"Meet me back here in the morning," Jack told Caroline. "Bix'll be watching out for you."

On the way to Mama Lucky's, Jack stopped in a Price Chopper to pick up a couple of jars of half-sour pickles, Mama Lucky's favorite.

Inside the supermarket, thunder rumbled over speakers in the produce department, followed by artificial rain, sprinkling the green beans, cucumbers, Brussels sprouts....

Outside, as Jack crossed the parking lot, he again heard thunder, this time cracking a few miles away over the river, followed by lightning and a wind that flung the car door back on its hinges while Jack slipped behind the steering wheel.

By the time Jack got to Mama Lucky's, a downpour swept the streets with sheets of rain.

On the sidewalk, a man heading into the wind leaned over, his hand holding his cap.

Inside Mama Lucky's, a heavyset man with scabs on his shaved head was trying to strap stag antlers onto the head of a naked whore.

Mama Lucky tilted her head, offering him her cheek, not her lips, to kiss.

"You've been neglecting me, Jack Slidell," she said. "Pickles won't do the job."

"Anything you want, Mama," Jack said. "Say the word."

"You been spending your time with that girlie you brought last time," Mama Lucky said, unscrewing one of the pickle jars and fishing for a spear.

"Have you heard about any new talent in town?" Jack asked.

"Sport-fucking never worked for you," Mama Lucky said. "When you jerk off, you have to fall in love with your hand."

"A guy who likes razors," Jack said.

"You have a close shave?" Mama Lucky asked.

Jack dropped his pants to show Mama Lucky the bloody bandage on his thigh.

"I'll ask around," she said.

2.

Unable to sleep, Caroline put her quilted robe on over the cotton panties and T-shirt in which she slept and padded downstairs to raid the refrigerator.

She was leaning over, left arm holding the door open, the glare from the refrigerator light making a pasty mask of her face, when she heard someone scuffing behind her.

She whirled around so fast, she knocked a plate of roast chicken onto the floor with a crash that made her-and Dixie, who had just come into the kitchen-both jump.

"Careful of the broken glass," Dixie said, grabbing paper towels and kneeling to scoop up the shards of glass, chicken, and jellied fat.

He was wearing an old-fashioned, ratty, maroon silk dressing gown over striped pajamas and backless leather slippers. A tuft of white hair stood up on the top of his head.

Caroline stepped out of the glass mess, also grabbed a paper towel, and ran the wad under the sink faucet.

Through the window over the sink, Caroline saw Bix standing across the street in the shadow of a large tree.

3.

The next morning, at Jack's shack, Caroline said, "You're trying to make sure I'm safe. Is it safe for you to stay here?"

Ignoring her, Jack said, "We've been thinking too small."

At his laptop, Jack logged onto the Internet.

"Frank's class-action suit...," he said. "Why limit the damage it could do to Mohawk? Electrical pollution's all over the country."

Jack checked the computer screen, jotted down some notes on a yellow pad, and went back to the computer keyboard.

"Keating's on the board of three other electric companies in the Northeast," Jack said. "And on the board of the North American grid."

"So," Caroline said, "we're not just talking about Keating anymore, are we?"

Jack's cell rang. He grabbed it.

"Yeah," he said.

On the other end of the line, Tremain said, "I never got fingerprints from the bowling ball your cowboy pal used."

"They couldn't lift any?" Jack asked.

"Fuck if I know what they could or couldn't do in the lab," Tremain said. "I never got the workup. Instead, I got a visit from two guys in white shirts, ties, and suits, with IDs from the Department of Agriculture. They were Feds all right, Jack, but no way these guys were from the Department of Agriculture. They wanted to know why I was asking about the prints from the bowling ball. Whatever the fuck you've gotten involved in, drop it."

Tremain hung up.

Before Jack had a chance to tell Caroline what Tremain said, his computer blinked.

The screen went black.

Jack hit some keys, thinking that his screen saver had kicked in. But Jack's screen saver was a moving star field. Not a black screen.

Nothing Jack did had any effect on the computer, which seemed as if it were being controlled over the Internet by someone unseen.

The C:/ prompt appeared on the top left corner of the screen. As Jack hit keys trying to stop it, all his files scrolled up, deleted one by one.

Any information Jack may have had on Frank or Jean or Stickman or Robert or Keating or electrical pollution was being purged.

"It doesn't matter," Caroline said. "We still know...."

Which is when the electricity went out.

The computer screen on battery power cast a pale glow as the deleted files scrolled past.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

1.

As he drove, Jack checked cars both in front of and behind him to make sure they weren't being tailed.

Jack said, "Bix told me the job he applied for-"

"The one in the prison?" Caroline asked.

"He heard through the grapevine he got it," Jack said. "The next day, they turned him down."

Jack made a sudden, random turn up a side street.

"They're going after you," Jack said, "after Bix...."

He doubled back, watching to see if any cars followed. Or if one car dropped off as another car picked him up.

"It doesn't matter," Jack said about his evasive driving. "We're not that hard to find."

Caroline looked over her shoulder out the car's back window.

"When I was a kid," Jack said, "we had a party line. You never knew who was listening in. Everybody knew everybody else's business."

Jack took a left onto County Route 9G. There were no cars either ahead of him or behind him.

"It can't just be about a class-action suit," Caroline said.

"Sure it can," Jack said. "People kill each other for fifty bucks."

2.

Jack took a sharp left, almost a hairpin turn, onto Route 66. Up ahead, a woman in a sequined gown, white boa, and feathered headdress was hitchhiking, holding a sign that read: Ghent Playhouse.

"At this point," Jack said about the hitchhiker, "I wouldn't even trust her."

Jack drove through Chatham, East Chatham. In Massachusetts, they passed a Shaker village, which had a circular building topped by a smaller circular second floor, like a gun turret.

Jack stopped for gas at a country store. While waiting to pay, he read a flyer on the counter: Hunters For The Hungry. Donate Venison To Food Pantries. Only Chopped Meat And Stew Cuts-Proper Labeling-Authorized Processers-Program Started In 1998-Minimum 5 Pounds. An Entire Deer Can Be Donated If It Is An Adult Doe Or Buck-Clean Kill-No Fawns-We Pay Processing-If Not Skinned Hide Becomes Property Of Processer-Special Arrangements Must Be Made For Deer Heads And Capes To Be Mounted.

Five miles down the road was an electric sign advertising: Carpet For Less-3 Rooms Of Carpets For $119 Up To 340 Sq. Feet.

In Mycenae, when Jack stopped at a red light, he started laughing.

Outside a Kansas Fried Chicken franchise, a man in a chicken suit was passing out advertisements: Best Breasts In Town.

Across the street, a second man in a chicken suit was also passing out advertisements-for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

When a man in a sports jacket stopped to take an advertisement from the second man in a chicken suit, the first man in a chicken suit shouted, "You're not going to eat this guy's roadkill, are you?"

The second man in a chicken suit shouted back, "Hey, Mac, work your own corner!"

"What?" the first man shouted, "you own the whole block?"

"Pigeons!" the second man shouted. "That's what they serve there."

The first man crossed the street.

"Get the fuck out of here," he said to the second man.

The first man in the chicken suit shoved the second man in the chicken suit.

"You want a piece of me?" the second man asked.

The man in the sports jacket, got into his car and drove away, leaving the street empty except for Jack and Caroline in their car, watching two men in chicken costumes fighting.

"That's it," Jack said. "That's it-everything anyone needs to know about what we are. What human beings are."

Jack laughed so hard he wept.

The light had turned green and red and green again.