Inside the elevator were a UPS driver with a hand truck, a cleaning woman and two more Zorros — a short one with a black suit, turtleneck and velvet cape, and the stoop-shouldered one who had been staring at Rom.  They all looked at each other for a few floors. Then the short one looked at the sword Rom carried and spoke.
     "Hey, nice job."  He extended his hand.  "I didn't figger the real one would show up."
     "Thanks."
     "Hell, I was just tryin' to meet Howard."
     Rom was about to speak when the third Zorro cleared his throat.  "Fuck both of you," he said.  "I'm Zorro, I shoulda been in there.  I'll take that."  He grabbed the sword from Rom.  Rom and the short Zorro exchanged looks.  "Listen," the third continued, "you don't wanna fuck with me.  I know who you are, OK?"
     Just then the elevator doors opened into bedlam.  In the lobby a dozen Zorros jostled with an equal number of cops.  A crowd of about 50 cheered the arrival of new Zorros.
     An older cop with a gold badge stepped up to the elevator.  The slouching Zorro, still trying to face Rom down, had his back to the open door.  "OK," said the cop.  "Which one of yez is Zorro?"  Rom and the turtlenecked Zorro both pointed to the third.  "Oh, so you're Zorro."
     "You're fuckin' right I'm Zorro!" he yelled, turning around.
     "Terrific!" said the cop.  "Come with me."  He grabbed the sword and gave it to a uniformed officer.  Two more cops each grabbed an arm.
     "No! No! Wait!  I'm not Zorro, I'm not!  This guy is, this guy here!"
     "Yeah, yeah, sure," said the older cop.  "We heard it all.  You got the sword, don't bullshit us."  The cop reached for his prisoner's mask, but the man began to struggle, and in a moment all the cops in the lobby had converged on the ruckus.  Now Rom noticed news crews scrambling to catch the action.  There was no sign of Lopez or Melody.  He looked around for Cassandra but couldn't spot her. Damn!  Why didn't he take the pullover shirt?  And where were his sunglasses?
     He slipped away from the excitement and out the big glass door and gestured for a cab.  What were the chances, he wondered, that a New York cabdriver would stop for a masked man?  Just then, from behind him, came a voice: "Over there!  It's him!"
     Rom looked back  to see the UPS guy pointing to him; the cops were letting the other Zorro go.  Now a couple photographers were starting toward him.  Rom stepped into Madison Avenue, cars honking at his dangerous jaywalk.  He could hear the scuffle of feet behind him.  They were coming.  Damn!  If the cops didn't get him, the press would.  Panic stung his heart.
     Halfway across Madison, Rom was almost hit by a limo.  It stopped, and a door opened.  Melody Marven's head popped out.   "Get in," she said, "unless you like to sign autographs."
     Rom jumped in and, as the limo took off again, landed awkwardly beside the mayor of New York City.  He sat there, sweating, breathing hard, in the left-hand rear seat.  Across from him sat Melody, still smiling.  Next to her sat Lopez, filming away, and next to him the stone face of Gideon Peng hung like a moon between his headphones.  The intercom phone buzzed. The mayor picked it up.
     "Yes, sergeant . . . not yet . . . good idea.  Thank you."  She replaced the receiver and looked at the man in black.  "Sgt. Ruiz says he'd feel better if you fastened your seat belt."
       Rom did.  "Thank you," said the mayor.  "And let me say I wouldn't have stopped if Miss Marven hadn't, shall we say, insisted."
     "He saved my life, your honor," said Melody.
     "Yes, yes, we heard all about it. You know, Melody, I didn't mind shuttling you around town this morning while you did your personal business, but picking up your friends on the street could be stretching my good nature."  Melody managed a helpless smile.
     Rom felt like jumping right out again.  The mayor turned to him and held out her hand.
     "Carole Fazio.  Pleased to meet you, I think."
     Rom returned her firm handshake.  "Thank you.  I, uh, guess you know who I am."
     The mayor turned to Lopez.  "You like to film everything, don't you, Fitz?"
     "Tape is cheap, your honor."
     "Just so, could you put that on hold a few minutes?"  Lopez put the camera down into his lap and looked at Rom, who kept his eyes focused on the mayor.
     "All I know," she said, "is you're some guy from Jersey with too much free time on your hands."
