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  "Just means they're confident in you. Plus they've got a hot new antibiotic, so maybe they don't need to push it so much."

  Doug looked at her. "No dividend, cutting the sales force—that sounds like a company on the ropes instead of one that's raking in the profits. Did you see the annual report?"

  "Well, no, I—"

  "It says the company's pouring most of its profits back into GEM Basic."

  Nadia raised her hand. "Hey, that's me." GEM Basic was the research division—right here where they were standing. She pointed to the molecule imager. "There's your proof."

  "The amount of money they say they're spending on R and D would fund dozens of these. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

  Nadia shrugged. "Balance sheets aren't my thing."

  "Not exactly mine either. But I figure if I'm going to be an alpha ape in the software jungle, I have to know how a company is run. Damned if I can figure how they're running this one." He smiled. "But that's not my worry. I'll be out of here by this time next year, and in the meantime, let's keep those commission checks rolling in." He pulled her close and kissed her. "Dinner tonight?"

  "How about the Coyote?"

  "I'm always up for Tex-Mex," he said. "Call you later."

  Nadia grabbed his arm as he started for the door. "Whoa! What if you run into Dr. Monnet on your way out? Let me go first and see if all's clear."

  She led him back to the security door, passing a tech or two along the way who paid them little attention. They seemed to assume that if Doug had got in and was with Dr. Radzminsky, he must belong.

  Nadia stepped through the door and looked around. No one in sight. She motioned to Doug, who hurried up behind her.

  "Go," she said, giving him a quick kiss. "And don't do this again."

  A smile, a wave, and he was heading down the hall toward the reception area. Nadia turned and nearly bumped into Dr. Monnet.

  "Oh, Nadia. There you are. I was just calling the dry lab to tell you I've been delayed. But I'll be down in half an hour and we'll get started."

  He looked distracted, frayed at the emotional edges. Dragovic's fault. Had to be. She felt her anger rise. It was criminal for a man of Dr. Monnet's brilliance to be upset by a thug. He needed a tranquil environment to allow him to focus fully on his work.

  Don't worry, Dr. Monnet, she thought. I know you're in some kind of trouble, but I think I've found you help.

  She wondered if Jack was already working on the case. Would he call it a case? And if he was on it, how was he starting out?

  8

  The quickest way to Staten Island's north shore was through New Jersey via the Bayonne Bridge. The guy Jack was going to see, Sal Vituolo, ran a junkyard there off Richmond Terrace. Lots of junkyards among the old docks along this stretch of road. Word had it some of them were fronts for chop shops, but Jack wasn't interested in car parts.

  When he was a kid, New Yorkers called this chunk of rock the Borough of Richmond and used it mostly as an offshore refinery and garbage dump. Sometime in the seventies it renamed itself Staten Island. A lot of people Jack knew would rather admit they were from Jersey than Staten Island.

  He steered his five-year-old Buick Century into the Sal's Salvage, Inc., lot and got out. The air smelled of brine, acetylene fumes, and carbon monoxide. Hopping over muddy puddles, he was making his way toward the office when he heard a voice shout, "Watch out!"

  Jack turned and saw that someone had backed a fork-lift into a twenty-foot stack of old tires. For an instant it leaned like the Tower of Pisa but looked like it might hold; then it toppled over, sending tires rolling and bouncing in all directions. Half a dozen came Jack's way, bounding wildly. A scary sight, and he had to duck, dodge, and weave to avoid being hit. He did not avoid getting splashed with muddy water. Once in the clear, he spent an amused moment watching the yard workers chase around like frantic shepherds after a scattered flock, then went inside.

  Sal Vituolo did not look happy to see Jack when he stepped through the door. The office was small, cluttered, stuffy, and dim—its two tiny windows probably hadn't been cleaned since La Guardia's day. The man behind the desk was about forty with a low hairline, two days' growth of salt-and-pepper whiskers, and a good-sized gut. Reminded Jack of Joey Buttafuco, but without the class.

  "Aren't you the guy from last week? Jack, right?"

  "Right."

