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Talk to God. Clean up your slate. The Rapture is coming and your time is running out. Mary is doing all she can to hold back the hand of her son. All but the elect will be chastised.

Lenore lowers the orange foam headphones to her neck and shuts off the radio. Ray, the born-again Nazi from WQSG, has kicked into another screaming rant, another variation on his normal tirade against communism, Satan, and Mayor Welby’s latest budget proposals.

She shouldn’t have brought the radio in the first place. It’s too distracting, a piece of equipment without a purpose. But the thought of spending another night listening to Zarelli debate divorce was too much. It exceeded her tolerance level. She had a hunch things could get ugly if she didn’t take some kind of preventive action.

But listening to Ray rasp and suck air till he’s overcome and close to vomiting is no solution.

So she sends her partner, Zarelli, across the street early, tells him to look for any surprises, and attempts to concentrate on her food. She’s eating some kind of rice and raw tuna dish out of a carton. It’s cold and she has no idea whether it’s supposed to be served this way or if Zarelli was just suckered again, handed a cold carton of last night’s house special out of a kitchen doorway. She can picture a trio of teenage Chinese dishwashers, soaked aprons sticking to their legs, pocketing Zarelli’s money and laughing for the balance of their shift.

It’s the Monday before Thanksgiving and Lenore is in the basement of a slaughterhouse called Brasilia Beef, sitting on a splintery shipping crate in the boiler room, hidden behind a double oil tank and an enormous, ancient monster of a cast-iron furnace. This is her third night in the basement. She’s listening for sounds, distant voices. She’s anticipating the noise of a business transaction, a semi-friendly deal, earnest handshakes over platters of marinated monkey livers and shooters of bourbon.

Across the street from the slaughterhouse is the Plain Jar Café, a new Laotian bar and grill. The place is owned by a new player that everyone calls Cousin Mo. It may or may not be a fresh money bin for a new company setting up in the Park. So far there’s been no way to cross-check this information.

Zarelli is sitting at the bar of the Plain Jar. Zarelli’s supposed to be sipping club sodas, but when he dropped off her supper, Lenore could smell booze. Now she’s starting to think she should have been the one inside the bar. But Zarelli’s so bad with the equipment, what he callsthe machines, and lately he’s taken to dozing on stakeout.

Earlier in the night, they managed to wire Zarelli with a voice-activated mike. The tech guys promised Lenore it was the latest thing. She didn’t bother to tell them that the equipment she’s most worried about is her partner. Right now, Cousin Mo and his meatboys could be sacrificing infants at the other end of the bar and Zarelli would talk right through it, choke himself spitting out his newest jokes about feminists and Orientals.

She pictures him now, her partner and lover, elbows planted on the bar, a long teak slab resting on a pedestal that’s hand-carved to look like a parade of elephants, all attached, tail to trunk. She sees him fire a punch line to the barkeep, then fit his mouth around another Genesee cream ale. As always, he’s dressed in this sport coat that might as well have orange neon across the back blinkingI’m a cop, I’m a cop.

She looks down at her own lap and has to smile. She’s got on the leather miniskirt that Zarelli’s so hot for and a pink tank top under a denim jacket. It’s a challenge finding the right outfit, hitting the perfect note between enough sleaze and not too much theatrics. Last night, sitting on the same crates, Zarelli said to her, “Jesus,