The Target

knew, but, of course, only people in my organization." He paused, pumped another hit of morphine into his vein, and said, "If I've got a traitor in my midst, I'll deal with it, Detective."

    "No, Mr. Lord, this is a police matter. It's called attempted murder."

    "Then you know who's behind it, Detective. Rule Shaker." He shook his head in bewilderment. "He's never been frankly stupid before. The moron."

    Detective O'Connor rose from his chair. "It seems to me, Mr. Lord, that if indeed Mr. Shaker was a moron and did try to kill you, then you've got a big problem. You seem to be well protected for the moment. Naturally, I assume that Rule Shaker has heard that you're still alive. If you're right, I can imagine what he's saying right now."

    RULE Shaker wasn't saying anything. He was standing close to the huge glass window in his office that looked out over an endless stretch of desert. He hadn't ever wanted a view of Las Vegas. He lived in a city of kitsch. He wasn't about to look at it unless he had to.

    The desert was clean, the air pure, so hot that all life sheltered during the hottest part of the day. Including people. He couldn't see a single soul in that vast expanse. He turned slowly as Murdock said, "Rudy's still hanging out at that motel in Oak Park, waiting for orders."

    "Let him continue to wait. I hear that Lord is getting stronger every day in that hospital. He's going to live."

    "That's the word," Murdock said, uncrossing his legs. He'd gained weight since he'd gotten back from Germany. He hadn't liked following Louey Santera around, but that's what Mr. Shaker had ordered him to do and that's what he'd done. Now he was home and could eat all the KFC he'd missed in Germany. He'd put on six pounds since he'd returned.

    "Is there anything you'd like me to do, sir?"

    "I'm thinking about it, Murdock. For the moment, we'll just let him lie in his bed, feel lots of pain, and think about his transgressions."

    "Mason Lord doesn't believe in transgressions," Murdock said. He studied his boss, the man who'd taken him out of the street six years before and trained him to be one of his forward men. Yes, he was one of the FM now, a group everyone important had heard of. He was respected and admired. He should get the six pounds off.

    Mr. Shaker wasn't tall and aristocratic-looking like Mason Lord. Nature had shortchanged him, topping him off at a mere five foot seven inches. But he was a fit little man, hard and lean. He dressed beautifully, mostly in handmade English suits from Savile Row. But he was cursed with a swarthy complexion, flat black glass for eyes, scary eyes that made him look like a Middle Eastern terrorist or a religious fundamentalist, and a five-o'-clock shadow that started at nine o'clock in the morning. Actually, he looked like the Hollywood stereotype of exactly what he was: a crime boss. For all that, the man had more women than he could reasonably keep up with. Murdock suspected it was danger that brought the women. For all his smallness, Shaker looked like danger. He'd heard that Shaker had serviced two women the night before, and he was fifty-eight years old. Amazing.

    Service. Murdock liked that word. He wished he could service women the way Mr. Shaker did. Maybe if he lost the six pounds, they'd come around him a little more here the way they had in Germany. Of course they'd wanted to use him to get close to Louey Santera, the little slime.

    "He believes in transgressions, all right," Rule Shaker said. "Just not in his own. Let's just wait and see. Tell Rudy to keep alert. I'm going to have my helicopter fly out over the desert now. It's time to scatter Melissa's ashes."

    "That's what she wanted, sir?"

    Rule Shaker said, "Melissa was twenty-three. She didn't even know there was such a thing as death."

30

    THERE WERE SIX bodyguards on duty around the clock, three shifts, one man always in the hospital room with Mason Lord and another outside his door. Mason Lord didn't trust the cops to do the job.

    He said to Detective O'Connor, "If I'm not paying someone, then I can't be sure he's working for me."

    "Fine by me," Detective O'Connor said. "It'll save the taxpayers some money. In Chicago, the good Lord knows they need a break."

    The mainstream media finally got bored and left, but some paparazzi, hoping for another strike on Mason Lord, stayed on speculation of blood and gore. They were like a plague of locusts only not as benign, said one of the hospital administrators. They