He called his attorney.

He called the Morning News about an ad for the club.

He called a stripper named Janet Alvord.

"Do I look swishy to you, Janet? What about my voice? People tell me there's a lisp. Is this the way a queer sounds to a neutral person? Do you think I'm latent or what? Could I go either way?

Don't pee on my legs, Janet. I want the total truth."

The bartender was here. Jack complained that the bar glasses were not clean enough to suit him. He spotted the new waitress, who walked in wearing a low-cut ruffled blouse. He took her into a corner and told her a joke. She had a rumbling laugh. He told another quick one and walked off fast, looking back at her laughing in the corner.

He liked a woman with a freckled cleavage.

He went down to the car and drove home for an early dinner. Because what is it like to be a Jew in a place, in a state like Texas? You feel to yourself don't ever speak out, don't ever stand out. But he loved this city. It made him a living in his own way. He didn't have to hide what he was. He didn't have to listen to Jewish jokes from the MC at the club. The MC knew one Jewish joke could land him in Emergency. No complaints. It's just the little feeling you get sometimes there's some secret thing they're shielding. He grew up in the neighborhoods, the crosstown wars. What was Dallas next to that? He used to come home with blood on his clothes for sticking up for the Jewish race. He met his sisters at the streetcar stop in Dago Town to make sure nobody catcalled Jew-girl at them, or walked close behind smacking their lips, or put a hand on them. No complaints. It's just the impression of you're off to the side. But he had friends on the force. He liked to give a loan to a young cop with a new baby. Plainclothes officers came to the club. How many cities could he name where a Jew can walk into police headquarters and he hears, Hello, how are you, it's Jack. I owe my life to this town.

George said they were having spaghetti tonight.

"I thought tonight was a broiled haddock."

"Where?"

"Didn't I come home with haddock-when was it?"

"I don't know," George said.

Jack took a Preludin with some leftover juice.

"Ask me I'm unhappy."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning with reference to what he said."

"No loan."

"They're getting ready to padlock my clubs."

"You take too many of those things, Jack."

"They're medically an obesity drug."

"Nobody's that fat."

"I need the stimuli," Jack said.

He took the newspapers he'd bought that morning and went into the toilet. All Jack's reading took place in the toilet. It was the best part of his day. He read the nightlife, the ads for the clubs, the local tidbits, the entertainment column. There were the shows around town. He checked the competition. His mind settled down when he was crapping. There was a restfulness and calm.

Later he stood in the kitchen talking to George.

He didn't want to reach the point again where he had to sleep at the club. There was a time not long ago when he didn't have a place to live. He was between apartments with not a lot of ready cash to maneuver. He slept at the club. He lived there, ate there, slept in a foldout bed in a back room next to the room with the dogs. His whole life conducted under one roof. A stink of beer and cigarettes and dog and what-have-you. That was the second-worst period after the Cotton Bowl Hotel, where he sat in the dark for eight weeks. He refused to go down to that level again. Of no place to live. Of totally outside the norm.

George said you can tell when the spaghetti's cooked by picking a strand out of the boiling water and flinging it against the wall. If it sticks, it's done.

Jack ate quickly and set out for the club in his bouncing Olds-mobile.

Guy Banister sat in his ottice after dark, the old lion head sunk in thought. Some bum was urinating in the street, drilling the wall of the building. The desk lamp was on. Guy picked up his file on the Red Chinese. It was the file he saved for quiet times of day, the final nightmare file, to be brooded over slowly. Red Chinese troops are being dropped into the Baja by the fucking tens of thousands. Mobilizing, massing, growing. Little red stars on their caps.

In fact there was nothing new in the file. The same old rumors and suspicions. They are down there in the pale sands in their padded jackets, gathered in one great silent sweep, waiting for the word. It didn't need elaboration or update. There was something classic in the massing of the Chinese.

He wanted to believe it was true. He did believe it was true. But he also knew it wasn't. Ferrie told him it didn't matter, true or not. The thing that mattered was the rapture of the fear of believing. It confirmed everything. It justified everything. Every violence and lie, every time he'd cheated on his wife. It allowed him to collapse inside, to melt toward awe and dread. That's what Ferrie said. It explained his dreams. The Chinese caused his dreams. Every terror and queerness of sleep, every unspeakability-it is painted in China white.

Men floating down in white silk. He liked to think of an unmechanized mass, silent men gathering their chutes, concealed in the pale sands. This was not the missiles or the satellites, all that cocksure technology. The Chinese file contained the human swarm, in padded jackets, massing near the border. A fear to savor slowly.

The door opened and Ferrie walked in, breaking the reverie. He leaned against a wall eating french fries from a carton.

"I came to give a report. Not that you want to hear it."

"Where's Oswald?"

"Houston by now. I had Frank and Raymo take him. He'll get on a bus for Mexico City."

"Mackey says he can fix it so the Cubans won't take him. He's got Agency connections in Mexico City. Agency's bound to have someone inside the Cuban embassy. We're counting on Leon going back to Texas. We know that station wagon parked outside his house had Texas plates. His wife and kid left in that car."

"I'm pretty sure his rifle went with them."

"Is he leaning our way?" Banister said.

"This is the part you don't want to hear."

"He says no."

"That's right. But there's time."

"Does he know who we want?"

"He knows."

"Not interested."

"It needs time. He's been carrying on a struggle inside."

"He's your project, Dave."

"We had a talk this morning. To the extent that he talks. He hasn't made the leap."

"You keep saying you'll get inside his mind."

"I'm in his mind. I'm there. Like a fucking car wash."

"He shot at Walker."

"That's the point. Walker was politics. But Leon can't get worked up over Kennedy. He figures the man has made amends for past errors. He's a little dazzled by the Kennedy magic."

Banister wanted to crush something.

"Leon's a type he is willing to relinquish control at some point down the line," Ferrie said. "It just hasn't happened yet. Where's Mackey?"

"Miami. He's got two houses set up. One for Alpha people. One for his own team."

"If Leon is in?"

"If Leon is in," Banister said, "you fly him to Miami the night before."

"Then what?"

"We have to work it out."

"Once it's done I want him out of there," Ferrie said. "I don't want him abandoned or killed. He leaves his rifle behind and he gets out like the rest of them."

"That's always a possibility," Banister said.

Ferrie tossed the empty carton toward a basket.

"Do you trust Alpha 66?" he said.

"What the hell. They've been running a high fever ever since Pigs. That's two and a half years with a thermometer up their ass. They're ready. Nobody doubts their readiness."

"Do you trust Mackey?"

"I trust him completely," Banister said. "He wants a wall of shooters. Maybe eight men elevated on both sides of the street. As many as ten men. A shooting gallery."