Chapter One

Nolan pulls into the parking garage, braced for the Rican attendant
with the cojones big enough to make a point of wondering
what this rusted hunk of Chevy pickup junk is doing in Jag-u-ar
City. But the ticket-spitting machine doesn't much care what
Nolan's driving. It lifts its arm, like a benediction, like the
hand of God dividing the Red Sea. Nolan passes a dozen empty spots
and drives up to the top level, where he turns in beside a dusty
van that hasn't been anywhere lately. He grabs his duffel bag,
jumps out, inhales, filling his lungs with damp cement-y air. So
far, so good, he likes the garage. He wishes he could stay here. He
finds the stairwell where he would hide were he planning a mugging,
corkscrews down five flights of stairs, and plunges into the
honking inferno of midafternoon Times Square.

He's never seen it this bad. A giant mosh pit with cars. Just
walking demands concentration, like driving in heavy traffic. He
remembers the old Times Square on those righteous long-ago weekends
when he and his high school friends took the bus into the city to
get hammered and eyeball the hookers. He's read about the new
Disneyfied theme park Times Squareland, but that's way more
complicated than what he needs to deal with right now, which is
navigating without plowing into some little old lady. A fuzzball of
pure pressure expands inside his chest, stoked by patches of soggy
shirt, clinging to his rib cage.

It's eighty, maybe eighty-five, and he's the only guy in New York
wearing a long-sleeved jersey. All the white men seem to be running
personal air conditioners inside their fancy Italian suits, unlike
the blacks and Latinos, who have already soaked through their
T-shirts. What does that make Nolan? The only white guy sweating.
The only human of any kind gagging from exhaust fumes. While
Nolan's been off in the boondocks with his friends and their Aryan
Homeland wet dream, an alien life-form has evolved in the nation's
cities, a hybrid species bred to survive on dog piss and carbon
monoxide. Nolan needs to stop thinking that way. Attitude is
crucial.

Last night, at his cousin Raymond's, he'd watched the TV
weatherchipmunk chirping about the heat wave, so
unseasonable for April, reassuring local viewers with his
records and statistics lest anyone think: Look out, global warming,
the world is ending right now. Why is everyone so
surprised that the planet's cutting them loose? Ecological
Armageddon was just what the doctor ordered to take Nolan's mind
off his own problems as he'd faced the dark hours ahead until it
was time to get up and borrow Cousin Raymond's truck, his money and
pills, and vanish into the ozone. Nolan's hardly slept for two
weeks, ever since he decided to turn. Two Xanax did nothing to stop
his lab-rat brain from racing from one micro-detail to
another.

Like, for example, sleeve length. Should he hide the tattoos? Or
just wear a T-shirt and let them do the talking? If one
picture's worth a thousand words, that's the first two thousand
right there, two thousand minus the hi howareya nicetameetcha.
Which was one reason to get the tats: cut through a load of hot
air. On the other hand, strolling into the office of World
Brotherhood Watch with Waffen-SS bolts on one bicep and a
death's-head on the other might make it harder for Nolan to get his
point across -- let's say, if the people he's talking to are hiding
under their desks. Nolan wouldn't blame them. It hasn't been all
that long since that lone-wolf lunatic in L.A. shot up the Jewish
temple preschool.

In any case, it's going to be tough, explaining what he's doing at
Brotherhood Watch, especially since Nolan himself isn't exactly
sure. There are some . . . practical issues involved with stealing
Raymond's truck plus the fifteen hundred bucks that, if you want to
be literal, belongs to the Aryan Resistance Movement. But there's
more to it than that. If it were just a question of disappearing
and starting over, Nolan could have some fun. Sell SUVs in Palm
Springs, deal blackjack in Las Vegas. Go to Disney World, put on a
Goofy suit, let toddlers fuck with his head.

What he'd really like to do is give every man, woman, and child in
the world the exact same hit of Ecstasy, the same tiny candy, pink
as a kitten's tongue, that managed to turn his head around, or more
precisely, to give his head a little -- well, a fairly big -- push
in the direction it was already headed. But that's not going to
happen, free Ex for the human race, so maybe the next best thing is
to help other people find a more gradual route to the place where
the Ex took Nolan.

Meanwhile, he knows that thinking like this will only get in his
way. He'll stay cooler if he convinces himself that he's just
interviewing for a job.

Has it only been two weeks since Nolan finally made up his mind? A
long two weeks of trying to figure it out, even --
especially -- after he knew how he was going to do it.

No one promised it would be easy. But Nolan has prepared. He's read
up, starting with two books by Meyer Maslow, the founder and
current head of the World Brotherhood Watch Foundation. He actually
went out and ordered them through the bookstore in the mall. The
first book, The Kindness of Strangers -- Maslow's tribute
to the people who saved his life when he was on the run from the
Nazis -- was what made Nolan begin to think that maybe his plan
could work.

For balance, Nolan has also been reading The Way of the
Warrior, a paperback he took from the tire shop, borrowed from
the backseat of a Ford Expedition some yuppie brought in for the
Firestone recall.