Notes:

This story begins the morning after "Call of the Wild" ends. It contains very specific, detailed spoilers about the outcome of the Ray Vecchio storyline in that episode, but I have made a effort not to spoil any other plot elements from "COTW". There are also major spoilers for "Juliet is Bleeding".

Regarding the Iguana Family: Because the word "Iguana" is of Spanish origin, I have cast the Iguana Family as a primarily Hispanic-American crime organization. The name of the only truly original character in this story, Mr Hicuana, is pronounced, roughly, "Iguana".

All other characters, including the three Iguana Family goombahs who appeared, namelessly, in "Call of the Wild", belong to Alliance Communications.

I would like to thank Vicki West and Mary Halbert for their advice and encouragement.

This story is a "prequel" to my first fanfic effort, "Baggage".

Please let me know what you think! (melanie_m@my-deja.com)

The front pew on the right at St. Michael's belonged to Frankie Zuko, just as it had belonged to his father before him. At High Mass on Sunday mornings the Zuko family was always in its place of pride, first in line to receive Holy Communion; upon returning to his seat Frankie was able to study his neighbors as they came forward in turn. Everything from the clothes they wore to the way the met his gaze--or avoided it--gave indications of personal successes or reversals, practical information to be put to use during the other six days of the week. Whether they passed him with fear or with pride, with contentment or with contempt, he repaid them with a smile; they were his, every one of them, inherited from his father along with the protection contracts and the grand old stone house on Peary Street.

Seeing Anna Vecchio, in her best blue dress and lace veil, usually meant that her daughters and grandchildren would be close behind. Frankie discreetly turned his head, secretly hoping that Frannie would be wearing her pink suit, the one with the plunging neckline that accented the firm curve of her breasts so well. What he saw instead made his stomach turn.

Ray.

Frankie's left hand moved unconsciously to a spot just above his own upper lip, to the place where he had almost lost two teeth in a fistfight with the detective, almost three years ago. The best oral surgeon in Illinois had restored his smile, but the unexpected sight of Ray Vecchio in church brought the memory of pain and humiliation searing back.

Steely self-control kept Frankie's expression neutral. He clenched his jaw and kept his eyes fixed on his rival, who was standing between his sisters in the line on the opposite side of the center aisle. Ray did not look well; while Maria and Francesca stood decorously, with hands cupped right-on-left to receive the communion wafer, Ray's left hand clutched the pew beside him for support, and his right hand was pressed tightly to his stomach. His face was set with discomfort, his forehead beaded with sweat. But when it was his turn to receive, he shrugged off Francesca's tacit offer of a supporting arm and approached Father Behan without assistance. The priest placed the host on Ray's tongue, then briefly laid his right hand on Ray's head and whispered a blessing.

Ray waited for Francesca to receive, then accepted her help as they walked away from Frankie toward the aisle on the opposite side of the church. As Maria and the children followed them, ten year old Joey looked over his shoulder to stare at Zuko. Ray did not look at Frankie at all, not once.

************************************

Diego Castellano stood beside the silver Cadillac and watched the Lear jet taxi across the tarmac of Meigs Field. With his left thumb he absently rubbed at the row of butterfly bandages that partially covered the gash that slanted from below his right eye down into his neatly trimmed beard; his right forearm was encased in a plaster cast and supported in a sling. The Matera brothers, Raul and Luis, stood nearby; they too showed the scars of a recent, vicious fight. As the jet came to a stop near the car, Diego motioned for the brothers to open the door and lower the steps.

Alonzo Hicuana, the seventy-nine year old Padrino of the Iguana Family, blinked as he emerged from the jet into the brilliant sunshine which beat down on the tiny airfield and sparkled on the blue waters of Lake Michigan, then pulled a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of his leather coat and slipped them on. More at home in the Nevada desert than in the brisk chill of Chicago in March, he was wearing straight-cut indigo jeans and a bolo tie; the heels of his snakeskin boots rang noisily on the metal steps. He moved slowly, arthritic joints protesting the steep descent. Raul Matera, the youngest and least injured of the waiting men, reached up to offer their boss an arm for support.

"Gracias," murmured the old man. "Raul, ahijado mio, who shut that eye for you?"

Raul's free hand flew to his face, touching the swollen, multi-colored bruise under his left eye. "Cops," he spat.

As he approached the waiting car, Hicuana took careful note of the injuries to the other two men, Diego Castellano's broken wrist and wounded cheek, the white bandage covering Luis Matera's broken nose. "And where was Armando when this happened?"

The awkward glances which the three men exchanged at that moment barely hinted at the dissent and confusion among them. During the two days since their release from jail, they had argued incessantly about the strange events at the Hotel California.

Raul Matera had been Armando Langoustini's bodyguard for the last six months; his older brother Luis had won the job as Armando's driver after Armando had nearly died at the wheel of his Fiat, eighteen months ago. Utterly loyal and touchingly naive, they both still believed that their boss had somehow escaped the police, and was still at large as part of some master plan. But Diego Castellano was too jaded and too ambitious to cling to such illusions. Having served as Armando's assistant and protege for the last four years, he was privately furious about his mentor's apparent defection and he now saw an opportunity to take Armando's place in the Iguana Family hierarchy.

Diego opened the passenger door of the Cadillac for Mr Hicuana, and spoke quietly in the old man's ear. "Armando sent us into an ambush, Padrino, he sent us into an ambush and he left us there. And now he is gone."

Hicuana did not respond to the accusation, but pondered it as he climbed into the car. Diego closed the door for him, and walked around the rear of the car to join him in the backseat. Raul and Luis took their places in the front. As Luis gunned the engine of the Caddy and drove away from the jet, Hicuana turned to Diego and asked, "Where are we going?"

  "First, we'll get you settled in your suite at the Renaissance. Then we have two appointments set up for today." He pulled his Palm Pilot from his breast pocket to check the names. "Both local businessman, just the kind of guys you like to deal with: small fish, independent, extremely local. Two-bit nobodies. At two-thirty it's a guy named Gus Fillion, then we're having dinner at six at the home of a Frank Zuko."

************************************

An hour after church, Anna Vecchio sat quietly at the kitchen table and listened to her daughters argue.

"Every Sunday, we have family supper," shouted Frannie. "All of us, together in the dining room, with the good china and crystal. We should cancel the first Sunday Ray is home? Defrost some TV dinners? Eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?"

"You are so insensitive!"

"You are overreacting!"

Maria threw up her hands. "Oh, so we should fill the dining room table with every food that Ray loves the most, but he can't eat because he got shot and his doctor wants him on a bland diet for a week. He gets to sit there and watch us eat, and this makes him happy?"

"Ray wouldn't want us to break family tradition just because he can't eat everything on the table. Sunday supper is special. Ray's home, and that's special." Frannie grabbed the doctor's orders from the magnet on the refrigerator door, and read out loud: "Clear broth, uncaffeinated tea, flavored gelatin cubes, unsalted crackers, toast. Do you really want to put this out on the table on Mama's best dishes for all of us to eat? Ray wouldn't want that."

Shaking her head, Anna put the package of veal back in the refrigerator, left her daughters in the kitchen to fight it out, and went to the living room where her son was propped up on a nest of pillows on the sofa. The tv remote control was in his hand, but his eyes were closed. She knelt on the floor beside him, reached to touch his face, hesitated; she did not want to startle him. She whispered instead, "Raimondo?"

He opened his eyes slowly, and a bright smile spread across his face. "Say that again."

"Say what again?"

"My name."

She cupped his chin in her hand and kissed his cheek. "Raimondo, Raimondo, Raimondo." Pointing toward the kitchen, where the Maria and Francesca were still going at it, she asked gently, "Do you hear them fighting?"

He listened. "Yeah. Now I know I'm home."

"They're arguing about what we should have for supper."

He brightened at the thought of his mother's cooking. "Can I invite a guest?"

************************************

In Frankie Zuko's basement game room, Charlie Bianco chalked his cue as he slowly circled the pool table. He had already planned his next shot, but he was using the extra time to employ the more subtle strategies of his game. Patience and silence worked to his advantage, as his opponent, the broken-nosed Iguana Family thug named Luis, took another long pull from a bottle of Dos Equis. Diego and Raul leaned against the polished oak bar, enjoying the platters of pastrami sandwiches, blue-corn tortilla chips, and fiery salsa. Jimmy Roastbeef had brought several cases of premium beer down from the kitchen, and the row of empty bottles on the bar told Charlie that he was winning the only game that mattered.

While he stalled, Charlie imagined the scene upstairs. In the formal dining room, Frankie would be nuts with impatience, barely tasting his meal while he wondered why in the hell Alonzo Hicuana, head of an organization that reached out from Las Vegas to encompass criminal operations on both coasts, would be visiting the boss of a family business which barely reached out to Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, good manners dictated that business should never be discussed during the meal.

Despite thirty-seven years of loyal service to the Zuko family, first as Carl Zuko's best friend and strong right arm, now as the unappreciated dogsbody for the lightweight Frankie, Charlie knew he would never be allowed to break bread with such a distinguished guest. A shame, because under different circumstances Charlie Bianco and Alonzo Hicuana could have passed the evening pleasantly, two men of the same generation, sharing a mutual love of opera and fine cuisine.

Charlie also knew very well that Frankie would much rather be down here in the game room, eating pastrami, drinking beer, and humiliating these sniveling puppies at the pool table.

"Any day now, grandpa!" Luis taunted. Charlie fixed him with a cold stare, then stopped to take his shot. He struck the cue ball smoothly, and his guests watched in admiration as it banked twice and struck the six with a solid 'click'; the green ball rolled the length of the table and stopped just short of the corner pocket.

"Damn," muttered Charlie.

"Step back, old man!" crowed Luis, as he handed his beer to Raul and stepped up to the table. Charlie had not only failed to make his shot, but he had left the cue ball perfectly placed for Luis to sink the eleven. Luis dropped the ball neatly into the side pocket, and began to hunt for his next shot while Raul opened another beer in celebration.

Charlie leaned against the bar and took a sip of his club soda, entirely satisfied with his performance. A man who is losing at pool is likely to lapse into sullen silence; Charlie's job was to get these men to talk. A generous supply of salty food would fuel their thirst, and the generous supply of beer would loosen their tongues. He turned to Diego and asked innocently, "So tell me, what happened to your arm?"

************************************

Anna Vecchio could not help but stare at Ray. Under normal circumstances, she would never have allowed one of her children to sit at supper with one elbow planted on the table, but she could see the strain on his face as he leaned his head on his right hand. In front of him was a small plate of dry toast and a cup of beef broth, which he had barely touched. Around him, his family ate veal marsala, risotto with mushrooms, baked zucchini, three-bean salad, and polenta in uncharacteristic silence. To his left, a strikingly beautiful woman sat in the chair where Benito should have been.

Stella Kowalski placed her knife and fork on the edge of her plate, and dabbed at her mouth with the corner of her napkin. "Signora Vecchio, Lei è una cuoca meravigliosa. I must have your recipe."

"Have some more, please."

"I couldn't possibly." Stella held up her hands in surrender. "I may never eat again."

"I insist. Just a little more."

"I'll take some more," Tony chimed in as he picked up his plate.

"Wait your turn, Tony!" Francesca slapped at his hand. "Ms. Kowalski is our guest."

"Please, call me Stella." From her highchair across the table, two year old Kerry launched a lump of polenta that scored squarely in the middle of the attorney's white silk blouse.

"Kerry! I'm so sorry, she just gets this way sometimes. . ." Maria jumped up, dipped her napkin in her water glass, and dashed around the table to attempt to blot up the damage. Stella pushed her ministering hands away.

"It's all right. Really-- my dry cleaner will get it out."

Mrs Vecchio was persistent. "Stella, have some more veal. What you don't eat now, you take home with you."

"Oh, all right. Just a little more." She lifted her plate and Anna served her another cutlet, then dressed it with the marsala sauce. Ray grinned; Stella had captured his mother's heart, too.

"Raimondo?" His mother held up the ladle, dripping with sauce.

"Oh, all right. Just a little." He held out his plate, and she poured a tiny amount of the savory liquid on his toast. Ray took a bite of it, and closed his eyes with pleasure.

Francesca smiled at the attorney. "So Ms Kowa.... um, Stella. Where'd you learn to speak Italian?"

"I spent a few months in Florence before law school." She blushed. "I'm afraid I don't remember much beyond 'You're a marvelous cook'."

Ray turned to Stella, grasped her hand, and whispered, "Tu hai begli occhi."

Tony, serving himself another double-helping from the platter of veal, punctuated Ray's sentiment with a wolf-whistle, and the older children giggled.

Stella blushed an even deeper crimson, the color spreading to the tops of her ears. "Occhi?"

"Eyes, Stella. You have beautiful eyes." Ray smiled, and Stella wished that he would smile more often. "Tu hai begli occhi."

Joey, bored by mushy talk, finally asked the question that had been burning on his mind all day. "Hey, Uncle Ray. When you were in the mob, did you get to whack anybody?"

Anna dropped her silverware onto her plate with a clatter; Francesca knocked over her wine glass. Ray's dropped Stella's hand and wheeled around to stare at his nephew in horror. Ten years old, Joey had grown in inches and pounds in the year and a half Ray had been away, but he hadn't grown any manners.

"Joey!" Maria hissed at her son. "You apologize to your uncle!"

"It's okay, Maria." Regaining his composure, Ray looked sternly at the boy. "Joey, I did not 'whack' anybody. Armando was a businessman, not a hitman."

"Some businessman," Tony snorted with derision. "Ray, you can't even balance your checkbook!"

