"Some other time. I've got to be at the clinic bright and early."

He picked up his cell phone and ordered her a cab. Doug's apartment was in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn; you could get old waiting under the Manhattan Bridge for a cab to cruise by.

When he clicked off, he reached out and pulled her onto his lap. "If you lived here," he said, nuzzling her throat, "you'd already be home."

Nadia puffed her cheeks as she let out a breath. "We're not going to get into this again, are we?"

"You're going to be living here anyway when we're married." His nuzzling was sending goose bumps down her back. "Why not just move it up a few months?"

"It's over a year. And do you want to convince my mother?"

He laughed. "No thanks!"

She'd moved in with her mother during her residency. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. She'd been spending so much time at the hospital, it didn't make sense to rent a place when Mom's little two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment on the upper border of Kip's Bay was just a few blocks from the medical center. Might as well pay the rent stipend to her rather than a stranger.

Now she wished she hadn't. Not that they didn't get along. Just the opposite; they got along too well. Mom was seventy and a widow—Dad had died five years ago. She'd come over from Poland before the war. She might be an American citizen now, but she had never really let go of the Old Country. Her accent was thick, and pictures of Pope John Paul II papered her apartment walls.

Except for religion—Nadia had stopped going to Sunday mass while Mom went daily—they got along fine. Well, maybe Mom was skeptical about her daughter the doctor taking a research job instead of practicing medicine like a "real doctor," but that was a minor point.

Moving out of Mom's and into her own place would not be a problem—Mom was independent and could handle living alone just fine. Moving in with Doug, on the other hand, would become an issue. She'd wail about her daughter living in sin and embark on a string of Novenas to try to save Nadia's soul.

What was the point in putting the poor woman through that torment? She and Doug would be married before long. Until then she'd hang in with the current arrangement, which wasn't hard to take. They saw plenty of each other, and living apart certainly hadn't stunted their sex life.

"Didn't want to start anything," Doug said.

"I know," she sighed. Reluctantly she pulled free of his embrace and rose. "Gotta go."

"Call me when you get in."

He always had her call him after she left, just to let him know she got home safe.

"How will I get through if your modem's got the line tied up?"

He held up the cell phone from the desk and hit a button. "I'll leave this on." He blew her a kiss and renewed his attack on the keyboard.

Another wave of apprehension eddied around her as she headed down to wait for her cab. Tonight she wished more than ever that she lived here.

17

Dressed in layers of rag shop clothing, Jack sat on a piece of cardboard in a shadowed doorway of Doyle's auctions across the street from Dr. Monnet's co-op building on East Eighty-seventh Street. He was keeping a low profile, not because he was afraid Monnet would spot him but because his current look wasn't exactly common in Carnegie Hill, especially just a few blocks up from the mayor's digs. The hour was late and traffic was light in this land of upscale shops and high-rise condos and co-ops.

Business must be good in Pharmaceuticals, he thought as he checked out the front of Monnet's building. Eight stories—tall stories—the apartments inside had to have ten-, twelve-, maybe fifteen-foot ceilings—with some sort of turretlike superpenthouse or common area on the roof. Three different kinds of brick, and large balconies recessed in the face. Even a small apartment in that place probably had a seven-figure price tag.

Since Dragovic was more secretive and harder to tail—and was probably already out in the Hamptons for the weekend anyway—Jack had decided to stick close to Monnet. Jack hadn't said anything to Nadia, but he wasn't ready just yet to buy into her idea that Dr. Monnet was a completely unwilling participant in any relationship he might have with the Slippery Serb. Guys like Dragovic did their fair share of arm-twisting, but lots of times the arm they were twisting had been offered to them. Jack was curious what else Monnet might be into.

But where was the good doctor? Jack had called his number before coming over, and a couple of more times from the pay phone on the corner. All he'd got was the answering machine.

That didn't necessarily mean the man wasn't home. Maybe he had caller ID and didn't pick up when the readout said "unknown caller." So Jack had parked himself here to keep an eye on the front entrance and see if Monnet showed—either coming or going.

But he'd been at it since nine and here it was almost midnight with no sign of him. No sense in hanging here any longer. If Monnet was in, he'd most likely stay in; if he was out, Jack wasn't going to learn anything by watching him come home. Time to pack it in.

Annoyed at the waste of time he could have better spent with Gia, he rose and folded his cardboard and headed west. He entered Central Park at Eighty-sixth Street and walked across the Great Lawn with his Semmerling in his hand in case some genius got the bright idea that a homeless guy might be an easy roll, but he reached the bright lights of Central Park West without incident.

Back in his apartment he stripped, showered, then set up the projection TV for the start of his Moreau festival—not Jeanne… Dr. Moreau. Jack had the tapes set up in chronological order. Unfortunately that meant playing the best first. The Island of Lost Souls with Laughton, Lugosi, and Arien was one of his all-time favorites and certainly the best of the Moreaus. Despite the inexplicable Hungarian accent of his man-wolf character, Bela remained unmatched as Sayer of the Law.

"Not to spill blood! That is the law! Are we not men?"

And then the guttural response from dozens of coarse throats not designed for human speech… "Are we not men? …"

But fatigue got the best of him. He dozed off with Charles Laughton complaining through his prissy little mustache and goatee about "the stubborn beast flesh creeping back…"

Somewhere in Jack's dreams Sal Vituolo became the Sayer of the Law, crying over and over, "Are we not men?… Are we not men?…"

FRIDAY

1

"Jesus H. Christ!"

It had changed.

Nadia sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the printout in her vibrating hands.

The diagram of the Loki molecule's structure—it looked different, was different. She couldn't say how, exactly, but she knew that some of the side chains present yesterday afternoon were missing this morning. For the life of her, though, she couldn't remember what they were.

She'd meant to check the printout last night when she came home but forgot. Probably because she hadn't thought it worth the effort, or maybe she'd subconsciously believed that Dr. Monnet had been kidding her. In Nadia's world, diagrams did not alter themselves.

Until now.

No-no-no. Don't go there. This is impossible.

Wait. She'd also printed out the empirical formula and memorized it. She pulled the sheet from her shoulder bag and unfolded it. It read "€24113404." But that was wrong. She was sure it had been C27H40O3. Or had there been six oxygen atoms? Damn! She couldn't be sure. And that wasn't like her.

She checked the empirical formula against the molecular structure—they tallied perfectly.