  "The guy that doesn't do what I need done."

  "Right."

  "So why you back? Change your mind?"

  "In a way."

  Before Jack could go on, Sal went on a tear. His eyes lit and his hands started stabbing the air. "Yeah? Great, 'cause I've got just the way to do it, see? I know this caterer who's gonna to be doin' the Serb's parties this weekend. I can have him hire you as one of the waiters.

  All you gotta do is poison the slimeball's food. Easy, huh?"

  "Piece of cake," Jack said.

  "I'd do it myself if I could look the part, if you know what I'm sayin'."

  "I think I do," Jack said, moving a pile of parts catalogs from a chair to the floor and seating himself. "But before we go any further, Sal, I need you to tell me why you've got it in for Mr. Dragovic."

  They hadn't got that far last week. When Jack had said he didn't "whack" people for money and Sal had said he'd settle for nothing less, the meeting ended.

  "It's that murder thing they had him up on during the winter."

  "The one he walked on after all the potential witnesses came down with Alzheimer's?"

  "Right. And you know why they suddenly didn't know nuthin'? Because one of the so-called potential witnesses got flattened dead in a hit-and-run in Flatbush a coupla days before the trial."

  "So I take it then this guy he was up for killing was a friend of yours?"

  "Corvo?" Sal said with a disgusted look. "He was a piece of shit. The world smells better without him. For him, the wrong side of the grass is the right side of the grass, if you know what I'm sayin'. Nah, it was the witness, the potential fucking witness—he was my sister Roseanne's kid, Artie."

  "How'd he become witness material?"

  "Who knows?" he said, drawing out the second word into a sigh. "Artie got in with a rough crowd. He was headin' for a fall at ninety miles an hour. I warned him, offered him a job here but he was like, 'What? Me work in a junkyard? Fuhgeddaboudit.' Like I was puttin' him on or somethin', if you know what I'm sayin'. Anyway, he happened to be someplace where he wound up knowing something about this killing Dragovic done. And the DA found out, so they was leanin' on him pretty good."

  "And he ratted?"

  "No way, man. Artie was a stand-up kid." Sal thumped his chest. "He was tough in here." He tapped his head. "A little thick up here, maybe—a real capa-tosta, if you know what I'm saying—but he'd never rat. Dragovic couldn't know that, of course, so he took him out."

  That was the word on the street: Dragovic arranged the hit and made sure to be very visible at the 21 Club when it went down. But Jack was curious as to how much more Sal knew.

  "You don't know it was Dragovic."

  "Hey, I heard from people who saw it go down. The car was aimed right at Artie. When Artie tried to dodge outta the way, the car swerved to hit him. No accident."

  "OK. No accident. But as you yourself said, he was in with a rough bunch. Maybe—"

  "It was the Serb. Guy was there told me. Won't say nothin' officially, if you know what I'm sayin', but he tells me he recognized one of the Serb's guys at the wheel. So it was Dragovic. I know it, and worse, Roseanne knows it, and every time I see her she looks at me and her eyes say, What're you gonna do about my boy? I'm her little brother, but I'm sorta the man of the family, so I feel I gotta do something. In the old days if you knew someone in the families you could maybe get something done, but those days are gone. So I gotta find someone or do it myself. But this Serb's crazy. I try something and he connects it to me, I'm dead, probably along with my wife and kids to boot."

  "You could just let it go."r />
  Sal looked at him. "What kinda guy would I be then?"

  "Alive."

  "Yeah. Alive and havin' to see Roseanne's eyes lookin' at me every Christmas and Easter and birthday and First Communion, sayin', When, Sal? When you gonna do somethin'?" He sighed heavily. "Bein' the man of the family can really suck, if you know what I'm sayin'."

  Jack said nothing. Nothing to say to that.

  "So anyways," Sal said, rubbing a hand over his face, "I'm talkin' to Eddy one day, sayin' what am I gonna do, and Eddy says I should call you." He spread his hands and looked at Jack. "And here we are."

  Jack remembered Eddy. He'd fixed a problem for him a few years ago. Obviously Eddy remembered Jack.

