"I get arrested once more," Jack said, "I'll have to start using credit cards. What do we know about the girl? Her name? Fingerprints? Record? The bouquet? Anything?"

Sciortino shrugged.

"We got a couple of guys on it," he said. "It's an open case, Jack, I can't mouth off to you."

"You remember when I was in law school?"

"You worked harder than anyone I know. Eighteen, nineteen hour days. Classes. Hitting the books. Then, hauling on the docks."

"For what? To get caught in someone else's mess, see everything I worked for go down the tubes?"

"We got nothing, Jack."

Jack stopped. So did Sciortino.

"Prints don't match up to any in the records," Sciortino said. "No lead on the bouquet. The nurses on duty said it just appeared. We asked around the crib joints, escort services. From Albany to Springfield. No one says any of their girls are missing. Our CIs on the street, no one heard anything."

Jack started walking again. Sciortino called after him, "We'll turn up something, Jack. These things take time."

Sciortino watched Jack get into his car, start the engine, and drive away.

3.

Jack headed across the cemetery toward his car. The wind had dropped, although on his way to the funeral Jack had heard that the hurricane was moving up the coast. They'd been lucky so far, but the storm that had been threatening for days would eventually hit. Jack wondered how bad it would be and if he should tape the windows in his shack.

The still air carried the priest's words from Frank's grave: "God loved the world so much, He gave us His only Son that all who believe in Him might have eternal life."

Jack felt rather than heard the bass thud from the sound system of a car passing on the mall road skirting the cemetery.

"Have mercy, Lord...." The priest's words were lost in the still air.

Caroline left her uncle Dixie and sister Nicole, who were at Frank's grave, and hurried to catch up to Jack, who stopped when he saw her coming.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," Jack said. "I'm okay."

"That's it?" Caroline asked.

Jack shrugged.

"You never struck me as a quitter," she said. "I can see you walking away from the job, from me, even from yourself, from everything you worked for. But from Frank?"

She walked beside Jack toward Jack's car.

"The way I hear it," she said, "you got out of law school and sent out ... what was it? A hundred, two hundred resumes? They used to joke about it in the office. Jack Slidell, the guy who doesn't give up."

"The human pit bull, huh?" Jack said.

"That's right," Caroline said.

"I never liked that," Jack said.

"Two hundred resumes," Caroline said. "And one hundred ninety-nine rejections."

"Never liked that either."

"When no one else would give you a break, Frank hired you."

Jack opened his car door.

"Someone murdered Frank," Caroline said, "and framed you."

"We don't know that," Jack said.

Caroline waited.

"Frank's dead," Jack said, sliding behind the steering wheel. "And I don't have a lot more to lose."

"Then what's stopping you?" Caroline asked.

Jack started the car and, without even a wave, drove away.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

1.

Caroline headed up the dirt road, her car bouncing in the ruts. When she turned through the broad leaves that splayed across her window and first saw Jack's shack, she stopped for a moment before driving the last two dozen feet and parking in the mud next to Jack's car. From beside her on the front seat she took a large manila envelope and, getting out of the car, climbed the cinder block steps to the front porch.

The front door was unlocked. She entered. The late afternoon sun slanted through the dirty lace curtains, casting reptile scales across the doorsill.

"Jack," Caroline said, "there are a few cases I thought maybe you could help me with-"

She stopped, staring at Jack who stood in the midst of devastation. The cabin was torn apart. Furniture, lanterns, smashed. Everything that could be destroyed had been.

"Either someone decided I needed to redecorate," Jack said, "or someone's trying to warn me off looking into Frank's murder."

2.

Jack fixed a broken table leg as Caroline swept up shattered glass. The night was humid. Jack wore a T-shirt and jeans. Where Caroline's dress was sweaty, it clung to her body.

"Maybe you should get a gun?" Caroline said.

"I've got one," Jack said. "I keep it unloaded. That way things don't get messy."

Caroline approached Jack, drawn to him.

"Neatness," Caroline said, "is an overrated virtue."

"All virtues are overrated," Jack said.

They stood so close, Jack could feel the heat coming off her body.

"Why'd you come here?" he asked. "What do you want?"

"To help you."

"I usually handle things by myself."

"Even big jobs?"

"All my jobs are big."

"What about this one?"

"Biggest I've ever had."

There was a moment when they could have ended in each other's arms, but Jack broke the tension.

"And," Jack said, "the most dangerous."

"I've got a stack of what Robert calls fix-me cases..."

"Which you're going to toss my way?"

"I can use the help. You can use the money."

"You know I can't practice law."

"You can do research."

"I'm not an investigator."

Caroline nodded toward the files, which lay in a small stack on a side table.

"There's one," she said, "a client's convinced his wife is sleeping with his brother."

"I thought you wanted me to go after whoever killed Frank."

Caroline picked up one of the files.

"There's a girl who got a speeding ticket."

"Screw the files."

"She claims she was five miles below the limit."

"I was raised to do anything, even steal, rather than take charity, Five Spot."

"You spend a night going over these cases, you won't think it's charity."

"When I was a kid," Jack said, "payday was Friday. By Thursday, we'd be broke. I'd go with my dad to the market and watch him shoplift cans of sardines for dinner. My mother wanted more for me. Kept telling me, fly, fly higher. I got a scholarship, CCNY, then Fordham Law School.... And, when I started flying, she stood there below me, looking angry, because she couldn't fly, too. Every morning, she'd start with an eight-ounce glass full of gin. One day, it turned out to be Clorox."

"Jack," Caroline said, "whoever trashed your place..."

"Is more afraid of me than I am of him."

"You want help?"

"It's not your kind of work, Five Spot."

"I'm a quick study under the right teacher."

"How are you on top?"

"Even quicker."

"You're not going to like everything you see."

"Jack, after working with you, I'm used to that."

Caroline put her arms around Jack's neck and kissed him. Jack put his arms around her, pressed her damp body toward him. Caroline ran her hands up and down Jack's body.

"This is why I don't carry a gun."