His mind racing with a hundred questions, Vito walked with a quickened pace to the streetcorner where Ralphy was waiting for him. Ralphy was one of the Man's most trusted assistants. Rumor had it he had been a hit man of such talent that he once shot a mayoral candidate from two hundred yards and disappeared into a crowd right in front of the television cameras. Vito didn't doubt it was possible. For him, Ralphy was more of a force than a human being. So when Vito halted a few respectful yards away from Ralphy, he looked up into those cold brown eyes above those pockmarked cheeks and saw a man who would snuff him out as casually as he would step on a bug. Vito held out the key. "Here it is!" he proclaimed, perhaps a trifle too loudly.

"Good," said Ralphy in his gravelly voice, pointedly not taking the key. "You check out the room?"

"No. I wasn't told to."

"Right. Check it out now."

"What's going on?" Vito blurted out. " I heard this was supposed to be a peace conference."

"You ain't heard nothing. We're just taking precautions, and you've been volunteered."

"What am I looking for?"

"You'll know if you find it. Now get."

Vito got. He didn't know if he should be elated or worried that he was being trusted with this part of the operation. His musings were interrupted as he accidentally bumped into a hunchbacked joker with a stiff hip shuffling from an alleyway. "Hey-watch it!" he barked, pushing the joker away.

The joker stopped and drooled, nodding fearfully at Vito. Something flickered on in his dull eyes, lasting for only a second, as the joker clenched and unclenched his fist. During that second the joker straightened and Vito got the distinct impression he could crush granite in that massive fist.

Then the joker deflated, another stream of spittle drooled from his mouth, and he shuffled backward into the alley until he bumped into a garbage can. The joker ignored Vito and rummaged about in the garbage. He found a dried, half-eaten chicken and took a big chomp of it with his white, straight teeth, masticating it furiously.

Disgusted, Vito turned away and hastened back to the hotel. Only as he pushed his way through the rotating doors that led into the lobby did Vito note that the joker's clothing-a lumberjack shirt and blue jeans-had been very clean and tidy. He couldn't remember having seen before a street person, reduced to scrounging in garbage cans for food, with fresh patches on his jeans at the knees.

Vito put the picture of the man from his mind with a shrug. He walked past the counter where the clerk still had his nose buried in the magazine, and thinking he might be trapped in the elevator with an unsavory sort who could reduce his probability of surviving the peace conference to zero, he instead took the six flights of stairs to the third floor. The hallway was depressingly dark, the dim fluorescents casting as much haze as actual light, light that barely reflected off the grimy tan walls, infusing them with an unpleasant glare.

He found the room. He looked up and down the hall. No one was there. He could hear the muffled sounds of a few TV sets coming through the doors, as well as what seemed to be the sounds of the plumbing working in the room across the hall. All this was pretty normal hotel activity in Vito's opinion, but he nevertheless felt prickly and uneasy inside, the way he always felt when he beleieved he was being watched by unseen eyes. He inserted the key with trembling fingers and opened the door.

And found himself staring into the face of one ugly motherfucker. The dude had virtually no jaw, two nostril pits instead of a nose, and a forked tongue that flicked in and out of his mouth. The way the joker grinned and looked at Vito with those predatory yellow eyes was definitely evil. Vito was used to a more banal, businesslike version. This joker savored the knowledge that he had already frightened Vito to the core.

The joker sneered. "I sssee the Calvinos are sending boysss to do their work now. Tell your boss it'sss all right for him to come in. I am quite alone."

"Maybe you should try taking off your socks next time," said Belinda May mischievously as the young preacher pulled the door closed. He winced at the playful sting of her words as he twisted the knob to make sure the room was locked. Belinda May giggled and put her arm around him. "Lighten up, Reverend. You take yourself too seriously." She gave him a squeeze that started his heart pounding, and he attempted a smile. "Just remember what Norman Mailer said," she whispered seductively into his ear. "'Sometimes desire just isn't enough.' It doesn't make you any less of a man."

"I don't read Mailer," he replied as they walked toward the elevator.

"His books too dirty for you?"

"That's what I've heard."

"It's only life that he writes about. Life is what's happening to us now."

"The Bible tells me everything I need to know about life."

"Bullshit."

Shocked by her casual profanity, he opened his mouth to reply-but she continued before he could get a word in: "It's a little late to protest your innocence. Leo."

The young preacher supressed his anger. Normally he only became angry before his congregations, and he wasn't used to being talked back to. Furthermore he wasn't used to being in the company of a female who implied his understanding of the moral dilemmas of love, life, and the pursuit of happiness wasn't beyond questioning. But in this case he was forced to admit, though not aloud to Belinda May, he was in the wrong, because he had indeed read the works of Norman Mailer-in particular The Executioner's Song, the exhaustive case-study of the tormented young ace who had been executed for turning nine innocent people into pillars of salt. The young preacher still had a copy of the paperback edition, hidden away in a cabinet drawer in his study in his southwestern Virginia home, where it was unlikely to be seen by anybody else. Many other books of dubious moral content were hidden away in the same drawer, and in many others, concealed from the curiosity of his closest associates the way other evangelical preachers might conceal the contents of their liquor cabinets.

So what else could he do except let Belinda May get the better of him? He was satisfied with the prospect of getting the better part of her body later. Besides, he wasn't all that interested in her mind anyway.

She gave him another squeeze as they stood and waited for the elevator to arrive. The thrill was twice as great as before, because this time she squeeed a buttock. "You have such a cute ass for a possible presidential candidate," she said. "Most of the current crop looks like a bunch of hound dogs."

His eyes darted back and forth suspiciously.

"Don't worry," she said, giving him a pinch. "There's nobody here."

Then the elevator doors opened and they found themselves staring at four men with impassive faces and eyes of steel. The young preacher felt his knees quake, and Belinda May's squeeze this time conveyed her fear and need for protection, a signal direct and primal.

The two men in the middle were the focus of the young preacher's attention. One was short and corpulent, red-faced and thick-lipped, with a long patch of white hair combed over the top of his head in a failed attempt to conceal the bald dome glistening beneath the fluorescents. His big eyes looked as if they would pop out of his head if someone slapped him on the back too hard. His fingers were thick and meaty. Despite a well-tailored black suit, with a red carnation in the lapel, and a neat white shirt and a gray vest, his taste in clothing was questionable at best, thanks to a red tie whose shade practically sent it into the Day-Glo category. The man serenely puffed at a big Havana cigar. The tobacco at the end had been darkened by his spittle, making it resemble nothing so much as a dried turd.