Say what you like about his dubious skills as a navigator of the city's back roads, about his haphazard steering, clunking gear changes or frightening disregard of traffic lights - but you couldn't hold a candle to his expertise in how to demolish a building, a vehicle, a human body.  He was the best.  He talked the game as though it was one he'd been playing only yesterday.

I knew him simply as Driver.  We'd been doing business for the better part of fifteen years.  I would call the firm from a booth at the Plaza and say I needed a driver, and it would always be Driver's dumb-ass face that revealed itself as the polished chrome driver's side window descended in a gust of Cuban cigar smoke. We would drive out to where the gibbons played at the water's edge, for the tourists to watch, and in the parking lot talk about the going rate for semiautomatics and bazookas.

It was two days after he'd been telling me about something called a GraceAngel automatic that I learned he'd been killed.  Or at any rate, had died.  I'll tell you about that in a minute.

His death induced immediate practical problems of course.  Such as where to get grenades; where to buy ammo.  But it was deeper than that.  You form bonds with people, after a while, even if you do what I do.

I'm a salesman.

Sorry, I forgot my manners.

My name is Jacob. Mister Jacob. I have been holed up at the Britannic Hotel in central Dicksville for the last few days. Stepped off the airplane on Saturday afternoon and headed straight for the bar. I was told this was a well-organized sale but for the life of me I can't figure out these southern bastards. The Man said I should just hang loose for a day or so till they finalize 'some shit' as he put it. He recommended a couple of dubious family cock service joints and said anything I wanted, 'on the house'. In our lives it is not a good idea to ridicule the hospitality of The Man.

I may have already got off on the wrong foot by trying it on with the chambermaid Sunday morning, but I am sure she was no-one's niece - only time will tell.

Just got off the phone; seems I will be here till at least midweek. A knock at the door - must be the room service I ordered about three-quarters of an hour ago. As I open the door, my nipple hairs stand to attention. There is something real bad in the air.

A tiny little man was there to greet me.

If I didn't have any manners I would have busted out laughing right away. He wasn't a tiny little man, he was just a kid dressed in a three-piece pinstripe suit looking like a mobster.

"Can I help you?"

"They call me Bagwell - the big boy."

I started giggling and couldn't stop. But this little kid sucked his thumb and sat there looking at me.

"I'd offer you a drink but you look too young to drink," I continued, pouring a couple of tumblers of scotch.

"How old are you Bagwell?" I stammered with giggles.

"I am ten years old, Mister.  But don't let this diaper and baby rattle fool you."

Now I think to myself - see, this kid is really a mobster. I downed the scotch and soda.  Bagwell took out a baby bottle and started sucking on it like a newborn, his eyes wide and fixated on me as he drank. Crawling through the door came his sidekick of a two year-old baby in a diaper.

I became even more nervous.

"Where's your parents, kid?" I wanted to know.  It had occurred to me that the last thing I needed right now was to be found in a hotel room with a couple of someone else's minors and with booze on my breath.

"They killed him," said the baby, the words too big and cumbersome for its tiny mouth.  It looked like a demon was starting to squeeze free of the head.

Why I sipped even more of the scotch is a mystery, but I did.  Perhaps I needed something to be certain of, and the bite of liquor was as good as anything else.  With perspiration setting up necklaces on my brow I said, "Who killed him? And who are you talking about?  Your dad?"

"Our dad," the ten year-old confirmed.  "You knew him as Driver. The people you're about to do business with whacked him.  That's why we're here."

"To warn you to get the hell out while you still can," said the baby.

I was desperate.  "Where's your mother?"

Bagwell sighed.  "Well there's a problem, see.  They never met - our dad never got the time to meet her, so we don't know her."

"Excuse me?"

"We're not the realest of kiddiwinks, Jacob," said Bagwell.  "You might want to sit down."  I sat down on the edge of the bed.  "We're the kids he would have had with our mother, given time.  We're sort of ghosts, but the other way round."

"Potentia," the baby added, helpfully - but painfully for me.

"This is so fucking weird."

"Come on, Jacob - you can do this.  Listen," said Bagwell.  "Dad was getting ready for his own death for a long, long time.  He worked with weapons, right?  He knew what they could do to him, and we think he took out a kind of insurance policy: in the event of his death before a certain age, the agency would ensure that his sensibilities continued through his kids."

"Or through the possibilities of his kids, in our case."

"Which is why we're able to conduct this conversation, Jacob."

I was aghast.  "You're Driver?" I wanted to confirm.

The baby, whose name I still did not know, rapped his knuckles against his own head.  "Hello, Mr. Jacob, anybody home?  We're not Driver.  Do we look like Driver?  But we have some of his ideals and philosophies, and so on."

"And we're telling you to get out before The Man returns."

I was frowning as I said, "You're asking a hell of a lot, boys.  You got any proof?  I mean, an insurance policy with who?  With the devil?"

Bagwell shrugged.  "It's as good a name as any," he said.  "Some agency, we don't have the details.  A spirit, a tribe - we've no idea.  It doesn't matter right now.  If you want dialectic, why not wait until we can sit down with a pizza, huh?"

"Jesus.  Only asking," I returned.  "And how did he pay them anyway - the agency people?"

"You don't think he gave them enough souls to toy with, over the years?" said the baby.  "How many times do you think he was responsible for a soul ending up in a place where it could be ripped to shreds and eaten up. Those

were his down payments and now he's got a chance to live on - or his thoughts have - through us."

Tempted as I was to get up, I had my obvious doubts.  This was not shaping up into the most ordinary days - and I guess I should have realized that things can always get a little bit stranger.

Suddenly the door swung open.

Two hours later.

