Whoever buys The Magi, he is the one who killed me. The bloody holes that had been Jon Bremer’s eyes gaped at her. Four are dead already. He is the Devil from Hell. He will pay anything, more than anyone. Whoever buys The Magi, Sophia …

Sophia’s jaw hurt. She was grinding her teeth together.

Buy The Magi no matter what.

She only wished she had been more surprised.

7

On the eve of his approach to Sophia, Richard Storm prepared himself with a meditation on John Wayne.

He had a framed, autographed picture of the cowboy star still enveloped in bubble wrap in a suitcase in the closet. He got it out, unwrapped it, and laid it on the flimsy folding table in his cramped service flat. He sat beside it, in a creaky chair, surrounded by the marbleized yellow wallpaper, the falsely gilded mirror, the matted flower prints that decorated the overpriced motel of a place. He was drinking from a mug of decaf, nibbling at a tasteless Shapers diet sandwich from one of those Boots drugstores: prawn and peach with dill mustard, or some other revolting British concoction. Between bites, he practiced the pranapatistha—a sacred form of breathing that this blond babe had taught him at Big Sur. She said it was supposed to infuse an image of your guardian ancestor with life. He also used it to cool his coffee while he sat and studied the photograph.

The picture showed the Duke full-length, striding towards the camera. Squinting from beneath his hat brim, Winchester hanging from his hand. It was a publicity still from Hondo, Wayne’s favorite of his own films and one of Storm’s. All about a rugged rambler who rides out of the horizon to rescue a woman and her boy. Storm had had the photo since he was nine years old, but it was in mint condition. He had always taken extremely good care of it.

Because Wayne was a guardian ancestor of sorts. He had given Storm his family name. Storm’s father had been Jack Morgenstern when he’d left his old man’s Brooklyn haberdashery in the late forties and set out for the West Coast. Shortly after he reached Hollywood, he and his craggy good looks had been rechristened Jack Stern. He had been billed as Jack Stern in his first few walk-ons, as a gangster, a Spanish waiter, and the popcorn vendor who shouts “This way!” in Strangers on a Train. But then came his big break. And he traveled down to hell-and-gone Mexico somewhere to play the role of Cade in Hondo.