"Someone call 9-1-1" the pimply faced college kid with curly hair and black framed glasses shouted from across the restaurant. A small crowd stood over a large well dressed man splayed out spread eagle on the sparkling red and white checkered linoleum floor. The curly haired kid straddled the well dressed man and pushed on his chest over and over. "Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen" the kid counted, then he leaned forward and performed mouth to mouth before resuming the chest compressions.

The sight of the curly haired kid's mouth pressed against the other man's made Big Mike's stomach churn. "Christ!" He pushed the plateful of uneaten food away and stared out the window.  Nothing had gone as planned on this trip, and now he wasn't even going to get breakfast before making the long drive back to Queens.

His jet black Mercedes sat parked under the red and yellow Route 17 Diner sign. In the trunk, Franky Gasio's body was growing stiff. Soon it would begin to stink. He should've never agreed to bring the damn body back. It went against everything he knew about doing these kind of jobs, and no one knew more about killing than Big Mike Tortarello, but the old man wanted to see Franky's body, and he'd pay an extra ten grand for it.

The kid's voice droned on. "Three, four, five, come on big guy hang in there. The ambulance is on its way." Out the window, the heavy morning traffic streamed by. The drivers, unaware of the commotion inside or the location of Big Mike's eighty-fifth victim, passed the little diner with hardly a glance. Seemingly out of nowhere, a gleaming red motorcycle materialized and sped into the diner parking lot. The powerful bike looked familiar, but Big Mike couldn't remember where he'd seen it before. The memory lapse surprised him.

Big Mike never forgot anything. His powers of recall were so good, in fact, as a young boy, teachers and psychiatrists used words like “photographic” and “eidetic” to describe them.

Of course, having a perfect memory brings its own set of problems. When nothing is forgotten, memories pile up and enter the thoughts at all the wrong moments. As a child, he'd learned to organize his mind into an imaginary maze of storage rooms where memories could be neatly tucked away. When Big Mike needed a memory, he simply went to the right room and checked it out. Some rooms he visited often, like the room where he kept the memories of the women he'd slept with or the room that contained his favorite wines. And then there were other rooms, darker rooms, he rarely visited. Some of these held images more graphic and violent than the most explicit horror films, and others held the painful memories of his childhood, including the early deaths of his parents.

Now, Big Mike went looking for the room that held the memory of the motorcycle. He was sure he'd seen one just like it on one of the jobs he'd done for Hiram Silverstein, the orthodox Jew who wouldn't eat pork but had no problem contracting for hits on people who stood in the way of his real estate development plans. Mike remembered thinking he'd like to ride a bike like that someday. Of course, at six foot seven and nearly four hundred pounds, he was much too large for a crotch rocket. They didn't call him Big Mike for nothing.

The rooms where he kept the memories of the jobs he'd done for Hiram took up a whole wing of his memory warehouse, but when he got there he found most of the wing had disappeared. The rooms and the memories they held were all gone. Only a handful of rooms remained in the wing, and none of them held the memory of the motorcycle. This had never happened before. He'd forgotten. Disoriented and confused, he focused his attention back out the window.

The rider, dressed in a shiny black jumpsuit, guided the bike to a parking spot directly below him and remained perched on the seat. In the background, the kid's counting continued. After each number the kid grunted from the exertion of pressing on the big man's chest. "One, grunt, two, grunt, three, grunt.”

Ignoring the counting and grunting, Mike studied the rider. A black helmet and tinted sun visor hid the rider's face. There was no way to know for sure, but, Mike got the feeling the rider was staring at him. After a long moment, the rider peeled off the helmet exposing shoulder length raven hair, alabaster skin, and candy apple red lips--a woman, and a beautiful one at that. She made eye contact with him and smiled. Her eyes were an unnatural golden color he'd never seen before. Jesus, he thought, that's both sexy and spooky all at once. Maybe he would have some fun on this trip after all.

With long deliberate strides, the rider made her way into the diner and seeming not to notice the pimply faced kid or the man dying on the floor, stepped around the crowd, and to Big Mike's surprise, strutted directly up to his booth. The glistening black jumpsuit looked to be painted on. The way it flowed over her breasts and hips left very little for the imagination.

He ran his hand through his thinning greasy black hair and flashed her his best smile. "Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

"Do you mind if I sit down?" she asked in a soft, raspy voice.

"Not at all, sweetheart."

The painted on jumpsuit made a crinkly sound as she slid into the booth across from him.

"Thank you."

Without prompting, she placed her smooth white hands on the table where he could see them just as he'd instructed so many others to do. She looked as if she'd been carved from marble like one of those statues at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas.

"Have we met?" Big Mike had never asked such a question before without knowing the answer.

The gold eyes flashed. "Not formally, but we've been to many of the same places together. I've had my eyes on you for quite some time now."

"Is that so, darling. Why is it I've never seen you before then?"