“What’s she famous for?” Neal asked. Famous was bad, famous was trouble.

“Something to do with movies. What, you need a resume? Are you working for us, or what? Because the Chinese can’t cash the check until you’re safely back in the States, so we can still tell them that you’d rather stay here. I just need you for backup. I can get anybody.”

Actually, I can’t just get anybody, Graham thought. I need you. But we got to take this one step at a time, ease you back in while I can keep an eye on you. See if you can still do the job or whether you’re a burnout case. Three years of what amounts to solitary confinement can do strange things to even the best. And Neal Carey was the best… had been, anyway.

“Look,” Graham continued as Neal sulked, “we’ll pick up little Cody, drop him back on Mommy’s lap, and go right back to New York. You’ll have the whole summer to jerk off before you start classes.”

“What classes?”

“Weren’t you in graduass school when we last saw you? Trying to con them into giving you your masturbator’s degree? Which should be a lock, if you ask me.”

Columbia University… English department. His would-be master’s thesis, “Tobias Smollett: The Outsider in Eighteenth-Century English Literature.” It seemed like a different life. Come to think of it…

“Wait a minute,” Neal said, “I’m supposed to be dead.”

Graham nodded. “It’s an appealing fantasy, I agree. So you were dead, now you’re alive. A glitch in the computer. Nothing a little WD-40 and a contribution to the library can’t take care of.”

We have to get him back in school, Graham thought. If Neal’s finished as a detective he’s going to need a trade. Seeing as he can’t do anything useful, he might as well be a college professor, which is what he wants to be anyway.

Neal poured himself another cup of the excellent green tea. He knew it had been provided only because he had a foreign guest, so he might as well take advantage of it. He listened to the sound of the morning chants rising up from the main temple, the numbing monotony that was supposed to focus the chanter on nothingness-and did.