by David Black
King’s voice was strong. Melodic. Humorous.
“Congratulations,” Jack said.
“Why?” King said. “Life’s not an endurance contest. Or is it? I don’t care. I’m not going for any record. You Billy Slidell’s boy?”
“My people,” Jack said, “you wouldn’t know them.”
“Billy Slidell was the best tennis player I ever met,” King said. “Tried to teach me the backhand. I played tennis for seventy-five years and never did learn a decent backhand.” To Caroline, he said, “Young lady, when I was a boy in school I once knew a girl as beautiful as you are.”
“Thank you,” Caroline said. And introduced herself, “Caroline Wonder.”
“I knew a Caroline Wonder,” King said. “A long time ago. Colonel Wonder’s daughter.”
“That was my grandmother,” Caroline said.
“I think she would have married me,” King said. “But I was too shy to ask her. In this life, by the time you’re not too shy, you’re too old. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
Caroline glanced at Jack, who nodded for her to go ahead. Columbiaville was his world. This was hers.
“We heard a rumor,” Caroline started.
“You look bien elevee,” King said. “You should know better than to trust rumors.”
Again, Caroline glanced at Jack, who gave her his poker face.
“You’re right,” Caroline said. “I once heard a rumor at work. One I shouldn’t have trusted.”
“Rumors are like cut flowers,” King said. “Dead things people use to brighten up drab lives.”
“This one, though, is important to Mr. Slidell,” Caroline said. “Important to both of us. Someone said you know about a bouquet sent to a girl in a hospital.”
King looked benignantly on Caroline, saying nothing.
“Please, Mr. King,” Caroline said.
King sighed.
“I’m a gentleman,” he said. “Another gentleman came to me to ask a favor. Could I have one of the boys here buy a bouquet, something special, and deliver it to a hospital.”
“Who asked for the favor?” Jack asked.
“He didn’t want anyone to know,” King said. “That’s why he asked me.”
“Mr. King,” Jack said.
“I gave my word, Mr.—”
“Slidell.”
“That’s right. Mr. Slidell.”
“Two people have died.…”
“Look around you, Mr. Slidell. This place is filled with death. Do you think death matters that much?”
“Yes,” Jack said.
“To me, honor, my word, matters more,” King said. “You said I wouldn’t know your people. Maybe that’s the difference between your people and mine.”
2
Another gentleman came to me to ask a favor. Could I have one of the boys here buy a bouquet, something special, and deliver it to a hospital.
“All we have to do,” Jack said, “is figure out who that other gentleman is.”
“That should be easy,” Caroline said. “There aren’t a lot of gentlemen left in the world.”
Jack and Caroline walked down the long, sloping drive from Gainsvoort Gardens to the parking lot off Route 203.
Caroline said, “A dead end.”
Jack shook his head no and said, “We’ve been stirring up trouble.”
“I thought,” Caroline said, “we were trying to get out of trouble.”
“If you expected a cotillion,” Jack said, “you should have stayed in the ballroom.”
“Given the results, I don’t see it would’ve made any difference.”
“I’m the one in the jackpot, not you, Five Spot. You want to sit this one out, it’s okay with me.”
“Five Spot. Why do you call me that?”
“In fifth grade,” Jack explained, “I hung out in a store, the Acre General Store out on Route 66. It had a pinball machine called Five Spot. Cost a nickel to play. I used to save up. On the display, there was a picture of a woman I fell in love with.”
“You fell in love with a picture?”
“I figured someday I’d meet someone who looked like her.” Jack smiled.
“I look like a pinball bimbo?” Caroline asked.
“That tickles you?”
“You have no idea.”
“When I got supplies the other day, when I moved into the shack down by the boat basin, I stopped in the store. The machine’s still there.”
“Five Spot, huh?” Caroline said.
