Jack Crow stood at the baggage claim in Dallas - Fort Worth International Airport gazing longingly at the bank of pay phones and rattling the change in his pocket.

It was probably too late to call the people he had in mind. Too late at night, too late in his career. And he didn't much want to get involved with them again. What was that old joke? One of the three Big Lies? "Hi! I'm from the Government. I'm here to help you!"

But still, nobody could find someone like the old crowd. And God knows they were fair to me. Just let me walk away from it all.

He stood where he was, undecided, idly watching the others gather the bags. Annabelle and Davette stood chatting amiably on the edge of the activity, picking up all sorts of looks from the other passengers. Crow didn't blame them. Damn few women looked like Annabelle at her age. And come to think of it, fewer looked like Davette at any age. She was really something to see.

Then he noticed something odd.

"Davette? Where are your bags?" he asked, innocently enough but absolutely everyone turned and looked at him and Davette blushed to her dress line and Annabelle trotted over to him wearing her "Hush!" look.

Oh, God, he thought. What have I done now?

Well! If he'd just be quiet for a minute, she'd tell him. It seems this dear sweet little girl has had a falling-out with her family. She, Annabelle, hadn't gotten all the details yet but it was some sort of major blowup and the poor girl is just desperate and she needs this story and I know she probably won't get it printed, Jack! But that's not the point! The point is: she's lost and alone and away from her family and she's going to stay with us for a while, doing her job as a reporter - I'm sure she's a dandy little reporter, she's so smart - and then we'll worry about the rest of it later.

Please? Please, Jack?

For me?

Jack absolutely hated it. He hated the whole bit - the girl, the sob story, the responsibility, Annabelle's tone. But what the hell was he going to do? Annabelle had yet to be wrong about someone, and besides, what could he do anyway? He hated it. He just hated it.

He looked down at her pleading eyes. He was a foot taller and one hundred pounds heavier and one day, when he grew up, he was going to stand up to her.

He just nodded and slunk his ass away toward the taxis.

Shit.

Davette, visibly tense, watched him pass by. She turned to Annabelle.

"Is it all right?" she asked.

"Of course it is, dear."

Davette relaxed somewhat. "He agreed?"

Annabelle stopped and looked at the younger woman. She laughed. "You sweet thing," she said, patting Davette's cheek. "Did you get the impression I was asking him?"

The young night clerk at the Adolphus Hotel, Dallas's rejuvenated downtown palace, had no better luck than Crow. Annabelle was terribly sorry they hadn't made reservations but it's just that they always stayed at the Adolphus - it was like their second home and one hardly makes reservations at one's home, does one? Ha ha ha.

And the next thing the poor young man knew, Team Crow had its pair of connecting suites and Davette had her single on the same floor.

Everyone was starving to death so they ordered down for... How many of us are there? Six?... for eight steaks and big baked potatoes with everything on them and tossed salad and asparagus and a round of drinks, make that two rounds, and a half dozen bottles of Mondavi red... No. That's eight steaks and six bottles of wine. Whaddya think we are? Alcoholics? Right. Thank you.

Davette further endeared herself to everyone by falling asleep twice. Once after her first drink and again at the table during the meal. Annabelle clucked and had the men carry her, still sleeping, into her room. The poor girl had been both exhausted and starving and, No thank you very much, Cherry Cat. I can undress her myself.

The next morning Jack Crow declared a holiday. It didn't apply to Carl Joplin, who was going to be busy setting up his workshop and getting ready to make silver bullets and it didn't apply to Annabelle, who was going to be busy screaming at movers and temporary servants, at least during the day, but everyone else could play.

And they did. Jack and Cat and Adam and Davette did Dallas in a big way for the next couple of weeks. The others joined them at night for dinner, but during the day they got silly on their own. They went to movies and amusement parks and go-cart tracks. They bowled. They golfed. They played tennis, hard, every day to stay in shape. They lunched, huge lunches lasting three hours and costing as many hundreds of dollars. They ran up an enormous tab at the hotel (everyone still slept there), paid it, ran up another, paid that.

In the meantime the house was getting ready; the vehicles arrived from California in time for Jack to get a DWI. He stood there, furious, while a twenty-year-old policeman dressed him down, quite rightly, for driving across a cemetery at three o'clock in the morning scouting picnic spots for the next afternoon. Jack was forced to renew his old acquaintances downtown before he really wanted to think about such things. The lieutenant he spoke to knew (unofficially) who he was and what he did and got him off but lectured him some more.

Jack shut up and took it and leased a limo the next morning.

In the meantime, all had their-own little chores. Davette went shopping with Annabelle once it was discovered she had only what she had been wearing. Cat chased and caught several women, at least two of whom had a sense of humor. Adam went to mass every morning.

And Jack made his phone call to the nation's capital.

