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Carlos the fucking Jackal. And we never talk about anything over the phone. Regular professionals. But thatclown Smirnoff is trying to organize an openly terroristic group—over the fucking telephone! He’s about as shrewd as your braindamaged Lhasa Apso. Shit! I wonder if we could sue him for defamation, just for mentioning our name.”
    â€œI’m not a lawyer.”
    â€œI could definitely see a defamation suit, though, if a news organization tried to connect us in any way.”
    She was more amused than furious. I knew she would be; she thinks I’m cute when I’m angry. After you’ve fucked a man on a Zodiac in the middle of Boston Harbor on your lunch hour, it’s hard to distance yourself from him, say what you want about objectivity and ethics.
    â€œS.T., I am stunned. Did you really just threaten
The Weekly?”
    â€œNo, no, not at all. I’m just trying to express how important it is that we are kept separate from him and Boone in the public mind. And as soon as we’re done I’m going to drop a dime on one of our earnest young ecolawyers and see if we can sue the crap out of him.”
    She smiled. “I don’t want to connect you. There is no real connection. But I am interested in the topic. I mean, the Ike Walton League fades into the Sierra Club fades into GEE fades into NEST. …”
    â€œRight, and then Smirnoff, then Boone, then al-Fatah. And I think Basco and Fotex are down there somewhere. It’s a dangerous premise, babe. You have to draw a definite line between us and Smirnoff. Or even NEST.”
    â€œYou’re not allowed to call me babe.”
    â€œIt’s a deal. You can call me anything but a terrorist.”

4
    I took the T into the middle of Boston and cut across the North End to a particular yacht club. Mostly it was run by lifestyle slaves who were studying to be Brahmins, but there were a couple of old vomit-stained tour boats that ran out of there, one fishing boat, and it was the home base for GEE Northeast’s nautical forces. They’d donated a small odd-shaped berth, a little trapezoid of greasy water caught between a couple of piers, for the same reason that someone else gave us the Omni. Upstairs we had a locker for our gear, and that’s where I headed, driving up the blood pressures of all the deckshoed, hornrimmed twits waiting to be let into the dining room. I cruised past and didn’t even turn around when some high-pitched jerk issued his challenge.
    â€œSay! Excuse me? Sir? Are you a member of this club?”
    It happens every so often, mostly with people who’ve just spent their Christmas bonuses on memberships. I don’t even react. Sooner or later they learn the ropes.
    But something was familiar about that goddamn voice. I couldn’t keep myself from turning around. And there he was, standing out from that suntanned crowd like a dead guppy in a tropical aquarium, tall and slack-faced and not at all sure of himself. Dolmacher. When he recognized me, it was his nightmare come to life. Which was only fair since he was one of my favorite bad dreams.
    â€œTaylor,” he sneered, ill-advisedly making the first move.
    â€œLumpy!” I shouted. Dolmacher looked down at his fly as his companions mouthed the word behind his back. Grinning yuppie hyenas that they were, I knew that I had renamed Dolmacher for his career.
    The implications did not penetrate and he sauntered forward a step. “How are things, Taylor?”
    â€œI’m having the time of my life. How about you, Dolmacher? Pick up a new accent since we left B.U.?”
    His soon-to-be ex-associates began to file their teeth.
    â€œWhat’s on the agenda for today, Sangamon? Come to plant a magnetic limpet mine on an industrialist’s yacht?”
    This was vintage Dolmacher. Not “blow up” but: “plant a magnetic limpet mine on.” He cruised bookstores and bought those big picture books of