Clive Atkins had been adding to the book for years: Snippets of conversation, scribbled by informants and held as leverage for future needs. Photographs of political enemies and friends, just in case friendship faltered at a pivotal moment. Taped transcripts of conversations from phone calls and private meetings in dining rooms, country clubs and social gatherings of every kind. It also listed who was sleeping with whom in both a literal and a figurative sense. Yes, the book was a treasure trove of influence and power. It was also missing.

When he first noticed its absence, Clive slipped a nitro tablet under his tongue and took a deep, deep breath. It wasn't really gone, couldn't be. He was a careful man, a fastidious man, a man who always crossed every 't' and dotted every 'i.'

The book was stored in a wall safe and he was the only one who knew the combination. So all he had to do was think. And reconstruct his actions for the past twenty-four hours.

That was easy. Yesterday afternoon he'd had a visit from Daryl Sleagal. Daryl was one of those individuals you wanted to keep on your good side. He was a ferret. A ferret with bad breath and inquisitive habits. Seems Daryl had been in a men's room at the State Capital when a certain lobbyist had felt the need to piss--at the same time a certain State Representative came in to wash his hands and check his tie.

They talked.

Daryl took notes.

Suddenly things got pretty quiet and Daryl peered over the top of the door. Lo and behold. The lobbyist and the state rep were engaged in an activity that was quite apolitical but definitely news. Daryl clicked the shutter on his ever present camera and another skeleton found resurrected life in Clive's book. And it hadn't cost that much. A couple grand! Small potatoes for dynamite. Clive had smiled. Some fish were just too easy to shoot--even in a barrel. After Daryl left, Clive slid the photo into his book, adding the scribbled notes of the men's conversation. Did they know they'd been had? Apparently not. They'd been much too engrossed in each other to hear the soft click from Daryl's camera or the stealthy sounds of ferret feet on the toilet seat. Business complete, they had zipped up and hurried back to their spheres of influence.

What had happened next? Clive scratched his head. The phone! A wave of apprehension gobbled two more inches of his colon.

Shit! That's right, the phone rang. Adam Tobler. And his hot tip on stocks. Only thing, it was a hot tip and Clive needed a serious band-aid on his ruptured portfolio. Adam had to see him--right then. Wasn't about to spill the details over the phone. The market would close in an hour and it was a now-or-never kind of deal. Clive remembered looking at the book and deciding to slip it into his briefcase that was on the floor next to his desk.

He sighed, relieved and hurried to the snakeskin case.

No book!

The briefcase was propped against Clive's walnut wastepaper basket. He saw a fragment of paper caught in a seam at the top of the container and pulled it out. It was a phone number, one he recognized as the contact for another informant. It had been tucked in a little pocket of the book.

No! He was not the kind of man who would put his career, his political future, the meaning for his very life in a trash can by mistake. His chest ached and he plopped heavily onto the floor and opened the nitro bottle again. Take two, they're small.

No one knew the book was valuable. If it had gone into the trash--where next? All he had to do was follow its trail to the dump or the landfill or the barge or wherever the hell people took garbage these days.

It took less than three phone calls before he was on his way out the door.

Clive was accustomed to a world of concrete and steel and the wide-open spaces at the landfill unnerved him. As did the great expanse of blue sky. There was a stench in the air that--well, to be honest, he liked it. It wasn't quite as strong as death--but close. If the place hadn't been so exposed, so easy to scrutinize, he might have considered it prime real estate.

The acreage around him teemed with seagulls. They screamed and flew at him, as if afraid he would snatch their tasty tidbits. Not a chance, he muttered, hurling blobs and globs of anything at them to drive them away.

He gazed around the landscape, astonished and disheartened by its sheer size and scope. According to the guy at the gate, yesterday's trash from his building, as well as several other buildings, was right on top of the area where he stood. Right. In any single spot he looked he could see ten thousand flashes of blue and white, the colors on the front of the book. And paper? It fluttered and waved and tossed itself all around him.

It was then Clive noticed he was not alone. Movement to his left and right and all over the landscape caught his eye. A swarm of small figures, lithe and rat like, scurried in and out of the mounds of trash. They were clothed in rags, fabrics that blended and melded with their surroundings, an odd camouflage of cans and cereal boxes and wadded disposable diapers. His breath caught in his throat. Who were they? What were they doing here? Who authorized this ballsy incursion onto his turf? One woman caught his eye. Her direction was away from him but still, he'd have sworn she was looking back, sizing him up, keeping him in her sights at all times. Something told him she had the book! Knew its value and knew he had come to reclaim it. Hell, she might even work for Daryl or those two assholes from the Capital Building john.

