for his examination room. There was another patient waiting. One who might really have something interesting.

In the heart of Vancouver's glittering downtown, Marylee Scott lay on a king-sized bed in the Colonial Arms on Hornby, a cold towel on her face, her nose tingling and running from the last line of coke. Despite the nose candy, she had a pounding headache and was expecting police at the door any minute. But her mind was not in the Colonial Arms. Instead it was a half block from Pioneer Square in Seattle, in a fifth floor, high-ceilinged room of a tawdry barn-red brick hotel called the Tara Sands Inn and known locally as the Tarsands. In that fifth floor room, hanging naked in an S & M harness, was the body of a skinny young man she had enticed to his death a couple of nights before.

That poor man.

Marylee snuffled and wiped at her eyes. God, the rain had been so heavy when she persuaded him to leave the cab and go into the Tara Sands with her. Just to dry off a bit. She remembered slipping him past a drunkenly snoring desk clerk with a stream of spittle running down his frayed vest. Going into that cheap, tacky room to change from the shimmering red sheath dress she'd worn for the pickup to jeans and a sweatshirt. Slipping back out and spotting the sallow young man standing in the front room with his soaking wet shirt in his hands, gazing out the window at a crowd streaming in to Seahawks Stadium for a Seahawks-Forty Niners game.

Such apprehension as she'd eased the heavy bolt back on the massive old door, allowing it to open just a crack. The lithe, dark form of Lennie slipping in to the gloom of the hallway.

What was it the poor man had said? Something about this couldn't happen between them because he had someone waiting for him?

Oh, God.

Marylee, her head absolutely throbbing, went in search of another line of coke. "Lightning" Lennie Lennox had not left her any additional supplies. There were a few grains in a large glass ashtray and she desperately snorted them. There was no rush, just another throb from her head, and she tottered back to the bed where she collapsed again, whimpering, feeling her stomach doing flip flops. She couldn't decide if she was hungry or going to be sick.

He had said he couldn't stay. That was it. The poor man had a girlfriend and he couldn't stay. He had been going to pull his sodden shirt back on and go to meet his girlfriend.

Then Lennie had stepped out of the shadows, a horrid, slack-mouthed, heavy-lipped grin splitting his face, his feral brown eyes restlessly darting about the room before settling on his prey.

She remembered the horror on the man's face as he had caught sight of Lennie, and started to fumble his way into his wet shirt. Stopping only when he saw the nickel-plated Saturday night special in Lennie's long-fingered, effeminate hand.

Marylee tossed restlessly, sweat breaking out on her forehead and trickling down her ribs. God, where was Lennie? Couldn't he find that fucking guy so they could get out of there? Go back to the States and get out of this place where everyone had such fucking good manners and the money was funny colors?

Why had she agreed to do that terrible thing?

Why?

Well, there was Lennie's cattle prod, for one thing. She didn't want to feelthat again. Or the coat hanger. And, for another, she had trusted the bastard. It was just going to be a shakedown. All she had to do was pick up a man at the Outriggers. She had waited with Lennie in his Cadillac for more than an hour in that musty parking garage until he got a call on his cell phone. Then he'd leapt out, raced over to a Mercedes and slammed a switchblade into the tires. Hopping madly around the car, he got all four, then ran back to the Cadillac and pushed Marylee out with a hissed "you do it right, girl". In a few minutes, the elevator had opened and the young man, whose name she later learned was Rodney Moorhen, came face to face with the four flat tires. The rest had been childishly simple.

Once they had arrived at the Tara Sands it had not been at all difficult to persuade him to put off his quest for a wrecker and accompany her to the room to dry out a bit. Getting off the elevator, she had caught sight of the tips of Lennie's pointy-toed pimp boots sticking around a corner of the ice alcove. God, if she could just have that time back again. She'd cheerfully call out "Hi, Lennie, been waiting long, babe?" and the poor man would have been saved.

No, she wouldn't.

That would have meant the cattle prod or far worse. She had caught sight of the men who had arranged the "shakedown" when they had come to the club to talk to Lennie one night a week before. Well-dressed, immaculately-groomed young stud muffins with easy, charming smiles, clouds of Faberge Brut and cold, chitinous eyes that missed absolutely nothing.

