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with crime statistics.
      "Things change," Xaphan said, tilting the glass and draining the last of the rum.
      "What things?"
      "Well, mainly," said his assistant, "you."
      "I haven't changed," said Chesney. "I don't change." Anyone who knew him could have attested to the truth of the remark – although not too many people, apart from his mother and now Melda McCann, could have been said to have really known Chesney Arnstruther. "Does not play well with others," had been a frequent notation on his grade-school report cards, words that could have served as both the young man's life motto and the epitaph carved into his tombstone. The only other phrase that could have given those six words competition as a succinct summation of Chesney's life was the one he had just voiced to his demonic helper: "I don't change."
      "Yeah," said the fiend, "but you've changed the game. At least around this here burgh."
      "You mean crime – major crime – has gone down since I started being The Actionary?"
      "You got it. The serious outfits, they gone and pulled right back. No dope, no heists, no chop shop action. Nobody would look at a bank job even if they had the keys to the front door and the combination of the vault."
      "Hmm," said Chesney. "So what does that leave?"
      Xaphan shrugged again and puffed smoke around the cigar clamped in its jaw. "Little everyday jobs, muggings, burglaries, guys cheatin on their taxes, playin' poker, hangin around in cathouses, kids boostin stuff outta the stores, guys spittin on sidewalks." It drew deeply on the Churchill and blew another complicated smoke-shape. "You wanna tackle some of that?"
      "We've been doing that kind of thing the past couple of weeks. That's not what I became a crimefighter for."
      "Hey," said the demon, "whatta ya gonna do?"
      Chesney had no quick answer. He couldn't see a pool of light to work within. "Wait a minute," he said after a moment, "I play poker."
      "Not for the stakes I'm talkin about," said the demon. "Real moolah. Besides, you never played in the back room of no high-class house of ill repute. A house that takes a percentage of every pot – that's what makes it illegal."
      "Huh," said Chesney, still thinking. "Is there a game like that going on tonight?"
      "It so happens, there is."
      "Are the players hoodlums?"
      Xaphan looked like a weasel weighing things up. "These ain't your ordinary street goniffs," it said, "but ain't one of them as hasn't done a shady deal or taken a kickback."
      "Racketeers!"
      "It wouldn't be stretchin' the point too far."
      "What time does the game start?"
      "Nine, ten," said Xaphan. "They eat, have a few drinks, maybe talk some bizness, go upstairs with the girls. Then they settle in for an all-nighter."
      "Where is this place? What's it called?"
      "It ain't got a name. Too exclusive. Mostly they call it 'Marie's place.' Or just 'the place,' seein' as how Marie's been dead maybe forty years."
      It was sounding good to Chesney. He could see it in his mind's eye: chandeliers and swag lamps, champagne in free-standing ice buckets, velvet-covered plush furniture, cigar smoke, women in frilly corsets. He realized he was back in a pool of light. "Come at midnight," he told his assistant. "We'll let them get right into it. Then… wham!"
      "Wham it is, boss." Xaphan looked into its glass and seemed surprised to find it empty. "Ya need me for anything right this minute?"
      "No, I've got to get to the park and meet Melda." Chesney checked his watch, found he had to hurry.
      "You wanna take the short cut?"
      Technically, according to the contract Billy Lee Hardacre had negotiated with Satan on behalf of the young man, the demon's powers were only to be invoked in Chesney's role as the crimefighting Actionary. But Chesney and his assistant had come to a private arrangement: Xaphan performed some extra duties in exchange for being able to use their way station in the