3
The woman on the pinball display was dressed in a harem costume, beaded and fringed top covering nose-cone breasts, a voluptuous belly with a green jewel in her navel, and translucent pantaloons covering a skimpy bikini bottom. Her arms were raised to her right, hands palms out, obviously in the middle of a belly dance.
“Still costs a nickel,” Caroline said.
“The good things never change,” Jack said.
Caroline stood at the old pinball machine, her hands on the flipper buttons. Jack stood behind her, his hands over hers.
“This is the way you used to do it?” Caroline asked.
“Not quite,” Jack said as Caroline moved her body back against Jacks. Bells rang and lights flashed. On the machine.
“Do you always hit the target?” Caroline asked.
“Every time,” Jack said.
At the shack, Jack parked, got out of his car, and started for the door. Standing first on one leg and then on the other, Caroline paused to take off her shoes—to save them from the muddy path. She was looking down when she heard the noise, a thud, like a bat against a softball.
Jack was falling as a man, face hidden in the dark, raised the two-by-four he had used to crack Jack’s head.
“Jack,” Caroline cried, running half on, half off the planks toward where the stranger was beating Jack with the two-by-four.
The stranger gave Jack one last thwak in the ribs before running to a pickup truck and roaring off.
Kneeling in the mud, Caroline cradled Jack, half conscious from the beating, in her arms.
CHAPTER TEN
1
Kerosene light flickered on Jack’s bruised face. One eye was swollen half closed. His upper lip crusted with dried blood. His shirt was off. Tigerlike welts striped his side, ribs. Caroline was sponging the wounds on his chest. Open beside her on the side table was her car emergency Red Cross kit.
“You’ve got great bedside manner,” Jack said.
“This isn’t exactly how I imagined we’d end up in bed,” Caroline said.
She touched a raw spot. Jack winced.
“Sorry,” Caroline said.
Caroline wrapped gauze around Jack’s chest.
“Is all that necessary?”
“Think of it as a fashion statement.”
Caroline touched a cut on Jack’s lip.
“This might need special treatment,” she said.
She ran her fingers over Jack’s mouth. Closed her eyes and leaned forward to kiss Jack, who, taking a deep breath, pulled back.
“You’re a good nurse,” he said.
“Doctor,” she said.
“You practice a lot?”
“I don’t have a lot of patience.”
“Which kind?” Jack asked.
Caroline kissed Jack again.
“I can tell you don’t have a lot of patience,” Jack said. “Did I tell you I can read minds?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re going to say, I’m not going to help you get killed.”
“And you’re going to say, If they wanted to kill me, you’d be in mourning by now.”
“And you’re going to say, Let’s leave all this to the cops.”
“And you’re going to say, Go back into Frank’s files, everything from the past six months, everything.”
“We know each other so well,” Jack said, “maybe someday we ought to go on a date.”
“I don’t date corpses,” Caroline said.
“W
hy not?” Jack said. “You know what they say about necrophilia? At least, you don’t have to worry about hurting your partner’s feelings.”
Caroline closed the first aid kid. Angrily.
“I thought you wanted me to find out what happened to Frank.”
“That was before this.”
“They stole my job—” Jack began.
“They?” Caroline asked.
“I worked hard to get where I am,” Jack said.
“Where are you, Jack?” Caroline asked.
“Back where I began,” Jack said. “That’s what I mean. If it hadn’t been for Frank’s murder—”
“You don’t know he was murdered,” Caroline said. “As for screwing up your life—if it hadn’t been Frank’s death, it would have been something else.”
“My fate, huh?”
“Your character. They pulled you in for obstructing justice. Resisting arrest. It’s amazing you weren’t disbarred years ago.”
“So my fate’s this car heading at me—”
“And your character is you being so stubborn you decide to play chicken when the driver of the car has had a stroke and can’t turn the wheel away. You think he’s trying to prove he’s more macho than you, Jack. But he’s dead. And you’d rather crash than get out of a dead man’s way.”
“But if he was alive…”
“You’d still be a fool to play chicken,” Caroline said.
