The other mime placed a finger on the top of Spector's head and danced around him like a maypole. He stopped in front of Spector, tugged at his cheeks.

Spector had put up with enough. It was time to get this fucker out of his hair. He stepped in close and made eye contact. He locked in and set the pain free, grabbing the mime's shoulders as he began to fall over. Spector lowered him slowly, pulling the mime's hands together over his chest. The shithead's eyes were glazed over with death and surprise by the time he came to rest on the trampled grass. Spector stuck the flower in the corpse's hands and applauded melodramatically. The crowd laughed and cheered. Some patted him on the back; others looked at the mime, waiting for him to get up.

"My friends." The amplified voice came from the podium. The crowd turned. Spector angled his shoulders and began pushing through. "Today, we will have the privilege to hear from the only man who can lead us through these next difficult years. A man who preaches tolerance, not hatred. A man who unites, instead of being divisive. A man who will lead his people, not herd them. I give you the next president of the United States of America, Senator Gregg Hartmann."

The applause was deafening. There were weird screams and whistles, joker noises. Spector caught an elbow in the ear from a freak with arms that hung to his knees. He shook it off and kept moving in.

"Thank you." Hartmann paused while the applause and cheers played out. "Thank all of you very much."

Spector could see him now, but there was no way to lock eyes at this distance, even if Hartmann was looking right at him. The crowd was pressing in toward the podium. Spector rode the flood of human mistakes; used his narrow shoulders to cut through. Another minute or two and he'd be in position. "It has been said that I am a pro-joker candidate." Hartmann raised his hands to still the applause before it could start. "That is not strictly true. I have always placed one idea above all others. That this country should exist as our founding fathers planned it. Equal rights for all, guaranteed, under the law of the land. No individual greater than the next. No one, however powerful, exempt from the law." Hartmann paused. The crowd applauded again.

Spector was about a hundred feet away in the center of the crowd. Hartmann was wearing a beige suit. A slight breeze stirred at his styled hair. Secret Service agents flanked the podium, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses. The senator's gaze swept the crowd but missed Spector. It would take total concentration to lock on for the instant they had eye contact. If that even happened.

"I need your help to win our party's nomination and become your next president." Hartmann extended his hands to the crowd. "Your presence here in Atlanta can help me only if you demonstrate in an orderly manner. Any acts of violence, whether provoked or not, will certainly be used against us. You have the opportunity to make a simple, but eloquent statement. A statement made by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. That violence is an abhorrent act. That it will not be tolerated, by you, under any circumstance."

Hartmann's eyes were drifting across the crowd again, headed straight for him. Spector held his breath and concentrated, the pain howling in his head. Just a little more. Spector stood on his toes. Their eyes locked…

… there was a sound. A Secret Service man knocked Hartmann down. Gunfire. There were screams and people tried to move, but were packed too closely together. Spector looked at a hilltop. There were maybe a hundred men in Confederate uniforms. Puffs of smoke came from their guns, then the echo of the shots across the park.

Hartmann was gone. There wouldn't be another chance. Not here, anyway. Spector jumped in behind a joker who was as broad as three normal men. It didn't matter where he was going. It would be safer than here. The Turtle whooshed by overhead. There were a few more rounds and then the gunfire stopped. Spector stepped on something that cracked. There was a groan. He held onto the joker's leather belt, which had WIDE LOAD painted on in gold.

No shit, Spector thought. But this was one time he was glad to have a fat freak as company.

6:00 P.M.

From the end of the corridor, Mackie watched the tall, thin man with coffee-and-cream skin close and lock the room door. 1531, just as der Mann said. It came to him that Amerika was decadent, even as his departed comrades of the Red Army Fraction used to say. Where else in the world might a man see a nigger wrap himself in a suit that cost more money than Mackie Messer had ever owned at one time in his life, and stroll out upon the town with a white woman on his arm?

To himself he laughed at his target's apparent attempt at disguise. She looked just like one of the ReeperbahnstraBe girls, armored against unaccustomed daylight. It was appro priate. Just a whore; just another fucking whore. Who had lured the Man and would pay.

They turned away from him, toward the elevators. He pushed off from the wall next to the fire extinguisher under glass. He couldn't do them here-he was already thinking them; it was only logical, he mustn't leave a witness-because this crazy bourgeois palace was hollow at the core, like the culture that built it, and anyone on one of a dozen levels could see everything that went on out on the catwalks surrounding the atrium. His move had to come on the quiet; der Mann had been very explicit.

But that was no problem. Mack the Knife was subtle, like. Like his song. He would follow, and know the time.

Maybe he'd ride the elevator with them. He licked his lips at the joke. That would be really kriminell. They'd never suspect him. They might not notice him even. Perhaps they were in love. Perhaps the black man had a hard-on.

He moved. A voice grabbed at him. "Hey, you. Not so fast."

He turned. A squat white man in a brown suit stood there with a wire hanging out of his ear. Hotel dick; Mackie had the gradations of cop burned into his autonomic nervous system by the time he was toddling the Sankt Pauli cobblestones. He had been as discrete as possible, staying back in the entry to the room where the ice machine lurked and clattered to itself, fading through the wall into a utility closet when people got too near. But there was a limit to how covert even Macheath could be, hanging out here over sixty meters of emptiness in this unsettling outside-in place.

The suit laid a hand on his arm. You couldn't do that, not to Mackie Messer.

"You're lucky," he said. He touched the man on the point of his cheekbone, buzzed a fingertip.

Blood started. The man cried out and doubled over, slapping a hand to his face. Mackie phased through the steel fire door and started running down the stairs. He didn't dare lose his quarry now. Women were always changing their minds; no knowing if she would be returning to this place.

Spector sat on the edge of the bed, feet tucked underneath him. He was almost surprised to find his room clean when he returned. It had been that long since he stayed in a hotel. He was alternately planning his next move and watching TV. Right now, the television had his attention. A local reporter, trying not to look out of his depth, was interviewing Hartmann in the lobby.

"Senator, do you feel Reverend Barnett had anything to do with this afternoon's disturbance?" The reporter held the microphone up to the senator, who paused before replying.

"No. I think that, whatever our differences, Leo Barnett would not stoop to such tactics. The reverend is an honorable man." Hartmann coughed. "But I do feel that those individuals who disrupted the meeting likely share many of his dangerously narrow views. It is precisely this kind of unreasoning bigotry that we must all struggle to eliminate. Leo Barnett wants to solve the problem by removing wild card victims from society. I want to overcome the hatred itself." Hartmann sat back in his seat, folded his hands and stared hard into the camera.