The limo issued a final growl before the driver slipped it into gear, then purred contentedly on down the street.

      "Well, now," said Concasseur, lips pulled back in a Jolly Roger grin. "Here we are."

      Joey felt as if his entire body had become a gigantic heart, a throbbing organ that threatened to rupture with each rhythmic spasm. One more fright would do him in.

      Concasseur patted Tiffany's bare knee with a long-fingered, liver-spotted hand. "Trade places with Joseph, my dear. We will all be more comfortable that way."

      Tiffany lifted herself slightly off the leather upholstery and sidled to her right. Her firm ass brushed across Joey's lap. There was no question of it being an accident. At another time the contact might have been pleasant, but now it made him squirm out of the way before she could sit on top of him. In doing so, he wound up sandwiched between the stripper and her manager.

      Concasseur regarded him with an approximation of sympathy, his bony face taking on an avuncular expression. "You are very frightened, Joseph, are you not?" There was no need for an answer. "It is perhaps understandable. We shall have to remedy that."

      Concasseur turned and clutched the back of Joey's head with one hand. Joey flinched but the old man held him still. Concasseur closed his eyes and placed his free hand on Joey's forehead. With one long, sharp fingernail, he traced the sign of the cross on Joey's brow while muttering strange words.

      The fear went away. Not in a flash, but as if it had been draped in warm, wet, smothering blankets and dragged off to the deeper recesses of his consciousness. Gradually, Joey's heart stopped hammering, his breathing returned to normal, and the plug in his throat came unstoppered.

      Concasseur opened his ice-chip blue eyes and took his hands away. "Much better, yes?"

      How had he done that? Seconds before, Joey had been a quivering wreck. Now he felt almost calm. Almost. "Yeah. Thanks. I guess."

      Concasseur reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a roll of wintergreen mints. He extended the roll to Joey. "Would you like one?"

      Joey shook his head and waited while Concasseur picked the foil off the topmost mint and then flicked the candy into his mouth.

      "You know who I am?" Concasseur said, not looking at him, busy making sure his mints got back into the right pocket.

      "Henry Concasseur. Tiffany Wellington's manager."

      The old man pursed his liverish lips. "It is pronounced `Henri.'"

      "Sorry. The barker at The Hot Spot must have flunked out of the Sorbonne."

      Henri Concasseur produced a grudging smile. "You see? You are so much more relaxed."

      "Where are you taking me? Back to the Crossroads Center?"

      "Our business there is concluded for this evening. No, we go to a rendezvous in the park. That meeting is not scheduled for another half hour, so I though we might use the time to all become better acquainted."

      His abductors were a study in contrasts. Elderly, thin almost to the point of emaciation, clad in white from head to toe like some antebellum plantation owner or latter-day Tom Wolfe manque', Concasseur was in almost constant motion. His gaze darted from point to point: at Joey, out the window, over to Tiffany. His fingers picked invisible lint from his trouser leg, and he rolled the mint noisily around the inside of his mouth.

      Lovely raven-haired Tiffany, dressed in the tight black outfit featured in her act, leaned indolently against the door. Her lithe, well-muscled body barely moved. She seemed to ignore both Joey and Concasseur, staring out the window as the limo cruised down Market Street and then turned onto Grant.

      Joey said, "What do you want with me?"

      "You may find this difficult to believe, Joseph, but I have been searching for you, or someone like you, for almost five years." The old man poked Joey's leg to drive home his point. "It is true. Ever since I left my native country, Haiti."

      Haiti. The name brought to mind associations Joey did not wish to explore right now. "What's so special about me?"

      Concasseur chuckled, a dry, papery sound. He did not answer the question. Instead he said, "Do you know what a bokor is?"

      The word meant nothing. He shook his head.

      "A sorcerer. One who practices the ancient rites of Haitian vodoun, one who communes with the dark gods. That is what I am, Joseph, a bokor." Concasseur smiled and bit down on .,his mint, which crackled like mouse bones.

