"Your brother is quite deceptive."

Max absently swung his foot into the rib cage of one of the maggots lying on the floor, never taking his eyes off the woman. I heard a sound like a twig snapping. He touched his eyes again, shook his head "no." He expanded his chest; his eyes flattened and power flowed from his body. He turned to me.

"My brother says a maggot cannot see a true man," I told her.

Still with the same half-smile, she asked, "Can a maggot see a true woman?"

Max took a pair of dark glasses from my coat pocket-he knows where I keep them-and put them on his face. He made a gesture like tapping with a cane, took off the glasses, threw both hands toward the woman, and smiled.

"My brother says even a blind man could see a woman such as you, I translated, and she was smiling too, even before I finished.

That's how Max met Immaculata.

TO MAMA, Immaculata was a "bar girl," her catchall phrase for anything from prostitute to hostess. A Vietnamese was bad enough, but one of mixed parentage was suspect beyond redemption. As far as she was concerned, a true warrior didn't need a woman, except on an occasional basis.

Mama never seemed to move from her restaurant, but nothing escaped her sight. She knew Max still lived in the back of the warehouse near Division Street, where his temple lay hidden upstairs. But he didn't live alone anymore. For Mama, anything that wasn't business was bad.

Immaculata had been working as a hostess in a Manhattan bar before she met Max. She had been trained as some kind of psychotherapist in France, but she couldn't practice in this country until she completed enough courses and got a license.

I saw her work one day when I went over to the warehouse looking for Max. I pulled the Plymouth into the garage on the first floor. It was empty-it always was. I got out of the car, closed the garage doors, and waited. If Max was around, he'd be there soon enough. If he didn't show in a couple of minutes, I'd just chalk a message to him on the back wall.

I heard the sound of fingers snapping, looked to my left, and there was Max. He was holding a finger to his lips-no noise. I climbed out of the Plymouth, leaving the door open, and walked over to where Max was standing. He motioned for me to follow him upstairs.

We padded along the narrow catwalk past the entrance to his temple. When we came to the blank wall behind the temple door, Max reached up and pulled back a curtain. We were looking through some one-way glass into what looked like a kid's playroom: kid-size furniture, brightly painted walls, toys all over the place. Immaculata was seated at a small table. Across from her was a little girl-maybe four years old. They were both in profile to us. It looked like they were playing with some dolls together.

I shrugged my shoulders, spread my hands, palms up. "What is this?" I was asking Max. He patted the air in front of him with both hands and pointed to his eyes: "Be patient and watch."

There were four dolls on the table. Two were bigger than an average kid's doll; the other two were a lot smaller. From their clothes and their hair I could see that two were male and two female.

Immaculata put the dolls to one side of the table and asked the kid something, looking calm and patient. The little girl took one of the small dolls and started to undress it, slowly and reluctantly. Then she stopped. She took the big male doll and made it sort of pat the little girl on the head. The little doll pulled away from the pat, but not too far. Finally, the big male doll helped the little girl doll get undressed. The big male doll unbuttoned his pants. It had plain white boxer shorts underneath. The child took off the shorts, revealing a set of testicles and a penis. The little girl doll was pushed over toward the big doll. The child kept lifting the male doll's penis, but it always flopped back. Finally, she put the little girl doll's mouth against the male doll's penis. A couple of dead-weight seconds went by. Then the child pulled the little girl doll away from the big doll. She put the little girl doll face down on the floor-then she had the big male doll pull up his shorts and pants and walk away.

The little girl was crying. Immaculata didn't move-but she was talking to the child. You couldn't hear a thing outside the window. She put out her hand to the child. The little girl took her hand, and Immaculata gently pulled her around to where she was sitting. She put the little girl on her lap, one arm around her back. She kept talking until the child nodded agreement to something.

Then Immaculata reached out for the big male doll and put it right in front of the child. The little girl grabbed the doll and started to shake it, screaming something. Her face was contorted in rage. She ripped at the big doll. Suddenly, the big doll's arm came off in her hand. The child looked at the arm she was holding, then back to Immaculata, who nodded something to her. The child ripped off the other arm. Then she started talking to the big, armless doll, shaking her finger in some kind of admonishment. Then she started to cry again.

Max motioned for me to follow him again. He pointed back toward his temple, telling me to wait for him.

I walked through the temple, being careful not to step past the black lines painted in a rectangle on the bleached wood floor. Then around to the back stairs, and from there into the small room that opened onto an alley behind the warehouse. I went over to the battered wood desk and pulled out the last score-sheet from our endless gin-rummy game.

I heard a knock at the back door. Then another. And then three raps, short and sharp. Max. I opened the door to let him in. If the three raps had come first, I wouldn't have opened the door without a gun in my hand.

Max and Immaculata came in together. She greeted me the way she always does-a slight bow of her head over her hands clasped in front. Always formal. She sat down across the table from me. Max went around behind me so he could watch her lips when she spoke.

"What was that I was watching?" I asked her.

"That was what we call a 'validation,' Burke."

"Validation?"

"That little girl has gonorrhea-a sexually transmitted disease. It was my job to find out how she contracted it."

"And she showed you?"

"Yes. The large doll is her father. Many children, especially very young ones, have no ability to use a narration. Most of them don't even have the words for what has been done to them."

"I never saw dolls like that," I said.

"They're 'anatomically correct' dolls. Under the clothes, the bodies have genitals proportionate to their size. They have to be specific, especially when the children don't speak."

"You mean when they're too young?"

"Not necessarily. The child you saw is almost six years old. But she had been told that the 'game' Daddy plays with her is their special secret and she isn't to tell anyone."

"Did he threaten her?"

"No. In fact, most incest offenders don't use threats until their victim is a lot older than this one. The child almost instinctively knows something is wrong with the activity, but the combination of guilt and fear is usually enough to ensure silence."

"What was that thing at the end-with the arms on the doll?"

"Just what it looked like to you. Rage. Sexually abused children are often consumed with anger at the person who hurt them. And sometimes at the person who failed to protect them as well. Part of the treatment process is letting them know it's okay to say 'No!'-it's okay to be angry. The arms and legs of the dolls are attached with Velcro; the children can tear them apart-and maybe put them together later, if they come that far."

"Doesn't the kid live with her father?"