  "Let me float a concept by you, Sal."

  "Float away."

  "A life for a life balances the scales, sure, but lots of times it can leave you unsatisfied. You're redressing an act that has caused a lot of heartbreak and pain to you and the people you know and love. But when you kill the other guy, it's all over for him. Done. He's gone where he's beyond pain and suffering, but you're still living with the fallout from what he did."

  "At least I know he paid for what he did."

  "But did he pay? Really pay? He's pain free and your sister's still hurting. Think about that."

  Sal did just that, or appeared to, sitting behind his desk staring at the empty sockets of a plastic pen set. Eventually…

  "I take it we're talkin' about something worse than death here, right?"

  "Right."

  Sal frowned. "Which means, I take it, we're back to you tellin' me you don't kill for money."

  "In a way."

  "You know, I got to thinkin' about that last week. 'I don't kill for money.' Real funny way of putting it."

  "Think so?" Jack wasn't too comfortable with where this seemed to be going.

  Sal stared at him a moment, then shrugged. "So whatta you got in mind? Some of the old meat-hook-and-cattle-prod thing?"

  "Not exactly. I was—"

  "A little amputation action, then. Wham! Both legs off at the knees. That'll cut him down to size—in more ways than one." He grinned. "Yeah. Everywhere he goes he's eyeballin' other guys' crotches."

  Jeez, Jack thought.

  "No, I was thinking about a different approach, maybe coming at him through what's important to him. Dragovic seems to like the limelight, to be seen with the glitterati, to get his picture in the paper with celebrities and—"

  Sal slapped one hand on the desktop and pointed a rust-stained finger at Jack with the other. "Acid in the face! He'll be blind and ugly as shit! That's it! That's it! Oh, I like the way you think!"

  Jack bit the insides of his cheeks. Maybe this wasn't going to work.

  "Acid in the face is always an option," he said, "but it's sort of crude, don't you think? I'm looking for a move with just a tad more style. You mentioned a party this weekend. Where?"

  "Out at his new place in the Hamptons. Not one party—two."

  "That might be a place to start. Got the address?"

  Sal reached for the phone. "No, but my caterer friend will know it. Thinking of torching his place during one of the parties?" Sal said as he punched in the numbers. "Maybe his face'll catch fire and melt. I could go for that."

  "Arson is always an option," Jack said, keeping his voice steady.

  Sal Vituolo was a shoo-in for Bloodthirstiest Customer of the Year. How was Jack going to come up with something short of death, dismemberment, or disfigurement that would satisfy him?

  Maybe a look at Dragovic's new place would inspire him. But if he wanted to avoid the holiday weekend traffic, he'd have to go today.

  9

  "I call it Loki," Dr. Monnet said.

  Nadia stood at his side as he sat at the console and manipulated the hologram of the molecule that floated before them. She'd wondered, feared that being alone with him, being this close, might trigger that old sexual excitement. Thank God, no. She was still in awe of him as a scientist, but that one afternoon seemed to have permanently purged the lust she'd felt.

  She concentrated, squinting at the image, not because it was too small or out of focus but because she had never seen anything like it.

  "Did you make it?"

  "No. I found it."

  "Where? On the moon?"

  "Right here on earth, but please do not ask me to be more specific. At least not at this time."

  Nadia accepted that. Before inserting a sample of this Loki molecule into the imager's sequencer, Dr. Monnet had sworn her to secrecy, insisting that nothing of what she was about to see was to leave this room. Looking at it now, she could see why. This was unique.

  Nadia stared at the odd shape. The molecule looked like some sort of anabolic steroid that had collided with serotonin and then rolled around in an organic stew where it had picked up odd side chains in combinations unlike any she'd ever seen.

  Something about that singular shape and the way it seemed to go against the laws of organic chemistry and molecular biology as she knew them disturbed her. She felt chilled and repelled… as if she were witnessing a crime.

  She shook off the feeling. How silly. Molecules weren't right or wrong; they simply were. This one was unusual in a disorienting way, and that was all.

  And yet…

  "That can't be stable," she said.

