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illuminated by an amber light from the dining parlor.
    “You look like a skuzzy Bowery bag man. Is that
blood
on your sleeve? Are you all right?” She stood up suddenly.
    Carroll looked down at his torn, dingy shirtsleeve. He turned it toward the dining parlor light. It was blood all right. Dark, dried blood, but not his own.
    “I'm fine. The blood isn't mine. At least I don't think it is.”
    Mary Katherine frowned deeply as she came forward to examine her brother's arm. “The bad guys get banged up, too?”
    Arch Carroll smiled at his twenty-four-year-old “baby” sister. Mary Katherine was the keeper of his house, the substitute mother for his four children, the uncomplaining cook and chief bottle washer, all for a two-hundred-dollar-a-month stipend, a “scholarship.” It was all he could afford to pay her right now.
    “I had to kill one of them. He won't be bothering people with his plastique bombs anymore… The kids all asleep?”
    The kids, in order of arrival, were Mary III, Clancy, Mickey Kevin, and Elizabeth. All four of them were far too Irish-American cute for their own good: outrageously tow-headed and blue-eyed, with infectious smiles and quick, almost adult wits. Mary Katherine had been their house mother for nearly three years now. Ever since Arch's wife, Nora, had died on December 14, 1982.
    After Nora's funeral, after just one desolate night at their old New York apartment, the six of them had moved into the Carroll family homestead in Riverdale. The old house had been closed and boarded up since the deaths of Carroll's mother and father back in 1980 and 1981.
    Mary Katherine had redecorated immediately. She'd even set up a huge light-filled painting studio for herself in the attic. The kids were out of New York City proper, at least. They suddenly had acres of fresh air and space in which to ramble around. There were definite advantages to being up in Riverdale. They had almost everything they needed up here… everything but a mother.
    Carroll had held on to their old rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive. Sometimes he even stayed there when he had to work weekends in New York. It wasn't ideal, but it could have been a lot worse. Especially without Mary K.
    “I have several important messages for you,” Mary Katherine announced brightly.
    “Mickey says, if I might paraphrase, that you work too hard and don't make enough skoots. Clancy says if you don't play catch with him this weekend-and not video game baseball-you're a dead man. That's a
direct
quote. Let's see… oh, yes, I almost forgot. Lizzie has decided to become a prima ballerina. Lessons for the spring semester at the Joliere School start at three hundred per, Dad.”
    “That's all?”
    “Mairzy Doats left you a humongous kiss, and a hug of equal magnitude and intensity.”
    “Uncomplicated young woman. Shame she can't stay six years old forever.”
    “Arch? What about this Wall Street thing? The bombing? I was worried.”
    “I don't know. Too late to talk.”
    Carroll wanted to box off Wall Street in a dark, private corner until he was ready to deal with it. It would still be there in the morning, you could bet on that. He massaged his eyelids, which were heavy with fatigue. His mind was crowded with unwelcome pictures-the Lebanese Butcher, the face of the Atlantic Avenue restaurant owner, fire trucks and EMS ambulances flashing all over Wall Street…
    Carroll bent and loosened his flopping high-topped sneaks. He peeled off a discolored satin Tollentine High School jacket. His fatigue now yielded to a kind of peaceful, ethereal, waking slumber.
    In the large bathroom on the second floor, he turned on the water full blast. Curling hot steam rose toward the ceiling from the chipped and scratched white porcelain tub. He took off the rest of his squalid street-bum ensemble and rolled a fluffy bath towel around his waist.
    Quick mirror check. Okay. He was still around six two, solid, durable, and sturdy. Pleasant face, even if