I didn't even remember going to bed but found myself there when I woke, close to noon. Isabel had already gotten up. Feeling a little shaky, I crawled out of bed and threw on my robe. Upon entering the kitchen, I found them all gathered again, save for Schell. The only verbal welcome I got was an "Hola," from Isabel. The others smiled and nodded but looked altogether bedraggled.

"Coffee?" I asked.

"Forget the coffee, kid. It's hair-of-the dog-time," said Antony.

Then I noticed the two open champagne bottles on the table. I took a seat, Morgan passed me an empty flute, and Vonda poured. "Takes the edge off," she said as the bubbles rose in the glass.

I was just going to ask where Schell was when he came into the kitchen. He took his seat and reached for the bottle. Filling his glass with one hand, he held up the other, waving a slip of paper. "That was Emmet just getting back to me," he said. "He does fast work. I called him at eight this morning. He said that the initials ERO, and he thinks they're most definitely initials, in conjunction with the town of Cold Spring Harbor, refer to the"-here Schell consulted the slip of paper again-"Eugenics Record Office."

"What's that?" asked Antony.

"Never heard of it," said Schell. "But Emmet said the study of eugenics has to do with inherited traits, like in Darwin or, more precisely, Mendel. He's going to look into it more deeply and call back later."

That afternoon, Schell, Antony, Vonda, and Morgan took off in the Cord to drop Vonda at the train station and then to take Morgan shopping for a few things that were not in the boxes we had been able to retrieve from the cabin. Isabel couldn't go, as it was still uncertain to the police if she'd been kidnapped or was a suspect in connection with Parks's murder. Even though there were no photographs of her, it was too chancy for her to leave the house yet.

She and I stayed home and lolled on the couch in the living room, talking, kissing, napping. At about two o'clock, the phone in the office rang, and I went to answer it.

"Is Tommy there?" asked the voice of The Worm.

"He's not here, Mr. Brogan."

"How about tall, smart, and handsome?" he asked.

"Antony?" I said. "He's out too."

"Who's this, the swami kid?"

"Yes," I said.

"Okay, kid, it's going to have to be you, because I don't know when I'm going to have a chance to call back. Listen good. Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?"

I sat down at Schell's desk and lifted a pen. "I'm ready," I said.

"First, take down this name. The guy's in Huntington and has written a recent article, not too complimentary, about the ERO. He used to work there…a doctor, Manfred Stintson." He gave me less than two seconds and asked, "Got it?"

I was still writing when I said, "Yeah."

"Well, Schell asked me about the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor. Your old man has a knack for sniffing out the shit, 'cause this one stinks like there's no tomorrow."

He paused for a moment, and when he began speaking again, he sounded agitated, almost angry. "Eugenics Record Office, Cold Spring Harbor, founded in 1910 by Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin. The main purpose was to study heredity in relation to the scientific work of Mendel. It's all about breeding, and it's all about breeding the perfect race. They started by tracing the heredity of anomalies like your buddies on the midway down in Coney-giants, dwarfs, six-finger guys, you know. Then they got into twins and albinos, imbeciles, any trait that could be traced back generations. Hey, I'll give you a hundred guesses what the model was for perfection."

"I've no idea," I said.

"Here's a clue. All of the people who support this have a heritage from northern Europe. We're talking Anglo-Saxon, white, blue eyes, get it? And there were and are some very powerful people behind this. The initial money came from the fortune of E. H. Harriman, to the tune of eleven million dollars. You also have donations from Carnegie and Rockefeller. Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, moneymen like Prescott Bush. All were or are solid supporters of this crackpottery. And what is it they support? A beating back of the rising tide of, as they put it, 'feeblemindedness'; compulsory sterilization for those of less marked intelligence; distinct separation of the races; and stricter immigration and naturalization laws to keep the likes of you and also those of southern European extraction from sullying the lineage of the founders of the great USA. As far as these guys are concerned, the very Depression itself was caused by hereditary malcontents, imbeciles, and the shiftless masses draining the life from our culture. And kid, please tell me you realize that perfection is in the eye of the beholder."

I didn't understand that he actually wanted an answer, but when he didn't continue, I snapped to and said, "Certainly."

"Shiftlessness, by the way, is something these doctors at the ERO can apparently score for. Also things like 'musical intelligence.' That's not too subjective a determination is it? Christ, to normal society, I'm as shiftless as they come. I could see these guys wanting to make me a castrati. Can you imagine how annoying I'd be if my voice was even higher? This shit's everywhere, in school textbooks, in church sermons that say only the best should marry the best, in Congress, where the real idiots are passing laws to put this plan in place. Through the efforts of these arbiters of humanity, twenty-some-odd states have mandatory laws concerning the sterilization of anyone they consider to be of subpar intelligence. There's even talk of euthanasia. You know what that means? Who needs the fucking Ku Klux Klan when you've got these guys? This very year, the International Congress of Eugenics met, and, baby, they've got plans for you. Are you with me, kid, are you with me?"

"I'm here," I said.

"I'm going to give you a little prophecy from the illuminated mind of The Worm. Follow me on this. You think you've got it bad, well you do. Mexicans are seen as a poison in the bloodstream of true America. You're a shiftless and thieving lot. That goes without saying, and that's the main reason they want to round you all up and send you back. It's political, it's social, but they pretend it's a medical condition. But consider the Jews, they have none other than Henry Ford on their keisters. Henry's a major race baiter. In the newspaper he owns out in Deerborn, Michigan, he published a piece called 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' The bottom line: Jews need to be eradicated. He's spreading this stuff all over Europe as well. The Germans, who he does scads of business with, are loving the hell out of him. Take the fact that in his autobiography he claims to have gotten the concept for the assembly line from slaughterhouses and put that together with the money and influence these fools have, their desire to sweep humanity clean of anyone who doesn't look or think like them, and that equals dark days ahead, my young swami. The Worm has spoken."

The receiver went dead. My head was swimming, not only from the cyclone of Emmet's diatribe but also from its implications. A strange emotion filled me, but I was too stunned to place it. I went back into the living room and took my seat on the couch next to Isabel. I put my arms around her and held her tightly, closing my eyes. It came to me then that what I felt, like a snowball lodged in my chest slowly melting into my system, was fear. I felt as fragile as a butterfly, and no matter how tightly I held on to Isabel, I couldn't help but see, in my mind's eye, the image of a giant shoe, above me, descending.