The cigarillo looked at me; somewhere behind it, Jerry G was looking at me, too. "You don't have the size for a strongarm. You're no pipsqueak, but I wouldn't hire you on as a bouncer, that's for f.u.c.king sure."

"I'd get a nosebleed up on those boxes. No, my specialty wasn't handling problems or convincing people not to be problems."

"Your business is removing removing problems." problems."

"Used to be." I held my hands up in surrender, my empty hands. "I retired. I made a lot of money, and I retired."

"So you just happened to be in Haydee's Port."

"I heard a good time could be had."

"Got that right. So, then...you just want to pay my papa your respects? I don't think so."

I shook my head. "No. I want to tell him about somebody I saw over at the Paddlewheel. Somebody I recognized."

He settled a hand on my shoulder. Gently. His smile emerged from the darkness, Cheshire Cat style. "Jack, you're going to have to tell me. The only path to my pop is through me. I'm the gatekeeper, capeesh capeesh?"

I capeeshed capeeshed.

"I saw a guy I'd worked with once in the old days," I said. "He was a specialist in hit-and-run. You know, 'accidents'?"

The hand came off my shoulder, the smile disappeared, and the cigarillo tip stared.

"I believed he was casing that guy Cornell, who runs the Paddlewheel-"

"I know who Cornell is."

"And I think Cornell was his mark."

"How do you know, Jack? Did you talk to this old pal of yours?" do you know, Jack? Did you talk to this old pal of yours?"

Improvising like a jazz solist, I said, "I only worked one job with him, a long time ago, and that was before I had my face worked on."

"You had a plastic surgery job? That good, was it?"

"My mother wouldn't know me. Anyway, I didn't want any part of it. No skin off my a.s.s if my old 'pal,' as you put it, takes Cornell out. My experience is, anybody with a target on his back probably mostly put it there himself. f.u.c.k the guy."

"All right," Jerry G said.

He'd liked the sound of that, I thought.

"Anyway, last night, or I guess this morning, I was in my car in the Paddlewheel parking lot. I drank too much and fell asleep in the back seat. Something woke me, and I realized it was daylight, and I saw a couple of Cornell's security guys grabbing Monahan. That's his name, Monahan, the hit-and-run specialist."

"What do you mean, grab?"

"Well, more than grab. One of 'em smashed his head into the steering wheel. Then another shoved him over, and took off out of there, and the other Cornell security guy followed in a second car."

"Disposing of the body..."

"Obviously."

Silence.

He dropped the cigarillo, crushed it under his heel, and stepped into the light. "And what does this have to do with my father? And me?"

I shrugged. "I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. I can see who around Haydee's Port would want rid of Cornell. If a hit on that guy has gone t.i.ts up, I figure you guys would want to know about it."

"Just out of the goodness of your heart."

"Not really. I thought your papa might think the information was worth a buck. Or maybe...well, I should save this for him."

He thumped my chest with a finger. Lightly but the threat was there. "No, Jack. Give it to me."

I shrugged. "I thought you might need somebody else to step in, and take care of Cornell."

"...But you're retired retired, Jack."

I grinned at him. "Yeah, but I retired early. I'm still healthy enough to pick money up in the street."

His tan puss split into a white grin. He and Cornell were two f.u.c.king peas in one f.u.c.king pod.

He slipped an arm around my shoulder and said, "Let's play cards."

We played cards. I continued to play conservatively, hanging onto my stacks of chips, which were the envy of the others. I continued not to bluff. When my wrist.w.a.tch said it was nearing six, I finally asked how late we were going to go.

I could see from the expressions around me that the others would have gone on till either h.e.l.l froze over or they'd won their money back. Neither seemed likely, and our host knew it.

"Once more," he said.

He dealt a simple game of five card stud. I'll cut to the finish, which may be of interest. I had an ace of diamonds up and otherwise bupkus. Jerry had two kings up. We each had two cards down, Jerry having dealt the first and last cards that way. The others had dropped out, and along the way, not a single other ace had been on the board.

Time to bluff.

I had the bet, and tossed out a blue chip.

Jerry G gave me the snort laugh. "You want me to think you've got an ace down, Jack? I don't think you do."

He raised me a blue chip.

So I raised him another blue chip. "It's only five hundred to find out."

He was frowning. I didn't think it was unfriendly, just a deep, thoughtful frown. He was losing. Down maybe three grand.

"f.u.c.ker doesn't bluff, Jerry G," the surgeon said.

Jerry G snorted another laugh and threw in his cards. Because it was the last round, though, he gathered all the cards, and I noted him discreetly checking my hand, to see what I'd had. He flinched, but resisted the urge to let everybody know I had indeed, finally, been bluffing. He hadn't bought the right to see those cards, after all, and that was bad manners indeed.

Jerry G cashed everybody in. I was up six thousand and change above the five thousand I'd brought along. Hands were shaken all around, the little barmaid provided everybody with coffee and sweet rolls (the coffee in Styrofoam to-go cups to prevent the group from lingering), and soon Jerry G and I were by ourselves.

"Let's talk outside," he said.

