Calvert pulled on his leather jacket, locked the door and started down the hallway of his East Village apartment building, quiet now, a few minutes before noon. Most of the people in the building, he guessed, were outside, enjoying the first truly nice spring weekend this year or were still sleeping off their own debaucheries.

He used the back exit, as he always did, which deposited him in the alleyway behind the building. Starting for the sidewalk, forty feet away, he noticed something: motion down one of the cul-de-sacs leading off the alley.

He stopped and squinted into the dimness. An animal. Jesus, was that a rat?

But no—it was a cat, apparently injured. He looked around but the alleyway was completely deserted, no sign of its owner. Oh, the poor thing!

Calvert wasn't a pet person but he'd sat for a neighbor's Norwich terrier last year and remembered the man telling him that, just in case, Bilbo's vet was around the corner on St. Marks. He'd take the cat in on the way to the subway.

Maybe his sister'd want it. She adopted children. Why not cats?

Lingering in alleys wasn't the best idea in this neighborhood but Calvert saw that he was still completely alone. He moved slowly over the cobblestones so he wouldn't spook the animal. It was lying on its side, meowing faintly.

Could he pick it up? Would it try to scratch him? He remembered something in Prevention about cat-scratch fever. But the animal looked too weak to hurt him.

"Hey, what's the matter, fella?" he asked in a soothing voice. "You hurt?"

Crouching down, he set his makeup case on the cobblestones and reached out carefully in case the cat took a swipe at him. He touched it but then drew his hand back in shock. The animal was ice-cold and emaciated—he could feel stiff bones beneath the skin. Had it just died? But, no, the leg was still moving. And it uttered another faint meow.

He touched it again. And, wait, those weren't bones under the skin. They were rods, and inside its body was a metal box. What the fuck was this?

Was he on Candid Camera? Or was some asshole just ragging him?

Then he glanced up and saw someone ten feet away. Calvert gasped and reared back. A man was crouching—

But, no, he realized. It was his own image, reflected in a full-length mirror sitting in the corner at the end of the dark alley. Calvert saw his face, shocked, eyes wide, frozen for a moment. He started to relax and laughed. But then he frowned, watching himself slowly falling forward—as the mirror pivoted to the cobblestones and shattered.

The bearded, middle-aged man hiding behind it charged forward, raising a large piece of pipe.

"No! Help me!" the young man cried, scrabbling away. "My God, my God!"

The pipe swung down in a fierce arc directly toward his head. But Calvert grabbed the makeup case fast and thrust it toward the attacker, deflecting the blow. He struggled to his feet and began to run. The assailant started after him but slipped on the slick cobblestones and went down hard on one knee.