No, she'd do what she had, in fact, done. She'd take Moorhen to the room, making sure nobody but Lennie saw her slip him inside.

There was the sound of the elevator and some muffled voices. Marylee raced to the door, fumbling it open and sticking her sweating, yellow-eyed face around the corner. She got out the word "Len..." before she realized it was a man and woman she'd never seen before. Tottering back to the bed, she resumed her tossing and turning on the sweat-soaked comforter.

Her headache was worse and she could hear Moorhen's voice again, pleading with Lennie. Telling him to tell someone named Van Peebles that he would think about the sale. No, that he would actually sell -- what was it? Mor-something. That he would sell out Mor-something.

That was it, she had realized. That was the shakedown. The dark man and the cute blond had wanted this man to sell them something and he didn't want to do it.

She remembered the horror on Moorhen's face and his voice saying "Beth?" while never taking his eyes from the weapon.

"Sorry, Rod, the name isn't Beth, but it'll have to do," she said, adding "and you'll just have to forget all about me, honey."

In her fevered mind she could hear Lennie saying "Shut up, girl," his voice silky and loaded with menace and the floppy smile slipping not one iota.

That had been her first inkling that this was not just a simple shakedown. God, she should have run screaming from the room. Pulled the ancient fire alarm in the evil-smelling hallway outside. Maybe it would actually have worked.

But she had just stood there, feeling the scratchiness of her threadbare old Snoopy sweatshirt on her goose-pimpled breasts and the quivering of her stomach.

Lennie, loose-jointed and in total command of the bizarre scene, had stood for a moment regarding Rodney with an arched eyebrow, then, chuckling and waving the gun negligently, had told the man to strip naked.

"Lennie..." Beth had said, her voice quivering with nerves.

"I thought I tol' you to shut up, girl. You want a little lightnin'?" Lennie's voice cut at her like a whip.

"No, honey," she heard her own voice as though it were coming from somewhere outside of her, "No. Please."

This was the point at which, on the most beloved TV show of her protected adolescence, the door would suddenly crash in and big Steve would shout "Five Oh, freeze!" or something like that.

It had almost seemed as though Moorhen were expecting the same thing. He had gazed into the gloomy shadows of the hallway with such an expression of entreaty that her heart had gone out to him. But there had been no big Steve or Danno.

Slowly, Moorhen dropped the sodden shirt and Marylee could still hear the squishy thud as it landed like some drowned dog on the threadbare, puke-yellow Tara Sands carpet.

"Nekkid ain't just bare-chested, sucker, it's bare assed, too," Lennie said, again waving the gun at Rodney.

"That's a good idea, honey," she heard her own voice, "to get rid of his clothes -- he can't follow us then, right?"

God, how she had hoped that was what this was all about.

"I tol' you shut yo' mouth, Marylee," the black man had said, his eyes never leaving Rodney.

"Marylee?" Rodney stared at her, betrayal etched on a face she now saw as handsome in an elfin way, lower lip quivering.

"Jesus, Lennie, now he knows my real name," Beth said, sinking horror turning her stomach to water.

"Shit, girl, mine too," Lennie replied, backhanding her across the face.

Marylee probed the ruptured membranes inside her right cheek. What little coke she'd had was quickly being eliminated from her system and the sharp sting brought tears to her eyes.

Staggering backwards to the wall, half-stunned, holding her hand to her rapidly swelling cheek and pawing absently at a trickle of blood on her chin, she'd watched the macabre scene unfold through a shimmering curtain of heavy mascara-laden tears.

Moorhen, thoroughly cowed by the blow, stripped the rest of the way in silence and stood naked and shivering, hands covering shriveled testicles, clothes in a saturated heap at his feet.

Then Lennie pulled on a pair of leather driving gloves and picked up a large brown shopping bag, upending it on a chipped coffee table, spilling a pile of glossy magazines. She and Moorhen had stared at the magazines, uncomprehending, as Lennie dumped a second bag. The studded leather harness with the huge brass buckle that had joined the magazines on the table had been as bewildering to them as the publications. But Lennie, she'd realized, was following a carefully-conceived plan.