Ray wouldn't take the bait. Instead, he grinned and agreed with his brother-in-law. "You're right, I'm a lousy businessman. That suited the FBI just fine. After all, I had two objectives in my mission." He ticked them off on his fingers. "One: spy on the Iguana Family for the Feds. Two:..."

Francesca jumped in, "Snafoozle their books!"

Ray glared at his sister for stealing his punch line, but he had to admit she was right. "Exactly. The Feds call it 'Collateral Damage'. I've got the Iguana Family's financial records so screwed up, it'll take 'em years to recover."

"Wow," said Maria.

"Raimondo! Watch your language!"

"Sorry, Ma." Ray turned back to his nephew, serious again. "Joey, listen to me." Silence fell around the table. "Four months ago, Alonzo Hicuana-- he's the Padrino, the godfather-- believed that a man named Willie Contreras had betrayed the family. Willie worked under me, so Hicuana told me to have Willie killed. Like you said, whacked. Now Armando-- the guy I was pretending to be-- would have turned right around and paid some hitman to deal with it, but I said I would do it myself." Ray paused, looked around the table at his family. Stella chose that moment to lay a hand gently on his shoulder, and Ray was glad of it.

"Willie and I took a ride out into the desert in my car. About forty miles out of town I told Luis-- my driver-- to pull over to the side of the road." Ray closed his eyes, remembering. "I put my gun in Willie's back and I walked him away from the car, about fifty yards away from the road, into a gully. Agent Maddox from the FBI was waiting there for us. He offered Willie a deal, a fair deal: Witness Protection for him and his family, in exchange for his testimony in front of the Grand Jury."

Anna let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

Ray opened his eyes and locked his stare with his nephew's. "Joey, I saved that man's life. I'm still a cop-- I'm one of the good guys. Okay?"

"Okay." Joey admitted, chastened, but disappointed.

"Elena?"

Seven year old Elena looked up from her plate with wide, frightened eyes, and whispered, "Yes, Uncle Ray." Ray winked at his niece and wondered what poisonous stories Joey had been feeding her. Little Kerry, uncomprehending, picked up a slice of zucchini with her fingers, and threw it at her uncle.

************************************

Two hours after the informal pool tournament had begun, Charlie brought his guests upstairs to join their boss in Frankie Zuko's elaborate home office. Zuko leaned back in the soft leather chair that had been his father's; Charlie stood in his accustomed place beside him. Alonzo Hicuana was already comfortable in an antique wing chair, sipping single-malt Scotch from a heavy crystal glass. Diego stood behind him; Luis and Raul were seated on straight-back chairs by the window, keeping very still, as if the room might start spinning at any moment.

Mr Hicuana cleared his throat; after two hours of small talk and pleasantries, it was time to conduct business. "I came to Chicago in search of my nephew, my sister's grandson. My man has implied that he has betrayed me." He turned around to glare briefly at Diego. "I do not believe this."

"You think he's here in Chicago?" Zuko steered deftly past the betrayal issue onto less emotional ground.

"He was here five days ago, conducting business which was to be of great profit to me." Hicuana drained his glass, and Zuko motioned for Charlie to refill it. "Mr. Zuko, you do not know me, and I do not know you. We have never done business before today. But if you help me bring him back to my family, I will be in your debt."

"Happy to help. I place my organization at your service." Zuko flashed his trademark grin. "Tell me more about your nephew."

With a trembling hand, the aged Don motioned to Diego, who opened a tooled leather briefcase and withdrew a package wrapped in blue silk. He handed it to Hicuana, who unwound the fabric to reveal a sturdy picture frame, which he handed across the desk to Zuko. "His name is Armando Langoustini."

"Langoustini?" Zuko gulped involuntarily. "The Bookman?"

"Yes."

"I've heard of him, of course. I didn't realize that he-- that you were related."

Hicuana shrugged. "My sister married a Sicilian."

Zuko took a moment to admire the heavy silver frame, running a finger along the geometric inlay of turquoise and obsidian. When he finally turned his attention to the photograph in the frame, he was gripped by the same wave of nausea that he had felt in church that morning. "Ray Vecchio," he muttered coldly.

"Ray Vecchio?" asked Charlie, confused. Zuko handed the picture to him, and Charlie let out a low whistle. "Whaddaya know."

Luis lurched unsteadily to his feet. "Ray Vecchio! That's the guy!" he shouted.

"Who is?" asked Hicuana.

Puzzled, Zuko pointed toward the frame in Charlie's hand. "Ray Vecchio."

"That's my nephew!"

Luis chimed in. "He broke my nose!"

"Armando broke your nose?" Hicuana was incredulous.

"No! Not him, Vecchio!"

"Who the hell is Vecchio?"

"This is Vecchio!" cried Zuko, grabbing the picture back from Charlie's hand

"That's Armando!" Hicuana shouted as Charlie slipped unobtrusively from the room.

From deep within a fog of inebriation, Raul thought this all made perfect sense. He patiently tried to impress Hicuana with his grasp of the situation. "Vecchio is the cop who broke Luis's nose."

"Right. He's a cop," agreed Luis.

"Local detective. We go way back," agreed Zuko amicably, handing the picture back to Hicuana. Zuko pointed at Raul's swollen black eye. "Did Vecchio give you that shiner?"

"Yeah."

Zuko turned to Diego, "Did Vecchio bust your face, break your arm?"

Diego looked thoughtfully at Zuko, but did not answer. Many pieces of this conversation were not fitting together well, and he was struggling through a mild beer-buzz to make sense of it all. He had not drunk so much that he could not keep control of his tongue, and he knew that he was better off listening to this discussion than adding to it.

"Nah," said Raul, "the other guy, the brown-haired cop, did him."

"Not Vecchio. The brown-haired cop," echoed Zuko, looking up to heaven for guidance. Charlie reappeared at his elbow, handed him a thick file folder, and Zuko smiled, his prayers answered. He cradled the file in one arm as he rifled through it, and pulled out an enlarged color photograph. He dropped the picture on the desk in front of Mr Hicuana, then beckoned to the others. "Do you see the cops who jumped you?"

All four Nevadans examined the photograph of five grim-faced Chicago policemen and one Mountie in red serge, who were carrying a flag-draped coffin.

"That's the man who broke my wrist," said Diego, pointing left-handed at Benton Fraser.

************************************

"You have a wonderful family, Ray."

"Were we in the same house tonight?"

Ray and Stella stood side by side on the front porch, hand in hand, their breath visible in the night air. Despite the cold, they were not in much of a hurry to say goodnight. Bashful as a teenager, Ray glanced back at the windows of the house, to make sure that they were not being spied upon by one of the kids, or worse, by one of his sisters.

Stella held up a yellow Tupperware container of leftovers. "Your mother wouldn't give me the recipe, you know. But I think I can get it out of her, if I work at it long enough,"

Ray grinned, and squeezed her hand. "I know the recipe."

She pulled him close. "Can I get it out of you?"

"If you work at it long enough." His grin spread into the smile she had been hoping for.

She leaned forward and breathed in his ear, "Tu hai un bel sorriso."

His smile broadened even more. "Grazie! That's very good, it's coming back to you."

"Actually," she blushed, "I asked your mother to remind me of how to say 'beautiful smile'."

"My mother? Oh, great, I'll live that one down soon."

"It could be worse. I could have asked Frannie!"

He considered that possibility. "That would've been worse. Thanks for sparing me." He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it gallantly. She leaned her head on his shoulder, surrounding him with the fragrance of her hair, the scent of strawberries.

"You know, Ray, it's not often that I get to meet a guy's whole family on the first date."

"This isn't our first date."

"Have I forgotten one?"

"Come on. We spent half of last week together."

She recalled the endless blur of hours they had spent together on the sofa in Lt. Welsh's office. "That wasn't a date, we were working."

"Working?" He remembered the long hours, too. The pleasure of her warm presence by his side had soothed the razor-edge of his anxiety and frustration during the vigil. "We weren't doing much work."

"We were waiting. Waiting for news about your friend, about my..." she hesitated, having been warned by Francesca about the brief but strained relationship between the two detectives with the same name.

"About your ex-husband." Ray let go of her hand, and cupped his hands over his mouth to warm his fingers. Halfway through March, the weather was swinging back toward winter.

Stella set the container of leftovers down on the windowsill and turned to face him, her hands on his waist. "It's okay to talk about him, Ray. What I had with Ray Kowalski was wonderful, but it's in the past. I'm over it, he's over it, we're both over it."

"You know. . ." He pulled his eyes away from her face, and stared over her shoulder toward the street as he tried to imagine how the mercurial Stanley Kowalski would react to the news that he was dating his ex-wife. "You know, we didn't exactly hit it off, Stanley and m. . ."

Stella moved her hands to his shoulders, stretched up on her toes and stopped him with a kiss. Caught off guard, Ray stopped trying to talk and gave his attention to the warmth of her lips, the scent of her hair, the touch of her hands moving from his shoulders to caress his chest, the thrill of her body pressed against his, the sweet, sharp pain....

"Yaahhhhh!" Ray pulled away from Stella's embrace as her fingers raked across his half-healed wound. She jumped back, horrified, as he slumped back against the side of the house, both hands clutched to his stomach.

"Oh, jeez Ray, I'm sorry!" She hovered at arm's length, her hands in motion, trying to decide where it might be safe to touch him, biting her lip with worry.

He panted as the pain slowly receded. "It's all right. I'm okay." In a gentle, reassuring voice he added, "Ouch."

************************************

Halfway up the block from Ray Vecchio's front porch, Jimmy "Roastbeef" Rosanova lowered his binoculars. For the last hour he had been watching the Vecchio house from the driver's seat of Charlie Bianco's green Saturn, and he was enjoying the show on the front porch. He reached across to the passenger seat, and groped around until he found his flask. With one hand he unscrewed the cap and took a swig of cheap bourbon, wiping his mouth on his sleeve as he trained the binoculars again on the detective and the prosecutor.

He watched as they kissed again, delicately and cautiously, but with no less passion. At last the lady turned reluctantly to walk down the stairs alone. Vecchio stood on the porch and watched as she started her car and backed out onto Octavia Avenue.

Jimmy kept the binoculars focused on the car until he had the license plate, then scribbled the number on a paper napkin.

************************************

Frankie Zuko and Charlie Bianco stood together on the veranda of the Zuko home and watched as Hicuana's silver Cadillac drove away.

"Charlie?"

"Yeah, Mr Zuko."

"When was the last time you saw Ray Vecchio?"

Charlie opened the door for his boss, and thought back over the last two years as they entered the house. He hesitated before answering, not because he couldn't remember-- he remembered the occasion all too well-- but because he knew that Frankie would not like to be reminded of the day. "At the hospital."

"Irene..." Zuko stopped removing his coat long enough to cross himself; Charlie did the same as he said a prayer for the soul of Frankie's sister, the one child of Carl Zuko who had possessed a measure of sophistication and grace. Charlie glanced up the staircase to the second-floor hallway, where Irene had fallen in Ray Vecchio's arms, killed by the gunfire in her own home.

Frankie interrupted Charlie's reverie. "I saw Ray this morning at St Michael's. He looked like hell." He handed his coat to Charlie. "You know, I can't remember the last time I saw Ray in church."

Charlie hung the coat beside his own in the closet. "Mr Zuko, why did you show them the photo from the Gardino funeral? You must have half-a-dozen better pictures of Vecchio in that file, and two or three more of the Mountie."

"It's the only one I have with both of them together in the same shot." Zuko led the way back to the office, and Charlie went to the bar to pour a Scotch. "Fix yourself a drink too, Charlie," the young man invited. "In fact, bring the whole damn bottle." Charlie glanced up with irritation-- he had been fixing the drink for himself, not for Frankie-- but he obediently brought two glasses and the decanter to the desk, sat in the wing chair, and filled the glasses. Zuko grabbed one, and raised it. "Mud in your eye."

Charlie lifted his glass. "Salute." They both drank deeply.

"Okay, Charlie. What in the hell is going on?"

It was Charlie's turn to report what he had learned while shooting pool with Hicuana's underlings. "Langoustini and the three stooges arrived in Chicago last Tuesday. They had a three o'clock meeting at the Hotel California with a Canadian arms dealer named Muldoon. No sooner they arrive, the cops show up."

"Vecchio and Fraser?"

Charlie paused before responding, "That's a good question. Fraser, certainly-- he wasn't in uniform, but Diego Castellano recognized him in your photo. Vecchio?" Charlie sipped his drink, then continued. "They all say the same thing: The second cop had thick blond hair and blue eyes, and a Chicago Police ID that said 'Ray Vecchio'."

"Blond hair?"

"Thick, blond hair. Armando Langoustini, on the other hand, looks exactly like.... Well, you saw the picture."

"So, what happened?"

"Once Armando made the cops, he herded them into the bathroom, and shot them dead." Zuko looked up from his drink, startled. Charlie continued, "Two shots, two bodies fall, and Armando comes out of the bathroom with a smoking gun in his hand and a little bit of blood on his chin."

"Armando who looks like Vecchio?"

"Right."

"Killed Fraser and the blond cop named Vecchio?"

"Shot 'em dead."

"After Vecchio broke that guy's nose?"

"Before Vecchio broke that guy's nose."

Zuko chortled. "I am loving this story. Please, continue."

"Armando tells Larry, Moe and Curly to go clean up the bodies. They go into the bathroom, where they find that the corpses have made a remarkable recovery."

"Armando didn't kill them very well."

"Very careless. So the stooges get their asses kicked. Broken nose, broken wrist, et cetera. When they wake up, the hotel room is full of cops, and Vecchio, Fraser, and Langoustini are all gone." Charlie tossed back the rest of his Scotch and grinned as he slapped the empty glass down on the desk. "That's their story and they're sticking to it."