     Rom regarded the elegant, 60ish woman sitting across from him.  Her tailored dark-gray suitjacket and knee-length skirt had narrow teal pinstripes, echoed by small turquoise earrings. Her short, mostly gray hair framed a narrow, friendly face.  Her rimless eyeglasses slightly magnified her brown eyes, and her lips, now puckered in assessment, were unpainted.  Carole Marie Fazio, 30 years a schoolteacher, had served three years as Staten Island borough president before emerging the surprise winner in a three-way primary for the Republican nomination for mayor of New York, then pummeling her Democratic opponent in the general election.  That challenger — Jacob Hamring, a self-made real estate tycoon from Queens — had helped Fazio by drinking too much champagne at a campaign dinner in Brooklyn ten days before the election and suggesting that the slum-ridden South Bronx be razed and turned into a theme park to attract wealthy Japanese tourists.
     Fazio, who knew that most New Yorkers agreed with the notion of demolishing the South Bronx, nevertheless made political hay by accusing Hamring of  "selling out New York" to the Japanese.  In a city where a good percentage of real estate had been grabbed already by overseas investors, the characterization stuck, and Hamring had spent the last week of the campaign explaining and sucking wind.
     Now, four years later, Fazio was riding a swell of good luck and relative prosperity to a second term, if she could get past the inflammatory rhetoric of her opponent, Alvin Shackleton, a black minister from Harlem who had manipulated his way into the Democratic primary and skillfully used the media to promote an us-vs-them campaign that had fired up the city's low- and middle-income voters.
     Fazio had proven a blunt but thoughtful speaker and a political realist, and had pushed several important pieces of infrastructure-rebuilding legislation through Albany. Rhetoric-weary New Yorkers were responding favorably to the evidence of her efforts: bridge repairs, subway improvements, massive grants for water system upgrades, and — most popular — an aggressive campaign to eliminate potholes in city streets.  Charismatic and unmarried, she'd proven herself able to run the city, despite the drawback of constant scrutiny as the city's first woman mayor, and she'd attracted the attention of the Republican National Committee as a potential presidential candidate, a development she pretended to take lightly.
     Rom felt a bit foolish sitting before this important, accomplished woman, wearing a scarf and an increasingly irritating mask on his face.
     "Thanks for picking me up," he said meekly.  "My public wanted a piece of me."
     "Welcome to show biz," said Fazio, her smile warming a bit.  "I heard part of the show.  You handled yourself pretty well.  If you ask me, it takes as much bravery to face Howard Stern as it does to take on hooligans in the park."
     "Thanks.  You came off pretty well yourself."
     "I felt like strangling the son of a bitch," she said.  "Tattooed Lesbian Dial-a-Date!"
     Everybody laughed, and some tension dissolved.
     "By the way," she said, "knock it off, will you?"
     "What— "
     "We have policemen in this city who are paid good money to uphold the law."  Now she leaned toward Rom.  "Are you trying to put them out of work?"
     "No, ma'am, I— "
     "Not only that, but you're going to get yourself hurt.  Did you think of that?"
     "Well, I— "
     "And you must not go around stealing policemen's horses."  She sat back.  "Doesn't that look good on the news?"  A telephone chirped at her elbow.  "Excuse me."
     Rom and Melody looked at each other.  Was Melody flashing him some thigh?
     Fazio spoke into the phone.  "Yes, it's him . . . Listen, Frank, what was I going to do, leave him out there to be eaten alive? . . . Your guys weren't anywhere near him."
     Melody leaned toward Rom and whispered.  "It's the police commissioner."
     "So you want me to drop him off someplace for you?"  Now Melody got the mayor's attention.  "Hold on, Frank," said the mayor.  She put her hand over the mouthpiece.  "What is it?"
     "Mayor Fazio, please think about this.  I urge you not to turn him in."
     "Melody, don't think I—"
     "This is one of the good guys.  He helps people.  Why turn him in?"
     "What am I supposed to do?  Drive him to the state line?"
     "You don't have to do that.  Just drop him off somewhere, anywhere."
     Fazio studied her a long moment, then looked at Rom again.  He'd never felt sillier. Fazio spoke into the phone again.  "Hold on a moment, Frank.  Sorry about this."  She hit the "Hold" button and replaced the receiver, then picked up the intercom phone.
