She was a full-bodied woman with strong clean features, a blonde with brown eyes under heavy blue eye-shadow. She wore a neat suit, whose sewing and material Remo estimated at $250 in a large Cleveland store or $550 in New York City. The ring was three karats-if flawless, a fine stone.

The shoes oozed the subtle richness of expensive leather. Wife of manufacturer or leading citizen, on a shopping trip to New York, and if convenient, uncomplicated lay for herself.

Estimating clothes and accoutrements had been one of his poorer programs during training. But he was good enough to trust himself. As much as indicating wealth, clothes tell you what a person wants you to believe. In that could give you a handle.

Remo Pelham answered the question: "Riverside Drive overlooks the Hudson. It's pretty."

"Where on Riverside, Mac?"

"Anywhere," Remo told the driver.

"You, too, lady?"

"If I wouldn't be bothering anyone," she said.

Remo Pelham said nothing. He said nothing as he paid the driver at 96th Street and Riverside Drive and got slowly out of the cab. He did not turn around nor offer to help the woman with her luggage.

Remo Pelham did not need luggage. Neither did a half dozen other names he lived by. He walked to the low stone wall and stared out across the Hudson, glimmering in the hot September day.

Across that river and beyond the decaying docks of Hoboken, in the city of Newark, a young policeman had been tried, found guilty of murder and executed at the state penitentiary. A young policeman who swallowed a pill from a. priest who had offered last rites and promised him not eternal life, but life. He had taken the pill, passed out in the electric chair, and awakened to hear a story from a man with a hook for a hand. The story was this:

The American constitution didn't work and was workless each year. Criminals, using the safeguards of the constitution, daily increased in number and strength. The next step was a police state. Machiavelli's classic perception of chaos and then repression.