      Joey glanced over at Tiffany. Concasseur's words had no effect on her. She continued to sightsee as the car moved along Chinatown's narrow streets.

      The old boy was crazy. There was no doubt in Joey's mind regarding that. But just how dangerous was he?

      Concasseur leaned forward and opened the limo's small refrigerated bar. He poured clear, pungent liquid into a martini glass. "I am having clairin, a kind of white rum. I do not think you would enjoy it, although it is very popular where I come from." He gestured to a rank of soda cans. "A soft drink, perhaps? I had them stocked especially for you."

      "No, thanks." Concasseur offered nothing to Tiffany. Leaning back, he sipped at his drink and said, "My family has been on Haiti for nearly three centuries. Just before the American occupation, my father built Port-au-Prince's most luxurious hotel, the Fleur de Lis. It was there I spent my childhood, my happiest years."

      A strong breeze ruffled through Joey's hair, startling him. He looked around for an open window. There was none. The wind died away as quickly as it had appeared. Neither Concasseur nor Tiffany seemed to notice.

      "When I was sixteen, we hired a new chef at the hotel. Clairvius was his name. He was very cultured, very intelligent, a connoisseur of fine food and fine art. He was also a devoted believer in vodoun."

      "And let me guess," Joey said. "Clairvius done taught Massa Concasseur dat ole black magic."

      Without spilling a drop of his drink, Concasseur slapped Joey's cheek. The blow was shocking, not for the strength of it, which was considerable, but for the speed with which it had been dealt.

      Concasseur's eyes glittered with anger. "I am glad, Joseph, that you are sufficiently at ease to make jokes. But I warn you, I will not stand to be mocked. This is serious business we are discussing here. Do I make myself clear?"

      His face stinging, Joey mumbled, "Understood."

      Mollified, Concasseur continued his story. "There were few Caucasian children my age near the hotel, and I was not encouraged to play with the black peasant children. Consequently, I spent many hours in the kitchen, listening to Clairvius expound on the many vodoun miracles he had witnessed. At first I was very skeptical, thinking his stories to be no more based in reality than tales by the Brothers Grimm."

      Again that strange draught puffed across Joey's neck. This time it carried sound with it, the throbbing of drums.

      Joey sat stock-still, awaiting the first premonition of an attack. None came. The rhythm was not right. These were not for him. The drums faded away.

      He turned and looked out the side window. They were in the heart of Chinatown now. Bare-chested black men and women in white dresses and scarves bore torches through the packed-dirt streets.

      He blinked and looked again. An Asian couple, bent over with age and too many packages, trudged along the concrete sidewalk, hurrying home before something bad happened. A merchant pulled a set of retractable metal bars across his storefront, hoping to keep his stock of cheap jade and brass trinkets safe for another night.

      The hair on the back of Joey's neck stood on end.

      Concasseur said, "At about this time, I began having very strange dreams, half-remembered nightmares that filled me equally with dread and ecstasy. I dimly recalled images of blood and fire, the beat of drums and the cries of women. Doctors diagnosed my dreams as the products of adolescence and a low-grade tropical fever. They were wrong, of course. Clairvius understood my problem immediately. I was being called by the loas, he said. Called by the gods of vodoun."

      Joey was only half-listening to Concasseur's story. As the limo turned left onto Broadway, he watched the traffic, the buildings, the few pedestrians who walked the night streets. When he concentrated, everything appeared absolutely normal. The stop lights looked like stop lights. The pedestrians were of the usual polyethnic variety.

      When he allowed his mind to wander, the stop lights shifted into palm trees, the Wells Fargo branch became a thatched hut, the hooker in the skintight pants transmogrified into an obese black women wearing a bright red bandana.

      Delicately licking his lips, Concasseur finished his glass of clairin and set the glass aside. "One night," he said, "when my parents were away on business, Clairvius took me up into the mountains to meet a very powerful vodoun priest named Marcel. We found him living in a squalid little hut deep in the jungle, a wizened, toothless, nearly blind old man. Hideous pustules covered his arms and legs, and a tumor grew in one cataract-covered eye. At the sight on him, I wished only to be back in my bed at the Fleur de Lis, so horrified and disgusted was I.

