Mr. Murder

is singing about love.
        The song is touching. He is deeply moved by it, almost to tears.
        Now that he finally is somebody, now that a wife waits for him and two young children need his guidance, he knows the meaning and value of love. He wonders how he could have lived this long without He heads south. And east.
        Destiny calls.
        Abruptly, the spectral hand lifted from Marty.
        The crushing pressure was released, and the world snapped back to normal-if there was such a thing as normality any more.
        He was relieved that the attack had lasted only five or ten seconds.
        None of the bank employees had been aware anything was wrong with him.
        However, the need to obtain the cash and get out of there was urgent.
        He looked at Paige and the kids in the open lounge at the far end of the room. He shifted his gaze worriedly to the east entrance, the south entrance, east again.
        The Other knew where they were. In minutes, at most, their mysterious and implacable enemy would be upon them.
        The scrambled eggs on Oslett's abandoned plate acquired a faint grayish cast as they cooled and congealed. The salty aroma of bacon, previously so appealing, induced in him a vague nausea.
        Stunned by the consideration that Alfie might have developed into a creature with sexual urges and with the ability to satisfy them, Oslett was nonetheless determined not to appear concerned, at least not in front of Peter Waxhill. "Well, all of this still amounts to nothing but conjecture."
        "Yes," said Waxhill, "but we're checking the past to see if the theory holds water."
        "What past?"
        "Police records in every city where Alfie has been on assignment in the past fourteen months. Rapes and rape-murders during the hours he wasn't actually working."
        Oslett's mouth was dry. His heart was thudding.
        He didn't care what happened to the Stillwater family. Hell, they were only Klingons.
        He didn't care, either, if the Network collapsed and all of its grand ambitions went unfulfilled. Eventually an organization similar to it would be formed, and the dream would be renewed.
        But if their bad boy proved impossible to recapture or stop, the potential was here for a stain to spread deep into the Oslett family, jeopardizing its wealth and seriously diminishing its political power for decades to come. Above all, Drew Oslett demanded respect. The ultimate guarantor of respect had always been family, bloodline.
        The prospect of the Oslett name becoming an object of ridicule and scorn, target of public outrage, brunt of every TV comedian's puerile jokes, and the subject of embarrassing stories in papers as diverse as the New York Times and the National Enquirer was soul-shaking.
        "Didn't you ever wonder," Waxhill asked, "what your boy did with his free time, between assignments?"
        "We monitored him closely, of course, for the first six weeks.
        He went to movies, restaurants, parks, watched television, did all the things that people do to kill time-just as we wanted him to act outside a controlled environment. Nothing strange. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing to do with women."
        "He would have been on his best behavior, naturally, if he was aware that he was being watched."
        "He wasn't aware. Couldn't be. He nor normal men. No way.
        They're the best." Oslett realized he was protesting too much.
        Nevertheless, he couldn't keep from adding, "No way."
        "Maybe he was aware of them the same way he became aware of this Martin Stillwater. Some low-key psychic perception."
        Oslett was beginning to dislike Waxhill. The man was a hopeless pessimist.
        Picking up the thermos-pot and pouring more coffee for all of them, Waxhill said, "Even if he was only going to movies, watching television-didn't that worry you?"
        "Look, he's supposed to be the perfect assassin. Programmed.
        No remorse, no second thoughts. Hard to catch, harder to kill. And if something does go wrong, he can never be traced to his handlers.
        He doesn't know who we are or why we want these people terminated, so he can't turn state's evidence. He's nothing, a shell, a totally hollow man. But he's got to function in society, be inconspicuous, act like an ordinary Joe, do things real people do in their spare time.
        If we had him