He closed the door, buzzed a hand, and slashed across. The thick-gauge metal parted with a shower of sparks and a satisfactory vibration up his arm and down his dick. Onlv skin was more fun to cut than good metal. He grabbed the refrigerator, pulled, got it rocking with a strength that was surprising in his skinny, twisted little body, and pulled the thing over with a satisfying bang on the cracked linoleum. Then he turned his attention to the cupboards that crowded around a sink filled with caked and crusty dishes, which gave off a fruity fecal wino smell, something you could dip a spoon into.

The cupboards were layered, like a televangelist's wife, with enamel. Though they hadn't been refinished in living memory they gave off an odor of paint, overlaid with eons of cigarette smoke that had permeated the cabinets to their presumed bedrock of wood, that actually competed with the organic decay in the sink. Inside he found sixteen bags of Doritos, two cans of beans, one of them opened, replaced, and forgotten during binge munchies, and a box of Frosted Flakes. Tony the Tiger looked ill. The beans smelled like a dead cat.

"This is Randy St. Clair, and I'll be coming back at you with more sounds of your city from WBLS-FM, 107.5 at the end of your dial," the radio was saying when he came back in the living room. "But first, on Newsbreak, Sandy will tell us how the delegates are preparing for a long, hot summer week in Atlanta, and update us on continuing reports of genocide in Guatemala, and she'll have the latest on a grisly celebrity murder in Jokertown. Sandy?"

He frowned. It was too bad about Chrysalis. The Man had promised he could do her himself one day. Now he'd never find out what it would be like to put his hand in that glass-clear meat.

That was a brand new bitch, and it made him mad all over again. He went from room to room of the cramped apartment breaking what he found, alternating between exhilarated and clinical: Will this make me feel better? It was vandalism as designer drugs.

The bed was propped up with textbooks under one corner: French, darkroom technique, a police text on interrogation. There was no spread. The sheet was tie-dyed with bodily fluids of the kind you were supposed to encase yourself in Latex rather than come in contact with. He shredded things.

When he emerged he was starting to feel cranked at Downs again. Der Mann wasn't going to like this, not for one little minute.

Well, Downs just wasn't here. The Man could hardly blame him for that; it wasn't his fault. Fuck it. He phased through the outer wall, into the corridor.

As he did, a door across and down one opened.

"I tell you it's those Chinese people," a woman was saying in that nosy whine that made these New York people sound to Mackie like big, fleshy insects. "They're all drug dealers, you know. I saw all about them on the 60 Minutes. This Mr. Downs, he's, like, a crusading investigative reporter. I figure he got too close to them, the tong sent somebody over to mess his place up. There must be a dozen of them, the noise they were making. With sledgehammers and chain saws."

She pushed out into the hallway like an East River tug in housecoat and fluorescent-pink, fuzzy slippers, with a hankie tied over curlers, and a super in tow. The super was a black man not much taller than Mackie, with a mustache and gray-stippled hair bushing out in back from beneath a Montreal Expos baseball cap. He had on paint-smeared, gray coveralls. He nodded distractedly at the woman while grumbling to himself, and tossing his big steel ring of keys for the master to Digger's apartment. He didn't notice Mackie.

The woman did notice Mackie. She screamed.

He smiled. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to him all day.

The super looked up at him, his mouth a shout of pink in his dark face. Mackie felt his hands begin to vibrate as of their own accord. This wasn't going to be a total loss after all.

Jack saw the weird red pyramids, looking like some strange form of acoustic tile, that crowned the Omni Center, and headed in their direction. He'd got lost in Peachtree Center looking for cigarettes, and taken the wrong route to the convention.

Ted Turner's Omni Center was built of a new type of steel that was designed to rust. The theory was that the rust would protect the steel underneath, and from what Jack had seenand Jack had built a lot of buildings over the last thirty years-the theory was perfectly correct.

Still, the damn thing was so ugly.

He was approaching one of the convention's back entrances. A uniformed guard stood outside the closed door. Jack nodded into the mans shades, then tried to step past him to the door.

"Wait a minute." The guard's voice was sharp. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Into the convention."

"Like hell you are."

Jack looked at him. Connally, the man's name badge said. He had a broken nose and a little silver Christian cross pinned to his collar.

Great, Jack thought. Probably a Barnett supporter. He unclipped his ID and floor pass from his pocket and waved them in the guard's face.

"I'm a delegate. It's okay."

"No one gets through this door. Ever. Those are my instructions. "

"I'm a delegate."

Connally appeared to reconsider. "Okay. Let's see that ID."

Jack handed it over. Connally squinted as he looked at it. When he looked up, there was an evil grin on his face. "You don't look sixty-four to me," he said.

"I'm well-preserved."

The guard reached for his walkie-talkie. "This is Connally. Situation Three."

Jack waved his arms. "What the hell is that?"

"You're under arrest, asshole. Impersonating a delegate." "I ant a delegate."

"The Secret Service are on their way. You can talk to them."

Jack stared at the guard in rising despair. This, he realized, was only Monday.

12:00 NOON

"Devils and ancestors. What are you doing here?"

Jack Braun eyed Tachyon sourly. "I'm headed for that bar." His long arm speared the underside of the raised piano bar. "For a drink

… or two… or three, and if anybody tries to get in my way-"

"You should be on the convention floor."

"I was trying to get to the goddamn convention floor when this lard-assed security guard accused me of impersonating a delegate, and had me arrested. It took Charles Devaughn to cut me loose. So I've had a rather trying morning, Tachyon, and I'm going to get a drink."

"The Barnett forces are desperately politicking for delegates. You need to be there to keep California solid."

"Tachyon, in case you've forgotten; I'm the head of the California delegation. I think I can handle it." Braun roared, and several ever vigilant reporters craned to see the fight. "Jesus, you've been an American citizen what, five, six months, and already you're an authority on American politics?"

"Anything I do, I do well," replied Tachyon primly, but he was working to subdue a smile. Braun spotted it and suddenly grinned.

"Relax, Tachyon. Gregg's not going to lose California."

"Jesse Jackson wants to talk to me," said Tach with one of his bewilderingly abrupt changes of topic.

"Are you going to?"

"I don't know. I might learn something."

"I doubt it. Jesse's one smart operator. And besides, you're not working for the Hartmann campaign. Objectivity of the press and all that."

Tachyon frowned. "What do you think he could want?"

"At a guess I'd say your support."

"I have no delegates, no influence."

"Balony. Tachyon, these conventions are like a big shambling dinosaur. A prod in the ass can sometimes start the whole beast off in a new direction. If you were to switch your support, many of the jokers would follow. People might decide that you knew something. It could tilt things toward Jackson, and that's what he's after."