What was it Moorhen had squeaked out then? Something about "this is where it ends, okay?" and "tell Dan and Mr. Setterly I'll consider it, okay? I'll consider signing, okay?" Yes, that was it. He had said "Mr. Setterly". That, she realized, had been one of the two men who had spoken in furtive tones to Lennie in the back booth of Hobby's Sports Grille on Seneca. Probably the gorgeous, curly-haired blond with the preternatural green eyes and deep dimple.

Lennie, however, had not been interested in whatever it was that Moorhen would now consider selling. In the same tight, flat tones, he ordered the terrified man to pick up the magazines and go through them, "page by fucking page or you're gonna be singing soprano in the fucking Vienna Boy's Choir." He cocked the revolver and leveled it at Rodney's testicles , a move that sent the man diving for the pile of magazines.

And hadn't those been horrible?

Outside, the elevator hissed to a stop again and the door rumbled open. This time Marylee stayed on the bed, staring at the door, her eyes mirroring a hope that crumbled as voices moved down the hall. Her feverish gaze ran over a hairline crack in the ceiling that ran like a jagged fork of lightning from the corner to the ornate, cheap chandelier in the center. Jesus, this was supposed to be a fucking four-star hotel. Couldn't these Canadian assholes do something about that?

She tried to work up an outrage to take her mind off that terrible night but she kept seeing the magazines, like some awful tape loop that wouldn't quit running. She could see, too, Moorhen's stunned expression as he took in the cover of the first magazine. The picture of a young and muscular man in a studded leather harness, hands bound securely behind his back. He was wearing a heavy leather hood that looked like a death mask, save for an eye slit. There was a rope around the man's neck and he was standing on his tiptoes, head held slightly to the left because of the heavy hangman's knot in the hemp.

"Right, bro, it's a snuffer," Lennie said, breathing fast and shallow and eyes gleaming. "Now you start lookin' through it and you make sure you get your little fingers on every fuckin' page."

Then the final horror began. Lennie, seeming to enjoy the performance, handed Marylee the harness and ordered her to put it on Moorhen.

It had been a fumbling comedy of errors as a terrified Marylee worked an equally terrified Moorhen into the harness, buckling the waist strap at the rear and snapping the handcuffs on his wrists. Then Lennie beamed at them and said "right on" before producing, from behind his back, a long and supple riding switch.

That was when Moorhen had lost it.

"Jesus Christ!" he had shrieked as the implications sank in. "Oh, come on, this is too damn much! Tell Dan I'm gonna do it, okay? Tell..."

"Shut the fuck up, dude."

"I'll sell. Tell him I'll sell? Please?"

For an answer Lennie slipped the revolver into his hip pocket and walked over to a ghetto blaster in a corner of the room, quickly filling the air with M.C. Hammer.

"Bueno," he had said after a moment, "Get over there under that exercise bar, dude."

He used the revolver to point to the high, vaulted arch separating living room from hallway. There Marylee saw a chinning bar mounted at about the seven-foot level. God, when had that gotten there? She stared at it in stunned disbelief as Lennie dragged a cheap chair under it and ushered the pinioned Moorhen over.

"Okay, bro, on the chair," he said, helping the terrified man on to the rickety piece of furniture.

By this time Marylee had been in such a state of panic she barely noticed when Lennie climbed on the chair with his victim and, teetering awkwardly, slipped a noose over Moorhen's head, tying it off on the bar.

"Oh, Christ, Lennie, you said nobody'd get hurt, you promised, babe!" she heard her own voice wailing.

Her anguished wail was the last thing the poor man probably heard as Lennie hopped down, reached out with one glossy pointed shoe and, ever so casually, hooked the chair out. With a well-practiced flick of his foot, he sent it flying across the room where it struck the wall so hard it snapped off a leg and gouged a hole in ancient plaster.

Marylee had crumpled to the floor, vomiting helplessly, as Lennie repeatedly slashed at the hanging man with the riding crop.

Lying and sweating on the bed, she tossed and moaned as her mind was filled once again with the sounds of the whip as the body, looking like a huge white slug in a monster spider's web, slowly twisted in the air.

She didn't hear the room door open and didn't see Lightning Lennie Lennox come in, looking self-satisfied and followed by a diminutive man in a green blazer and neat little pork pie hat. A blank-faced little man with pale, icy eyes that betrayed not a trace of emotion as they blinked myopically behind shiny, steel- rimmed glasses.