     "Sergeant, what's behind us? . . . Two of them?  Are they ours? . .. OK, thanks."  She hung up the intercom.  "Looks like two units from Central Park Precinct are following us.  They'll be friends of the cop whose horse you stole."
     "So once he leaves the limo,"  Melody said, "he's dead meat."
     "Looks like it."
     "Listen, you're the mayor.  You can't do anything?"
     "I'm the mayor, not the governor.  I don't do pardons."
     "OK, don't pardon, just get the commissioner not to prosecute.  He's got discretion in which cases his office pursues, right?"
     Rom watched Melody's blue eyes flash with enterprise.  She was leaning forward and had her hand on Rom's knee.
     Fazio seemed stymied. "But then it'll seem like I'm condoning vigilantes, and that's the wrong message to send."
     "Well," Melody continued, "you could issue a statement that while you deplore vigilantes, the exceptional courage shown by this man — "
     "It'll never wash."
     "Mayor, think about it.  You saw how those people were swarming around him at the radio station.  He touches something in people.  They respond to him.  He's a hero, like it or not."
     The mayor thought a moment.  Rom glanced at Lopez, who was smiling surreptitiously, trying to look out the window.  Peng still quietly watched the masked man. With a strange mixture of awe and helplessness, Rom regarded the two women who were now deciding his fate.
     "Think about it," continued Melody.   "You can do a lot worse than being good to your city's hero."
     The mayor looked at Rom and grimaced.   "I don't know . . ."
     "Look at it his way.  Election is a few weeks away.  You've got the higher-income voters in your corner thanks to the improved fiscal shape of the city.  You've got some middle-class voters but not enough for comfort.  Shackleton's skimming the undecideds, and he's got a lock on the lower-income vote.  Is it safe to say you could use some shoring up?"
     The mayor sighed.  "I would breathe easier if the polls showed me doing better there, yes."
     "So, you've got the people who read the Journal and the Times.  Help yourself to the people who read the News and the Post.  Did you see the Post editorial today?"
     "Of course.  They complimented him."
     Melody leaned forward again.   "They coronated him."
     For a long moment Fazio frowned at Rom.  "Listen, fella.  I get you off, you go be a hero in Jersey or somewhere, OK?"
     Rom grinned stupidly.   "Deal."
     Melody sat back, beaming.  Fazio tried out a stern look on her that went nowhere.  She reached for the phone again and looked out the window at the traffic on Fifth Avenue, where they were now heading south.
     "Frank?  Sorry about that.  I've been negotiating here.  Listen, call off the dogs on this guy, will you please? . . . Yes, drop the charges."
     Melody crossed her legs, letting her skirt ride high on her thigh.  Rom swallowed hard.
     "Frank, this is not a complicated thing I'm asking here.  Just decline to prosecute, and let him get out of town in one piece . . . Look, just trust me on this one, OK? . . . Because I'm the mayor and you work for me.  Is that one good reason? . . . Humor me, Frank.  I haven't even made it to the office yet, and I'm having a rough day.  So far I've been stood up by the Mexican trade ambassador and invited to a tattooed lesbian party . . . Never mind, just do this for me, OK? . . . Thank you . . . I know.  Thanks, Frank . . . Goodbye."
     She looked at Melody, and at the way Rom was looking at Melody, smiled and punched another line on her phone.   "Ellen?  Get me Ruby in the Press Office."  She moved the mouthpiece away.  "So you're a teacher?"
     "Uh, yes."
     "What grade?"
     "High school."
     "Ah. I taught, you know.  Also high school, in Staten Island.  Sometimes I— excuse me."  She spoke into the phone again.  "Ruby? . . . Where's Ruby? . . . Get her.  I'll wait.  Tell her don't hurry, it's only the mayor."
     She looked at Lopez, who smiled evenly.  The mayor leaned toward Melody.
     "I presume these, er, negotiations will not be a part of your report?"
     "Absolutely not."  said Melody.
     "Don't screw me, now."
     "No way."
     "Hmmmpf," said the mayor.  She spoke into the phone again.  "Ruby, get the press over to the Blue Room in about 30 minutes.  We'll have a short announcement on this Zorro thing but no questions.  Also, ask Ellen to get the police commissioner back on the line.  And find a tin badge somewhere."