They were surprised to hear from him but not entirely distant. They said they would see what they could do. Two weeks later they called him back and gave him an address. He thanked them, hung up, checked the address in the yellow pages, nodded to himself.

During the whole two weeks they never once mentioned their jobs. Nobody said the word: vampire. Jack even stopped jumping whenever the phone rang.

He shouldn't have.

The silver had arrived from Rome through the local see. The bishop was a new man who knew nothing about Team Crow or, for that matter, his parishioners. Persuaded by his aide that anyone with enough clout to receive a package from the Vatican through diplomatic channels was worth knowing, he grudgingly consented to share his sumptuous evening feast with Crow & Co.

It took less than fifteen minutes in his presence for Team Crow to know all the important facts about this man. He was cold. He was haughty. He was better than his flock, more cultured, more intelligently pious, more... how shall one put it? More aristocratic.

The bishop was an idiot.

He was also Carl Joplin's meat. Carl's and Cat's. The two of them took rich delight in infuriating the man, pretending all the while to be unaware at how offended he was by their every gesture and semicrude remark. They had descended to triple entendres when the bishop had absolutely had enough.

He rose curtly and left the room, gesturing for the uniformed Father Adam to follow.

Adam loved the Church. He loved it deeply and fully, without reservation, both as an institution and as a vehicle for Almighty God. He loved priests also, knowing them to be as fine a collection of human beings as existed on the planet. Many times in even a career as short as his he had felt... no, he had known he had seen, in the shining eyes of some simple servant of Rome, the hand of Christ.

But this bishop was an ass and he ignored the man's clipped demands for explanation and instead laid before him on his desk the pouch he had brought with him from the Vatican.

With a snort and a sneer, the older man reluctantly began to read. When he was finished, his face was pale.

It was worth seeing.

Suddenly (almost miraculously, thought Adam wryly), all was well. Anything the bishop or his office could do for them would be done without question. Why, he'd be glad to.

Right. Great. They all shook hands and left.

As much fun as Cat had been having, he hadn't been neglecting his job, which was to fret over Jack Crow. Everybody had his own relationship with their leader and each relationship was close but none as close as Cat's and everyone knew it. Cat found it strange that he received such attention, that his feelings of... well, approval, he guessed, should be so important. But they were.

For now.

Because one day, Cherry Cat was very sure, someone would stop by from the Home Office, some field man in charge of Karma, and inform him that there had been a dreadful mistake. We're very sorry, Mr. Catlin, the man would say, but you're not supposed to be here. By some clerical error, your soul was classified under Hero when it should have been under Intelligentsia. Let's face it, Mr. Catlin, you are hardly the crusader type, now are you? You should have been a film critic.

It was bound to happen, thought Cat. But until that time, until they caught him, he was going to stick. Because he couldn't imagine any other way that a fellow like him, a smartass and a determined coward, could hope to bang around these giants. So he would stay until they dragged him away. Just to be there. Just to see it.

He only hoped the Home Office wouldn't prosecute.

But in the meantime he watched Jack Crow and he'd noticed an odd look on his leader's face all night. He hadn't joined in with their game of Piss Off the Bishop, hadn't even seemed to notice it much. Something was going on, Cat knew. And it was something that he ought to be able to...

Of course! Mexico! That story he told about that funny smuggler guy. What was his name? Fre... No. Felix. Like Felix the Cat. Hmm. So. That was that look.

Hmm, again. When do you suppose he's going to get around to telling us? Maybe he could use a feed.

At the moment there was no decent opportunity. Jack had directed the limo to Greenville Avenue, the American model, from New York to Chicago to L.A.'s Marina del Rey, of the Singles' Strip. For six straight miles, ninety percent of the real estate was devoted to night life. Everyplace was a bar or a restaurant with a bar and all served steak and lobster and silly drinks with sillier names designed to sound obscene when drunkenly pronounced and all were filled with nubile young ladies, a terrifying percentage of which had received herpes from dirty toilet seats.

Cat moved through this place like International Harvester in the fall. Women loved his blond looks, his sly smile, his five-foot-eight build. Even the tall ones and that was okay because some of them were worth the climb.

But the bar Jack was taking them to was a lot different. For one thing, the name (the Antwar Saloon). For another, the clientele. This was a bar bar. No foo-foo drinks with little umbrellas for them. This was a place for men, mostly, where they could come and talk and do serious drinking without showering after the office. They didn't seem particularly anxious to get new customers, or even happy about the arrival of six cash-carrying strangers. The waitress who took their order after they had filled up a corner booth seemed friendly enough, and she did her job quickly and well, but Cat could tell she didn't care if they returned or not or lived or died. It was a nice place anyway. Somehow.

Cat glanced again at Jack, saw him surveying the room with that look strong on his features, and decided it was time for the feed.

