It was 4:15 a.m. and quite dark. Hooks sat in the back seat of a car again and when they were well down the road headed toward St. Louis, he saw the marina lights come back on. He had left in darkness.

The car left the asphalt road and drove to the yard of a small construction firm. Hooks was surprised to see Janet Hawley waiting for him. She wore a bright yellow print dress covered from the waist up with mud. She was resting. At the bottom of a ditch, with a very big dent in her head.

Hooks started to question the servants about this when one of them interrupted by banging a baseball bat into Donald (Hooks) Basumo's auditory cortex in his temporal lobe. It went crack. And made a very big and final dent in his skull.

Don Salvatore Massello was not around to hear the crack. He was on a plane bound for New York City where he would have something very important to report at the national meeting of the crime families.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he must have been cheating. James Merrick was praying for strength to complete his twentieth mile and the skinny bastard in blue had just passed him for the second time.

The next time would be three. Merrick's mind flitted back to the old sea adage of going down for the third time and he giggled hysterically. Suddenly his mirth turned bitter and he squeezed out, through clenched teeth:

"Hey, you. You, skinny. You, the guy in the tee shirt."

The man who had "Remo" written on his number card with a red magic marker turned his head back toward the huffing Merrick and pointed at himself.

"Who, me?" he said.

"Yeah. You. Remo. Wait up."

Remo slowed down and Merrick pulled his anguished legs, back and forth, back and forth, seemingly faster and faster. But he wasn't catching up; the distance between the two remained the same, no matter how hard he pushed his aching body.