“Thanks for the lift, Trike …”

He grinned, then stood up on his pedals and pulled away from the curb. The doorman glowered at me as he held open the door; I caught his disdainful look and shrugged. “The Rolls is in the shop,” I said as I strode past him. “You know how it is.”

I left my topcoat at the chequer and paused in front of a mirror to inspect my appearance. White tie and vest, black morning coat and trousers, faux pearl studs and cufflinks: I looked as if I was ready to conduct a symphony.

It had been a long time since I had gone white-tie. The only reason I owned tails in the first place was because Marianne had insisted upon a formal wedding. She had resented unpacking my tux from the attic boxes and bringing them downtown to my apartment, but it was the only way I was going to get into the main event of St. Louis’s social calendar. This evening, no one in jeans and a bomber jacket would have been allowed within a block of the Adam’s Mark.

Tonight was the night of the Veiled Prophet Ball, and I had come to the ritziest hotel in downtown St. Louis to complete the story I was writing.

No one had arrested us when we emerged from the water tower. In obedience to Payson-Smith’s demands, the ERA squads that had surrounded the tower left the scene. The soldiers piled back into their LAVs, the Apache flew back to Busch Stadium, and when the park was clear of everyone except for a handful of police officers and paramedics investigating the helicopter wreckage in the reservoir, Ruby Fulcrum informed us it was safe to exit the tower.

By then it was dawn, and I was dog-tired. It had been a long night. I barely said anything to either Richard Payson-Smith or Jeff Morgan; I simply walked away from the park, trudging down several blocks of empty sidewalks until I reached the nearest MetroLink station.

It was a long walk; I had to carry a plastic grocery sack filled with computer printouts. I kept expecting to see an ERA vehicle pull over and a couple of troopers jump out to hustle me into the back for a ride down to the stadium, but this didn’t happen. Ruby had assured each of us that we had been given amnesty; our records were scrubbed clean, our names and faces removed from the most-wanted list.

The conspirators would leave us alone now, even if by doing so they ensured their own demise. How could they do otherwise? A sword of Damocles now orbited over their heads, a sword cast not of Damascus steel but of focused energy, and the single hair that kept it from falling was observance of Ruby Fulcrum’s demands … and what Ruby wants, Ruby gets.

I made my way back to Soulard, hiked through the early morning streets until I reached my building, hauled my weary ass upstairs, and stumbled through the broken door into my apartment. I didn’t even bother to take off the clothes I had been wearing for more than two days; I simply dropped the grocery bag on my desk, shrugged out of my jacket, kicked off my boots, and fell facefirst onto my unmade bed, falling asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I thought this was the end of the affair, but it wasn’t quite over yet.

At twelve o’clock, just as the church bells were ringing the noonday hour, I was awakened once again by the electronic beep of Joker’s annunciator. I tried to ignore it for as long as I could, but the noise continued until I crawled across the littered mattress, grabbed my jacket from where I had tossed it on the floor, and pulled the PT out of my pocket.

I hesitated before I opened its cover. Instead of Jamie’s face, though, the screen depicted a man wearing an absurd Viking helmet, his features indistinguishable behind the veil of purple silk.

A window opened at the bottom of the screen, scrolling upward to display in fine lines of arabesque typescript:

You are commanded to appear

at the

Annual Ball

to be given in honor of

His Majesty

The Veiled Prophet

and his court of love and beauty

on Saturday evening, April twentieth,

Two thousand and thirteen

St. Louis Ballroom

Adam’s Mark

I gaped as I read this. Receiving an invitation to the Veiled Prophet Ball wasn’t like winning a free ticket to a Cards game; it was a passport into the upper echelons of St. Louis high society. You’re either rich, famous, or both to be sent such a notice, even if it’s by e-mail at the last moment; since I was neither wealthy nor notable, getting invited to the VP Ball was a weird honors.

Just how famous is the Veiled Prophet Ball? Robert Mitchum drops a line about it in the original version of Cape Fear, that’s how famous it is. The Veiled Prophet Society was organized in 1874 as a secret society of upper-class St. Louis citizens; it was concocted around the ramblings of some obscure Irish poet about one Hashimal-Mugunna, who ruled a nonexistent kingdom in ancient Persia called Khorassan. The Veiled Prophet Society stopped being secret around 1894, when the first annual Veiled Prophet Ball was held to commemorate the return of the Veiled Prophet to St. Louis.

Actually, the Prophet has never left; he is a member of the Society itself, although the role changes every year and the identity of the new prophet is kept a closely guarded secret. Over time, the ball has evolved into an elaborate coming-out party for the debutantes of the city’s high society, the so-called “court of love and beauty,” when one of them is crowned as this year’s reigning queen.

For about the past fifty years, the Veiled Prophet Ball has been held around Christmastide, yet last year the Society had decided to postpone the ball until April. Since the downtown area was still recovering from the quake and there were riots going on in the north and south sides of the city, it would have been unseemly for several hundred rich people to be cavorting in public while most of the citizenry were enduring hardship.

But why had I been sent an invitation?

I switched on Joker’s dialog box. Ruby? Is that you? I typed at the bottom of the screen.

The invitation vanished, to be replaced by a line of type: ›I am here.‹

What’s going on? Have you sent me this invitation?

›I have arranged for it to be sent.‹

I don’t understand, I typed.

›Clarification: I have arranged for your name to be added to the guest list for the Veiled Prophet Ball. The notice you received is the standard one sent to persons who are invited within the last six to forty eight hours. You will also be receiving a commemorative rose vase by package service. Note: the festivities begin at 2000 hours. Formal white-tie apparel is mandatory.‹

I smiled. In this apartment, I would probably be using a commemorative rose vase as a beer mug. I replied: Thank you for doing this, but I still don’t understand why.

›You have done much to help me. This is my way of thanking you.‹

I laughed out loud when I read this. An invitation to the Veiled Prophet Ball; it was like sending a starving child a box of Godiva chocolates. Sweet and fattening, but not necessarily nutritious.

I wrote: If you really want to thank me, you can deposit a million dollars in my savings account.

There was a short pause, then:

›This has been done. Is there anything else you need?‹

I almost dropped Joker. I knew better than to ask if it was kidding; for Ruby Fulcrum, it was only a matter of accessing my savings account number at Boatman’s Bank and Trust and inserting the numeral 1 followed by six zeros. Money meant nothing to Ruby; everything was bits and bytes, little pieces of information that could be manipulated in a nanosecond.

What God wants, God gets …

It was a tempting notion, but what would the IRS have to say about this? I wrestled with my conscience for a few moments, then typed: Please undo this. I was only joking, and it would only present me with some problems.