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observations of his mother who had gone through life torn by conflicting attitudes toward her ancestry and toward the demands of her sex. That she knew about, she had black, Cherokee, Portuguese, and Cajun ancestors. Sometimes, she had been proud of her progenitors. “Never forget, boy, that your ancestors were here before the first white thief set foot on these shores.” Other times, she would remind him, “We were sailors under Henry the Navigator when most sailors never came back from a long voyage.” But she could temper these outbursts of bitter pride with cautious warnings: “Dzule, you look white enough for nobody ever to know about the niggers in our blood. Play the white game, boy; that’s the only way to win in this world.”
    And he had won the field this day, no doubt about that. Thebitch of the board room had tried to cross-examine him about Hellstrom’s corporate activities, trying to catch him in a contradiction. The Chief had warned him about that. “They’ll try to take advantage of you and check up on the Agency. I’m trusting you to give them blow for blow.” That was the Chief for you: like a father to those he trusted.
    Peruge had never known his own father, who had been only the first in a long line of men who partook of Juanita Peruge’s favors. Her family name had been Brown, a commonplace easily discarded for the more mysterious Peruge. The father had stayed with Juanita long enough to name the infant Dzule for a half-remembered uncle, then he had gone commercial fishing on a voyage that would have satisfied the Navigator’s worst fears. His boat was lost in a storm off Campiche.
    Tragedy had been the firming cement of Juanita’s character. It offered her the splendor of a lifelong search to replace a love that time made ever more romantic and unattainable. And for Dzule, she created a myth of the mighty John (originally Juan) Peruge: tall, bronzed, capable of any great deed he might envision. A jealous God had taken him, which said something pertinent about gods.
    It was this tragedy, seen through his mother’s fantasies, that made Dzule forgive any of her offenses against morality. His earliest and strongest image of women told him that they could not withstand life’s crueler torments except by seeking the pleasures of the bed. That was just the way they were and one had to accept it. Others might deny this, but obviously they were hiding identical behavior in their own women.
    The Agency had been a natural place for Dzule Peruge to find himself. Here, the strong sought their place in life. Here, those who took the blinders from their eyes naturally gravitated. And most important, it was a last outpost of swashbuckling. In the Agency, no dream was too remote, provided that you recognized most humans as essentially frail—especially women.
    The bitch of the board was no exception. There was a weakness in her; had to be. She was clever, though, with her own brand of driving ruthlessness.
    Peruge stared out of the taxi’s window at the rain-washed streets, reviewing the encounter in the board room. She had opened the attack by bringing out her own copy of the Hellstrom file. She had found the entries she wanted, referred to them, and said, “You tell us Hellstrom’s company is private, incorporated in 1958; one chief stockholder, himself, and three officers—Hellstrom, a Miss Fancy Kalotermi, and a Miss Mimeca Tichenum.” She’d put down the file and stared down the long table at him. “The disturbing thing to many of us is that, although two women signed their names to these incorporation documents in front of witnesses, duly notarized, you show no other record of them.”
    Peruge’s response, he thought, had suited the attack. He shrugged and said, “That’s correct. We don’t know where they came from, where educated, nothing. They both sound foreign, but the notary in Fosterville