"So," he began cheerily, "whatever happened to that Felix guy?"

"Yes," echoed Davette, who seemed genuinely interested. "I'd like to hear."

"So would I," said Adam, now without his collar once more. "Did you ever see him again?"

Jack eyed CM briefly, surprise and dawning gratitude on his face. He smiled and nodded to the question. "Yep. Twice more."

Annabelle's smile was a knowing one. "What happened?"

"Well, to answer that, I've first got to talk about Mr. Peanut."

Carl frowned. "What's Carter got to do with it? He wasn't president then."

"No," Jack agreed slowly. "But the damage was done. Who else told the world a bunch of unshaven purportedly religious punks could mob-storm an American embassy and capture and torture the diplomatic personnel for four hundred and forty-four days and get away with it?"

Carl frowned again. "So what's the point?"

Jack sipped and grinned. "That is the point. The whole world knew we lacked the one thing absolutely required to stop outlaws: the resolve to get the dirty job done. Without that, they knew if they pushed us hard enough and long enough, we'd back off.

"So they decided to murder DEA agents. One, anyway, so there would be a chance for Congress to whoop and holler and then do nothing and the agents themselves would see they had no backup after the second killing and quit. Not quit their jobs. Just quit doing them. And why shouldn't they? Why be targets for people who didn't care anymore about them than to say they did?"

"So what stopped it?" Adam wanted to know.

Jack's face was hard. "It wasn't stopped."

Adam stared at him. "You're kidding."

"Read the papers much, kid?"

Jack snorted, smiled. "Don't blame you. Anyway, they've killed five DEA men since 1983."

"And they tried to kill you?" prompted Davette.

"Kidnapped me first." Jack drained his glass and signaled the waitress for another round. "Which was stupid. Felix tried to warn me. He got word to me two days before but I had John Wayne fever or something and wouldn't get out like I should."

"How," asked Cat slowly, "did Felix know?"

"They were his gang. Those partners he was so worried about, trying to prove they could make it in the raw-brown-heroin business."



Third Interlude: Audition

They trussed me up good. Four of 'em. They took me right out of my motel room in the early morning during my shower.

Stupid, stupid, stupid on my part. Just stupid!

But not bad on theirs. They were fast and rough and scared and they had me down and wrapped up tight and then they pounded on me to show they meant it and then we left. At least they gave me my trousers.

Two hours later we're out in some abandoned mobile home way out in the sticks and I'm tied to a chair at the legs and armrests and shoved up against this rickety old kitchen table like they're going to feed me and then they sit down and shoot some more speed into their arms.

It was plenty scary. All four were Americans, all four young. All four wired to the gills. The dope didn't even seem to affect them, so God knows how long they'd been awake and psyching up to do this. Two or three days at least. Maybe a week.

I was dead meat.

There was a fifth guy there. Hispanic, but I knew damn well he wasn't a Mexican. He was cold sober and cold-eyed and dressed the way he thought American gangsters were supposed to dress. He chewed a toothpick and played with the gold on his wrists and fingers and around his neck. He was the one they were trying to impress. They kept offering him speed. He shook his head and smiled. Then he looked at me with a sly sneer of personal triumph. He suggested they keep the gag in my mouth. They did.

The moment came. They all exchanged nervous looks and then looked at the Hispanic and be looked at them as if to say, "Well?"

The leader looked a bit like Cat, thin and blond, and he licked his lips and nodded to the others and they all stood up. The leader reached for his gun. Two of the others did the same.

Felix appeared without warning in the doorway behind them.

"Knock, knock," he said quietly.

They jumped like they'd been zapped by a laser beam. They spun around, cocking their pistols, or trying to get them out with jerking slippery hands - And I thought they were going to shoot him. Or at least shoot at him. But they didn't. They recognized him at the last split second, and didn't shoot. The air was filled with the sound of their roaring breath.

Felix, feigning concern, took a step back and raised his hands. He smiled. "Don't shoot, Yankee!"

There was about a three-beat pause while everyone's heart was restarted. Felix, still smiling, lowered his hands and strolled casually into the room. He stopped in front of my table and lit a cigarette. He regarded the blond.

"Cliff, you look like shit," He looked around at the rest of them. "The rest of you look worse." He paused when be came to the Hispanic. His smile remained but his eyes looked hard. "I see the company rep is here."

Then he did a scary thing. He took one of the chairs abandoned by the others, the one next to me, and plopped down in it. He looked at me, said, "Hi, Jack," and tapped his cigarette in the ashtray.

Cliff's eyes went wide. He stared, took a step toward us without thinking. "You know this guy?"

Felix remained calm. "Sure. Got drunk with him a month ago."

One of the others, a dark-haired scruffy one with tattoos, all but lunged forward.

"Did you know he was a narc?" be demanded.

"Not at the time." Felix took a puff. "I found out later."