"And five days after Armando disappears from the face of the earth, I see my old amico Ray for the first time in two years, looking like death." Both men sat quietly for several minutes, retracing events and calculating probabilities.

Frankie finally broke the silence. "Charlie?"

"Yeah, Mr Zuko?"

"Do you think the old man will ever get his nephew back?"

Charlie shook his head grimly. "No. Not in this life."

"Should we give him Ray Vecchio instead?"

"That's not the answer he's looking for."

"That may be the only answer he's ever gonna get."

Charlie had an inkling of how Hicuana would react. "He won't thank you for it."

"Think he'd be the type to kill the messenger?"

"To save face? Quite possibly."

Zuko finished his drink, and handed the empty glass to Charlie, who took both glasses to the bar to rinse them. "I have to give him something, Charlie. I agreed to help him find his nephew."

Charlie spelled it out for him. "Sooner or later, someone in Chicago is going to tell him what's going on. He's going to find out that he's been played for a fool. If he finds out from somebody else, then he's gonna wonder why we held back."

"Here's what we're going to do." Zuko crossed the office to join Charlie at the bar. "We're going to know all the facts before we start pointing fingers. First, I want a man watching Vecchio."

"Already done."

"Already?"

"As soon as I heard their story, I figured that Vecchio would want watching. Jimmy Roastbeef's out on Octavia Avenue right now."

Zuko smiled broadly, and poked Charlie sharply in the shoulder with his finger. "You know Charlie, that's why I keep you around. You may be getting old, but you show initiative; I respect that. Okay, second: You get on the phone. You talk to my people. You talk to every one of my merchants. You question people at random on the street if you have to. I want to know how long this has been going on."

"I'll get on it first thing in the morning, Mr. Zuko."

"Tonight, Charlie. Tonight."

Charlie swallowed his resentment, bitter as bile in his mouth. "I'll get on it right away, Mr. Zuko."

************************************

The wind had changed, and was now blowing hard from the north, disturbing the surface of the Chicago River eighteen floors below Hicuana's suites at the Renaissance. It was far too cold a night to be standing out on a hotel balcony, but Diego Castellano didn't want to sleep and was relying on the sharp air to clear his head. Unlike the Matera brothers, who had drunk themselves silly and were now snoring their way to a wicked morning hangover, Diego had limited his beer intake in order to carefully observe the meeting between Hicuana and Zuko. Now he was trying to make some sense of it all.

Zuko had shown them a photograph of a policeman's funeral. There were six men in the picture, five of them in the uniforms of the Chicago police, the sixth in what he now knew to be a Canadian Mountie's uniform.

Okay, that made sense. Their meet with the Canadian arms dealer had been interrupted by an undercover Canadian cop.

He recalled from his prodigious memory the disjointed discussion in Zuko's office. Zuko, Charlie, Luis and Raul had all spoken the name "Ray Vecchio", but the Mountie's name, "Fraser", had not come up once. And yet, somehow, Zuko had produced a picture of him.

Six pall-bearers. Six cops. He had recognized all of them. Four of them had either been involved in his arrest at the Hotel California last Tuesday, or had been present during the questioning at the 27th District station afterward. The fifth was Fraser, the Mountie. The sixth was definitely not the wiry, blond man who had broken Luis Matera's nose. Vecchio was not in the picture.

Or was he?

Alonzo Hicuana may not yet be feeble-minded, but he was certainly feeble-sighted; since he had not been present at the beat-down, he had no reason to expect to recognize any of the cops in the picture Zuko had shown them. Raul and Luis had focused their beer-soaked brains only on the memory of the face of the cops who had beat them. Only Diego had taken the time to carefully examine and memorize the faces of all six police officers in the photograph.

He alone had seen Armando Langoustini's face where it did not belong.

************************************

Charlie found his green Saturn parked under a broken streetlight on Octavia Avenue. He shined his flashlight on the driver's side door, then walked up and tapped on the window with his thermos. Startled, Jimmy Roastbeef had his gun halfway out of the holster before he recognized his colleague. With a nervous laugh, he holstered his weapon and rolled down the window.

"How's it going, Jimmy?"

"Great, Mr. Bianco. Goin' great." He jerked a thumb toward the passenger seat. "Come on, climb in."

Charlie circled around and took a seat beside Jimmy in the car. "Coffee?"

"Nah, thanks anyway. I've got my own," Jimmy explained, holding up his flask of bourbon.

"So. Anything worth reporting?"

"Vecchio's been home all evening. His girlfriend left 'bout half an hour ago."

"Girlfriend?"

"Oh, yeah." Jimmy rolled his eyes and leered. "Vecchio's been shoppin' up on Michigan Avenue, if you know what I mean."

"Didja get a good look at her?"

"Yeah. 'Bout five foot seven, hundred twenty, straight shoulder-length blonde hair, blue eyes..."

"Like hell. There's no way you could get eye color from this distance in the dark!"

"Didn't need to. I remember exactly what she looks like. I spent two hours admiring her gorgeous self while she was cross-examinin' me during Donnie Bartello's assault trial last month. That broad don't have a face you can forget."

"Cross-exa. . . The prosecutor? Stella Kowalski?"

"Yeah. Ain't that a kick in the pants? The one lawyer who's ever been able to put any of Mr Zuko's people away, and she's ticklin' tonsils with Ray Vecchio."

Charlie stared at the empty porch and repeated, "Stella Kowalski..."

Jimmy wasn't finished with his report. "Anyway, she drove off in a blue Lexus. Here's the license number." He handed Charlie the paper napkin, on which he had scrawled "RCW 139". Charlie folded the napkin carefully and tucked it into his pocket.

"Jimmy, I'll take over here. You go home, get some sleep."

"It's okay, Mr. Bianco. I'm not tired."

"Jimmy," Charlie spoke firmly, "you've been drinking. Go home. Go."

As Charlie walked around to take his place in the driver's seat, Jimmy reluctantly climbed out of the car. "Anything else I can do for you, Mr. Bianco?"

"Yeah. Tomorrow morning, around six, bring me a couple of bran muffins and some fresh coffee."

"You got it."

"None of that light latte decaf stuff, either. Real coffee."

Jimmy gave Charlie two thumbs up as he strode down the sidewalk toward home.

************************************

Most mornings Francesca was the first member of the Vecchio household to get up. Half-awake at quarter after six, she stood slumped against the doorframe of her walk-in closet and tried to make a choice. During the past year she had sewn Chicago P.D. Civilian Aid patches onto thirty-seven different outfits, every one of them designed, under the principles of psychology, to communicate a specific message. But the message she wanted to deliver today wasn't really in her current wardrobe.

She wanted to make Ray crazy.

When he had walked into Lieutenant Welsh's office last Tuesday, he had said not one word about finding his kid sister working there. The urgency of the Muldoon investigation had overridden all other concerns. But during the long days of waiting that followed, after he had been shot and effectively removed from the case, Ray had found time to speak privately to Frannie-- several times, in fact.

He had been very blunt. Never mind that she was an important member of Welsh's squad, and every bit as skilled at her job as Elaine Besbriss had been, all Ray could think about was that she had taken the job in order to continue her campaign to wheedle her way into Ben Fraser's bed.

Okay, so it was true. He didn't have to go on and on about it, did he?

One by one she considered and rejected the thirty-seven outfits. In the end, she was left with the one article of clothing she had thought she would never wear again. Relegated to the back of the closet, pristine for lack of wear, crisply starched and pressed, it was the one thing that just might do the job. In fact, it was the only official Chicago P.D. Civilian Aid uniform she owned.

She hung the pale blue shirt and black pants on the hook on her bedroom door, and went to take a shower.

************************************

Jimmy Roastbeef arrived with fresh coffee and muffins at six twenty. Charlie was wide awake, watching the Vecchio house, his cell phone resting on the dashboard. Charlie thanked Jimmy for the breakfast, but refused his offer to take over the surveillance. Dejected, Jimmy headed home.

The answers Frankie Zuko had demanded had not been difficult to find, since Charlie knew the right people to ask. After finishing his first hot, strong cup of coffee, Charlie pulled out his cell phone and punched speed-dial one.

"Mr Zuko? Sorry to call so early, but I figured you'd want to know right away. Best I been able to find out so far, the last anybody remembers seeing the real Ray Vecchio was about a year and a half ago. We've had our blond Ray Vecchio-substitute for at least the last sixteen months, but nobody in this neighborhood has ever seen him. That's the best I've been able to do so far; give me some more time and I might be able to pin it down for you."

"So what you're saying is that Hicuana's been suckered for more than a year."

"Yeah."

"Old fool." Charlie recognized the familiar sound of contempt in Zuko's voice. "Where are you now?"

Charlie peered through the binoculars; a light had come on in the bedroom above the porch. "Out on Octavia, watching his house. Jimmy was tired, so I sent him home."

"Stay there. I'm coming over." Charlie took a bite of his muffin as Frankie added, "It's time for me to shake his peaches."

************************************

A loud thump on the front door startled Ray awake with a rush of adrenaline. He bolted upright, and immediately wished he hadn't; suppressing a cry of pain, he gritted his teeth as his abdominal muscles ached in protest. He really shouldn't have spent so much time on his feet yesterday.

Rest today.

He picked up his wristwatch from the coffee table beside him; it was just past six-thirty, which meant that the sound that had awakened him must have been the Sun-Times hitting the front porch. Satisfied, he lowered himself gingerly back onto the pillows of the temporary bed Mama had made for him on the living-room sofa, to spare him having to climb up and down the stairs to his bedroom during his convalescence.

He closed his eyes, and listened. He had never before appreciated how comforting the sounds of his family preparing for a workday could be. Above his head, he could hear two-- no, three sets of footsteps, closet doors were banging, and someone was taking a shower. There was traffic on the street, and shortly an el train roared by, shaking the house. He accepted the inevitable; over-sensitive to noise after having a house to himself in the desert, he was not going to get any more sleep until the rest of the Vecchios were out of the house. And he would still wake up every time an el went by.

His thoughts returned to the newspaper whose arrival had interrupted his sleep. He had a faint hope that there might be some coverage in the paper of the events at Franklin Bay. The official report from the RCMP had been maddeningly terse; Ray knew he wouldn't get the real story until Benny came back to Chicago. But the Sun-Times was on the porch, and his full bladder told Ray that he was going to have to get up soon, anyway. He carefully rolled over onto his side, then by slow inches pushed himself upright. Once on his feet, he shrugged a blue velour bathrobe over his pajamas, and slipped his feet into warm sheepskin slippers. After a brief stop in the hall bathroom, he opened the front door.

The temperature had plummeted overnight, leaving every surface slick with a glaze of frost. The rolled-up newspaper lay in the center of the porch, and Ray made only one attempt at bending down to pick it up before realizing that such a simple action was just not possible with his injury. Feeling somewhat foolish, Ray kicked the newspaper across the porch to a spot where he could hold onto the railing while bending down.

Newspaper in hand, he was halfway back up to a standing position when he heard the familiar voice.

"Hello, Ray."

Like the earlier sound of the newspaper hitting the door, this new and unexpected sound overrode all muscle-caution. Ray jumped and spun around without regard for his tender stomach or the slippery porch surface. His feet went out from under him and he fell hard to the floor, flat on his back, his breath knocked out of him.

Frankie Zuko bounded up the steps to where Ray was lying, gasping. Once he got his breath back, Ray let out the cry of pain that he had suppressed earlier, but shaped it into words: "God damn you to hell, Frankie!"

Zuko stood over his boyhood friend and adulthood enemy, and offered a hand. Much to his surprise, Ray took it. By slow stages Frankie helped Ray back to his feet, then let go of his hand. "I'm sorry, Ray. I didn't mean for that to happen."

"Get the hell off my porch."

Frankie's voice was warm with concern. "I saw you at St Michael's yesterday. You look awful. What happened to you?"

"Get the hell off my porch." Ray stepped toward the bully, hoping that he looked at least a little menacing, but realizing that in his pajamas and bathrobe he probably didn't. Still, he got his desired result; Frankie raised his hands in mock surrender, grinned, and backed down the steps. Ray continued to glare, and prayed that Frankie would just get in his big black Lincoln and leave.

No such luck. Frankie stopped at the curb, and turned around to face Ray again. "I've missed you, Ray. What's it been? A year? More?" He paused, made a show of putting on his gloves. "I was just telling someone yesterday, I can't remember the last time I saw my old buddy Ray around the neighborhood. And here you are." He opened the rear door of the waiting car, then turned for a parting shot. "Get well, my friend."

Ray watched as the Lincoln drove out of sight. As soon as it turned the corner, he sagged against the doorframe. He was surprised to find that he was still clutching the newspaper.

************************************

Upstairs, in her room above the porch, Francesca stood at the window and watched Frankie Zuko get into his car. As it pulled away from the curb, she tossed her hairbrush onto her bed, dashed into the hallway and thundered down the stairs to the center hall, where Ray was just coming back into the house with the newspaper, accompanied by a blast of cold air.

"Zuko," she gasped.

Ray dropped onto the settle and let the newspaper fall to the floor. Frannie sat down beside him, suddenly unconcerned about whether her uniform would irritate him. "What did he want?" she asked.

"Has he been hanging around here? Have you been talking to him?"

"Of course not! Give me some credit-- even if I liked the low-down snake, which I don't, we all knew we had to steer clear of him while you were undercover. Ray Kowalski sure couldn't pass as you with Frankie Zuko around. Why? What did he say to you?"