He would follow her.

The sun was relentless. The flies were worse. What compelled these people to search the mounds, moving ever deeper and further into their rancid depths. It was hours, he was sure of it, before the woman turned and started back toward the gate.

By now he knew her habits.

She hummed--incessantly. Her fingers were nimble and quick, sorting through items that baffled him by their sheer proliferation. And yet, she made selections, finding objects of apparent value that she deftly stowed in a canvas bag she carried slung over her shoulder.

She was aware of him. He was sure of it. But every time she turned toward him, he would reach into the garbage, as if intent on finding things she had missed. Her clothes were remarkable, kind of flowing and fluid and so much in motion he was convinced the flies gave her a wide berth. Or maybe they were repelled by her choice of color. Her top was designed in a patterned silk, paisley he thought, and the sleeves were loose and wide. The pant part of the ensemble was wool, or some other heavy fabric, and boasted a deep and rich plaid in earthen (garbage?) colors.

The closer she got to the gate, the more her humming turned to actual singing. He couldn't discern the song, if in fact it was a song. Rather it was a stream of words, tunelessly flung at the day and at him. Once outside the landfill, she seemed to blend into the buildings of the nondescript streets she chose. He watched her as she moved stealthily from the shadow of one structure to the next, thinking he could almost see the blue and white book bouncing in her bag, itching to leap from its confines and get back to him, its rightful owner. What would she do with such information? The bitch? The whore.

What gave her the right to read his precious book, to try to piece together those fine, ammunition-like details that shaped the destinies and futures of so many people? As if she could use such information, as if it fit her nasty paisley and plaid world.

He laughed and then quickly silenced his humor and ducked into a doorway as she paused and looked as if she might turn around. There would be time enough to chuckle when the book was back in his hands, when his careful planning and fastidious research was tucked in the safe again.

If possible, the neighborhood got even worse. Rats walked boldly in the open. Newspapers and cardboard boxes rolled around him, urban tumbleweeds in a world no longer human.

And yet the woman, crouched and bending into her life, her circumstances, forged through the desolation, walking toward a bridge overpass just ahead. Clive glanced at the cars rushing east and west on top of the bridge, vaguely aware that his own limo frequently crossed this spot. He had never--not once--looked down into this cavernous abyss.

Where did she think she was going? Taking his book? His life's work? His guarantee for the future? He bent down and picked up a brick. He would need to be careful. This woman was crafty. And she was a thief. Just as she slipped inside the shadow of the overpass, Clive caught a glimpse of the book through her canvas bag. And he heard it. It called to him. It did.

Wanting to come home, to tell its stories, hold its subjects hostage and shape the days and destinies of his world.

Just as he brought the brick down, hard and repeatedly, in the shadows of the bridge, he finally understood the woman's song. It was that stupid tune, that insidious ditty, from an old Coke commercial. Something about 'I want to teach the world to sing--in perfect harmony.' Damn song had never made any sense at all.

He dumped the contents of the bag out onto the ground. Nothing. At least nothing besides a pile of paper pictures--jaggedly torn from pages of newspapers and magazines, and pulled off labels and boxes. The pictures began to flutter away in the breeze. He grabbed at them. What in the hell?

Babies. Young boys and girls. Mothers, fathers and beautiful models. Old men and women. Dozens of pictures of kittens and puppies and long-beaked birds.

Clive sank to the ground. What was the old bitch thinking? Why would she walk so far and swelter in the sun for hours just to collect these worthless scraps? He looked around. The walls, almost the entire surface of the underpass, were covered with a thousand thousand faces. Just a patch on the far side of the concrete structure was bare. The old woman would have completed her task soon, maybe that very day. Then he saw the candles. They were crude, made from the fat and gelatinous debris found in the dump's foodstuff, lighted with wicks that had once been string or twine or ribbon. Shadows danced. The faces, those hundreds and thousands upon thousands of faces winked and grinned.

Clive stared at them. His chest throbbed. He reached for the nitro, for the sanity and order of the world up top. But before his hand could find the bottle, he fell. And there he lay, face to face with that stupid old woman. And the last thing he saw was her battered and toothless smile.