"Then why didn't you tell us?" the guy wanted to know.

"What for, Randy?" Felix replied calmly, looking him dead in the eye. "You told me you were getting out of the business."

Randy looked like he was about to explode - embarrassed, ashamed, and worse, angered by it.

"You knew we were lying!" he spat.

Felix continued to eye him coldly. "Did I?" he replied with a faint touch of hurt in his voice.

It got quiet for a second, then Felix said, "Sit down, Cliff. Or shoot me."

Cliff looked down at the gun still in his hands - a big monster .357 - glanced at the others, then stuck it into his holster and sat down. Randy sat down, too. But he put his Colt automatic on the table in front of him. The third and fourth Americans - one was fat and one had a beard - put guns away and drew up chairs on the edge of the circle.

They all kept glancing over at the Hispanic, who hadn't moved but clearly didn't like what was going on.

"What the hell are you doing here, Felix?" asked Cliff abruptly.

"I came," he replied with a jerk of his head at me, "to rescue Jack, here."

Then he smiled again.

There was a pause... and then everyone, save the Hispanic and me, started to laugh.

But it didn't last very long. It couldn't. The scene was just too hot.

"C'mon, Felix," continued Cliff. "Be serious. What are you doing here?"

Felix smiled. "I am serious."

And it all got very tense again. Cliff lit a cigarette with shaky fingers, leaned toward Felix, and spoke the way he probably thought real men do.

"Felix, look. I know you want to get out and I know you never liked this part of it, the smack. And we all understood that, didn't we?"

And the other three nodded soberly.

"But," he continued, "we're moving up. We understand how you feel - really - but we're going ahead. There's just too much at stake here."

Felix leaned back. "Let's see if I can get this straight, here. You're about to murder an American policeman for the privilege of going on the Cuban payroll to smuggle raw heroin onto the streets of the United States?" He dropped his cigarette on the floor and stomped on it. "And you call it moving up?"

Randy exploded. More rage and shame and hatred for Felix for making him see it. "Goddamn you, Felix! You always put things like that! You love putting things in the worst possible way!"

And Felix just stared at him like he was from another planet.

It was getting hotter in a hurry.

"However you wanna put it, Felix. Fine. That's what we're going to do," said Cliff, trying to stay calm. "Now the best thing for you to do is just leave and... just leave us alone."

Felix's voice was ice-crystal clear. "You know I can't do that, Cliff."

And then he did a spooky thing. The whole time we'd been drinking that night I'd never noticed his shoulder holster and I'm used to looking for them. But he turned in his chair a certain way and suddenly it was exposed to the room.

"Let me put this so you can understand it," he said in a gentle, dead voice. "I'm not going to let this happen. I love you all. Even when I don't like you. But I won't let you kill him. Look, I disagree with those bullshit drug laws as much as anyone alive but I will not let you murder an American cop just for doing his fucking job. Do you understand that? Am I being very clear?"

He sat back in his chair and looked right at Cliff. "Let him go," said Felix.

Cliff exchanged half-glances with the others. Then decided to sit tough. "No," he said simply.

Felix sighed. "Then we fight."

Long pause. Cliff spoke: "Felix, you can't really mean this. You're not gonna do it - track us down to avenge some pig narc? C'mon!"

"I'm not going to do that. I'm going to stop you from killing him."

Randy, wired up and all but hopping in his chair, said, "How?"

Felix eyed him. "I'm going to shoot you if you don't let him go."

Randy tried a sneer. "When?"

And Felix said, "Now," and I thought he was the craziest sonuvabitch I'd ever seen in my life. There were five of them and he just sat there for a second and so did everyone else except Cliff, who stared hard at him and saw he meant it, saw he was serious, saw he was going to start it right there and then against all of them, all of them and more - it didn't mean a shit to Felix. It was really going to happen. Felix was really gonna - And Cliff reached for Randy's automatic on the table in front of him.

Felix shot him through the cheek, rose, shot Randy through his open gaping mouth already covered in his friend's blood, shot the fat one square in the chest and blew him back, shot the one with the beard, who had managed to get his gun out and cock it, through the throat. And the Hispanic, the Cuban, who had risen frozen at the far side of the room, he shot right between the eyes.

It took three seconds.

Felix's face was beet red. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He took his nine-millimeter in his left hand and turned to me, roaring, "I told you to leave, you dirty stupid motherfucker!"

Then with his free right hand he slapped me so hard my chair flew over backward and shattered beneath me. I lay there stunned and gasping for breath. When I looked over, Felix was vomiting onto the floor, still bawling like a baby, sobbing so hard it looked like it hurt.

After a while he stopped. He stood up, gun still in his hand. He gave me this kinda vacant look, then walked out the door and out of sight. He didn't even bother to untie me.

I didn't see him again for years. Until...