Daoud had opened the chain-link door. Was gazing out at the wilderness.

"What's it look like over the side?" Shmeltzer asked him.

The Arab dropped to the ground, crawled to the edge, and peered down.

"Small drop, easy," he said, surprised. "Looks like a hiking trail."

They lowered themselves over the side, Daoud first, Shmeltzer following. Landed on flat, soft earth, a wide terrace-three meters by two. The first of several oversized steps notched into the hillside.

"Like stairs," said Daoud.

Shmeltzer nodded. Below the steps was a thick, coarse growth of water-spurning shrubbery. Ugly stuff, green-gray spikes and coils, some of it browning in the heat.

He noticed a split in the brush, a parting like the Red Sea. The two detectives climbed down the steps and entered it, edging through a narrow pathway, barely one person wide. Beneath their feet, flat surface rounded to a concave ditch; they sank suddenly and had to use their arms for balance. But soon they grew used to the concavity, were walking steadily and rapidly down the side of the hill. Bent at the waist to avoid being snagged by the thorny branches overhead.

Shmeltzer slowed and looked up at the branches. An arch of greenery-the classic Jerusalem arch, this one fashioned by nature. Opaque as a roof except for frayed spots where the sun shone through, letting in shards of light that cast brilliant white geometric patterns upon the hard-packed earth.

A tunnel, he thought. Leading straight down to the desert, but from the air or below you'd see only brush, a serpentine line of gray-green. Probably fashioned years ago by the Brits, or maybe the Jordanians after them or the Turks before them. An escape route.

"How you doing?" he asked Daoud. "Still got the stuff?"

The Arab patted his middle. "Still got it."

"Okay, let's follow this. See where it leads."

After a while, Nightwing got more open about herself, lying in his arms in the backseat of the Plymouth after she did him.

and talking about her childhood-growing up fat and pimply and unpopular, terrorized by an asshole father who crawled into her bed every night and raped her. The next morning he'd always feel guilty and take it out on her by slapping her around and calling her a whore. The rest of the family going along with it, treating her like scum.

Once he saw tears in her eyes, which nauseated him; hearing about her personal shit made him sick. But he didn't stop her from spilling it out, sat back and pretended he was listening, sympathetic. Meanwhile he was filling his mind with pictures: real science experiments on whimpering mutts, touching the stiffs in the path lab, memory slides of what he'd done to Fields, how the slimeball's head had looked all bashed to trash. Thinking: It's easy to be a shrink.

One night they were driving on Nasty, headed for a parking spot, and she said, "That's him-that's BoJo!"

He slowed the car to get a good look at the pimp, saw a short, skinny nigger in a purple suit with red fake-fur lapels and a red hat with fake leopardskin band and peacock feathers. Little slime was standing on a corner talking to two fat blond whores, his arms around them, showing lots of gold tooth.

Nightwing slumped low on the seat and prodded his arm. "Speed up. I don't want him to see me!"

He slowed the Plymouth, smiled. "What, you're scared of a little shit like that?"

"He may be little, but he's bad."

"Yeah, right."

"Believe it, Doctor T. C'mon, let's get out of here!"

"Yeah, right."

After that, he started watching the nigger.

BoJo was a creature of habit, showed up on the boulevard Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, always around eleven P.M. Always driving from the south side of town in a five-year-old lacquer-flake purple Pontiac Grand Prix with gangster whitewall tires wrapped around chrome reversed mag wheels, silver sparkle vinyl top, etched opera windows, fake ermine tuck-and-roll interior with purple piping, "BJ" mono-grammed in gold on the doors, and blackened windows with stickers on them warning that the entire shitty mess was protected by a supersensitive motion-detector alarm system.

The pimpmobile was always left in the same no-parking zone on the south side of Nasty. Cops never checked; Grand Prix never got ticketed. When BoJo got out of the car, he always stretched, then lit an extra-large gold-tipped purple Sherman's with a gold lighter shaped like a Playboy rabbit, before setting the alarm with a little handpiece. Repeated the same song-and-dance on his way back to the car.

The little shit's evenings were just as predictable: a westward stroll on Nasty, collecting from his whores until midnight, then the rest of the night spent drinking at a puke-stinking pimp bar called Ivan's Pistol Dawn on Wednesdays and Fridays. Ogling the dancers at a strip joint called the Lube Job on Sundays.

Dr. Terrific followed him. No one noticed the clean-cut guy in the windbreaker, T-shirt, freshly laundered jeans, and blue tennies. Just another soldier on leave, looking for action.

Soldier of destiny.

Once in a while BoJo left with one of the Lube Job strippers or a whore. Once in a while another nigger, a big, light-skinned, muscle-bound type, hung around him playing bodyguard. But usually he did his thing alone, swaggering along the boulevard as if he owned it. Probably feeling confident because of the nickel-plated pistol he carried-big.45-caliber cowboy job with a white fake-pearl handle. Sometimes he took it out of the glove compartment and waved it around like some kind of toy before sticking it back in his waistband.

Fucker certainly seemed confident, dancing and prancing, laughing all the time, his mouth a fucking gold mine. He wore tight, satin-seamed pants that made his legs look even skinnier than they were, custom-made ticky-tacky wide-shouldered jackets, and patent-leather shoes with high stacked heels. Even with the heels he was short. Black dwarfshit.

Easy to spot.

He watched the scuzz for weeks, was there one warm Friday night, waiting, when BoJo returned from his prowl/party at three-thirteen A.M. Had been waiting in the shit-stinking alley for four hours, standing next to a shit-stinking dumpster, but not the least bit tired. Letting the garbage smells pass right through him, floating above it like some angel, his mind pure and free of thoughts.

Seeing only Fields's face, then BoJo's, then the two of them merging into a white/nigger slime mask.

Pow. His hands itched.