Though it usually was very easy.

Rune took the firings better than most employees. She had the routine down. So why was she worried about getting canned now?

She couldn't figure. Something in the air maybe… As good an explanation as any.

Rune continued east, through the area that NYU and the real estate developers were decimating for dorms and boring cinder-block apartments. A large woman thrust a petition toward her. "Save our Neighborhood" it said. Rune passed the woman by. That was one thing about New York. It always changed, like a snake shedding skins. If your favorite area vanished or turned into something you didn't like, there was always another one that'd suit you. All it took was a subway token to find it.

She glanced again at Mr. Kelly's address. 380 East Tenth. Apartment 2B.

She crossed the street and continued past Avenue A, Avenue B. Alphabet soup, alphabet city. The neighborhood growing darker, shabbier, more sullen.

Scarier.

Save our neighborhood…

I Haarte didn't like the East Village.

When it came to the coin-toss to see who was going to stake out the target's apartment three weeks ago, after they'd gotten back from the Gittleman hit in St. Louis, he was glad Zane'd won.

He paused on East Tenth and looked for surveillance in front of the tenement. Zane'd been there for a half hour and had said the block looked clean. They'd learned that a while ago the target had vanished from his apartment on the Upper West Side-the apartment the U.S. Marshals Service had provided for him-and he'd given the slip to his minders. But that info was old. The feds might've tracked him down again-those pricks could find anybody if they wanted to-and be checking this building out. So this morning Haarte paused, scanned the street carefully, looking for any signs of baby-sitters. He saw none.

Haarte continued along the sidewalk. The streets were piled with garbage, moldy books and magazines, old furniture. Cars doubled-parked on the narrow streets. Several moving vans too. People in the Village always seemed to be moving out. Haarte was surprised anybody moved in. He'd get the fuck out of this neighborhood as fast as he could.

Today Haarte was wearing an exterminator's uniform, pale blue. He carried a plastic toolbox which contained not the tools of the bug-killers' trade but his Walther automatic on which was mounted his Lansing Arms suppressor. Also inside the box was the Polaroid camera. This uniform wouldn't work everywhere but whenever he had a job in New York-which wasn't often because he lived there-he knew the one thing that people would never be suspicious about was an exterminator.

"I'm almost there," he said into his lapel mike. The other thing about New York was that you could seem to be talking to yourself and nobody thought it was weird.

As Haarte approached the building, 380 East Tenth Street, Zane-parked a block away in a green Pontiac- said, "Street's clear. Saw a shadow in his apartment. Asshole's in there. Or somebody is."

For this hit, the way they'd worked it out, Haarte was going to be the shooter, Zane was getaway.

He said, "Three minutes till I'm inside. Drive around back. Into the alley. Anything goes wrong we split up. Meet me back at my place."

"Okay."

He walked into the foyer of the building. Stinks in here, he thought. Dog pee. Maybe human pee. He shivered slightly. Haarte made over a hundred thousand dollars a year and lived in a very nice town house several miles from here, overlooking the Hudson River and New Jersey. So nice he didn't even need an exterminator.

Haarte checked out the lobby and hallway carefully. The target might not be thinking about a hit and Haarte could possibly just call up on the intercom and say that he was there to spray for roaches.

The target might just let him in.

But he might also come to the top of the stairway, aim into the foyer with his own piece, and start shooting.

So Haarte decided on the silent approach. He jimmied the front-door lock with a thin piece of steel. The cheap lock clicked open easily.

He stepped inside and took the pistol from his toolbox. Started down the hall to Apartment 2B.

Rune was surprised, seeing Robert Kelly's building.

Surprised the way people sometimes are when they come to visit a friend for the first time. She'd seen his modest clothes and had expected modest quarters. But she was looking at piss-poor. The brick was scaly, diseased, shedding its schoolhouse-red paint in dusty flakes. The wooden window frames were rotting. Rust water had trickled down from the roof and left huge streaks on the front step and sidewalk. Some tenants had patched broken panes with cardboard and cloth and yellowing newspaper.

Of course she'd known that the East Village wasn't the greatest neighborhood-she came to clubs here a lot and hung out with friends in Tompkins Square Park on Avenue A, dodging the druggies and the wanna-be gangsters. But, picturing the gentlemanly Mr. Kelly, the image that had come to mind of his home was a proper English town house with frilly plaster moldings and flowered wallpaper. Outside would be a black wrought-iron fence and a neat garden.

Like the set in a movie she'd seen as a little girl, sitting next to her father-My Fair Lady. Kelly would sit in the parlor like Rex Harrison, in front of the fire, and drink tea. He would take small sips (a cup of tea lasted forever in English movies) and read a newspaper that didn't have any comics.

She felt uncomfortable, embarrassed for him. Almost wished that she hadn't come.

Rune walked closer to the building. A three-legged chair lay on its side in the bare-dirt garden outside the front stairs. A bicycle frame was fastened with a Kryptonite lock to a no-parking sign. The wheels, chain, and handlebars had been stolen.

Who else lived in the building? she wondered. Elderly people, she supposed. There were a lot of retirees around there. She herself would rather spend her final years there than in Tampa or San Diego.

But how had they happened to end up there? she wondered.

There'd be a million answers.

Them's the breaks…

The building just across the alley from Mr. Kelly's was much nicer, painted, clean, a fancy security gate on the front door. A blond woman in an expensive pink jogger's outfit and fancy running shoes pushed out the doorway and stepped into the alley. She started her stretching exercises. She was pretty and looked disgustingly pert and professional.

Save our neighborhood…

Rune continued to the front stairs of Mr. Kelly's building. An idea occurred to her. She'd pick up the tape but instead of going back to the store she'd take a few hours off. She and Mr. Kelly could go have an adventure.

She'd take him for a long walk beside the Hudson.

"Let's look for sea monsters!" she'd suggest.

And she had this weird idea that he'd play along. There was something about him that made her think they were similar. He was… well, mysterious. There was nothing literal about him-being unliteral was Rune's highest compliment.

She walked into the entryway of his building. Beneath the filth and cobwebs she noticed elaborate mosaic tiles, brass fixtures, carved mahogany trim. If it were scrubbed up and painted, she thought, this'd be a totally excellent place…

She pushed the buzzer to 2B.

That'd be a fun job, she thought. Finding junky old buildings and fixing them up. But people did that for a living, of course. Rich people. Even places like this could cost hundreds of thousands. Anyway, she'd want to paint murals of fairy tales on the walls and decorate the place with stuffed animals and put magical gardens in all the apartments. She supposed there wasn't much of a market for that kind of look.