In the center of the room-on a rug that had as much pile on it as a piece of burlap-sat a plain white altar with a man perched on top.

"Let the guy in," the man said in a tough, husky voice. "He doesn't need the spiel."

Adonis stepped aside. I stood in the doorway without moving. The man on the altar sat cross-legged, studying me. His thick, muscular body barely permitted the contortion.

He wore a suit that had been through three recessions, a depression, and maybe a panic or two. Someone such as he must have been around when they coined the word burly. Two beefy hands hung from his sleeves like chunks of rock laid across his lap. His face looked like a Teamsters' strike.

"You know Joey, right?" Bulldogs have barked more politely.

I pulled out a cigarette and made a big deal of lighting it.

"Knew," I said for the second time that day.

"I knew him, too." A little grief flickered in the man's eyes. Not much, but it seemed real enough. He unfolded his legs and got his arms in position to slide off the Formica cube. He stepped toward me, a much shorter man than I'd expected. He stared up at my eyes. Straight ahead, he'd have been gazing at my Adam's apple.

"Take the man's hat, Tom."

"That's not necessary," I said, blowing smoke in Tom's direction.

The beautiful face didn't wrinkle its nose or emit any prissy noises. His dreamlike blue eyes blinked twice, and a muted laugh snorted out of him with the sound of a distant drum.

I kept my hat on because I didn't want my current abstract hairdo to detract from my image.

"Your name's Dell Ammo," the short bear said. "Your business license lists you as a P.I.-which I don't suppose means Perfect Initiate-and I hope we've both proven we're tough and cool and can get down to brass tacks."

"You haven't proven much yet," I said. I was feeling wise. The smart guy. Dell Ammo-hard man.

Shortly after his fist connected with me, I was relocated to the hallway. He'd aimed for my solar plexus and hadn't missed. I made the sounds a drowning man makes and clutched at my guts. My right hand reached instinctively toward my waistband.

Seeing that, he turned to stroll back to his altar.

"Tough guy," he said through the thick buzz in my ears. "Has to pull heat at the first jab." He climbed up on the altar and folded his beefy legs with a yogi's agility.

I staggered back inside, feeling less the smart guy.

"Joey and I were friends in Berkeley," he said. "I was a right-wing conservative sort. Buckleyite. He was a Trotskyist. We met once when we both happened to be beating up some Larouchites. We found other interests in common and became friends, sort of. Over the years, he started reading a lot of Russian literature. I started reading Christian heretic and Gnostic writings. Joey got hooked on Tolstoy, started edging toward religious pacifism. One quarter, I see him come to class in a priest's getup. He'd quit the Trots to join the Russian Orthodox Church. Changed his major to religious studies. Same as Tom here."

Tom laughed. It wasn't quite the musical laughter of Apollo or whomever, but it had a note of carefree joy in it.

The grizzly voice continued. "Joey's folks were Mexican Catholic, so you know how they greeted him at home. When he came to L.A., he started working in the barrios. I don't know how he met you."

"We got drunk in a bar together once," I said. "He dragged me home."

"He was good conversation, Ammo. Same as Tom here. Good conversation is hard to find. Joey had a good mind-muddled sometimes, maybe a little naif…" He looked down at his hands.

I used the silence to scan the room for an ashtray. The butt ended up on the floor, ground beneath my heel.

Tom looked at me with a resigned smile.

"Joey apparently respected you." The fellow's voice had taken on a soft, far-off quality. That he knew me but didn't bother to give me his name was beginning to annoy me. His face, which looked as if it had been used to tenderize sides of beef, lost its tough, street wise edge. "He was worried about you after a couple of big boys from his archdiocese paid him a visit." He shifted his weight around to take a grunting breath.

I closed the office door, though direct experience indicated that it wouldn't prevent eavesdropping.

"Anyway," he continued, "I suppose you'd like to know that they grilled him about you. That they asked rather pointed questions about your degree of faith, whether you believed in God or in Satan."

"So?" I asked. "Maybe they were checking the answers I gave on my application to Sunday school."

"You're like most people, Ammo. You think priests and bishops and rabbis and the like sit around praying and absolving people of the sins they've devised to instill guilt. Forget it. Religion is a con game like any other. It relies on efficient information gathering. You'd be surprised how well a confessional works for purposes of extortion."

"Even those they don't literally blackmail get shaken down," Tom said through a grin. "Who can resist throwing a few bucks toward someone who implies that you'll roast in hell for an eternity if you don't pay up? Certainly a far worse fate than any court or scandal sheet can threaten."

"Most people," I said, "seem willing to defer their punishment that long." I pulled up a dirty folding chair to sit on. "Get to the point. You knew Joey. Somehow he got dead in my office. What's that got to do with you and me?"

"Relax, Ammo," the guy on the altar said. "We're on the same side. I think." He pointed a thick index finger at me. "You're trying to find a way to expose religion as a hoax, and you're on some sort of a track that's got a certain group of powers-behind-the-throne scared out of their gowns. Enough for them to put a tail on Joey. Enough to kill him."

"So they kill him and don't wait around for me? As deduction, that stinks."

"Maybe something bigger scared them off. I was watching the news last night. Some fun happenings around Hollywood. More than usual, wouldn't you agree?"

He slid off the altar to walk over to where I was sitting. We were nearly eye-to-eye now. He looked me over, circling the chair. He peered at the scalp showing below my hat. He nodded approval at the wounds.

"Maybe you are a tough guy after all. Not many people go up against the Ecclesia and survive two warnings." He caught my frown of incomprehension. "Ecclesia," he repeated, "with an impressively capital E. You won't find it in any reference book, even the ones that are fairly replete with information about Freemasons and the Bavarian Illuminati and other small-time conspiracies. Anyone you ask either won't know or will deny its existence. In religious circles, though, gossip circulates and leaks. They have their own unique conspiracy theories."

"Do they?" I asked, as raptly interested as I could be without stifling a yawn.

He poked at the still-swollen lump that served as a souvenir of my night escapades outside Auberge. Something dull throbbed through my body to ache against the newer bruises and slashes under my hat.

"The Ecclesia-" was about all he got out by the time my hand whipped around to sweep up under his chin. I had to crouch in the chair to reach that low. He sat with astonishing speed, landing on the floor with a thud that I thought would bring us crashing down into the shops below. He stared blankly forward, his hands useless by his sides.

I stood to look at Tom.

Adonis looked worried. It was an admirably beautiful worry. Michelangelo spent years trying to sculpt that kind of worry.

"Fine way to treat one another," I said to Tom. "We haven't even been formally introduced."

"Randolph Corbin," came a voice as thick as library paste. One hand massaged his jaw, the other extended upward, palm open. He leaned forward. I grasped his hand and pulled. My knuckles were sore from the punch, and his grip didn't help matters.