      "Then that gruesome wretch called my name. `Good evening, petit Henri,' he said. `The loas have sent you to me, have they not? Stay and I shall teach you things such as you never imagined.'

      "And do you know what happened, Joseph? That disgusting old creature eventually convinced me to stay. I did not leave that filthy hut on that deserted mountainside for another three years." Concasseur laughed, and the loose, crepey skin on his throat wiggled up and down.

      "Marcel worked me to the point of sheer exhaustion, but he also kept his promise and taught me everything he knew. When he finally succumbed to the ravages of advanced age, it was I who crawled beneath his death shroud to collect his soul. And when I returned to Port-au-Prince, I returned as more than a spoiled innkeeper's son. I came back a full-fledged bokor, knowing the very secrets of life and death themselves."

      As the limo neared the Broadway Tunnel, Joey heard sirens. Flashing blue lights approached from the rear, and for a fleeting moment, he dared hope the cops had arrived to rescue him. The patrol car zipped past, unmindful of the limousine and its occupants, rushing to somebody else's emergency.

      Concasseur snapped his fingers under Joey's nose. "Have you been listening to me, my young friend? What do you think of my story? Eh?"

      How was he to answer that? "Fascinating," he said, hoping he would not be asked to elaborate.

      Concasseur nodded. "Indeed. But do you see how it applies to your own situation, Joseph? Has that become clear to you yet?"

      "No! Just tell me, straight-out! What do you want with me?"

      Concasseur shook his head in evident disappointment, then shrugged his knobby shoulders. "Like Marcel, I am almost at the end of my earthly existence. It is time to choose a successor. You have already proven yourself to be the perfect candidate."

      "How?"

      "Let us see if you can put it together for yourself." Concasseur opened the fridge and poured himself a second drink. He held out a can of Diet Coke to Joey. This time, Joey accepted, but took care to open the can himself.

      He gulped the drink, savoring its chilly wetness as it poured down his throat, wrung bone-dry by terror. He imagined that the jolt of caffeine would help him think straight. After belching quietly into his hand, he said, "The videotape was a test, wasn't it?"

      Concasseur tilted his head and smiled. "Very good. It was, indeed."

      Joey looked at Tiffany, at her tight, revealing dress, at her pretty, immobile face with its lustreless violet eyes. Images flickered through his brain. Tiffany onstage at The Hot Spot, whirling like a lubricious dervish. Tiffany on the televison screen, razor at her creamy throat.

      "The performance at the Hot Spot was solely for my benefit, right?"

      "That is correct. Ms. Wellington has no further need for a professional career."

      "And tonight's trip to the Crossroads Center must have been some kind of final exam."

      The bokor nodded.

      As the limousine swung onto Divisadero, it struck a pothole. Concasseur bounced and sloshed rum on his pants. He barked a Gallic curse. Tiffany flinched. The bokor removed a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, patted daintily at the stain and eventually calmed himself.

      Joey asked, "What were you testing?"

      Concasseur said, "Curiosity. It is an essential trait of a successful bokor, the need to see beyond what is apparently real. Some people, watching that film, would find nothing at all strange about it. They might be disgusted or bored or even secretly delighted, yet they would forget all about it once they turned off the television and rewound the cassette. But you, Joseph, you could not put our little entertainment out of your mind, could you?"

      It was true. He could not. He did not exactly feel proud of it. "So that's all it takes, huh? Curiosity?"

      "And persistence. And inventiveness. All of which you displayed in your pursuit for the ultimate truth about Razor Cut. But most of all, my friend, a bokor requires a fascination -- indeed, an obsession -- with death."

      Obsessed with death? Him? Right now, all Joey could think about was how he was going to get out of this situation alive.