"He welcomed me home. Said he missed me." The outward message was so innocuous, so damned polite. Ray turned to his sister and clutched her arm until it hurt. "He wasn't supposed to know I was gone!"

"Uncle Ray!" Still in his pajamas, Joey leaned over the bannister of the upstairs hallway. "Telephone's for you!" Ray glanced to the spot where the telephone had once sat on a table at the foot of the stairs; a vase of flowers had taken its place.

"Joey, no!" Frannie cried, too late to stop Joey from tossing the new, cordless phone over the railing. Frannie jumped to her feet and caught the phone just inches above Ray's head. "Sorry, Ray. Ever since we got the cordless, the words 'telephone's for you' now mean 'here, catch!'" She handed it over peacefully. "Um. . telephone's for you."

Ray wondered what other hazardous traditions had been started in his absence. "I'll take it in. . ." he glanced over his shoulder to his makeshift bed on the sofa, where the blankets and pillows were still strewn about as he had left them, "in my room."

************************************

"This is Ray Vecchio."

"Vecchio? Special Agent Maddox."

"What do you want, Maddox? I thought we were clear on this; I don't work for you any more."

"Ray, we have a big problem."

"Take it somewhere else. I have my own problems, don't want yours."

"Ray, listen to me. Alonzo Hicuana arrived in Chicago at noon yesterday. He was met at Meigs Field by your man Castellano and the Materas."

Ray's heart sank. "He's looking for Armando."

"I wish it were that simple. No, I think now he's looking for you. He met last night with a Frank Zuko. . ."

"Shit!"

"Ray, calm down. I've got a car coming to your house now."

"Call 'em off!"

"Ray, we're going to get you to a safe. . ."

"No! Call your people off! I am not getting in any car with them."

"Ray, don't be unreasonable. You need us to protect you and your family."

Ray looked out across the hallway to the kitchen, where Joey and Elena were wolfing down their cornflakes, with Maria hovering over them, urging them to hurry because their school bus was almost due. "You'll protect my family? Like you protected Willie? Pardon me for my lack of faith, but it's your own frikkin' fault my cover got blown in the first place!"

"My fault? That was your Canuck friend, sticking his nose where it didn't belong."

"Don't go blaming this on Fraser. I told you a week ago it was insanity to bring me to Chicago, a city full of people who know me on sight-- if Fraser hadn't seen me, somebody else would have. Hell, the least you could've done was told my fellow officers I was here, so they would know to look the other way. . ."

"I told them!" shouted Maddox. "I stood in Welsh's office and gave a direct order to Fraser and Kowalski to stay off the Muldoon case. I couldn't have been more explicit. But they chose to interfere in a Federal. . ."

"When have the Chicago police ever backed down from a case just because some shiny-assed Federal agent told them to? At the 27th, if we hear a Fed say the sun is shining, we all break out the umbrellas."

"So what was I supposed to tell them? Keep working the case?"

"You could have told them that Detective First Grade Ray Vecchio of the Chicago P.D. was already on the case! It was my LIFE on the line, you bastard, and you withheld information from my fellow officers, my friends!"

"You can't pin this on me. This was your fault, too."

"What?"

"You broke your own cover. You could have left Fraser and Kowalski in that bathroom, and left the hotel with your head held high."

"My people thought that there were two dead cops in that bathroom. Dealing with the bodies is their job."

Maddox had no more patience. "It was Muldoon's hotel room, you damn fool! If there were bodies to be discovered in that bathroom, which, of course, there weren't, they would have been Muldoon's problem, not yours. You could have left them behind and we would still be in business. But you weren't thinking, were you? You were just so pleasantly surprised to see your old buddy Fraser that you did something completely stupid!"

Ray replayed the sequence of events in his mind. If-- if he had left his friend and his new partner in that hotel bathroom, he could have scheduled the backup meeting with Muldoon, ordered the Materas to leave the cops' bodies behind, and left the hotel with his cover intact. Still undercover. No cops or Mounties at the second meet. No bullet in the gut. . .

"Look, Vecchio, what's done is done. We can keep spreading the blame around, but that won't fix the immediate problem. We have to get you the hell out of Chicago, or your life won't be worth a bucket of warm spit."

"Have you called off that car?"

"Don't be pig-headed, Ray."

"I'll meet you at the 27th. I'll come in with my sister, she works there."

"Right. I'll be waiting." Maddox hung up the phone without saying goodbye, then dialed the cell phone of his man on Octavia Avenue.

************************************

Ray turned off the phone and carried it into the kitchen. The whole family except for Joey and Elena were seated silently around the table; he could tell from their solemn expressions that they had overheard his end of the phone conversation with Maddox. "We have to assume that somebody's watching the house."

"Joey, Elena... They're on their way to school!" Maria left Kerry in the highchair and stumbled away from the table. Ray and Tony both followed her as she ran into the foyer, Tony intending to go with her in search of their children, Ray intending to stop them.

"Maria! Maria, Tony, don't. The kids'll be okay, I promise." Ray put his back against the front door and held out his hands to stop them from leaving. "Hicuana doesn't make war on children. He doesn't hurt his enemies' relatives, ever. That's a hard-and-fast rule in the family."

Maria sputtered as she continued to put on her coat. "How can you be so sure? If he's mad enough at you, how can you be sure he won't use my children to get you?"

"Hicuana wants me, not you, and not them. He won't let anything happen to any of you; it's a matter of pride with him. Believe me: I've heard him order a man's execution, and with his very next breath tell me to set up a pension for the widow, and a college fund for his kids." He looked around the foyer at his mother, his sisters, his brother-in-law; they did not seem to be particularly comforted by his words. "What I'm trying to say is, once I'm gone, they'll leave you alone. I swear to God, they will leave you alone."

"Gone? What do you mean, gone?" demanded Anna.

"I can't stay here. The head of the Iguana family met with Frank Zuko last night; Frankie was here on our doorstep this morning. So I gotta figure Hicuana knows who I am and he knows where I live."

"So you'll get Witness Protection," said Francesca. "Like that guy Willie Contralto."

Ray opened his mouth as if to answer, then closed it. His family watched in silence as he clutched his hand to his wounded stomach, his face contorted with anguish that was more than just physical pain. Anna crossed the room to stand beside her son, slipped her arm behind his back, and drew him away from the door. "In the kitchen, all of you."

Nobody questioned her authority. Maria and Tony put their coats away, and obediently followed the others to the kitchen, where they all took their places at the long trestle table. Anna put a mug of tea and the bottle of pain pills in front of Ray, and he gratefully took his medicine before speaking.

"Contreras, Frannie. Not Contralto." His voice was flat, and tired. "I couldn't tell the whole story last night, not in front of the kids." He closed his eyes, and called up the memory: Willie's face drained of color, eyes wide with fear, his yellow cotton shirt drenched with sweat as Ray forced him to walk out into the desert darkness. Ray had trained a loaded gun on hundreds of criminals in his long and storied career with the Chicago PD, but had never before sensed such naked fear in a man.

"Willie Contreras worked for Armando; that is, he worked for me. He was a strategic planner, his job was developing and implementing better import routes for the Iguana Family's cocaine shipments. Last November he brought in three dummy shipments through a new pipeline without a hitch, so it's all systems go for the real thing. Two days before Thanksgiving, the first shipment of cocaine was intercepted at the border by the DEA. That's a hundred seventy-five thousand dollars of product plus six months of planning down the drain.

"There was only one possible explanation: Willie had sold us out. But Willie never would have betrayed the Iguana Family, he was as loyal and devoted an employee as Alonzo Hicuana could ever want."

"Willie wasn't the leak," said Tony.

Ray stared miserably at his hands as they cradled his mug. "I was."

"Of course," Francesca breathed.

Anna bent her head down to try to make eye contact with her son. "Raimondo, it's all right, he's safe now. You helped him get out of that terrible life, into something better."

"Yeah, I guess I did." Ray looked up at his mother. "Six days after I turned Willie over to the FBI, some vacationers from Kansas found his body floating in Lake Mead. Single gunshot to the back of the head."

A stunned silence settled on the family, until Maria found a small voice, "If he was in Witness Protection, then who killed him?"

"I asked Agent Maddox that same question. He told me that Willie must have gotten scared, and ran back to Hicuana. He said some protected witnesses do that, thinking that they can double-cross their way back in to the mob's good graces."

"Seriously?" asked Tony.

"Yeah! The exact same thing happened here in Chicago, just a couple of months ago." Francesca sat a little taller in her chair, proud of her inside knowledge. "I found the body."

Maria rolled her eyes. "And then you screamed and fainted." Everybody else in the family ignored Frannie; they'd heard the story before.

"Raimondo. Willie came back because he wanted to. He was stupid, but that's not your fault."

"I don't know." Ray pressed his fist against the bridge of his nose, as if the gesture could banish the unwelcome thought. "As long as I was there, walking that tightrope every day, I needed to believe that they were being straight with me. But no, I don't believe Willie came back on his own."

"Because if he did, the first thing he would have done was stir the beans about you being a double-agent," said Francesca.

"Spill the beans, you moron," corrected Maria.

"Shut up!" was the best rejoinder Frannie could produce.

"Don't talk to my wife that way!" threatened Tony.

"Don't talk to my sister that way!" Maria answered, giving Tony an elbow in the ribs.

Ray rolled his eyes and prayed for patience. "Focus, people, focus!"

Anna summarized. "You don't think the FBI can protect you from the Iguana Family because they couldn't protect Willie Contreras. You need to disappear, but you don't want their help."

Ray nodded. "All I have to get past Hicuana and his people, Zuko and his people, and the whole Federal Bureau of Investigation to do it."

Francesca asked keenly, "What do you want us to do?"

Ray reached over to squeeze her hand, and extended one finger to touch the cuff of her uniform shirt. "First thing, Frannie, you gotta get outa those clothes."

She yanked her hand away. "What?"

He took a deep breath. "You remember when I said that they'd leave my family alone? There's only one exception to that rule. Cops are always in the game."

He stopped short, dismayed by his own choice of words. In common usage among the younger members of the Iguana Family, the expression "in the game" had rankled him when he had first come to Las Vegas, as if organized crime was some sort of entertaining blood-sport. The intervening months had deadened his sensitivities, and now "in the game" was a natural part of his own speech. Like so many of the perversions that had constituted Armando's short, corrupt life, it was a part of him now, as familiar as his own skin.

"This isn't a cop's uniform!" protested Francesca. "I'm a Civilian Aid!"

"You think Raul Matera's going to notice the difference before he shoots you?" Ray lowered his voice, and barely managed to keep it calm. "Francesca, please. Lose the uniform."

Sputtering, torn between fear and anger, Francesca glanced down at the starched blue shirt that she had only donned to annoy him. She had much more to say, but she bit back the words; not even her mother yet knew about her pending application to the Police Academy. Now was certainly not the time to stir the beans. "Okay."

************************************

There was one overwhelming factor in the balance of power in Maria and Tony's marriage: the leopard-print housecoat. Maria no longer had to actually take the despised fifth-anniversary gift out of the closet to wield it as a weapon; in the heat of an argument she only had to mention its existence to reduce Tony to a trembling mass of spousal inadequacy. That the housecoat had survived the fire-- that Tony had not seized the opportunity to consign it to the flames-- was sure evidence of its power. As he grabbed the offending item from its hanger in the back of their closet, Tony grinned despite himself; he was finally going to be rid of the damned thing.

He came down the stairs just ahead of Frannie, who was pulling on the jacket of her tightest pink suit. At the bottom of the stairs Maria was pacing back and forth across the foyer as she finished her conversation with the principal at the Sacred Heart School. "Me or my husband will pick them up after school. Don't let anybody outside of my family anywhere near my kids." She glared at Tony and the housecoat, even as she listened to the principal's assurances. "Okay. I'll be there at two-thirty. Just don't let them get on the bus!"

In the kitchen Ray was nibbling on some crackers as his mother refilled his mug with tea. His family, his small, pathetic band of loyal supporters, gathered around the table for their marching orders.

"Maria?"

"Yes, Ray?"

He tossed his Illinois Federal ATM card onto the table in front of his sister. "I need you to go to the bank for me. Wipe me out, I'm gonna need the cash."

She slipped it into her pocket. "What's your code? No-- let me guess. R-A-Y-V?"

"Not even close. 7-2-R-V" His face clouded with indecision as he struggled to remember. "Or is it 7-1-R-V? God, I haven't used the damn thing in more than a year!"

"It's okay, don't throw a conniption fit. I'll try 'em both."

Ray turned to his younger sister. "Frannie, Agent Maddox is expecting me to come to work with you. Would it be out of character for you to drive the station wagon to work?"

She looked up from her makeup case. "I usually take the bus. But. . . I have driven the wagon to work a few times."

"Good. You'll drive to work. Call Lt. Welsh and tell him you'll be late, 'cause you gotta run some errands. Don't be specific about how long it'll take."

"You're actually going in? I thought. . ."

"That's what I want Maddox to think-- but I won't be with you. I'm going to Fraser's apartment, to take care of a few things, then I'll leave from there."

"Fraser's apartment?" Francesca's voice choked with emotion.

"No, Frannie, you can't come there with me!"

"Ray, it's not there any more!"

"Where is it?"

"It got scorched, the same time as the house and the Riv. His building burned to the ground!"

************************************

Diego knocked quietly on the connecting door, then eased it open. "Mr Hicuana?"

"Come in, Diego. Would you like some coffee?" The Padrino graciously indicated the room service cart, which was set up with a light breakfast of coffee, juice and pastries.

