"What did I give you last time?" the voice said conversationally. " I believe it was second-stage hypothermia, correct? Lowered your body to about was it eighty-eight degrees? Just made you a little uncoordinated for a while."

Anton was still hanging in the air. Suddenly he felt himself falling. He wanted to scream but couldn't manage it. His fall stopped short. There was a horrible wrenching of his knees and ankles.

"Let's go to the third stage, shall we? Shall we make you eighty-one degrees?"

Heat funneled out of him. He could feel his heart skip a beat, then another. Anton ceased to feel altogether. His breath rattled in his throat, trying to draw warmth from the air.

"I told you to stop stealing, Anton," the voice said. " I told you to stop pimping underage joker girls to tourists. I told you to stop beating and raping girls you meet on the street. And you go right on doing it. What does that make you, Anton? Stupid? Stubborn?"

The voice turned reflective. "And what does this make me?" Cold laughter answered the question. "A man of my word, I believe."

The darkness flowed away, revealing what it had left behind. Anton, gasping for breath, swayed in the wind. He had been strung up from a streetlight, his feet lashed to it by the belt of his trench coat. His pockets had been emptied of money. The credit cards and the drugs remained, enough to put him in prison. Or at any rate the prison hospital.

Droplets of blood made little patterns on the pavement as the wind scattered them-each, until chilled by contact with the air, a precise 81 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Chalktalk? Girl? You all right?" Darkness flowed toward the fantasy landscape on the pavement.

The street artist was gone.

The flowing darkness paused, alert to movement in the night, alert to body heat. Saw none, then looked downward. The fantasy landscape was brighter, as if lit from within. Invisible clouds traced moving shadows on the landscape.

And in it the young girl was running. Up over a green hill, and out of sight.

Night surrounded the phone booth, which stood alone in a puddle of yellow beneath a streetlamp. Despite the spilling light, it was difficult to see just who it was who picked up the receiver and dropped a coin into the slot.

"Nine-one-one emergency. Go ahead."

"This is Juve." (pronounced Hoo-vay). His words had, a strong Spanish accent. I heard shots. Shots and screams.' "Do you have an address, sir?"

"One-eighty-nine East Third Street. Apartment Six-C."

"May I have your full name, sir?"

"Just Juve. I want to be anomalous."

Juve hung up and in the instant before the darkness claimed him, smiled. The emergency dispatcher would never comprehend that in his very last statement, he had meant exactly what he said.

The streetlight shone green. Then yellow. Then red. Colors that reflected on the dark chalk landscape drawn on the pavement below.

The wall read: JUMP THE RICH. Red light glowed off the orange graffiti, off the little droplets of blood on the pavement.

Anton swung above, his body growing colder with each red drop that spilled from his swinging form.

When No Dice walked into Freakers, the air turned chill. People shivered, shuddered, turned apprehensively toward the door.

No Dice only smiled. He just loved it when that happened. No Dice ignored the stage show and glided regally to a booth in the back. Three Liza Minnellis sat on its torn red plastic seats. All were wearing black bowler hats, as in the movie Cabaret. At least they'd spared him the net stockings. "My man," said No Dice. He looked from one Minnelli to the next, uncertain whom to address.

"Mister No Dice." A big man rose from the booth. No Dice knew he was Lostboy from his high-pitched voice. "Lostboy" said No Dice. "My man." As if he'd known all along which Liza to talk to.

No Dice gave all three of the 'Wolves the homeboy handshake-thumb up, thumb down, finger lock and tug, back-knuckle punch. Then he sat down in their booth. His long leather coat creaked.

"Lookin fresh, No Dice," said Lostboy.

No Dice smiled. "Manhattan makes it, Harlem takes it."

"That the truth," said one of the Lizas.

"Order you a drink?" Lostboy said. He grabbed a waitress as she passed. "Chivas Regal. Straight up."

No Dice leaned over the table. "Wanna move weight," he said. "Wanna move kilos."

Lostboy picked up his highball glass and deliberately threw its contents on the floor. "I always like my man No Dice." Lostboy reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag of blood-fresh from the blood bank and guaranteed free of AIDS. He began squeezing it out into his empty glass. "My man No Dice always wants weight, always pays cash, doesn't give attitude. Got his own clientele up in Harlem, so he never cuts into our action. Never no hassles with No Dice."

"That the truth, homes," said No Dice. "I'll drink to it."

No Dice's smile turned a little glassy as Lostboy lifted his Liza Minnelli mask and his proboscis unrolled from beneath his tongue into the red fluid.

"Chateau AB Negative," he sighed. "My favorite vintage."

Whoever answered the phone answered it in Chinese. "Can I speak to Dr. Zhao, please?"

"Who shall I say is calling?" The switch to English came smoothly enough.

"Juve."

"One moment."

Juve knew the place he was calling, had been in it a few times. The bar-restaurant was on the second floor above a grocery, and it didn't even have an English name, just a sign in Chinese characters on the door. Juve gathered that the gist of the name was simply Private Club. Sitting in red leather booths would be soft-voiced Asian men in Savile Row suits and handmade Italian shoes, very probably packing Israeli submachine guns.

"This is Zhao."

"This is Juve. You still lookin' for Dover Dan? The guy with three eyes who stole your product in that apartment down on East Third?"

"Ah." A moment's thought. "Should we discuss this over the phone?"

"Ain't no time to get up-close-and-personal witchoo, man. He's in Freakers with some of his homeboys."

"And you're certain he's there."

"He was there five minutes ago. He took his mask off when he got his drink, and I seen him."

"If this information is correct, you may apply to me tomorrow for my very special thanks."

"You know I'm a man of my word, Dr. Zhao." Juve hung up the phone.

Darkness hovered uncertainly around him. He stared up at the glass front of One Police Plaza. Anything else to do tonight?

Might as well go home.

He buttoned the collar of his black leather trench and headed southwest on Park Row. One Police Plaza glowed across the street. He kept to the shadows.

"Simon? Is that you, Simon?"

The distorted voice wailed out of a doorway. Juve jumped at the sight of a figure huddled under a salvaged old quilt, the sad-faced old female joker whose face seemed to have collapsed into itself, so heavily wrinkled it looked like that of a bloodhound.

Terror rolled through him. He wasn't Simon anymore. "Simon?" the joker said.

"Not me, lady," Juve said. "It is you!"

Juve shook his head and backed away. The woman lurched to her feet, tried to reach for him.

Her hand closed on air. She stared around her. The darkness had engulfed Juve entirely. "Simon!" she screamed. "Help me!"

The darkness didn't answer.

He was No Dice again by the time he got a cab heading north. He had been Juve wearing No Dice's clothes, he thought, and that had made him uncertain, made him overreact when his identity was challenged.

Who was still alive, he wondered, who remembered Simon?

Some old joker lady apparently. He couldn't remember ever seeing her. He wondered why her appearance had frightened him so much.

The cab left him at Gramercy Park. Darkness carried him up the side of a whitestone building on raven wings. He opened the roof entrance with his key and went down two flights of stairs, then padded on an old wine-colored carpet to his apartment door. The door and frame were steel sheathed in wood. He opened several locks and stepped inside, then pressed the code that would disconnect the alarms.