I followed him, and two guys grabbed me. One was the big bald black b.a.s.t.a.r.d and the other was the limpnose p.r.i.c.k from the dance club. They dragged me out of the lot and into an alleyway between the Lucky Devil and some other dive, and Jerry G followed along. I have no idea how he set it up, other than maybe enlisting his goons by way of a whispered command he'd given the barmaid. He'd risen from the table to do this more than once, and she'd slipped out several times, presumably for supplies, and now I was up against a brick wall, the black guy holding onto my one arm, the noseless guy onto the other, doing my Jesus on the cross impression.

"You're working for Cornell," Jerry G said, grinning at me, and it was a vicious thing, a horsey look worthy of a stallion getting ready to kick your head in. "You were seen there, you were heard there, and I gave you a chance to play it straight, but you thought you'd f.u.c.k me, didn't you?"

"I did talk to Cornell! I hadn't finishing tell you-"

"No, you are are finished." finished."

And Jerry G walked away, into the dawning day, while in the darkness, the two bouncers took turns. I felt a fist rattle my teeth, and another bash my nose, then my belly played punching bag first for one, then the other, while I coughed and gurgled on blood. I wish I could tell you this is where I came roaring back, but the truth is, I fell to my knees and then my face found the filthy brick floor of the alley and I got used to the taste of blood while they kicked me in the a.s.s and the ribs, and finally the toe of a shoe caught the side of my head.

My last thought was, Shouldn't have bluffed the f.u.c.ker... Shouldn't have bluffed the f.u.c.ker...

Chapter Eight.

Somebody was asking me a question.

A woman. A girl. Some Some kind of female... kind of female...

I couldn't make it out, but I felt hands on me, small, struggling to get hold of me, trying to lift me, but I just wanted to sleep.

"Come on...come on...get to your feet. They might come back back..."

As those words came into aural focus, so did the pain, starting with a blinding headache. I opened my eyes, saw a blur, and shut them again. I was on my side, on something hard, but moving only made it worse. My instinct was to stay put.

"Get up up..."

The hands pulled on me, and I found myself standing, through no real effort of my own, a broken puppet whose improbable limbs went in every direction but the right ones, operated by an unseen puppeteer, and the headache eased just a little to let in the pools of pain that were throbbing in seemingly random regions around what had once been my body.

"You have to help help...They're coming back back..."

That was when I remembered where I was, if not who I was, and what had happened before I took my nap on a brick bed, specifically that I'd been beaten b.l.o.o.d.y, and not long ago, because the blood was still warm and wet in my mouth and on my face.

I willed my feet to support me and my legs went along with it and my eyes focused enough to tell my savior was the little blonde stripper I'd done the favor for. She was in a black silk baseball-type jacket and her makeup was off and her hair was ponytailed back and she looked about twelve. She also looked scared s.h.i.tless.

"You have a car?" she asked.

What the f.u.c.k was this, small talk?

But I nodded.

"Parked close?"

She was on my right, helping my legs hold me up. With my left hand, my wrist limper than Paul Lynde's, I gestured toward the street.

"Ponty," I said.

She was walking down the alley toward daylight and the street. "Pontiac?"

"Boo," I said. Not trying to scare her: trying to say...

"Blue?"

She paused at the mouth of the alley where daylight blinded me. A few moments, and I could see, sort of. n.o.body on the street. Not a car moving. Not a pedestrian. I willed my neck to turn two inches to the right and said, "There..."

"Two-tone blue?"

"Yeah."

We were close to it. She only had to drunk-walk me twenty feet before leaning me against the side of the Sunbird. She looked all around her, like a frightened bird, while one of her little hands dug in my front pants pocket, digging, searching. Not as much fun as it sounds.

I heard the jangle of the car keys as she drew them out and she unlocked the door on the rider's side, and stuffed me in, shut me in, and came around and got in on the driver's side.

"I don't take my car to work," she said.

I had no comment.

The Sunbird was moving.

"I'm only a few blocks away. Usually walk it. But I can't walk you you that far." that far."

Interesting information, but again, I let it pa.s.s. I was busy waiting to see if my head would come apart in pieces like a barrel with the rungs removed.

"Stay awake," she said. "Stay awake till we get there."

The unpaved side street she pulled onto made for a rough ride. I understood how a pinball machine must have felt when a ball was running around loose inside it and smacking into things. But it kept me awake.

She pulled up at a mobile home, yellow and white, not very big. A red Mustang circa 1969 was parked out at the curb, where rust was eating it. No sidewalk, no trees. A row of mobile homes, maybe six, but who was counting?

"Candy," I said. I was not requesting food.

She was struggling to get me pried out of the rider's side and onto my feet. "What?"

"Your name."

"You don't miss much, do you, Jack?"

She remembered my name, too.

She was walking me past the Mustang onto and across a tiny front yard where crab gra.s.s was trying to grow and failing. Like a bad hair transplant.

The hardest part was her getting me up the three wooden steps, and not having me fall back down them while she held onto me with one hand and tried to unlock the door with the other. She couldn't quite get the key in the slot and finally just pounded a tiny fist on the wood and yelled, "Honey? Are you up?" Are you up?"