“Yes, indeed,” said Charismo. “Garrick delivered it to me without ever suspecting what it was. How could he? All programmed and ready to suck Bill back to the twentieth century—the twenty-first now, I suppose. I have it secured safely, just in case I need to escape this time zone. There will always be medical procedures—chemotherapy, for example—that I may need to avail myself of. That is the only reason I have not disassembled the portals. Of course, I only recently found out where the portals were.”

“Well, poor little Mob banker Terry wouldn’t be told the locations. Information like that would be strictly need-to-know.”

“Precisely. On the night I arrived, they hustled me out of there with a sack over my head. Can you believe it? In my condition?”

When he said the word condition, Charismo touched his mask lightly, and Chevie wondered again what precisely was under there.

“So, even with Agent Riley out of the way, you still needed to find Charles Smart and whatever portals there might be; otherwise you could never be sure that they wouldn’t come after you.”

“The alternative was keeping a low profile,” explained Charismo. “And what was the point in doing that?”

“Yeah,” said Chevie. “Why be a nobody in two centuries?”

“You’re doing awfully well so far,” said Charismo coldly, adjusting his devil’s mask. “Would you like to continue? Or should I kill you now?”

“It takes a while to build up your funds, but as soon as you can afford it you cultivate a relationship with Otto Malarkey, because only the Battering Rams have the network you need to find Charles Smart and the portals.”

“All I had was a sketch of Smart, which I drew from memory, and a description of a basement with a bed mounted on a metal plate. Not much to go on.”

Chevie took over the narrative. “It took years, but eventually the Rams found that Smart was actually living in this century in Bedford Square. And they followed him to Half Moon Street.”

“I kept him under surveillance, as you Feds might say, until I was satisfied that Smart was the only one using the portals. No one was looking for him or coming for me.”

“And you wanted to keep it that way. You wanted sole control of the wormhole, so Charles Smart had to go. And that’s when you contacted Garrick again, to finish the job he began a decade ago.”

“Yes. After all, my freedom to evolve was at stake.”

Charismo leaned forward and parted Chevie’s hair with his letter opener. “I had forgotten how much effort it is speaking with my fellow Americans. So confrontational.” “You made one mistake, Terry,” said Chevie.

“Oh, I don’t think so. After all, you are prostrate before me, as is the entire city.”

“Garrick. You should never have hired him. He can’t be controlled.”