Remo coughed. The guard looked up, startled to see someone there.

"Oh, Father? I didn't see you come down."

"No," Remo agreed pleasantly. It took three more minutes for him to get through the penitentiary's infallible security system.

He was soaked with perspiration by the time he reentered the bright sunshine of the day, and he was in such a hurry to get distance between himself and the prison that he did not bother to notice the two men across the street, who matched their pace to his and followed him at a leisurely gait.

CHAPTER THREE

Remo pushed through the revolving door of the Palazzo Hotel, then stepped quickly across the marble lobby, toward a bank of elevators in the corner.

A bellhop leaned against a small counter, watching him. As Remo stood by the elevators, he came up alongside.

"Sorry, Father," he said briskly, "no panhandling."

Remo smiled gently. "I've come, my son, to perform last rites."

"Oh," the pimply-faced bellhop said, disappointed that his show of power had failed. "Who's dead?"

"You will be if you don't get your ugly, bugging face out of my way," Remo said. The bellhop looked at him, this time carefully, and the monk was no longer smiling gently. The face was hard and angular; the expression would have shattered crystal. The bellhop got his face out of there.

Remo rode the elevator to the eleventh floor, giving a blessing to an old woman who entered on the seventh floor and got out on the eighth. Then he was in the hallway on the eleventh floor, heading for one of the expensive suites on the left side of the corridor.

He paused outside the door, heard the usual melange of voices from inside, and with a small sigh unlocked the door and stepped in.