Jack slipped outside and silently followed two men who were just disappearing down the stairs. He went to the end of the corridor and looked out the window. From that spot he could see the street below. After a few seconds, he saw the two men walk out of the building, climb into the back of a brown Econoline van and pull the door closed. They were both in their mid-twenties, with crewcuts, jump boots, jeans, and windbreakers.

The van didn't leave. While Jack watched, the door opened again and the two men got back out. They looked up at the building and scratched their heads. One of them gave the other a beats me shrug, then they headed back inside the building.

Jack returned to the Lipstick Lounge and waited until the door to his office opened and the men were again walking around inside. He put his ear to the wall and faintly heard the two men arguing. The sentences sounded garbled, like cartoon fish talking, but Jack could make out what was being said.

"He ain't here," one of the voices insisted.

"He's gotta be," the other answered.

"Go tell that to Valdez, why don't ya?"

"You're right… this is stupid. The equipment must be screwed up. Let's go."

And they left for the second time.

Jack followed them out as they headed back into the stairwell, then watched from the window until they appeared on the street. Then they both climbed back into the van and closed the door.

Jack returned to the Lipstick Lounge and reported. "They're parked out there waiting. We gotta find a way to sneak out of here and slide past 'em."

"You could wear some of these," Miro said, pulling some dresses off the rolling rack. "We've got wigs in those boxes, some triple-wide pumps."

"Not even during Gay Pride Week," Jack said. He was trying to be enlightened, but he wasn't going out on the street wearing plastic pumps and a ball gown.

"The wigs are a good idea," Susan said, and began opening boxes, pulling out a few. She chose a long black one for herself, then gave Herman a blond bob. Zimmy tried on a gray shag. Jack got the strawberry pageboy.

"Oh, Jack, that's so you," Miro gushed.

When Jack looked in the mirror he saw Wynonna Judd on steroids.

They took off their jackets to further change their appearance, and Susan borrowed a blue plastic raincoat.

Jack led them down the staircase and out the front, hugging the building, using a crowd of laughing men coming out of The Sports Connection as a screen. Miraculously, they made it to the Nissan Sentra.

Jack snatched off his wig. "Let's get the hell out of here."

They pulled past the Econoline van, and as Jack was looking out the back window one of the CDF troopers got out and looked up the street after them. It was almost as if he knew they had just driven away.

Dr. Carolyn Adjemenian was a tall woman in her mid-thirties with a pockmarked, narrow face and a spectacular body. Her muscles were etched on tight skin like lines on an anatomy chart. She had blondish hair, grayish eyes, and wore her reading glasses up on her head like a geek tiara.

"Come in," she said after Zimmy did the introductions. The house was a two-bedroom duplex in Santa Monica. Neat lawn, white shutters, a carport.

She led the three of them to her computer room in the guest bedroom. As they were walking down the hall, Herman caught a glimpse of the master. She had turned it into a full gym: free weights, a pull-down lat bar, stacks of heavy plates and pulleys. He wondered where she slept- maybe on the flat bench.

"Sit down," she said as if she were ordering sprinters onto their marks. She sat in front of her computer, booted up, and found a Web site called basic alignment search tool:

BLAST

"We use this Web site in genetics research to identify any unknown DNA sequence," she said. "It has the gene maps for all plant and animal species that scientists have catalogued to date."

While she waited for it to load she turned toward Herman. "Zimmy gave me your decoded encryption. As you may or may not know, DNA is made up of thousands of base-pair genes. There are only four different kinds of proteins that make up a gene. Each protein has its own designated letter: A, C, G, or T. The combination and sequence of these base pairs determine our genetic makeup." She reached behind her and grabbed the printout of what Roland had died for. It contained pages and pages of the same four letters in varying chains and sequences.

ACACACACCAG TGTACCACA TTGATCAG TTCAAGTA

CCAAGGTAT GGATTCAGTCC ACCATGGATTA TTAGAACCTA

CCTTAGC ACCAACCAAG ACACACAGTATA TATCCG

"When I first saw it I knew it had to be a DNA sequence for some animal or plant, so I fed it into the BLAST program to compare this sequence of yours with all the gene maps of species already stored in its databank. It gives you a percentage of homology."

"It does what?" Herman asked.

"It takes your DNA sample and matches it to all others, then tells you what percentage one is to the other." She turned back to her computer and clicked on two icons. "For example, if you put in a chimp and ask BLAST to match its DNA to the gene map of Homo sapiens, this is what you'll get." The BLAST program displayed a percentage: "98.4 percent homology. She pointed to the percentage printed on the screen. "That's how close human DNA is to a chimpanzee's. A chimp is closer to a human genetically than the African elephant is to the Indian elephant. It's hard to believe, but chimps are closer to humans than they are to their ape cousins, like bonobos, or gorillas, or orangutans. So, despite outward appearances, the chimpanzee's closest relative is not any ape species, but us. Some geneticists believe humans are nothing more than a third more developed species of chimpanzee. You with me?"

"Yes," all four of them said at once.

"What comes up on a typical BLAST search is a list from the most homolistic to the least," Dr. Adjemenian continued. "Then if you want to narrow it you can set your search to focus on particular irregularities between species. Those irregularities can also be determined by percentile. A single gene can be a gene-to-gene perfect match between two species, or it can differ by a percentage. Okay?"

"Okay." This time only Herman answered. "We are usually trying to determine the identity of the animal in question," Carolyn went on. "If we recover a DNA sample and we want to know what animal left it, we might run a BLAST search comparing it to a human. If we find that it is 98.4 percent human we know it's a chimp. If it's only 96.4 percent we know it's an orangutan. Still with me?"

"Yeah, I guess," Herman said.

"So… once I got my basic DNA comparison, I set BLAST to asterisk any gene in this map that doesn't match on the over forty thousand genes in this particular base-pair string. I ran a BLAST search on your sample, but it doesn't correspond to any exact species we have here on earth… at least not as far as I can determine."

She looked at them and let this sink in. "It's close, very close. But this genome does not represent any species now in existence."

Jack rubbed his eyes. He hated this more than he hated gang violence or checks bouncing. More than just hating it, he was also terrified of it. Jack didn't mind facing off some murderous asshole like Matasareanu outside a bank in North Hollywood, because at least Emil wore pants and pissed standing up. But aliens? Space monsters? No way. That was not in his emotional zip code.

"Are you saying that this animal, whatever it is, is from somewhere else?" Herman said, creeping up on his next thought like an Apache in the dark. "Are you saying that it's perhaps from some other world… like… well… like from outer space?" He'd finally said it.