She grabbed her bag and headed for the door.
“At least,” Jack said, “we now got a clue.”
“What are you talking about?” Caroline asked.
Gingerly, Jack touched a bruise and said, “Whoever hit me was a professional.”
Caroline slammed out.
2
Caroline balanced a doubled cardboard coffee cup, which splashed hot coffee onto her knuckles as she crossed the square in front of the Mycenae County Courthouse. Thrusting out his chin so he wouldn’t drip on himself, Robert took a sip from his cardboard cup.
“Smart move,” Robert said, “cutting free of Jack. That relationship wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Don’t get me started,” Caroline said.
“Does he have any idea who’s trying to scare him off?”
Caroline shook her head no, took a careful sip of coffee.
“Jack’s going to destroy himself,” she said.
They passed a stranger slamming his fist against one of the last public pay phones in town.
“You see that, chief?” the stranger said to Robert. “I work hard for my money, and the goddamn phone stole my quarter!”
The stranger kept hitting the telephone. Caroline and Robert walked on. Robert shaking his head.
“There was a time in this city when people were courteous,” Robert said.
“Long before our time,” Caroline said.
“—when the air here was sweet with the smell of the honeysuckle they dug up when they redid the square,” Robert said.
“Robert,” Caroline said, “you’re such a romantic!”
“If the commercial expansion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries hadn’t happened,” Robert said, “if the commercial expansion hadn’t given impetus to capitalism, if the rise of capitalism in France hadn’t outstripped the country’s slower, natural social and political change, if that imbalance hadn’t helped cause the French Revolution, if the Revolution hadn’t created an opening for Napoleon to seize power, if Napoleon hadn’t tried to conquer Europe, if the wars in Europe hadn’t given the United States a chance to take over shipping between Europe and the West Indies, if America’s expansion into shipping didn’t cause Great Britain to impress American sailors and interfere with American maritime trade, if Great Britain’s interference with American maritime trade didn’t encourage Jefferson and Madison to prohibit trade with Britain, if that prohibition didn’t contribute to the War of 1812, if the War of 1812 didn’t lead to the British blockade of American ports, if the blockade of American ports hadn’t made Mycenae one of the few protected ports in America, sailors wouldn’t have come here, if sailors hadn’t come here, Mycenae wouldn’t have become a center of prostitution, if Mycenae hadn’t become a center of prostitution—”
“Maybe people would still be courteous?” Caroline asked.
Robert shrugged.
“You’re still courteous, Robert,” Caroline said. “The last gentleman.”
“You grow up with someone like my daddy, who’s still fighting Shay’s Rebellion,” Robert said, “it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the history.”
3
Geigerman’s Gym was dirty. In one corner was a brass spittoon left over from the 1940s, still used. Young guys sparred, jumped rope, worked on the heavy bag. Two of the three rings were occupied. An older man was climbing out of the third ring after a workout. Honey LeVigne.
Jack came over to LeVigne.
“Just like Archie Moore,” Jack said.
LeVigne glanced sideways at Jack as he walked across the gym.
“You went for the nerve point on his hip,” Jack said. “A man’ll feel that head to toe.”
“You don’t look like a fighter,” LeVigne said, checking out Jack’s wounds, black-and-blue marks. “Not a good one anyway, you don’t.”
“I got caught by surprise,” Jack said. “I’m looking for a rematch.”
LeVigne grabbed a towel and hooked it around his neck.
“Your friend,” LeVigne said, meaning whoever had beaten Jack up, “he should’ve gone for the body. Like Hagler. Frazier. Work on the body, the guy won’t last five rounds.”
“He wasn’t looking to win the match,” Jack said, “just sign an autograph on my face.”
“So you’d remember him, huh?” LeVigne said.
“But he knew how to throw a punch,” Jack said. “You know anyone who does that for a living?”