"Yes, thank you." Diego first poured a cup for Hicuana, adding a splash of heavy cream and half a packet of sweetener. For himself, he left it strong and black. He carried both cups to the round table where Hicuana was studying several faxed pages of closely spaced figures, and took his place opposite his boss, awaiting his pleasure. Several minutes passed in silence as Hicuana read the reports, pausing only to sip delicately from his coffee cup. Finally, the old man gathered up the pages, tapped them on the table to make a neat pile, and slipped them into his briefcase.

"Diego, how long have you been with me?"

"Counting the time I was working at the Golden Coast in Atlantic City? Seven years, sir."

"You are from New Jersey, originally."

"Yes, sir."

"Four years ago Armando brought you to Las Vegas to be his personal assistant."

Diego was suddenly transported back to that sultry summer night, when the legendary Bookman had treated him to filet mignon and lobster in the Golden Coast's four-star restaurant. Diego had been in fear and awe of the powerful mobster, but Armando had put him at ease, praising Diego's diligence, his business acumen and his uncanny memory. Armando was celebrating his promotion to Director of the Iguana Family's southwest operations; the offer he made to Diego, to join his staff as his personal assistant, was a princely one. "I was very grateful for the opportunity."

"He has been a satisfactory supervisor?"

"Exemplary, sir. I-- I owe Mr Langoustini a great deal. He has been very generous to me."

Hicuana nodded sagely, then changed the subject. "I will be returning to Las Vegas today."

"So soon?"

The elderly Padrino locked the briefcase. "Matters requiring my immediate attention have arisen." He paused, as if uncertain how much Diego should be told. The decision was made between one breath and the next; Diego Castellano's status within the Iguana Family jumped substantially at that precise moment. "A team of auditors have been reviewing Armando's business records from the last year. They have found. . . anomalies."

"You don't think that I. . ."

"No, Diego. We have checked thoroughly; some of the discrepancies appear in the records of projects in which you were not involved." Again, Hicuana paused, this time reluctant to speak the suspicion that he and Diego now shared. "As much as it pains me to say it, I fear that you may have been correct in your suspicions about Armando."

"I want you to know that I have been praying to be proven wrong."

"I know. I must leave Armando himself to you; the mess he has left us in Las Vegas demands my attentions there. I will leave Raul and Luis to assist you."

"No."

"Why not? Three pairs of eyes will see more than one."

Diego's gut reaction was that he wanted nothing further to do with the Matera brothers. "Last night, at Zuko's-- they allowed themselves to become stinking drunk, to the extent that Luis was unable to control his tongue. I would not tolerate that from someone working under me."

Hicuana nodded approvingly. "Good. You are already thinking like a manager. Raul and Luis go back to Las Vegas with me, then; I will consider carefully how to reprimand them for last night's shameful performance."

************************************

Frankie Zuko pushed a forkful of mushroom omelet around his plate and tried to work up some appetite. Finally his timid, dutiful wife walked around the table to pick up the plate.

"If you'd rather have something else. . ."

"No, sweetheart. I'm just not hungry this morning."

She patted him sympathetically on the shoulder and took the uneaten omelet to the kitchen to consign it to the garbage disposal, leaving Frankie his coffee and juice.

For the first five minutes after the confrontation on Ray's front porch, Frankie had been truly happy, but his mood had crashed earthward as soon as he got home. Now that the ordeal of breakfast was out of the way, Frankie pulled a tube of antacid tablets from his pocket and popped three into his mouth, then carried his coffee into the office.

The message light was flashing on his answering machine. He pressed the button with his left pinky as he dropped into his father's leather chair.

"Monday. March thirteen. Seven oh three a.m.," the machine patiently recited.

"Mr Zuko: This is Alonzo Hicuana calling from the Renaissance Hotel. Urgent matters require that I return to Las Vegas immediately. If you get this message before eight o'clock. . ."

Frankie looked up at the grandfather clock; it was eight-twenty.

". . .call me at my hotel, room 1801. Otherwise, I will call you from Nevada. I am anxious to learn your progress in locating my nephew. Also, I would like some clarification about the connection between Armando and that detective. . ."

Frankie punched the button that would erase the message. The last twelve hours had done nothing to inspire him with a solution to this mess. Before retiring the previous night he had sent e-mail messages to several of his closest colleagues and best trading partners in other cities, and now he read their responses about the powerful crime boss from Las Vegas.

". . . if you cross him, he will crush you. . . . if he wants you to deliver the moon, you better start looking for a rocket. . ."

". . . he's a mergers and acquisitions kinda guy. . . . if he wants to operate in Chicago, you might as well give him the keys now. . ."

". . . only two things matter to him, his family, and his pride. . . . he'd definitely kill somebody to save his family from embarrassment. . ."

". . . you actually have something on him? Take my advice, kid, keep it to yourself!"

************************************

Ray stood at the dining-room window, and watched the first stage of his plan unfold. Armando's Burberry raincoat barely reached around Tony's ample waist; fortunately, Armando always chose coats a couple of sizes too large in order to accommodate his shoulder holster without the usual tell-tale bulges. (Now that Ray was carrying his police-issue weapon again, he had gladly switched back to the less noticeable holster on his belt.)

Ray had to give Tony credit; he was doing a hell of an acting job. His face concealed within a six-foot long purple scarf that Maria had knitted when she was fourteen, and shaded by one of Ray's knitted caps, Tony was doing a credible imitation of his injured brother-in-law, leaning heavily on his wife and his mother-in-law as they moved slowly down the steps. As long as he kept the scarf over his face and the cap pulled down close to his eyes, he should fool anybody Maddox might have sent to watch the house. Frannie waited impatiently at the wheel of the family station wagon, which she had pulled accommodatingly close to the front of the house.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, sending them out like that?"

Ray closed his eyes and counted to ten before opening them again. Sure enough, his father had managed to break out of purgatory long enough to make Monday the thirteenth even worse than it was already.

"Look at them, Raymond. Taking chances, taking risks, why? So you can run away like a coward?" Salvatore Vecchio leaned toward the window, his eyes narrowed with distaste. "What is your mother wearing?"

Ray sighed. He had long since learned that yelling at his late father never accomplished anything. "That's Maria's anniversary gift."

"God in heaven, hasn't he gotten her a proper fifth anniversary gift, yet? I told Maria the day she married that bum, this is one fish you should have thrown back!"

Ray couldn't let that one slide. With disgust he called his father on that last remark. "You said that to Maria on her WEDDING day?"

"So what? She didn't listen, did she?" Sal waved an accusing finger in Ray's face. "So where's your looney tunes friend now? You carried him halfway across Canada, you took a bullet for him, where is he when you need his help?"

Ray pulled back and turned his attention back to the window, where his mother stood alone on the front steps watching Frannie back the station wagon out onto the street. As they disappeared around the corner, a nondescript green Saturn followed. Ray smiled; phase one, executed successfully. "Give it up, Pop. Fraser had to leave Chicago on the tra. . ."

"Uncle Ray?" Little Kerry had toddled out from the kitchen, and now stood in the spot where her grandfather had stood moments earlier. "Who you talkin' to?"

************************************

Francesca drove the station wagon down Montclair Street with more attention on the rear view mirror than on the road ahead. The green car that had been behind them on Octavia had followed them around the corner.

"Maria, please sit down. You're blocking my view!" Maria slid back into her seat, and Frannie checked the mirror again. "Don't look, but we're being followed." Tony and Maria both turned around. "I said, don't look!"

"We're gonna die, I just know it." Tony slumped down in the seat, and pulled the scarf even higher on his face.

Francesca swerved out of traffic and pulled to a sudden stop in front of the bank. "Here's where you get out, Maria."

Maria sat frozen in the backseat. "I'm scared."

"Don't be. They're gonna follow the car. You'll be fine."

Maria climbed out of the car on the passenger side, and stopped briefly to place her palm on Tony's window. Tony mirrored her gesture, until Francesca rolled her eyes and complained, "You're supposed to be saplings, not husband and wife!"

Maria pulled her hand away from the window, and walked around the front of the car to the sidewalk. Francesca hit her turn signal and checked her mirrors; the green car was still behind them.

"Okay, Tony, now we gotta stall long enough for Ray to get away from the house. I say we start with breakfast at the drive-in. Feel like an Egg McMuffin?"

Tony's voice emerged, muffled by the scarf. "Why? Do I look like one?"

************************************

Special Agent Maddox burst into the squadroom of the 27th and crossed the room to Lt. Welsh's office in eight strides. He slammed the door behind him and lit into the lieutenant as the men and women of the district listened outside.

"Where is he?"

"Who?" Welsh was genuinely mystified by the question.

"Vecchio! He said he was coming in with his sister!"

"Francesca?"

"Okay! Where is she?"

As Maddox paced furiously back and forth in the tiny office, Welsh entertained the vision of the tightly-wound agent dropping with a massive coronary. Federal agents almost always rubbed him the wrong way, but Maddox was the worst. "Ms Vecchio called me fifteen minutes ago, and said she would be a little late. She has some errands to run."

"And this is acceptable?"

Welsh shrugged. "Despite her many flaws, Ms Vecchio has an excellent attendance record. I was willing to overlook her lack of advance notice on this occasion."

"She didn't say anything about her brother?"

"What about her brother?"

"None of your business!" Maddox pounded a fist into a nearby filing cabinet. "You do not need to know!"

Welsh leaned back in his chair, which creaked in protest. "I can see we've learned a great deal about inter-agency cooperation in the last week, haven't we?"

************************************

Anna emerged from the walk-in closet with one of Ray's favorite Armani suits. "There wasn't much damage in here, but the water and smoke got into everything. I had everything dry cleaned, but I'm sorry, sweetheart; most of the clothes just weren't salvageable."

Ray watched and listened to his mother from his seat on the bed. It had been a prodigious effort for him to climb the stairs to the second floor, and now his job was to rest quietly, his back against the headboard, while she packed his remaining clothes into two canvas grocery bags. "That's the only one left?"

"The only suit, yes. There's some of the casual stuff. . ."

"Pack it all," Ray ordered.

"You still have the suit you came home in."

"No. I'm not wearing his clothes any more." He placed his hand on the pillow beside him, and remembered how, night after luxurious night in Armando's home, he had yearned to be able to once again sleep between the honest cotton sheets of his own bed.

The sound of the front door slamming, of feet pounding up the stairs, brought him back from his distant thoughts. Maria burst into the room, out of breath, and dropped a stack of twenties and the ATM card into Ray's lap. "Three hundred dollars. Don't spend it all in one place."

"Three hundred? My God, that's not all I have, is it?"

"No, you moron. Three hundred is the most you can get from an ATM in one day. Tomorrow you can get three hundred more."

"I won't be here tomorrow."

"Hey, you know? I hear they got ATMs outside of Chicago, too."

"No. I can't leave a trail." Ray squeezed his eyes shut as he reconsidered his plans. "I'll have to risk going to the bank myself, after all. God, that's one extra trip I didn't need to deal with."

"Three hundred dollars should last you a few days, right? Leave the card with me and I'll withdraw more and mail it to you." Maria snatched the ATM card back from him. "You can call us with the address."

"No phone calls until you get rid of the cordless phone. Hand me my wallet, will you? A cordless phone's like a radio-- anybody can listen in. I don't know if the Iguana family would do it, but I'll bet the FBI will." Ray considered her offer. "Keep the card, though, it's a good idea. Damn! If Benny was here I could arrange to reach you through the consulate."

Ray watched as Maria retrieved a slim, black billfold from the top of the dresser. "Uh, Maria? That's not mine. Mine's the brown one."

She picked up the tan cowhide wallet, scuffed and worn, its stitching frayed along one side. She tossed it over to him, but held onto its more stylish mate and dug through its contents with greedy curiosity as she sat on the bed beside him. "Ray? There's already a wad of cash in here." Before Ray could object, she plucked the bills out and counted them, quickly and efficiently as a bank teller. "And one, and two, and three, and four, and five. . . . There's five hundred dollars in here!"

"Put that away. It's not mine."

"So?"

"Just put it away."

Maria continued the inventory. "American Express, Diner's Club, Gold MasterCard, Platinum VISA. . ."

"Absolutely worthless. Even if they haven't cancelled the cards, I'd leave a great big beacon of a paper trail if I try to use them."

"Awww, Ray, you look great with a mustache!" Maria held up the open wallet for her mother to see. "Doesn't he look good, Ma?"

Anna paused from her packing long enough to look approvingly at the picture on the driver's license. "Very handsome. Very, um. . . " she searched for the right word, ". . .distinguished." She reached over to pinch Ray's cheek, just as she had done when he was a child. He turned his face away from her touch.

"That's not me."

"No, really, Ray, you look nice," insisted Maria.

"No, I mean that's really not me." Ray placed his hand firmly on Maria's and pulled the billfold from her grip. "That's Armando's picture on Armando's license, issued two months before he died."

"You mean. . .?" Maria's eyes grew wide, and her mother crossed herself.

"It was in his pocket when he was killed."

"Oh, my God." Maria paled visibly, wiping her hands on the bedspread. "That's a dead man's wallet?"

Ray gazed steadily at his sister, but bit back the urge to make a sarcastic retort. Maria hadn't had to deal with such morbid realities day after day for the last year and a half, as he had learned to do.

************************************

The wind was blowing in cold from the lake as Hicuana prepared to board his jet. Raul and Luis were already aboard, still innocently unaware of the disgrace that awaited them in Las Vegas, but the Padrino had some last instructions for Diego Castellano.

"Bring Armando in alive if you can, but do what you have to do. If you cannot bring him home to me alive and well, I will forgive you. I suspect that Mr Zuko has not been entirely forthcoming with me; you will convince him to cooperate. Kill him if he does not. And Diego. . ."