      "Death intrigues you, tantalizes you," Concasseur said. "The knife, the gun, the garrotte -- all hold you in their spell. You spend the daylight hours sleeping and your nights watching countless episodes of cinematic mayhem, modern-day Grand Guignol. Your job, your hobbies, your conversations, your very thoughts, constantly revolve around torture, mutilation and death."

      He hated hearing himself talked about like this. "How would you know?"

      "I spoke to the loas. What they did not tell me, I learned by having my various employees watch you."

      For the first time in many years, Joey felt thoroughly unclean, totally despicable. Was his life truly that shabby, that sordid? He had learned to ignore the snide remarks of those who didn't share his enthusiasm for slasher flicks, taught himself to ignore the whispers and the raised eyebrows. Now he wondered whether they hadn't been right about him all along.

      "You enjoy the darkest places of human experience, Joseph," Concasseur continued. "It is nothing of which to be ashamed. The loas love you for it. That is why they mounted you with such ease at the Crossroads Center tonight, how you passed the final exam, as you so aptly put it. You are the perfect receptacle for them. And if you will allow me, I will teach you how to harness their immense, unearthly power."

      "Please," Joey begged, "just let me out and forget about me, Mr. Concasseur. I don't want to learn these things, honestly. There's got to be someone else in this city who fits the bill. Please."

      Concasseur looked at him over the rim of his martini glass. "I do not think you understand what it is you are refusing, Joseph. Perhaps that is because you believe me to be a crazy old man, a rich lunatic whose brain has been scrambled by too many hours in the tropical sun." He held up a hand to forestall any declarations to the contrary. "It does not matter what you think now. You will believe. For the moment, consider only that I can improve your lot in life through fairly conventional means. I have money. I have influence." He glanced over at Tiffany. "I have beautiful women at my beck and call."

      That was her cue to slide closer to Joey. Tiffany turned and pressed her breasts against his chest. Joey's cheeks burned, and his temperature rose ever higher as Tiffany licked his ear and idly stroked his crotch with her red-nailed fingers. He slapped her hand away, as if it were a trespassing spider.

      Concasseur said, "For such a young man, you seem to lead an almost monastic existence, Joseph. Surely you do not prefer it that way. Would you not like to make love to Tiffany? To do with her as you please? To control her utterly, as a film director controls his actors? Does that not interest you in the least?"

      Joey tried to frame a response, but his head swam with the musky scent of Tiffany's perfume. His pulse pounded loudly in his temples, almost deafening him. As Tiffany's caresses became more insistent, he felt his resistance weakening.

      "If it is not Tiffany you desire most, another beautiful young woman can be had, any one you choose. The possibilities are boundless. Point her out, and she can be yours."

      As luscious Tiffany rubbed up against him, it was Alison's face that popped into Joey's mind. He literally bit his tongue to prevent himself from speaking her name. After the pain came nauseating self-loathing.

      Concasseur leered at him, enjoying his discomfiture. "You can attempt to sublimate your erotic desires, Joseph, but books and videotapes are poor substitutes for willing flesh. Believe me, my boy, any flesh can be made willing. How, you ask? Please allow me to demonstrate."

      The bokor reached down and took Tiffany's hand, holding it palm up in front of him. From his inside jacket pocket, he removed a scalpel.

      Concasseur slit Tiffany's wrist.

      Joey screamed. He tried to jump up, but he was trapped between the injured girl and the madman.

      Tiffany made no sound, nor did she jerk her arm away from Concasseur. She sat there, her beautiful face in repose, oblivious to her wound.

      Joey stared at Tiffany's wrist, expecting to see a gory mess. What he saw was worse. Concasseur's scalpel had cut clear to the bone, and the severed blood vessels were clearly visible. But instead of spurting red blood, the incision only weeped a yellowish, bad-smelling fluid.

      He clamped his eyelids tight to shut out the horror. "Oh, god," he moaned. "I was right all along. She's dead!"

      Concasseur laughed. "Of course she is! That is the whole point."

      Joey felt his sanity coming apart, unraveling like a poorly-knit sweater. For the second time in one evening, he fainted.