Tillie was sure she hadn't made a mistake-she wasn't half crazy, like Liz Hodges. Besides, it had only been yesterday that she'd seen Miss Harris, and she'd said to meet her right here-on the same bench-at nine-thirty. Tillie had made sure not to be late, too. Not because Miss Harris would have been mad at her-she never seemed to get mad at anyone- and not because of the money, either. Tillie made sure she wasn't late simply because she knew Miss Harris was a busy woman-even busier than most of the surface people seemed to be-and she just plain liked her. Being on time was the least she could do.

Until this morning, Miss Harris had never been late.

Still, Tillie was prepared to wait all day if she had to. It wasn't as if she had anything else that needed doing. Besides, it was a nice day, and there hadn't been many nice days since last fall, when it got too cold to be outside at all, and she'd have to retreat into the tunnels for the winter.

Like a bear going into hibernation, she thought to herself. Maybe that's what she'd turned into-an old bear that curls up for the winter. The thought left her chuckling out loud, but a young couple pushing a baby carriage gave her a look that made the laughter die on her lips. That was the one thing Tillie hated about living the way she did-she could always tell that most people thought she was crazy. She was wondering if maybe she ought to have some fun with the couple by acting really crazy, but then she saw Jinx walking briskly down the path, a combative look on her face.

"You said the hunters only went after criminals," Jinx said, her voice tight, her eyes glittering with anger.

Tillie frowned. What was the girl talking about? "Well, of course they do."

"Not this time," Jinx said, her voice rising.

"You want to tell me what you're talkin‘ about, or you just want to stand there yellin'?"

"Jeff Converse," Jinx said. Her voice was still rising, and as Tillie recognized the name, she glanced around. Nobody seemed to have heard Jinx, at least not yet, but you didn't talk about the hunters on the surface-in fact, most people didn't talk about them at all. Tillie grabbed Jinx's arm. "Now you just calm down," she said, scanning the area in one final search for Eve Harris. With no sign of her, Tillie decided not to wait any longer and started walking toward the river, her hand still clamped on Jinx's arm, steering her along the path.

"Let go of me," Jinx complained, trying to shake Tillie's arm loose.

But Tillie held fast, and a few minutes later they had skirted around the baseball diamond that lay on the shelf above the river and pushed through a nearly invisible hole cut in the high fence separating the park from the railroad tracks. More than a score of men were scattered around the weed-choked area, wearing the numerous layers of clothing that marked them as homeless. Mostly they were sitting in groups of two or three, but a few were standing like sentries, their backs to the rotting concrete columns that supported the highway, almost like a parody of the guards at Buckingham Palace.

Tillie nodded to most of the men as she steered Jinx past them, even spoke a few words to two of the sentries. It wasn't until the gloom of the railway tunnel had swallowed them up that she spoke to Jinx again.

"Now you tell me," she said, her eyes fixed on the girl. "What are you talking about?"

"He didn't do it!" Jinx said, her voice quivering with anger.

"Who didn't do what?" Tillie demanded. "What are you talkin‘ about?"

"The guys that came to the co-op-the ones you kicked out yesterday morning?"

Tillie's expression darkened. "What about ‘em?"

"I don't know about the big one, but the other one-Jeff Converse?-he didn't do anything."

"You said that to me this morning, but that's not what it said in the paper."

"I know what it said in the paper. I know what it said in all the papers, ‘cause I went down to the library today and read them. And guess what? They're wrong! I told you, I was there. I saw what happened that night. That guy was trying to help her. It was Bobby Gomez who did it. He was muggin' her, and the other guy got off a train."

Tillie only shrugged. "Even if you're right, it don't make any difference now-the hunters are already after him. He's as good as dead."

"Not if he gets out."

"But he ain't gonna get out," Tillie countered. "None of ‘em get out."

Jinx took a step back from Tillie. "None of ‘em ever had any help."

"What are you-" But before she finished the question, Tillie understood what Jinx intended to do. She reached out to grab the girl, but Jinx was too fast for her. Darting out of Tillie's reach, she went deeper into the tunnel, quickly disappearing in darkness. "Jinx!" Tillie called out. There was no reply, and a few seconds later she watched the girl's dark shadow pass through the pool cast by one of the dim lights fastened high on the tunnel wall. "You come back here," Tillie hissed. "Even if you find them, all that'll happen is the hunters'll kill you, too!"

But Jinx was running now. Tillie could hear the sound of the girl's pounding feet blending with the fading echo of her own words.

A moment later even those sounds died away and the tunnel fell silent.

Perry Randall sat at the desk in his walnut-paneled library overlooking Central Park. His desk faced the window, and the curtains were wide open, allowing morning sunlight to flood the room. Had he paused to appreciate the view, he would have seen the profusion of color that momentarily filled the park as the spring flowers entered their full, brief glory.

But Perry Randall had not looked out the window- indeed, since he'd heard the message intended for Heather, he had been on the telephone. He'd called half a dozen people, and when no one had been able to provide him with an answer to his question, he'd instructed them to meet him at eleven o'clock that morning. "At the club," he told them. Though he was a member of four clubs scattered around Manhattan, including the Bar Association, the Metropolitan, and the Yale Club, everyone he called knew that he meant The 100 Club. Over a century old, to its members it was simply "the club," and to those outsiders who knew of it and hoped to become members it was "The Hundred."

To everyone else, it was entirely unknown.

The Hundred had been formed with a single purpose in mind: to provide a private retreat for the hundred most powerful people in the city with no regard whatsoever to gender, race, or religion. The petty snobberies and bigotries of the better-known clubs that were spread across the city were abjured by every member of The Hundred, at least when it came to fellow members. Far smaller than Perry Randall's other clubs, The Hundred still occupied the nineteenth-century brownstone at 100 West Fifty-third Street which had been built to house it, and little else had changed during the years since its creation. Since the membership would never expand, there had never been a need to move. Recognizing that the tides of power would inevitably shift over time, the charter of The Hundred provided that five percent of the membership be dropped every five years, and a new five percent elected. The policy ensured that there were never any senile old folks dozing away their days in the members' lounge, and that no matter what happened, the power brokers of the city- whoever they might be-would have a place to meet in complete privacy.

Today, if it somehow had been Jeff Converse's voice he'd heard on the telephone, Perry Randall was going to need that privacy to deal with the situation that had suddenly arisen. Obviously, someone had made a terrible mistake, and that mistake would have to be rectified. As the ornate, heirloom Seth Thomas regulator on the wall softly chimed the half hour, Randall closed the file on his desk-a file that contained every scrap of information relating to Jeff Converse's case, every page of which he'd reviewed again that morning-and placed it in his briefcase. Though he'd found nothing in it that seemed relevant to today's problem, one couldn't be too careful.