Diego halted at the touch of Hicuana's hand on his arm. "Yes sir?"

"See what you can find out about Zuko's business, with an eye to a possible merger in the future. We need a base in the midwest, and these kind of independent operators are such an inconvenience."

************************************

The taxi driver tooted his horn a second time, but Anna Vecchio would not let her son go. Up until the moment the taxi arrived, she had been holding up bravely, helping Ray with his disguise and his improvised grocery bag luggage; now she had her arms tightly around him, as she wept helplessly on his chest. Behind her, Maria was keeping her own tears in check as she tried to pull her mother away from him. Kerry, sensing the level of grief in the room, was bawling, too.

"Ma, I have to go now. I'll be back, I swear to you, but right now I have to leave."

Her grip only tightened as the taxi 's horn blasted impatiently.

"Ma, I'm supposed to be you. Do you ever keep the taxi waiting?" That seemed to break through to her; she released her hold on him and sobbed, "No, Raimondo. That would be rude."

"Then I can't keep him waiting, either. You brung me up right." He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, gave Maria a quick hug, then pulled his scarf up over his face, picked up his grocery bags and headed down the steps.

Ray gave the address to the driver and tried to shift his skirts to a more ladylike position as he settled back into the seat for the ten minute ride. Another of Maria's old knitting projects, a yellow beret, was pulled down almost to his eyebrows, with the matching scarf covering most of the rest of his face, despite the stuffy air in the well-heated taxi. The driver most carefully did not make any comment of his passenger's odd costume, animal print housecoat over a longer floral dress, all under a worn, olive green parka with yellow-knit accessories.

For the first few blocks Ray gazed enthusiastically out the window at the familiar streets of Chicago, but the knowledge that he would be leaving his home city by nightfall soon sapped the pleasure from that pastime.

"So. This is what it comes to. My son is running away from home in a dress."

Ray turned from the window to glare at his father, who was sitting in the seat beside him, puffing on a big cigar in clear violation of the "No Smoking" sign on the taxi's window. Ray almost said something to the unwelcome visitor, but instead reached into his pocket for some money, leaned over the front seat to show it to the driver, and said, "There's an extra twenty in it if you can get me there in less than five minutes."

************************************

Tom Dewey stuck his head into Welsh's office and interrupted the continuing argument between the lieutenant and the FBI agent. "They're here."

Welsh and Maddox both rushed for the door, racing childishly to the top of the flight of stairs that led up from the parking lot. Jack Huey was at the head of the procession, followed by a smug-looking Francesca. At the rear was a burly figure whose face was impossible to see beneath the scarf and hat. Welsh knew immediately, however, that it was not Ray Vecchio-- too tall, too hefty.

As they reached the top of the stairs, Francesca helped the muffled figure with his wrappings. Welsh had to smother the urge to crow at the expression on Maddox's face as Tony Giustino, Ray's chronically unemployed brother-in-law, emerged from within the purple scarf.

All eyes turned on Francesca, who was savoring the moment. "What!?"

Maddox glared at her, at Tony, at Welsh, at everyone in the room, then stormed back into Welsh's office and slammed the door shut. The lieutenant leaned down to speak in Francesca's ear. "I trust that there is a good reason for this switch?"

Frannie shrugged innocently. "Do I know what's going on? Ray asked me to give Tony the grand tour of the police station."

Despite the closed door, Maddox could be heard clearly in the squadroom as he shouted into his cell phone, "You idiot! That wasn't Vecchio in the car! Get back to his house before he disappears!"

Welsh stared at his Civilian aid, nodded sagely, and walked away.

Frannie pointed at Ray's desk, and gave Tony a gentle shove in that direction. "Sit down, stay out of the way." She then walked over to Huey's desk, and slipped the detective a piece of paper with Ray Kowalski's address on it.

************************************

Ray picked the lock on Kowalski's apartment with the ease of long practice, and dropped the two canvas shopping bags on the sofa. His first item of business was to shed his mother's dress and his sister's housecoat in exchange for his one last Aramani suit. The dress he stowed in his improvised luggage, the leopard-print housecoat he took out to the garbage chute. Tony would be pleased.

Using Kowalski's apartment for phase three had been Frannie's idea. How she knew the address, she didn't say, and Ray had been very careful not to ask. Some questions were best left unasked. It was an excellent idea she'd had; this was a good place for Ray to be alone with his thoughts, an emotionally neutral landscape in which to compose his letter.

He dropped several pages of stationary, borrowed from his mother's supply, on the small dining table, and unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen as he sat down.

"Benny," he wrote.

"Please understand that the last thing I ever wanted to do was to run out on you again. It kills me to know that you're going to come home and find me gone again; please believe that I had no choice.

"The Iguana Family is looking for me here in Chicago, and Frankie Zuko's helping them. My keepers in the FBI want me in Witness Protection, but I know that the last Iguana employee who took Witness Protection was dead within a week; I'm not taking those odds.

"Do NOT come looking for me. I will be in touch."

He stopped there, remembering how he had promised, "I will be in touch," the last time he had disappeared. A year and a half had slipped away since that phone call, and he had never once found a way to let Benny know he was all right; to be himself, and not Armando, for even the duration of one short phone call. Perhaps Maddox had been right; Ray had needlessly broken his own cover, out of sheer joy and relief at seeing his friend.

It may have been the biggest mistake of his life.

A sparkle of rainbow brilliance played across the table, pulling his attention away from the letter. He put the pen down, and went in search of the source of the annoying flash. He found it in one of the windows in the living room, a small, polished crystal of rose quartz, suspended by a web of strong threads in the center of a leather-covered hoop as wide as his hand. The curious talisman, adorned with feathers and beads, swung gently from a leather thong; with each swing the quartz scattered a shaft of morning sunlight across the apartment.

Very pretty. Apparently Fraser's new partner shared his affinity for all that Native-Inuit-Eskimo hoo-ha. They probably passed the time together on stakeouts regaling each other with tribal legends.

It was a good thing that Benny had found such a good friend in his new partner. When they had met five days ago the two detectives had immediately struck sparks off one other, but it was clear that Fraser did not relish the prospect of choosing between them; now he would not have to. Ray returned to the table to finish the letter.

"Kowalski seems like a real upright cop; I trust him to keep you out of trouble, and I know you'll do the same for him. I'm glad you have each other.

"I hate to put you to the torture, but I'd appreciate it if you would spend some time with my folks. Ma's pretty shook up about this whole Iguana Family thing. I'm going to leave a Power of Attorney with this letter, so you can take care of some business for me, and for them. I want you to have the deed to the house transferred to Ma, because I figure Pop should have left the house to her in the first place. And you'll have to work with Welsh on my retirement. . ."

One knock, then two, then one; the traditional knock of a policeman on a stakeout. Ray opened the door to admit Jack Huey.

"Ray. Tell me you're not doing this."

"Thank for coming, Jack." Ray led his friend into the apartment, back to the table and the unfinished letter. "I need to know what's been going on with Zuko since I've been gone."

"I don't know."

"What the hell do you mean, you don't know?"

"No need to get snippy, Ray. Right after you left, the department redrew the district lines-- specifically to get Zuko out of the 27th. The brass didn't want to risk Zuko, or anybody in his organization, coming into the squadroom to see Kowalski sitting at your desk. I personally delivered the Zuko casefiles to Lt. Shaughnessy at the 23rd less than a week after you left."

"He was on my doorstep this morning, telling me how much he's missed me."

"Damn."

"Zuko's gonna hand me over to the Iguana Family on a platter."

"If you think it might help you make your escape, I'll bring Zuko in for a chat today. It might slow the Iguanas down." Jack grinned hungrily.

"It might."

"Trust me, it'll be a pleasure to go three rounds with Zuko again." Huey dropped a file folder onto the table beside the half-finished letter. "Tell me what I need to know about these people."

Ray sat down, opened the file, and pulled out the three arrest sheets. "Come on, Jack, you just arrested these guys last week!"

"Yeah, but you know them. You've worked with them."

Ray put a finger on the first page. "Luis Matera. My driver. He's pretty good with a limo, but he has about a cup and a half of brains. He carries a weapon, but he won't use it unless someone orders him to. No initiative, whatsoever."

He touched the second page. "Raul Matera. Luis's little brother. He got all the brains in the family, but that ain't saying much. He's my bodyguard-- was my bodyguard. Once they convince him that I'm the enemy, he'll be a real danger." He shook his head sadly. "Luis and Raul came to work for me-- for me, mind you-- after Armando died. They never knew him."

Ray turned his attention to the third page. "Diego Castellano. He's a problem, because he and Armando, the real Armando, were really close. I've been walking a tightrope with him for the last eighteen months, because he knows there's something different about me, and he just can't figure out what it is. I've been using the aftereffects of the car accident as an excuse for any changes, but I'm not sure he's convinced.

"I don't think Diego has ever carried a gun in his life-- he's a pencil pusher, an accountant. But he's a very passionate man. Raul or Luis might shoot me if Hicuana orders them to, but Diego would kill me out of revenge for his friend."

Huey nodded, absorbing the information Ray had provided. He then held out his cell phone to Ray. "Take this with you-- you'll need it."

"Jack, I. . ."

"Don't mention it. Maddox will probably have the phones at the 27th bugged, so if you need to contact us, pass a message through Elaine Besbriss at the 23rd. Or through the Consulate, once Fraser's back. I won't officially report the phone missing, and I'll keep paying the bills, so nobody will have any reason to be checking where the calls are being made from. You can pay me back later."

"Show the bills to Fraser. I'm leaving him a Power of Attorney, so he can pay you back for me." Ray picked up his pen. "Just give me a minute to finish this letter, then I'll need you to give me a ride over to the State Office Building on LaSalle."

"Why there?"

"I'm going to ask Stella Kowalski to help me with that Power of Attorney. Jack, I need you to tell Benny that I'm leaving a letter, the Power of Attorney, and some other stuff for him with Father Behan at St. Michael's. Will you do that for me?"

"Sure, Ray. I'll do that."

"Nobody but Benny. Promise me."

************************************

Francesca placed the daily arrest reports on Lt. Welsh's desk and turned to leave. He finished his phone conversation, and looked up as she reached the door.

"You're out of uniform, Francesca."

She spun around to face him; he had touched a nerve. He raised his eyebrows, and touched a finger first to his left shoulder and then to the right side of his chest, indicating the places where her identifying patches were missing. Then he held his hand, palm cupped upward, in a gesture that meant, "Well?"

"Ray didn't think I should be looking official until. . . um. . . " She glanced around the office, as if to make sure they wouldn't be overheard, then sat down in one of his wooden chairs. "Lieutenant?"

He made the two-handed "go on, I'm listening," gesture.

"Ray says that, with the Iguana Family in town, looking like a cop could get me killed."

"Ah. So you have to..." Welsh brushed a hand across his own white shirt and tie.

Francesca shrugged. "Plainclothes. For a few days, anyway."

"How is he?"

"I guess he's okay. He's still weak, and he shouldn't be running around Chicago like The Fugitive, but what are you gonna do?"

"And, uh..." He pointed at the empty sofa at the side of his office, where Ray had rested for so many hours during the long wait for news from Franklin Bay, wagging his finger back and forth as if to indicate two people sitting side-by-side.

Francesca laughed, then leaned across the desk and whispered conspiratorially. "Supper last night at our house." She waggled her eyebrows and smirked. "We're talking Moonshine in the Cowshed, you know what I mean?" She nodded knowingly, "It's hopeless."

************************************

Sixteen blocks away, in his temporary office in the Federal Building, Agent Maddox pulled the headset away from his right ear. "Moonshine in the cowshed?"

His administrative assistant looked up from his computer. "Sir?"

"Why can't they just speak English? Moonshine in the cowshed, my ass."

"A code?"

Maddox spoke the words like a mantra, "Moonshine, cowshed. Moonshine, cowshed." A pattern failed to emerge. "How are we coming on getting video pickup from the 27th?"

"Working on it, sir!"

************************************

In a quiet corner of the Harold Washington Library, Diego stared glassily at the recent history of Chicago's Police Department, as it was told in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. After an hour and a half staring at the screen he had a monstrous headache, but he thought that he had found something useful: a series of articles dating back almost two years, about a thwarted train hijacking. The accounts mentioned that Vecchio had been present on the train, but apparently he was publicity-shy; the only photographs were of the Mountie, Constable Fraser.

Diego kept searching, farther back into history.

When he found it, the picture almost jumped off the screen. It had been taken from a different angle than Zuko's photo, but there was no question it was the same funeral; the juxtaposition of the Mountie's red uniform with the mass of Chicago police dress blues at the graveside was unmistakable. Diego leaned forward until his nose almost touched the screen, and stared at the familiar features of his friend and mentor until his eyes ached with effort and anger. Then he turned his attention to the story that accompanied the photo.

The deceased was a detective named Louis Gardino. He had been killed by a bomb that had been planted in the car of a fellow detective, named. . .

. . . Ray Vecchio.

Diego read the account of the crime and the subsequent arrest of Frank Zuko three times, as his own internal map of the city of Chicago spun wildly on its axis to accommodate this new information. "Zuko was deliberately holding out on us," he muttered under his breath. "Why?"

Updates, analyses, and editorials spilled from page to page of the Tribune on the days following the bombing. Vivid accounts of the untidy brawl that preceeded and apparently provoked the bombing. Intimations of bad blood between Vecchio and his boyhood friend and rival. Insinuations of shoddy police work, as Zuko walked free the day after the funeral. Censure of heavy-handed police methods during the arrest of a second suspect in Zuko's home, as an innocent bystander-- Zuko's own sister-- was killed in the crossfire; although it turned out to have been Zuko himself who had fired the fatal shot.

