Sayre— if that’s his name— turns to the vampires. “He’s the one,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s killed hundreds of you in a dozen versions of America. My friends”— he gestures to the low men— “were unable to track him down, but of course they seek other, less suspecting prey in the ordinary course of things. In any case, he’s here now. Go on, have at him. But don’t kill him!”

He turns to Callahan. The hole in his forehead fills and gleams but never drips.It’s an eye, Callahan thinks, a bloody eye. What is looking out of it? What is watching, and from where?

Sayre says, “These particular friends of the King all carry the AIDS virus. You surely know what I mean, don’t you? We’ll letthat kill you. It will take you out of the game forever, in this world and all the others. This is no game for a fellow like you, anyway. A false priest like you.”

Callahan doesn’t hesitate. If he hesitates, he will be lost. It’s not AIDS he’s afraid of, but of letting them put their filthy lips on him in the first place, to kiss him as the one was kissing Lupe Delgado in the alley. They don’t get to win. After all the way he’s come, after all the jobs, all the jail cells, after finally getting sober in Kansas,they don’t get to win.

He doesn’t try to reason with them. There is no palaver. He just sprints down the right side of the conference room’s extravagant mahogany table. The man in the yellow shirt, suddenly alarmed, shouts “Get him! Get him!” Hands slap at his jacket— specially bought at Grand River Menswear for this auspicious occasion— but slip off. He has time to thinkThe window won’t break, it’s made of some tough glass, anti-suicide glass, and it won’t break… and he has just time enough to call on God for the first time since Barlow forced him to take of his poisoned blood.

“Help me! Please help me!” Father Callahan cries, and runs shoulder-first into the window. One more hand slaps at his head, tries to tangle itself in his hair, and then it is gone. The window shatters all around him and suddenly he is standing in cold air, surrounded by flurries of snow. He looks down between black shoes which were also specially purchased for this auspicious occasion, and he sees Michigan Avenue, with cars like toys and people like ants.

He has a sense of them— Sayre and the low men and the vampires who were supposed to infect him and take him out of the game forever— clustered at the broken window, staring with disbelief.

He thinks,This does take me out of it forever…doesn’t it?