“Listen, you little weenies, don’t you ever again frighten my secretary by ignoring her requests and marching into my office uninvited. Don’t you ever again try to play the hard guy with me when neither of you have the stones to pull it off. And don’t either of you ever again, for an instant, think that I will listen to any orders that come out of pathetic losers such as yourselves. Whatever work I’m doing for my clients I will do no matter what you or anyone else says to me and whether I am or am not looking into the death of this friend of yours, whatever her name is, I will continue to do whatever I was doing before your pathetic attempt to scare me off. Now that we are finished here, get the hell out of my office.”

They both remained seated, staring at me with not quite the shocked and wary eyes I had hoped for. Gaylord started shaking his head and as he did so Nicholas rose. He pushed back his chair, swooped his arms before him and lifted his left knee. He stayed motionless for a moment, his left leg raised, his left arm before him like a shield, his right arm at his side, his stance as ludicrous and as far from threatening as if he froze smack in the middle of a power walk. I think I snickered.

“I believe you underestimate our sincerity,” said Gaylord. “It happens.”

In that instant Nicholas hopped into his left leg as he swung his right around, cracking the heavy vase atop the filing cabinet in two with his kick before it shattered against the wall. The shards of glass hadn’t hit the floor before, with a grunt and another spin, Nicholas pivoted off his right foot and buried his left heel into the side of my fireproof, batterproof, burglarproof, heavy-gauge steel filing cabinet. The concaving of the cabinet was punctuated with the slam bang of his heel against the side and the groan of bending metal, not unlike, I expect, the sound of the cracking of bones. From the force of his blow the lock popped and one of the drawers slid open.

By the time Ellie had rushed in to see what had happened, Nicholas was back in his seat, hands folded before him, and I was suddenly suitably frightened.

“It’s all right, Ellie,” I said, without looking at her so she wouldn’t notice my watering eyes. “Just a small accident with the cabinet. Everything’s fine.” I smiled thinly and she left, leaving the door open.

“Sometimes you walk down the street,” said Gaylord, “without realizing, until it is too late, that the fellow approaching you has the ability to reach into your chest and rip out your lungs.”

“I trained in Chiang Mai,” whispered Nicholas.

“You know, Victor, I think I killed you in a prior life,” said Gaylord. “Were you by any chance in Jerusalem at the end of the eleventh century when Godfrey of Bouillon stormed the city? Because your aura is very familiar.”

I still hadn’t recovered enough from the shot into the solar plexus of my filing cabinet, wondering at what a shot like that would do to my rib cage and the oh so delicate organs encased within, to start exploring my past lives with Gaylord. The image of my heart compressing to the flatness of a plate, my lungs exhaling first air, then blood, then bronchioles, alveoli snapping, my colon popping like a pea, such images tended to wipe out all thoughts of the hereafter with obsessions of the dangers in the here and now. I was breathing hard when I said, “What is it exactly that you want?”

Nicholas, for the first time, smiled. I couldn’t help but notice that his smile was excellent and he still had all his teeth. “No more questions about Jacqueline Shaw. That’s what we want.”

“I seem to remember that I sliced off your head with my broadsword,” said Gaylord. “Does that ring a bell?”

“Being beheaded by a midget in Jerusalem? Not really.”

“You scoff. Did you ever think there may be more to life than you imagine, more than eating and screwing and dying?” asked Gaylord. “Did that ever cross your mind?”

“Well, I do watch a lot of TV.”

“I’m talking existence, Victor. Have you ever wondered if your existence embodies more than you could ever imagine? Or maybe even, more profoundly, less?”

“Metaphysics in the afternoon?”

“I hate that word, metaphysics,” said Gaylord, “as if the truths in our souls are less real than the forces at work on pool balls clacking against one another. Let’s say we’re talking about a higher level of cognition. Any ideas?”

“Meaning. You’re asking me about meaning.” I was vamping for time, trying to figure out where this high-pitched little man was going. “Let’s say I’m still searching for an answer to that one.”

“Did you hear that, Nicholas? Victor here is searching. He is at least a one. There is hope for him yet.”

“If he ever wants to become a two then he’ll cooperate,” said Nicholas. “This was just a warning but…”

“This supposed meaning of life you are searching for, Vic,” said Gaylord, his high voice piercing Nicholas’s husky whisper like a dart, “any idea of where you’re going to find it?”

“I read some, talk to people, watch Woody Allen movies. In the past few years my private investigator has sort of been a spiritual adviser.”

“Your private investigator, how clever. You’ve hired him to investigate the meaning of life, I presume.”

“Something like that.”

“You ever wonder, Victor, if the answer is right out there for you to see? Ever have a coincidence happen that seemed too perfect for coincidence? Ever have a déjà vu and be certain that it wasn’t just a trick of the mind? Ever feel almost connected to the secret of the universe, feel that the answer to everything is just out of reach, or just out of sight? Ever think everything is so close except you are deaf to it for some strange reason?”

“Yes, actually,” I said, because I had actually experienced all that.

“Wonder of wonders,” said Gaylord. “You’re a two.”

“Gaylord is a nine,” said Nicholas. “I’m a five.”

“Nicholas is a five and I’m only a two?”

“Well, keep out of trouble,” said Gaylord, “and maybe you’ll rise. We can teach you how to see it, if that’s what you really want. There are novice meetings in our temporary headquarters every Wednesday night at eight.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card, tossing it into the clutter of my desk. “That’s all, I guess,” he said, slapping his chair armrests and standing. Nicholas stood too. “Be a good boy, Victor, and maybe I won’t have to use the sword once again. It is so wasteful when we are forced to relive the calamities of our past lives over and over again. We’ll be in touch.”

With a nod from Gaylord they turned and walked out of my office. I sat and watched them go. Then I picked up the card. “THE CHURCH OF THE NEW LIFE,” it read and underneath it “OLEANNA, GUIDING LIGHT.” There was a Mount Airy address and a phone number and fax number and an e-mail address. The Church of the New Life.

I had always been a little leery of churches, being Jewish and all, but what really gave me the creeps was Church Lite. I could fathom the power in the somber Romanesque visions of the Catholic Church, the stained glass and incense, the passionate story of sacrifice and redemption. But there was something creepy about those pseudomodern, calorie-reduced, image-cleansed, whitewashed churches that were springing up left and right. Glass cathedrals selling salvation and tee shirts. Betty Crocker as Madonna, Opie as child. And then there were those super-cleansed New Age halls, so scrubbed and shined that God had been washed right out of them, leaving crystals and pyramids and channeled entities from the fourteenth century to take His place. That was where I figured the Church of the New Life belonged. My new pals Gaylord and Nicholas were even creepier than I had thought. And none too bright either.

I mean, why would anyone bother to threaten someone off a case? Why not just put up a neon sign that flashed, “LOOK HERE FOR GOLD?” If I had still had doubts that there was something of interest to be found in Jacqueline Shaw’s death before my run-in with the apostles of the Church of the New Life, I had none anymore. And as I thought about the meeting and about my two new friends, the suspicion that had been hounding me, the suspicion that there was my very own way into the Reddman fortune, suddenly burst into the open and snatched my attention out of the air in its teeth and wrestled it to the ground. The route had been so obvious, so clear, that I hadn’t seen it. And now that I did I felt something ethereal flow through me. I grew light, almost light enough to float. I could barely remain seated in the chair as I felt myself suffused until bursting with the giddy sensation of pure pure possibility.