He got into the car and closed the door, and I went on by and around the
block.

When I came by again, his car was gone. I parked a few blocks away on a
small side street and went back, slowly slipping into my night skin as I
walked. The lights were all out at a neighbor's house and I cut through
the yard. There was a small guesthouse behind Reiker's place, and the Dark
Passenger whispered in my inner ear, studio. It was indeed a perfect place
for a photographer to set up, and a studio was exactly the right kind of
place to find incriminating photographs. Since the Passenger is seldom
wrong about these things, I picked the lock and went in.

The windows were all boarded over on the inside, but in the dimness from
the open door I could see the outline of darkroom equipment. The Passenger
had been right. I closed the door and flipped up the light switch. A murky
red light flooded the room, just enough to see by. There were the usual
trays and bottles of chemicals over by a small sink, and to the left of
that a very nice computer workstation with digital equipment. A
four-drawer filing cabinet stood against the far wall and I decided to
start there.

After ten minutes of flipping through pictures and negatives, I had found
nothing more incriminating than a few dozen photos of naked babies posed
on a white fur rug, pictures that would generally be regarded as "cute"
even by people who think Pat Robertson is too liberal. There were no
hidden compartments in the filing cabinet as far as I could tell, and no
other obvious place to hide pictures.

Time was short; I could not take the chance that Reiker had simply gone to
the store to buy a quart of milk. He might come back at any minute and
decide to poke through his files and gaze fondly at the dozens of dear
little pixies he had captured on film. I moved to the computer area.

Next to the monitor there was a tall CD rack and I went through the disks
one at a time. After a handful of program disks and others hand-lettered
GREENFIELD or LOPEZ, I found it.

"It" was a bright pink jewel case. Across the front of the case in very
neat letters it said, NAMBLA 9/04.

It may well be that NAMBLA is a rare Hispanic name. But it also stands for
North American Man/Boy Love Association, a warm and fuzzy support group
that helps pedophiles maintain a positive self-image by assuring them that
what they do is perfectly natural. Well, of course it is--so are
cannibalism and rape, but really. One mustn't.

I took the CD with me, turned out the light, and slid back into the night.

Back at my apartment it took only a few minutes to discover that the disk
was a sales tool, presumably carried to a NAMBLA gathering of some kind
and offered around to a select list of discriminating ogres. The pictures
on it were arranged in what are called "thumbnail galleries," miniature
series of shots almost like the picture decks that Victorian dirty old men
used to flip through. Each picture had been strategically blurred so you
could imagine but not quite see the details.

And oh, yes: several of the shots were professionally cropped and edited
versions of the ones I had discovered on MacGregor's boat. So while I had
not actually found the red cowboy boots, I had found quite enough to
satisfy the Harry Code. Reiker had made the A-list. With a song in my
heart and a smile on my lips, I trundled off to bed, thinking happy
thoughts about what Reiker and I would be doing tomorrow night.

The next morning, Saturday, I got up a little late and went for a run
through my neighborhood. After a shower and a hearty breakfast I went
shopping for a few essentials--a new roll of duct tape, a razor-sharp
fillet knife, just the basic necessities. And because the Dark Passenger
was flexing and stretching to wakefulness, I stopped at a steak house for
a late lunch. I ate a sixteen-ounce New York strip, well done of course,
so there was absolutely no blood. Then I drove by Reiker's one more time
to see the place again in daylight. Reiker himself was mowing his lawn. I
slowed for a casual look; alas, he was wearing old sneakers, not red
boots. He was shirtless and on top of scrawny, he looked flabby and pale.
No matter: I would put a little color into him soon enough.

It was a very satisfying and productive day, my Day Before. And I was
sitting quietly back in my apartment wrapped in my virtuous thoughts when
the telephone rang.

"Good afternoon," I said into the receiver.

"Can you get over here?" Deborah said. "We have some work to finish up."

"What sort of work?"

"Don't be a jerk," she said. "Come on over," and she hung up. This was
more than a little bit irritating. In the first place, I didn't know of
any kind of unfinished work, and in the second, I was not aware of being a
jerk--a monster, yes, certainly, but on the whole a very pleasant and
well-mannered monster. And to top it all off, the way she hung up like
that, simply assuming I had heard and would tremble and obey. The nerve of
her. Sister or not, vicious arm punch or no, I trembled for no one.

I did, however, obey. The short drive to the Mutiny took longer than
usual, this being Saturday afternoon, a time when the streets in the Grove
flood with aimless people. I wove slowly through the crowd, wishing for
once that I could simply pin the gas pedal to the floorboard and smash
into the wandering horde. Deborah had spoiled my perfect mood.

She didn't make it any better when I knocked on the penthouse door at the
Mutiny and she opened it with her on-duty-in-a-crisis face, the one that
made her look like a bad-tempered fish. "Get in here," she said.

"Yes master," I said.

Chutsky was sitting on the sofa. He still didn't look British
Colonial--maybe it was the lack of eyebrows--but he did at least look like
he had decided to live, so apparently Deborah's rebuilding project was
going well. There was a metal crutch leaning against the wall beside him,