I was neck deep in a big foamy bath of boiling hot bath water. I had made my escape down the fire exit just in time, I guess. It was all a blur, to tell the truth. What had I seen? Siamese twins of fate haunting my future script like no two beings I had ever encountered in all my years waiting on The Man.

The realness of the entire episode eludes any memory I have, however vague. Modern man just shouldn't have to deal with that sort of mind-fuck. I can't even . wait a minute. The hand stitched motif on the hotel bath robe hangs on the door hook. I can just make out a familiar name. But it can't be.

I get out of the bath and rush over to the bath robe, reading Britannica Hotel in bold blue stitch. The same motif I had seen on the hotel bath robes in my last hotel. What? Did I automatically stuff the bath robe into my bag before fleeing? What presence of mind I must have in a scrape. But. I have never left this hotel room. Surely, the mirror is the same. The contents of the vanity cabinet the same as before. Even the complimentary soap and body lotion are the same blend. This cannot be right.

I wander into the hotel room, suds dripping of my naked body. A chill wind rips across my flesh such that I fall to my knees nearly vomiting. I am back in the same hotel. A knock at the door. Could I have gone full narrative circle? Well, I shouldn't be answering the door in the nude, so. Back in the bathroom and on with the complimentary bath robe. The knock at the door becomes insistent. As I leave the bathroom, something catches my eye. Knock Knock Knock. There on the linoleum floor a hand print made of solid water. I don't remember putting down my hand. This imprint seems like jelly or some transparent supernatural substance. The hand is so real I reach out to it with a fingertip.

I find myself at the door, as it swings open. Dislocation..

"May I help you?" I asked.

"You're a bit young to be by yourself aren't you, Bagwell?"

"Who?"

I find myself sucking my thumb.  A baby crawls from the hotel room closet. Two years old.  Potentia.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"You."

"How can that be?" I said to him and myself who was myself.

He didn't answer but came in. He poured himself a couple of tumblers of

scotch.

"I'd offer you a drink but you look too young to drink," he giggled to me

which was he. I wanted a bottle. The grown up me drank the drink.

He said to me: "Don't even try to understand what is going on."

I nodded agreement.

"Is there anyone with you?" he asked.

"My sidekick.  His diaper needs changing.  Can you get me a bottle?" I found myself asking myself the big person now in the room.

The baby sat up and spoke:  "You ever heard of a GraceAngel automatic?" to the grownup who was apparently me as a grown up.

The man said, "Yeah, Driver told me about it right before---."

The baby's eyes lit up.  He said in gobbledygook baby talk:

"Something called a con-tract signed by the group is being paid up now. What's a con'tract?"

"I'm not sure," I said in adolescent talk.  I hurriedly put on my adolescent husky boy Bagwell suit replete with diaper.

"Bagwell", the baby said to me, "Where's Driver?  My daddy?"

I had my fucking cock out.

It was an unbelievable rush. There I was in the centre of a ballroom the size of an aircraft hangar and my cock was sneaking out of my fly. I had a rod on that ached and some barfly was watching me. Like he knew the score. He was recording everything, I could see his eye rotating along its Z axis, taking in every pixel of data, analyzing every breath for its obscene content.

A girl no younger than my mother when she gave birth came jiggling off the dance floor, her fat white breasts were popping out of her cum stained pink cocktail dress, a pack of slavering penguin suited drones panting after her, their cocks out four yards long leading them up her gaping vulva. The sucking and slurping sounds of debauchery were a hideous nightmare of the senses.

I threw up on the spot.

A barmaid was on the floor in a trice, lapping up my last meal with her tongue, showing me her adoring face of adulation all covered in carrot and strings of wine froth. I just had to get out of this hotel. It was driving me nuts.

I called room service.

No one was home.

I took this as my chance and (still in that towel I had wrapped around myself some three days ago at the insistence of Driver) tiptoed through reception. In one dark corner a sound of snuffling and milk sucking. I saw Bagwell as an old man, sucking on a horse-cock thick panatella, a billowing plume of leather smoke rose into the air above him. The ghost of all his past deeds coalesced into a phoenix of wonder.

"Mr. Bagwell." he addressed me in his own name which, for some reason, I didn't take as odd in the slightest. He was seriously trying to attract my attention now, having risen to his crocodile feet. He actually had me by the sleeve and he was trying with all his marketing might to stop me leaving this reception. I almost made it to the revolving doors when, horror of horrors, THE MAN appeared. The revolving doors were swiveling at about a million miles an hour and inside, buried within the spinning fabric of steel and glass was THE MAN.

He had a knowing grin scraped all over his face with an artistic trowel. A long arm with fourteen articulated joints came rushing out of the revolving doors of death and caught me by the collar. The hand gripped like a metal vice around the head of a tortured crook. The grip welding to solid metal so as to never let go. I tried to undress, but the crazy bendy arm was dragging me to the doorway spinning spinning lethal blades of retribution. I had clearly pissed THE MAN off and this was to be my penance. I would end up being ground to a red pulp over and over in the hotel foyer of this damn hotel until the end of time.

I could hear the whirring thwop thwop thwop of the spinning doors as he drew me into the machine of carnage. I could smell my own fear like burning tyre rubber, like grinding old gears. I was about to pass out and submit myself to my fate. Thought

No!!

And grabbed onto the steel frame of the door. My eyes coming open with a jolt of bright sunshine. It was driver's face that greeted me as the chrome window slid down. You couldn't hear any mechanism, it was like the thing rolled on mercury or something. The velvet cloud of grey cigar smoke gushed out. Followed by a gun they used to call a Grace Angel automatic. The butt of the gun was towards me.

"You're gonna need this." He said, with a knowing wink of his good eye.

Driver knew his munitions.