One of Zuko's lieutenants had ultimately been convicted of the murder of Louis Gardino. Diego reached with his good hand to touch the textured grip of the Glock where it rested snug and uncomfortable under his right arm, understanding well why it had to happen this way; sometimes it was necessary for one man to do another man's violence. Soon it would be time for Diego himself to accomplish what Michael Sorrento had failed to do.

************************************

Charlie Bianco took a bite of his ham and havarti sandwich, and washed it down with a mouthful of ginger ale. It had been a long day in the driver's seat, following the long night in front of the Vecchio house, and Charlie was feeling every one of his fifty-eight years. Stakeout duty was for kids.

Once he had found out that the man in the station wagon with Frannie Vecchio was not actually Ray, he had rushed back to Octavia Avenue to find the Vecchio house empty. Charlie's instincts next told him to seek out Stella Kowalski's blue Lexus, which he found in level four of the parking garage under the State Office Building. Charlie confirmed that the garage had only one exit, then parked his car in a metered space on LaSalle Street where he could watch both the garage exit and the building's front door.

A quick phone call to Jimmy Roastbeef had brought him a fistfull of quarters for the meter, and a respite long enough to use the men's room at the corner deli, buy some lunch, and inquire at the security desk of the State Office Building about the whereabouts of A.S.A. Kowalski. She was in her office; she was not due in court at all today.

Back in the car, he saw his hunch pay off. At twelve-twenty Vecchio was dropped off at the building's entrance by Detective Huey. That confirmed what Charlie had suspected, ever since he had noticed the absence of the familiar green Buick in the Vecchio driveway-- Ray didn't have a car. So now Charlie could expect one of two outcomes: either Ray would walk out of the building and be picked up again, either by a taxi or by another friend, or he would ride out of the parking garage in the passenger seat of Stella Kowalski's Lexus. Either way, Charlie would be waiting.

************************************

Ray slipped into Stella's office as she lost her patience with the voice on the other end of the phone.

"What the hell do you mean, you offered him a deal? I'm gone from the office two days, and you. . . . Hysterical? No, I am not hysterical. I'm mad as hell, that's what I am, I'm ready to chew nails and spit rust! Don't you. . . . Don't . . . Don't use that tone with me. That was my case. My case! You can't just hand it over to a . . ."

Without ever loosing the edge of anger in her voice, Stella flashed Ray a smile of welcome. He dropped the canvas bags by the door and crossed the office to sit in one of the chairs across the desk from her, and listened sympathetically as she continued her tirade.

"If Roger had actually taken a minute to read my notes, or called me at the police station to ask about the case, he would have known that the deal on the table was eighteen months in exchange for testimony against Zuko! Now Bartello's got his eighteen month sentence and we got squat!" She picked up a sand-filled balloon from her desk, and began to squeeze the stress-toy with her fingers as she listened. "What do you mean, you've reassigned the rest of my cases? Adam-- no Adam, I do not need to take some time off to spend with my ex-husband, I need you to back me up instead of cutting me off at the knees!" She held the receiver away from her ear, looked at it incredulously, then dropped it in its cradle on the desk. "He hung up on me!"

"Imagine that." Ray looked pointedly at the balloon in Stella's left hand, which was leaking sand onto the desk from the hole she had just punched in it with her thumbnail.

Her anger ran from her like the sand running from the balloon. She sank, laughing, into her chair, and tossed the ruined toy into the wastebasket. "I'm sorry you had to see me like that. My temper has always been my besetting sin."

"Sounds like you had every reason to be angry. I always hate it when the lawyers screw up one of my cases."

"I've been working on the Zuko organization for six months. I finally won a conviction against one of his enforcers, and I convinced him to testify against Zuko in exchange for a light sentence, out of state, and Witness Protection after. But while I was at the 27th last week, waiting for the news about my ex, my brain-dead boss handed the case over to the newest guy in the office, who gave Bartello the short sentence without any agreement to testify."

"Bartello was going to give you Zuko?"

"I didn't spend the last six months building up this case so some pimple-faced rookie can horse-trade my best witness away for nothing. Nothing!"

Ray planted his hands on the desk and pulled himself to his feet. "Tell me which office he's in, I'll go break his face for you," he promised, earnestly.

"Oh, I'm sure you would. I've heard all the stories about you and Zuko. Thanks for the offer, Ray, it's really sweet of you to want to bust faces for me, but I don't think it would help. Besides which, he's six-foot four, built like a linebacker, with a black sash in Kung Fu, and. . ."

". . .and?"

She grinned. "And I'm sure you'd be able to take him once you're off the disabled list."

He bit his lower lip and tried to suppress the urge to laugh as he sat back down. "Please don't make me laugh, it hurts when I laugh." He looked up at her, suddenly solemn. "Stella Kowalski, I need your help."

"Absolutely! What kind of help?"

"I need to leave town for a while, and I need to make a Power of Attorney so Fraser can take care of some things for me." Ray pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and dropped it on the desk; on the outside of the envelope was written, simply, "Benny".

"You want me to draw up a Power of Attorney for you? Oh Ray, I'm not that kind of lawyer!"

"Please, Stella. There aren't very many people I can trust right now. It doesn't have to be big or complicated, but I need it right now."

"I can refer you to a number of good. . ."

"I can't wait to make an appointment, Stella. It has to be now."

Stella wanted to continue to object, but her voice was stilled by the pleading in Ray's eyes. She picked up the phone with a sigh of resignation. "I'll call my father's firm. I can ask his secretary to e-mail me the basic text of a General Power of Attorney, and I'll try to make whatever changes you need here. Okay?"

"I really appreciate this."

As she listened to the telephone ringing at her father's office, she looked sadly at the floor beside her desk, where a cardboard box full of files represented six months of wasted effort on the Zuko case. "It's not like I have anything else to do."

************************************

The air was stiflingly close in Lt. Welsh's office, as Deputy Commissioner Morris gave a brutal dressing-down to Detectives Dewey and Huey. Also crowded into the tiny space were Commander O'Neill, Lt. Welsh, Lt. Shaughnessy from the 23rd District, and Agent Maddox.

"What were trying to accomplish, bringing Zuko in now?" Morris was nose to chin with Jack Huey. The tall detective hung his head humbly, which also helped him maintain eye contact with the diminutive Deputy Commissioner. You've had him here for-- what, two hours?-- because he had dinner with some Las Vegas wiseguy?"

Dewey put in his two cents, "He's not under arrest, sir; we just brought him in to ask him some questions."

"About what?" interjected Lt. Shaughnessy. "Jack, you brought the Zuko casefiles to me, to my district, more than a year ago. Whatever is going on with Frank Zuko is for the 23rd to pursue. We are building a case against him, and the FBI and the State's Attorney's Office are working with us. If you want to question him, you gotta clear it through me."

The Deputy Commissioner gave the final word: "Cut him loose, detective. That's an order."

Tom Dewey watched in astonishment as Huey calmly looked to Lt. Welsh for confirmation, in what was probably the most un-politic act of his career. Welsh gave an almost imperceptible nod, to which Jack replied smartly, "Yes, sir." With that, the detectives retreated to the squadroom.

Francesca was waiting for them, close enough to the lieutenant's office to have overheard every word that had been said within. She stepped in Huey's path, forcing him to an abrupt halt. "Give me two minutes with him."

"With the Deputy Commissioner?" Dewey laughed at her solemn intensity.

Frannie glared at him. "With Frankie. I want to give him a message, from Ray's family."

"Francesca," said Huey patiently, "you do not want to be messing with a guy like Zuko. He's a killer."

"Oh, pish! I've known Frankie since I was four. He used to chase me on the playground and try to look up my dress. He thinks I don't have a brain in my head." Frannie breezed down the hallway toward the interview room, with the two detectives in pursuit.

"Frannie," Dewey caught her just as she was about to push open the door to Interview One. "We'll watch through the mirror, just in case."

She smiled, not at all perturbed. "Enjoy the show, boys."

Zuko had been sitting alone in the bare interview room for more than two hours, and his patience had long since worn out. The uniformed officers who had brought him to the 27th had told him that the detectives just wanted to ask him some questions about Hicuana and his goons, but no detective had yet appeared.

The door opened behind him, and Francesca Vecchio slipped into the room. Despite his outrage, Frankie allowed himself a broad smile, for now she was wearing that pink suit with the exquisite curves. She sauntered over to him, brushed a hand seductively across his shoulder as she slipped past his chair, and pulled the other chair close beside him.

"I want to make one thing perfectly clear to you." Her voice was sultry, her stare chilling; she placed her left hand on his thigh. "If my brother gets killed, even if the Iguana Family does it, I will personally shoot your garbanzos off."

Zuko instinctively looked down, to see a black pistol gripped in her right hand, inches away from the threatened organs. He grinned, calling her bluff. "Good try, Frannie. Not a bad threat, for a beginner. Stupid, though, 'cause that kind of talk is police harassment."

"It would be if I were a cop, but I'm just a civilian," she reminded him. "The worst you can do to me is get me fired. The worst I can do to you is this." She shoved the barrel of her weapon into his groin and squeezed the trigger twice; genuine terror froze him in his chair as a stream of warm water soaked the front of his trousers. "Consider that a down-payment."

They glared at each other for several tense seconds. Then Francesca stood, slipped her water pistol into the waistband of her pink miniskirt, turned on one heel, and strode from the room, her head held high.

Five minutes later Zuko was released. He walked the gauntlet of the 27th, past detectives, uniformed officers, and civilians, all eyes focused on the wet spot on his pants.

************************************

"If you can't stay in Chicago, and you don't trust the Witness Protection Program, what are you going to do?"

"I'll manage my own disappearance." Perspiration shone on the crown of Ray's head as he stared through Stella's office window at the crowded street below. "I'm gonna head east on I-90. After that, I don't know."

"Ray." She approached him, speaking softly, but he didn't respond. "Ray. Ray."

He flinched as she touched his shoulder, but then turned to face her. She gently placed the palm of her hand on his stomach; she could feel the thick bandage under his shirt. "Ray, what did the doctor tell you? You can't drive. Not until this heals. How far could you go before you broke it open?" She shook her head and continued to make her case. "You don't even have a car."

"I'll buy one."

"You'll have to hire a driver, too."

"Stella, this isn't your problem."

"Ray." She touched his lips with her finger, to stop him from interrupting. "Ray, I may have only known you for a week, but I'm falling hard for you. What's more important, I'm the only friend you have that the Iguana Family, southwest branch, cannot possibly find out about. Except for your family, and your friends at the 27th, nobody even knows that we've met. We can use my car, and I'll drive."

"But..."

"Shhhhhh." She moved her finger so she could kiss him. "My car, my name. They won't be looking for anybody named Kowalski. Besides which, my pinhead boss just ordered me to take some time off to spend with Ray. . ."

He considered her argument, and surrendered humbly. "You would do that for me. You and me, running from the mob in your Beemer."

She smiled. "It's a Lexus, Ray."

************************************

Diego had returned the silver Cadillac to the rental agency, choosing a much more suitable Chevy with which to continue his investigation. As the afternoon wore on, he sat diligently in the car, the Glock resting in his lap-- not because he intended to use it, but because it was uncomfortably bulky under his sling.

Alonzo Hicuana had pressed the gun into Diego's hand only six short hours ago, and yet in his entire career of shady dealings with the Iguana Family, this was the longest stretch of time he had ever carried a weapon. The burden of it weighed heavier on him than its actual mass, a tangible confirmation of the commission laid on him by the Padrino. Although Diego could not have said, at that moment, exactly who it was he was searching for, there was no question that Frankie Zuko knew far more than he had already revealed. So Diego sat in his rented Chevy, cradled his Glock, and nursed his grudge in front of the old stone house on Peary Street.

Frankie Zuko was not home.

At three o'clock Diego's wristwatch beeped once. The afternoon was passing too quickly; a vague sense of urgency pressed him to locate his quarry before darkness fell. He was beginning to formulate a rash plan to break into the house when Zuko's sleek black Lincoln roared around the corner and into the driveway with a spray of gravel. Diego quickly slipped the gun back into the holster and climbed out to greet the young mobster.

"Mr Zuko!" He dashed across the street and across the lawn, aiming to intercept his quarry at the wide front steps. Zuko stared at him blankly, with no trace of recognition or welcome. "I'm Diego Castellano; I work for Mr Hicuana. I was here last night. . ."

Zuko's expression switched to one of impatience and irritation; he ignored Diego's extended hand and turned to climb the steps. As he reached for the doorknob, he turned again and snapped, "You tell Hicuana, I will call him when I know something." With that, he entered the house, leaving his visitor standing alone on the lawn.

Diego's face flamed with rage and humiliation, as he momentarily lost sight of his primary duty in his longing to take Mr Hicuana's revenge on the arrogant flea. He was reaching for the gun in its holster under his injured arm when he was startled by the sound of a friendly voice.

"Don't let him get to you!" Diego spun around to see Jimmy Roastbeef standing in the driveway, a big red thermos in his hands. "He's had a really, really bad day."

Diego forced a broad smile, and jogged down the path to the driveway with his good hand extended for a lefty handshake. "It is Jimmy, right? Jimmy Rosanova? I'm Diego, you remember? I was here last night, with Mr Hicuana."

Jimmy seemed uncertain which hand to use for the handshake, switching the thermos back and forth twice before finally putting it down on the hood of the car and extending both hands so Diego could choose which one to grasp. "I remember."

"Listen, Jimmy..." Diego put his good arm around the big man's shoulder. "Mr Hicuana asked me to come over here to ask Mr Zuko for some more information."

