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When the angel opened the door, Parker stepped first past the threshold into the darkness of the cinder block corridor beneath the stage. A hymn filtered discordantly through the rough walls; thousands of voices, raggedly together. The angel said, "I'm not sure about this ... "

"We are," Parker told him. Holding the door open with one splayed hand, he nodded back at Mackey and Liss, who slipped in quickly past him, carrying the duffel bags. Parker shut the metal fire door and pulled up on the bar to lock it again, while Liss stood his duffel on the floor with a muffled clank and loosened the loop of rope that closed the top. Mackey's duffel was full of other duffel bags, and for now stayed on his shoulder. Liss slid the rough canvas cloth of the bag down past the blunt metal barrels, then took out the three shotguns, giving one each to Parker and Mackey, then flipping the empty bag over his shoulder.

The angel blinked, watching. His heavy white robe and strapped-on feathery wings must have been hot, even in the air-conditioned arena; the white makeup on his face ran with perspiration, giving him the look of somebody who'd been dead a long time. Inside the costume and the makeup and the sweat, he was scared, with frightened pinpoint eyes. "There's too many guards," he said. His voice squeaked with the requirement that he keep it guarded and quiet. "Too much going on. We'll do it another time. A better time. "

"We're set up now, Tom," Liss said. "You got nerves, that's all. " He and Parker and Mackey had taken shells from their shirt pockets, broke open the shotguns, and were thumbing the shells into place.

"I don't want to do it now!" The angel's voice was more and more shrill, echoing around the echoes of the distant hymn. ''We'll get caught!"

This amateur, this inside man, was Liss's pigeon; let Liss smooth his feathers. Parker saw Liss's jaw muscles set on the left side, where they worked.

front of the string. He said, "Don't worry about it, okay? Lead the way. "

But the angel wouldn't move. Blinking sweat out of his eyes, fidgeting his hands together as the limp wings moved on his back, he said, "We can't do it. I told somebody. "

They all became very still. They looked at the angel, whose name was Tom Carmody. Liss said, "A woman?"

The angel looked ashamed. "Yes. I thought it was all right, but... "

"But what?"

"She's gone. She isn't at home. She isn't at work. Nobody knows where she is. "

Parker said, "She's with this bunch? Your bunch?"

"No, she teaches at a special school for disturbed kids. They don't know where she is. "

Mackey leaned his duffel bag against the wall. He said, "You live with her?"

"No. Not really. She has her own place. " The angel was miserable, he was scared and embarrassed and unhappy. He was also an asshole. He said, "I don't know what she'll do. "