"I'm not in shape for this," he said. "You should climb more buildings."

"The whole convoy came straight here. I don't know where they're all headed, but-"

"The penthouse would seem indicated."

"Yeah."

"Fly over to the other building, and catch your breath. When Latham leaves, I'll give you the high sign, and you follow him."

"Man. I sure hope I'm awake when this all comes to a head. I'd like to know what's going on here."

Judas Priest began to thunder from beneath Shad's feet. He could feel the bass rumble through his soles.

Croyd took a few wheezing steps to the parapet and launched himself off into the night. Shad cloaked himself in darkness, then peered over the edge into one of the windows.

Van Gogh's Irises sat on the penthouse mantlepiece, vibrating to the heavy metal booming from eight-foot-tall speakers. Nelson Dixon, the painting's new owner, strutted up and down on the boardroom table in two-thousand-dollar handmade shoes. Jokers, including Kafka, hung around a boardroom table, not mixing much with a bunch of kids who were probably jumpers. A well-muscled bald woman stood in the corner and watched everyone with an expression of cold contempt. Near her, Shad recognized the lawyer St. John Latham. Shad wondered if Latham had been jumped but decided not-no jumper could possibly imitate that frigid manner. Shad also recognized the comptroller for the city of New York, a famous Wall Street bond profiteer, the curator of the Metropolitan Museum, and somebody from the old Reagan administration whom he couldn't otherwise place. Then Blaise came in with Tachyon, and the boy jumped up on the long table with Nelson Dixon, and the two exchanged high fives. Tachyon swayed to a chair and seemed to pass out again.

An interesting start to the meeting.

Shad took pictures through the window with a pocket camera and wished he had eavesdropping equipment.

The bald woman came forward and called things to order. The music faded away. People spoke. File folders were produced and passed around. Party bowls of cocaine and rapture moved up and down the table.

Shad wondered where Constance Loeffler was. The new head of Global Fun amp; Games had to be a part of this scene. The meeting went on for several hours. Nobody thought to look out the window and wonder what a piece of darkness was doing poking its head below the sill.

When things broke up, Shad had decided whether to follow Tachyon or the Van Gogh. The art attracted him more-he wanted to see where they were keeping the loot. He followed it to the same brownstone warehouse in Jokertown.

Damn. Still, he had a good start. All he had to do was follow people around. Connect the dots.

Then do what he always did.

Later that night, he slipped into Shelley's hotel room, just to see what it was the one-eyed girl had put on top of the tall cabinet. He picked the lock and slid in silently, wrapped in darkness. Shelley was breathing easily on the bed. Shad walked up the wall and peered at the top of the cabinet. His mouth went dry.

What the girl had put there was her own eye. And her hand. The eye was looking down at Shelley's sleeping figure. Apparently Shad had not caught its attention.

He got the hell out of there.

Next morning, following instructions, Shelley set her window shade to the angle that meant yes.

And the jumpers came and got her.

Two nights later, Croyd collected his last payment of cash and bugs. Between the two of them they'd collected a large dossier, following and photographing every person and every car they could connect with the jumping scheme. Shad's files bulged with data.

Tachyon. St. John Latham. Curator of the Metropolitan Museum. The city comptroller. Shad had been in and out of each of their apartments, though without finding much incriminating. Nelson Dixon. Probably Connie Loeffler. Maybe even Donald Trump, who the hell knew? Trump had sure been going through a lot of changes lately. Hell, he'd gone and fired his wife. Nelson Dixon had fired a lot of people, too, including his entire security network. He bet the new security people were part of the scheme.

It wouldn't be the jumpers in their bodies, Shad figured. Fifteen-year-old street punks couldn't pull off impersonations this complex. Jumpers were just the means of entry. Shad guessed that the new tenants were probably well-educated jokers from Ellis Island, people who might have been Nelson Dixon or Donald Trump themselves if their wild cards hadn't been stacked against them.

How many millions were going into that warehouse?

Along with guns bought with converted bearer bonds, medical supplies from the Jokertown Clinic, drugs from the Snowboys, paintings from the Metropolitan collection…

The question was how to bust it open. His usual method was to infiltrate, then turn the bad guys against each other. But this was too damn big. And infiltration would be difficult. He wasn't a jumper, wasn't a joker, wasn't a Snowboy, and he certainly wasn't whatever the bald woman was.

The third night, he followed Tachyon to the warehouse. The Saab couldn't get in because there was a navy-surplus deuce-and-a-half sitting in the open main door. Blaise and Tachyon conferred inside for a few minutes, and then the Saab led the truck onto a pier on the Lower West Side. Shad remembered himself as Mr. Gravemold, fighting a paranoid albino Croyd and a near-invincible Snotman on this same pier. It seemed the pier wasn't keeping any better company since that time.

He slipped through the pier rail and walked inverted over the water. He stopped when he heard the truck brakes squeal, then the slam of doors and the sound of voices. The water near the pier began to bubble. Shad's nerves gave a leap. He summoned darkness to cover him.

Something broke surface, a gelatinous hemisphere streaming with cold Hudson water. Shad's mouth went dry as he saw the bulbous eyes, up top like a bullfrog's, and the leering twisted mouth. He was used to jokers but he wasn't used to this.

"Let's hurry it up," the thing said. "I got dinner waiting." Its veined skin split open, and another joker stood up inside. The joker was built along the lines of a beer truck, with a heavy armored exoskeleton to strengthen him, and he began to take heavy crates from those above and stow them carefully inside the shimmering dome.

The crates seemed evenly divided between food and munitions.

"My aching back," said the aquatic dome. "I hope you're ready for a slow ride home."

"Anything to give Granddad a kick in the teeth," Blaise said. Tachyon and the jokers looked uncomfortable. Granddad, Shad thought. Tachyon had been jumped. And he was on the Rox.

Tachyon and Blaise lay flat on a case of antitank rockets.

The big joker stepped out, the dome sealed, and in complete silence, it vanished from sight beneath the river.

The deuce-and-a-half rumbled as it started up.

Shad decided to burglarize Tachyon's apartment again. Maybe he'd find something incriminating this time.

On the pavement below Tachyon's window he found a chalk drawing of himself, dressed as he was just now, his feet planted to the wall. Shad's head swung wildly, his ears alert to the sound of laughter.

He heard nothing.

He found nothing in Tachyon's apartment.

He wondered, as he scuffed the drawing away with his shoe, if his role in this was ordained by someone not himself. If he was a pawn.

And he wondered if that someone had chalk dust on her fingertips.

"Hi. My name is Lisa Traeger these days. I'm calling from the trust officer's desk while he's off converting about half a million dollars to bearer bonds. I just thought I'd let you know I'm still among the living. I'll call back later, when I get some free time."

Lisa Traeger. He knew the victim's name now.

He heard the phone call hours after it was recorded. He'd seen the jump after having followed the Lincoln from the brownstone warehouse, but he hadn't known Shelley was a part of it. Shad was waiting by the phone when it rang again.