  Dr. Monnet glanced up at her. "It is… and it isn't."

  She didn't see how it could be both. "Sorry?"

  "It remains in this form for approximately four weeks—"

  "Four weeks!" she blurted, then caught herself. "Excuse me, Dr. Monnet, but that structure doesn't look like it would last four nanoseconds."

  "I agree. Nevertheless, it does last about twenty-nine days; then it spontaneously degrades to this."

  He tapped a few keys and a second hologram took shape in the air a few inches to the right of the first. Nadia felt a trickle of relief when she saw it. This molecule had a much more natural structure. She felt oddly comforted to know that the aberration on the left assumed the more wholesome configuration on the right.

  There I go again. Wholesome? Where did that come from? Since when do I assign moral values to chemical structures?

  "What are its properties?" Nadia said.

  "Animal studies are under way. It appears to work as an appetite suppressant."

  "We can always use one of those. Any side effects?"

  "None yet."

  Nadia nodded, feeling a tingle of excitement. A true appetite suppressant with a low side-effect profile would be the equivalent of a license to print money.

  "But don't load up on GEM stock yet," Dr. Monnet said, as if reading her mind.

  "I won't." Looking at that molecule again… Nadia couldn't imagine herself allowing something like that into her system, no matter how thin it might make her.

  "Because we have the stability problem to contend with. We can't exploit a product with a shelf life of twenty-nine days, no matter what its effects."

  "I take it then that the degraded molecule is bio-inert?"

  "Utterly. That's why I call the unstable form Loki."

  "Wasn't he some sort of Norse god?"

  "The god of deceit and discord," he said, nodding. "But Loki was also a shape shifter, able to assume another form at will."

  "Ah. Now I get it. And I'm guessing that's my job: stabilizing the shape shifter."

  Dr. Monnet swiveled in the chair and faced her. "Yes. It's an extremely important assignment, a problem we must—absolutely must—overcome. The future of this company hinges upon it."

  Oh, don't tell me that, Nadia thought as she looked at him. "The future of the company… that's… quite a responsibility."

  "I know. And I'm counting on you to handle it."

  "But you have other products—"

  "They all pale in comparison to this."

  "You think this is doable?"

  "I'm praying so. But there's something else you must know about this molecule. It… it changes
in a manner unparalleled in science."

  The intensity in his eyes, the way they bored into her, made Nadia uneasy.

  "How so?"

  Dr. Monnet licked his lips with a quick dart of his tongue. Could he be nervous?

  "What I am going to tell you will sound impossible. But I assure you that I know through personal experience that it is true."

  I don't believe this, Nadia thought. He actually looks unsure of himself.

  He took a breath. "Once Loki changes to its inert state, any record of its former structure—whether digital, photographic, a plastic model, even human memory of it—changes as well."

  Nadia blinked, thinking, Pardon me, Dr. Monnet, but what the hell?

  "No offense, sir, but that's not possible."

  "Exactly what I said the first time I witnessed its degradation. I knew it had changed, knew side chains were missing, but I couldn't remember which ones. No problem, I thought. It's in the computer, so I'll just call up the original structure from memory. But the molecule in memory looked exactly like the degraded molecule."

  "How is that possible?"

  He shrugged. "I didn't know, and I still don't know. But I figured it must have been a freak occurrence, So I procured another sample—"

  "What's the source?"

  A grimace. "That, I'm afraid, will have to remain classified for the time being. But after the change in the molecule and its records occurred a second time, I decided to take precautions. I made hard copy printouts of the original molecule and filed them away. When the next degradation occurred, I pulled them out and…" He paused and swallowed as if his mouth was dry. "They had changed. They all looked exactly like the degraded molecule."

  "Impossible."

  "My sentiments exactly. But there I was, staring at the evidence. The only explanation I could think of was mischief or sabotage. But who? So I thought of a foolproof way to overcome this. After obtaining a fresh sample, I took multiple photos of the unstable form and hid them in various places in the office and my home; I even went so far as to build a crude model and lock it in a safe."

  "That should have done it."