"If I were you, I wouldn't ask him for anything, right now."

"Yeah, so I found out. But hey, you know, my boss wants what my boss wants, so what am I gonna do?" Diego smiled ingratiatingly. "Hey-- maybe you can help me out. You know why we're here, right?"

"No, not exactly."

"Very good. You play it close to the chest, I admire that." Diego spoke conspiratorially in Jimmy's ear. "We're trying to find Mr Hicuana's nephew. Mr Hicuana wants to talk to a cop named Ray Vecchio, so he asked me to ask Mr Zuko for Vecchio's address."

"Oh."

"Now, I can see that Mr Zuko is a very, very busy man, and he obviously doesn't want to be disturbed with such a stupid-ass question. So I figure, maybe you can help me out?"

Jimmy gave the matter grave consideration. "Yeah, I'll give you the address, but Vecchio won't be there."

"Oh?"

"Charlie's been trailing Vecchio all over town, all day. In fact, I'm supposed to be taking this to him about now." Jimmy held up the thermos.

"Refreshment for a hard-working man. You're a good friend, Jimmy." Diego laid his hand on the top of the thermos and struggled not to look too excited. "Tell you what. Why don't you let me deliver this to him? Okay?"

"Um... okay. That'd be good. Yeah, that'd be good. Thanks." Jimmy handed over the coffee.

"My pleasure, Jimmy. Only... where'm I going?"

"Oh. They're at the church."

"At the church." Diego wondered if Jimmy could actually be so dense, or if he was being deliberately obtuse. Luis Matera was a rocket scientist compared to this hunk of muscle. "You know, ahh. . . I'm not from around here."

"Yeah! Las Vegas, right?" Jimmy was still clueless.

"So where's the church?"

************************************

High overhead, a cobweb wafted in the sunlight entering through the clerestory windows at St. Michael's. Stella sat alone in a pew, waiting for Ray to come out of Father Behan's office, her head tipped back as she studied the vaulted ceiling of the nave. She silently counted to one hundred-- in Italian-- before looking at her watch.

Only fifteen minutes had passed since the last time she had checked. It had seemed like an hour.

In the choir loft behind her the organist was practicing a tune that Stella remembered from childhood celebrations of St Patrick's Day. She counted the days in her mind; March 17th would be this coming Friday. A sudden wave of nostalgia overwhelmed her, as she realized that she would miss St Patty's day in Chicago: the green dye in the Chicago River, the silly parade down Michigan Avenue. She had never celebrated the holiday much, but now she could barely stand the thought of missing it.

"Homesick already?" Ray asked.

She had not heard him return to the church. She pulled a tissue out of her purse and tried to dry her eyes. "A little."

"Me, too." He slipped into the pew and sat beside her. "I've dreamed about coming home every day for the last year. My real job, my friends, my mother's cooking... less than a week in Chicago, and I'm leaving again."

"It's not forever."

"It's already been too long." He put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her close. "You don't have to do this, you know. The Iguana Family is my problem, not yours."

"I want to help, Ray. I want to go with you."

He took her hand and drew her to her feet. "Come on. Father Behan wants to meet you." He led her toward the sanctuary, where the priest was removing a silver pyx from the aumbry. He was in street clothes-- jeans and a blue-and-white striped polo shirt-- but the flickering light of the presence lamp picked out the gold embroidered crosses on his purple stole. He motioned for Stella to come; Ray released her hand and leaned against the pulpit to wait while the priest and the prosecutor conversed quietly.

The explosive sound of a gunshot echoed through the church; the organ fell silent in mid-phrase as the organist slumped to the floor of the choir loft. Ray's attention darted away from Stella and Father Behan, turning to the sound of a familiar voice, harsh with anger.

"Vecchio!"

Diego stood in the center aisle of the church, halfway down the nave, his gun cocked and leveled at Ray's head. Ray took two deliberate steps away from the pulpit, his hands in plain sight; his pain medication had slowed his reflexes, costing him the opportunity to draw his own gun from its holster in the small of his back.

Diego's face was stone. "It's true. You're not Armando, you're Ray Vecchio."

"Diego, put the gun down."

The gun did not waver. "Don't come any closer!"

"Okay. I'm standing right here." Ray considered making a try for his own weapon, but knew that he would not have enough time unless Diego could first be distracted into lowering his. One small, detached part of Ray's mind tried, unsuccessfully, to recall whether Diego was right- or left-handed.

From his vantage point, hidden in the shadow of a pillar toward the rear of the church, Charlie Bianco watched every move. Obviously, his source of information was unreliable; he had been told that the whole Iguana Family delegation had flown back to Las Vegas before noon. He drew his cell phone from his pocket as he slipped silently away from the scene of the confrontation.

"What did you do to him?" Diego strode several yards down the aisle, his gun never faltering. "What did you do to Armando?"

Father Behan pulled Stella away from the altar, aiming for the safety of the sacristy. The words of the treasured hymn which was no longer rolling from the organ sprang to the Irish priest's mind. He began to recite them under his breath, a prayer for protection: "I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity. . ."

Stella knew the words of St Patrick's Breastplate, memorized as a child, never forgotten; and joined her whisper to his. ". . .by invocation of the same, the three in one, and one in three. I bind this day to me forever, by power of faith. . ."

"Don't move! Stay where I can see you!" cried Diego. They froze.

Ray drew Diego's attention back. "I swear to you, Diego. I didn't do anything to him. I never even met Armando."

"Then where is he?"

Ray could sense the grief in Diego's voice. He knew that they had been close, Armando and his protege, and that Diego resented the distance that Ray had been forced to place between them. Diego's volatile emotions could bring a resolution to this standoff, or they could spell disaster. Ray was not liking the odds, but felt that Diego deserved an honest answer.

"I'm so sorry, Diego. Armando died."

"No! No, you're lying! He can't be dead! Where is he?"

"It's the truth."

"Who killed him? WHO?" Diego's arm was trembling, now, and Ray was glad of the cast on Diego's right arm, the injury that prevented him from using his other hand to help support the weight of the gun. Just keep him talking, Ray thought to himself, just keep him talking and soon he'll be too tired to take aim.

"It was an accident, Diego. It was a car accident. Nobody killed him, it wasn't anybody's fault; he fell asleep on I-15, coming back from L.A. He drove off the road, you remember. You remember."

"No! He survived. He survived that accident, I know he did, I took care of him. I sat by his bed, I brought him food, I kept him company, I was there! He survived."

"I remember." Ashamed, Ray recalled the many touching ways that Diego Castellano had shown his love for his mentor during the months of faked recovery. "At the hospital, Diego. . . that was me." At that moment, Ray knew that he had lost any hope of sympathy or compassion from the young man. Only Diego's need for answers would keep him alive.

"Where is he?" Diego took a dozen steps closer. The hand that held the gun was no longer shaking.

Ray shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Diego."

"To hell with 'You're sorry'! Where's the body?"

It was a reasonable question, one that had Ray had never thought to ask. "I-- I don't know."

"You don't know? What kind of answer is that, you don't know?"

"I don't know! I can ask, I'll find out."

"That isn't right! Is it, Father?" Diego turned his face, twisted with grief, to where Father Behan stood near the sacristy door. "Armando is dead. My friend is dead. His body is rotting away somewhere, and we doesn't even know where! Did they give him a funeral? Did they put a marker on his grave?" A sob broke from his throat. "Did anybody pray for him?"

"I did," breathed Ray, too quietly for Diego to hear.

Father Behan took a cautious step forward, then a second, angling his body to shield Stella from the gunman's line of sight. "No question, son. That wasn't right. But what's done is done, and using that gun isn't going to make it right."

While the priest was speaking, Ray finally seized the opportunity to draw his weapon, leveling it at the grieving man's chest. "Diego, drop the gun."

"You're alive and Armando's dead. That's not right."

"You won't do this. I know you; you're a businessman, you're not a killer."

"You know me? You know me? You THINK you know me?" His gun was waving wildly now. "Have I ever given you permission to call me by my first name? I'm Mister Castellano to you!"

"Drop it."

"I'm not a killer? I have killed! I killed for you! I killed Willie Contreras for you!"

Ray rocked back and momentarily lost his aim, as the memory of Willie's bloated, fish-eaten body appeared in his mind's eye.

Diego continued relentlessly, red with rage. "I was in Hicuana's office when he got the call from his man in the FBI. Willie was going to turn evidence against us! Hicuana was furious with you, because you were supposed to kill that sniveling double-crossing....

The cold touch of steel at the back of his neck stopped Diego Castellano in mid-sentence. A cool, female voice ordered, "Drop it. Now." And Diego did drop it; the gun clattered to the tiles and skidded several feet down the aisle.

Father Behan raced to the stairway that led to the choir loft, reaching it just ahead of the ambulance crew. Ray kept his gun trained on Diego as his old friend shoved the prisoner to his knees. "It's about time you showed up, Elaine."

"My pleasure, Ray. Glad to see you again."

"How'd you know I needed backup?"

She shrugged. "I didn't. Dispatch got an anonymous call, that there was somebody shooting up St. Michael's."

Face down on the floor, Diego Castellano continued his confession, not pausing even as Officer Besbriss put her knee in his back, handcuffed him, and read him his rights.

"You have the right to remain silent. . ."

". . .took the fall for you. I lied for you, I told him that it was my fault, my fault, give me another chance. . ."

". . .anything you say can and will be used against you. . ."

". . .and I'll make sure he's dead this time. Better I should take a little heat than leave Alonzo Hicuana angry at Armando. . ." Elaine hauled roughly him to his feet, where he stood face to face with Ray, tears streaming down his face.

". . .in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. . ."

". . .I did it for you, Armando. I killed Willie for you."

"I know."

************************************

An hour later, Charlie Bianco finished his third Scotch at the Highball Club in Chicago's bustling Union Station. He tossed a few bills onto the bar, put on his coat, and walked out into the busy concourse.

Following the flow of the rush-hour crowd, he wandered aimlessly around the warren of passageways, waiting rooms, ticketing areas, shops and restaurants for another half-hour, looking for the worst possible place to make a phone call; then he watched the departures/arrivals board for the busiest possible time. At 5:10 there were two Amtrak trains boarding, one late-running Amtrak arriving, and three Metra commuter trains getting ready to move as well. He stood in a hallway teeming with tourists and commuters, and punched speed-dial one on his cell phone.

"Mr Zuko? It's Charlie."

"Where is he?"

"I'm sorry, Mr Zuko. I lost him." The station announcement for the arrival of train six, the California Zephyr, blared through a loudspeaker right behind Charlie. He stuck a finger into his ear and shouted into the phone, "He was in a taxi, but he got out on Madison and went into Union Station." The announcement over, Charlie continued in his normal voice, "I had to find a place to park, and by the time I got inside he was gone."

"Where did he go?"

"How the hell would I know? I been searching for more than an hour, but this is a big place. Separate waiting rooms for Amtrak and Metra, restaurants, bars, shops, bathrooms.... Plus a dozen trains have left since I got here. He could be anywhere."

"He's probably on one of those trains."

"It's what I would do," agreed Charlie.

"Okay. Get the timetables of the last twelve trains, and we'll give them to Hicuana with our best wishes." There was the barest trace of relief in Zuko's voice. "From now on it's his problem, not ours."

"Right away, Mr Zuko."

"And tonight we'll drink to our dear departed Detective Vecchio."

"That we will, Mr Zuko. 'Bye." Charlie turned off the phone and slipped it into his coat pocket, where his fingers brushed against the crumpled napkin he had put there the night before. He pulled it out and read again what Jimmy Roastbeef had written on it: RCW 139. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

St. Michael's had been surrounded by a dozen police cars, their red and blue lights pulsing in that annoying, out-of-synch way that police cars' lights always do, when Ray Vecchio and Stella Kowalski emerged from the church, arm in arm, into the late afternoon sunshine. The police cordon had let them through, to the place where Stella's blue Lexus was parked on Montclair Street, and Charlie had done nothing to prevent.

By now, they could be in Wisconsin, or Indiana, or even Michigan. Or they might still be in Illinois. Certainly they had not been anywhere near the train station.

Charlie rolled up the napkin and tossed it into a nearby trash can, then retrieved his cell phone and punched speed-dial two.

"FBI, Organized Crime unit, Special Agent Maddox."

"It's Charlie Bianco."

"Charlie! Thank God, I was worried when you didn't check in. Where is he?"

"I'm sorry, Mr Maddox," Charlie admitted. "I lost him."

************************************

Not the end, a new beginning. . .

************************************

Afterword

St. Patrick carried no weapons and wore no armor when he went to convert the people of Ireland to Christianity. Rather, he used a prayer, now known as "St. Patrick's Breastplate" as his only protection. Tradition holds that, on one occasion, Patrick and his followers recited the "Breastplate" as their enemies approached them on the road; the armed Irish warriors passed among them, but could not see them.

I dedicate this story to the conscientious, hardworking men and women of the United States' Federal law-enforcement agencies, especially those who administer the Witness Protection Program; who surely deserve better than I have given them in these pages.

In addition, I give my heartfelt concern to those who have chosen to turn away from organized crime, and who have placed their own lives and the safety of their families in the hands of these Federal officers. May St. Patrick's Breastplate cover them and keep them safe from harm.

************************************

I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead,

his eye to watch, his might to stay, his ear to hearken to my need;

the wisdom of my God to teach, his hand to guide, his shield to ward;

the word of God to give me speech, his heavenly host to be my guard.

(from "St. Patrick's Breastplate")

************************************

Please let me know what you think! (melanie_m@my-deja.com)