"What do you mean `we,' girlfriend?"

She stood to lean over me. "Do you think that after what happened to me I don't have a grudge?" She looked as though she'd volunteer to pull the trigger on Number One all by herself. "This sort of thing has gone on long enough. It's all gone on too long."

"I work alone."

"Have it your way. The offer's there. What's that on your fingers?"

I didn't want to know. I raised my hand and saw grey gunk under a few nails. Memories flashed back. My stomach tried to beat the high jump record. I pressed up under my solar plexus to lift my diaphragm off the lurching organ. The sick feeling passed.

It was a technique I used a lot in my occupation.

A corner of my light blue hospital robe served to wipe the particles of dead flesh from beneath my fingernails. "Leftovers," I muttered.

She wasn't distracted. "I can help you on this. I want to help you. I know someone who can straighten you out on a few things about what god is."

I relented. "Do I have time to put on something less drafty?"

She showered and changed her outfit to a skintight peacock-blue Danskin top and a ruffled turquoise dress. After taking my measurements in a giggly stoned manner, she hopped into the stolen Porsche to head for Hollywood. She was gone until well after noon.

I took the opportunity during her absence to look around. After all, even if she hadn't actually told me to make myself at home, I was certain that such was her intent.

A quick glance through the medicine cabinet revealed nothing but the usual assortment of feminine colorants and perfumes. No medicine. Healthy sort.

One room contained an odd collection of metal and crystal sculptures. Copper and onyx and silver and amethyst glittered under the light from a ceiling lamp. The curtains were drawn. Bronze and quartz and gold and peridot scattered colors about.

Her bedroom barely enclosed a king-size bed decorated with an Egyptian motif. Lots of silk-screened papyrus leaves and scarabs. Stylized cobras. Very sexy.

I cut my tour short since I didn't know how long she would be out. I spent the next hour waiting for her, looking through her library. Real books, not plaques. Only a few of them were fiction. A good number concerned religions around the world and in antiquity. She owned books on history, mathematics, physics. The usual computer manuals were stuck here and there. All in all, a good balance.

Ann returned a few minutes after I'd settled onto the living-room couch. She tossed a navy blue pinstripe business suit my way.

I held it up. A lovely wool blend, not like the reflective stuff I usually wore to merge with the crowd. It fit in with the current style-wide lapels and shoulders, baggy pants with cuffs. Nostalgia for a time even I didn't remember.

A light yellow oxford cloth shirt and a navy-hued silk tie with nearly invisible maroon polka dots completed the outfit.

"Tasteful," I said, draping the wardrobe over my arm.

"Don't forget these." She pulled a pair of black wingtips out of a box and handed them to me along with a pair of black socks.

"Over the calf," I said with appreciation. "You know all the tricks of the trade."

She smiled. "You didn't strike me as the baggy-socks type. And I'm the one with the garters." She pointed to the already-familiar bathroom. "Would you like a shower?"

"I suppose I should, if we're calling on the country's top atheist."

Theodore Golding lived in Hollywood near his Philosophical Forum on the Foundations of Theology. The Forum was located on Larchmont, right next to Thucydides, a bookstore that he also owned. He must have had money to situate his esoteric businesses near the Wilshire Country Club. I was determined not to be impressed.

Ann pulled the Porsche up to a modest house on the four hundred block of Van Ness.

"That's Golding's home. Feel well enough to go in?"

With a shower and a new set of threads, I was more than ready for anything. "Bring him on. I think I can survive the experience."

"He can help you understand god better than any preacher or shaman."

"Certainly better than Father Beathan could."

She smiled. "Well, don't be too sure about that."

Golding answered the door himself. For a man my age, he had all the exuberance of a teenager in heat.

"You must be Ann Perrine," he said, snapping his fingers and pointing at Blondie. The finger shifted to me. "Because you don't look as if you'd sound as sexy on the phone."

Deep blue eyes gazed sharply from beneath jet-framed glasses. The frames matched his longish hair. Dressed in a bright red silk kimono, he stood a few inches taller and about fifty pounds lighter than I did. His voice had the vague musical quality of impish good humor. I suppose he needed it in his business.

If a man could live in a library, he might live as Golding did. Bookshelves lined every available square foot of wall space. Locked glass cases thrust out to serve as room dividers. What framed artwork he owned hung perilously here and there in front of the shelves. To top it off, in the center of it all stood a computer table sporting a library console.

Golding glided between the cases and around stacks of books until he reached a break in the mess that I arbitrarily declared the living room.

He cleared off a heap of plaques from each of three folding chairs. "I presume that this is your friend with the theological crisis?" He extended his hand as an afterthought.

I shook it. "Dell Ammo."

His grip was firm, pleasant.

"Good name," he said. "Spanish?"

"Just American."

He sat, folded his hands over his slim torso and smiled. "Ms. Perrine tells me that you're experiencing problems of a religious nature."

I rubbed the bruise on the back of my skull and nodded. "You might say that."

"I must admit that I sometimes feel like a priest, the way that people come to me with problems of faith. Except, of course, that I try to steer the doubters away from God."

"I, uh, don't exactly have a crisis of faith, actually." I tried to phrase things so that I didn't come off sounding like the consummate buffoon. "I simply would like to know which definitions of God are false" "They all are."

"Yes," I said hastily. "But why?"

"Because God doesn't exist. It's just a concept that people have an uncommon affection for."

"It's fine to assert that, but lots of people-lots of intelligent, sane people-believe in God. What sort of proof can you provide that God doesn't exist?"

He grinned and took a deep, satisfied breath. I had the uncomfortable feeling of talking myself right where he wanted me to.

"You can't demand proof of the nonexistence of something. It's logically impossible. The burden of proof is on those who assert that God exists."

"Why?"

"For the same reason that-up until a few years ago-an accused man didn't have to prove his innocence in court. Suppose you told me that there had been a murder. You demand that I prove I didn't do it. I ask you who was killed-how, when, where. You refuse to tell me and repeat that I must prove I didn't do it. How can I logically prove the nonexistence of something for which there is no evidence? The burden of proof must always be on the prosecution-on the one who asserts that something exists, whether it be a crime or a god. Only when I'm confronted with evidence purporting to prove that God exists can I do anything. Then it would involve demonstrating that the evidence is in error."

"Which," I said, "wouldn't prove the nonexistence of God, only the inadequacy of the evidence."

"Exactly." Golding peered at me. "Have you a philosophical background?"

"No. I've given extensive consideration, though, to what constitutes proof in, um… judicial situations."

"So why the interest in God?"