Weems tried to smile but knew it looked too fake. "It was no easy task informing the team owners that certain men wouldn't be allowed to play, but we must have standards. We must adhere to the new course we've taken if we're to restore the integrity of football. It must be made clean and good and strong like it was when we all first became fans."

One of the reporters asked him about playing fast and loose with the rights of free trade and so forth, but I was into my second whisky and couldn't care less what the fool had to say. Apparently, though, he'd bounced me and five other sorry bastards out without so much as a blink or a nod. Cold, cold motherfuckah.

I weaved outside after my third drink. Kleinhardt shot past in his BMW heading west and didn't even see me. Or at least he made like he didn't. I got in my ride and went home. Nothing else to do but chill with my buzz on.

Back at the pad there was a message waiting for me from Isabel. I called her, but she was out. I needed something to do, I was wound up tight and had to release it somehow. The phone rang and I grabbed the thing.

"Yes," I said, trying to sound relaxed.

"We're on for tomorrow, stud."

It was Nap. "What?"

"One-thirty on the t-i-t, and you'd better take a nap before you get over there."

"Negro, what you goin' on about?" I sure wished Isabel had called me back.

"Service with a smile, homebrew."

Then it sunk in "Oh damn."

The next day I headed out to Stadanko's pad, following the directions Nap had given me. As I neared the place, I started to get more hyped. I was thinking it had to be a trap that Chekka had set to get back at us. After all, Ysanya was one of them, from Kosovo or some such place where fools were still lighting each other up over who killed who in what century. But Nap said everything was on the positive tip, plus this was an important part of the plan. I was sure this sneaking around was really just part of the freak game him and missus were into playing. Me being in the middle didn't make me feel too easy.

I got lost a couple of times but found my way onto the right street in Palos Verdes Estates. The joint was huge like I'd expected, and there was a gate attached to a high brick wall around it. I pulled up to a call box on a post beside the entrance. I sat there looking at the box, not knowing what to do. Sweat was making the top of my lip wet.

"Come on in, Zee," Nap said over the intercom.

One side of the gate opened quietly. I drove in and followed the drive to the front door. The housemansion, I guess you'd really call it was three floors and had balconies and vines crawling all over it. It wasn't a modern look. No, Stadanko's pad reminded me of the kind of cribs I'd seen in old flicks from the '40s where the crazy widow hangs out and the stranger rolls up to throw her life off balance.

But I was the one off balance right now. Nap's car was there and I parked near him. I didn't see any other ride, but that didn't ease my nerves. There were big dragon heads on both sides of the double wooden doors. Before I reached the heads, one side opened and I froze like a high schooler caught in a double team.

"Sir." A heavy woman wearing jeans and a work shirt was standing at the door with her hand on the knob.

I considered spinning around and bolting, but she'd already seen me, so that would have done no good. I went on in.

The woman didn't say anything else as she shut the door behind me. She just smiled and pointed up the stairs. Then she walked off through a doorway to my right. I hit the stairs and went up past some photos hanging along the wall. One was Stadanko and Chekka in younger days. The two punks had their arms around each other, standing in front of a bar with foreign letters in the window.

I could hear voices and followed them down a bend in the hall to a set of doors with fancy glass knobs. I went in and found myself standing in a room with colored light coming in from above. There was a skylight made of stained glass cut in the ceiling. The walls were painted a girly shade of pink, the bottom half of them made of dark wood. Normally, I wouldn't pay attention like some faggot decorator to stuff like that, but I'd learned from past incidents involving me and my johnson that it was best to know as many details as possible.

There were paintings on the wall, modern jive that for some reason I kinda liked. Off to one side was a desk with a computer. The curtains were open to those French windows houses like this always have. A long telescope was pointed out the windows to the ocean.

Ysanya and Nap were sitting on a love seat in another part of the room. Nap was naked, the old lady in a fancy get-up like in a Penthouse layout, not sleazy like a Hustler chick. Though she did have his rod in her hand, strokin' that bad rascal nice and slow. In the other hand she was tokin' on a joint.

"Hello, Zelmont. Would you like a drink? There's a bar in the next room. And there's more dope too." She said it like we were standing around at a dinner party.

I got a drink at a bar made to look like the Titanic. The thing split apart, the racks of booze inside. On a side shelf were the joints, but I decided against the kronik. I wanted my mind on right. I had a Scotch and went back into the other room. Ysanya and Nap were feelin' on each other fiercely. I drank and looked at the paintings. I'd been in threesomes, but it had been me and two chicks, not me, a woman, and another man. Standards, you got to have standards, man.

Man, I hoped Nap wasn't expecting me to do no Marv Albert shit. Like one of us bunghole the other while she watched. If that was the plan, motherfuckah better get a new playbook, and I mean like yesterday.

There was a table done up like an altar, with crystals, a couple of the demon statues like in Nap's office, and other mystical crap on it. There were also some candles burning in twisty kind of holders. Next to that was a stereo unit. I turned it on. Anything to help cut the tension rising in me. I was so paranoid, I didn't know if I could get it up when the time was right. Yeah, and when would that be?

A CD was on and it took me a couple of moments before I recognized Dean Martin's voice. Dino was singing "Let Me Go Lover" as the two of them got up and trotted off through a doorway behind the love seat. Nap looked back at me, making a sign for me to follow. I finished the Scotch and went in, getting the knots out of my shoulders by working them up and down, back and forth.

There was a fancy bed high off the floor made of carved wood that I swore I'd seen on an episode of Melrose Place once. Nap and the lady of the house were going at it like teenagers. I stripped down and suddenly got another fear. Pablo wasn't going to show up all of sudden grinning like a possum in a grain factory, was he?

I looked around but didn't see no other clothes so I figured everything was all right. But I wouldn't put it past these two to have a faggot orgy planned and not let my naive ass know about it until it was too late.

The drink and Dino had helped my mood, and pretty soon me and Nap were turning Ysanya every which way but loose. I was between her legs doing some scuba diving, and she was rubbing my head and murmuring.

From down below I heard Nap ask the question point blank: "Say, baby, where exactly do your old man and his cousin conduct their business?"

I stopped, damn near choking.

"He doesn't think I know, but I've done my own checking, honey." Ysanya squeezed her thighs against the sides of my head. "You're not stopping now, are you, Zelmont?"

"No, ma'am." I went back to work.

"Why you want to know that, sweetie?" I could hear them kissing, and she moaned even louder.

"We gonna take down your old man."

I just about fainted. I brought my head up in a hurry. "Negro, have you not heard of subtlety?"