“Freelance, any palooka’ll grab a fifty, figuring he’s just going to get a workout, save time in the gym,” LeVinge said. “Shit, a twenty’ll do it.”
LeVigne disappeared into the showers. Jack watched a young kid on the speed bag.
“You the man looking for somebody?” someone said behind Jack, close to his ear. The voice was a hoarse whisper, as if the speaker had been punched in the larynx and never recovered. Kevin Hooper. A big man in gray sweats.
“How many fights you got?” Jack asked.
“In or out of the ring?” Hooper asked. “You want to go a round?”
Jack looked Hooper up and down. Tenderly touched a mouse under his left eye and said, “I don’t have any sweats.”
“I fought guys worse dressed than you,” Hooper said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1
Caroline sat at her desk at Milhet & Alvarez, going over files, one file in particular. She read it, puzzled. Outside a young law clerk, Curtis Lee, passed, pulling his bow tie loose.
“Curtis,” Caroline said.
Unbuttoning his top shirt button and stretching his neck in a circle, Curtis came into Caroline’s office.
“These files,” she held them out for him to see, “they were all Robert’s, right?”
Curtis nodded. Caroline tapped the file that especially had caught her interest.
“This one,” she said.
Curtis read, “Gaynor, Jean. Speeding ticket.” He looked at Caroline. “What’s the problem?”
“Is she one of our regular clients?”
“No.”
“Her parents? Are they our clients?”
Curtis shook his head no.
“These little fix-me cases,” Caroline said. “We do them as a courtesy for our regular clients. Why are we doing this one?”
Curtis shrugged.
“According to this morning’s paper, she’s the one found dead in Frank’s motel room,” Caroline said. “This address, Paul Gaynor…”
“Husband?” Curtis said.
“Could be,” Caroline said. “I think I’ll find out.”
2
In
the second ring at Geigerman’s, Jack, gloved and in street clothes, circled away from Hooper, who, grinning, flicked a few feints. Jack backpedaled.
“So we tango,” Jack said. “What do you got for me?”
“I surely got something for you,” Hooper said.
He popped Jack in his already bruised face. Jack jabbed, but Hooper was too fast. He got in under Jack’s left and opened the cut over Jack’s right eye.
“I meant information,” Jack said, blinking away the blood.
Hooper cracked Jack’s nose, which started to bleed.
Again, Jack jabbed and missed.
“When I was a kid,” Jack said, “I used to be a street fighter.”
“Pity we’re not in the street,” Hooper said.
Hooper got inside and hit Jack over the heart. Jack went gray.
“You want to know who beat you up?” Hooper asked.
He thumped Jack over the heart again. Jack rebounded off the ropes.
“Does this feel familiar?” Hooper asked.
He connected with a combination, Jack’s kidney and an uppercut to Jack’s cut lip, which opened up again.
“What happened to your two-by-four?” Jack asked.
“Wouldn’t fit in my glove,” Hooper said.
He swung. Jack sidestepped.
“Who hired you?” Jack gasped.
Hooper hit Jack, a left to the head, a right to the body, another left to the head. Jack staggered back, trying to shield the blows. Hunched, Hooper came in for the kill. Jack put up his gloves.
“Wait,” Jack said. “Wait a minute.”
“Hurt?” Hooper grinned.
“No,” Jack said. “Got to, got to…”
Jack yawned. A big yawn. Yawns are contagious. Hooper yawned—and Jack, who had faked the yawn, used the opening to hit Hooper. A left to the heart, a right to the temple, a left to the jaw, a right to the jaw.
Hooper went down.
Jack hung over him, panting. Out of the corner of his good eye, Jack saw LeVigne, ringside, in a lime green shirt, mustard yellow slacks, and worn but polished tasseled loafers.
“Hooper never could take a punch,” LeVigne said.
“Hooper?” Jack asked.
“Kevin Hooper,” LeVigne said. “Piece of shit. Surprised you let him do you so much damage.”
