"Yeah, it might go off unexpectedly."

Jack untwined her hands and gently, kindly pushed her away.

"Even twelve-speeds have to put on the brakes going downhill," Jack said. "And where we're going to find Frank's killer is all downhill."

3.

Jack and Caroline crossed the street toward Empire State Florists.

"The girl who was with Frank," Jack said, "when she was in the hospital, someone sent her a bouquet. With a flower in it I've never seen before. We find out where it came from, Five Spot, maybe we find out who sent it."

A bell rang as they entered the shop.

The florist, a young woman with a crest of dyed white hair that made her look like an egret, studied the book of flowers Jack had brought in.

"You're sure the bouquet included this?" the egret asked.

Jack nodded.

"White fringed orchid," the egret said. "We don't see that in bouquets that often. If at all. Not around here anyway. There's a specialty shop in town might handle it. Afton Florists."

Mr. Afton, an elderly man in a cream cardigan, tapped Jack's book of flowers with his forefinger.

"The man who bought the bouquet asked for something special," Mr. Afton said. "That's why I included the white fringed orchid."

"What did the man look like?" Jack asked.

"Ask me about flowers, I can describe plants I haven't had in stock for a decade," Mr. Afton said. "But people...?"

He shrugged.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

1.

The alley off Columbiaville Street was lined with peep shows and cheap shops selling drug paraphernalia and porno. A two-block red-light zone in upstate New York. For years, Mycenae had been the drug depot of the mid-Hudson, peddling dope from Albany and Troy to the west, to the Berkshires to the east. An area filled with the hopeless poor and college students with more money than sense.

A few hookers strolled, giving the come-on to the even fewer downstate weekenders, most of whom were male couples. In the 1980s, Mycenae had become a popular gay community with regular Thursday evening tea dances and a local transvestite coffee house, Coffee Grounds, where, early in the morning, men in 1940s dresses and spike heels shambled in, unshaved, for breakfast.

A bar blared recorded Zydeco music: Queen Ida and Clifton Chernier's "Allons a Grand Coteau." The bar light cast a paradoxically nursery glow on the surroundings, all pink and baby blue.

Caroline followed Jack. The music from the bar changed to Richard and Mimi Farina, Sixties head music. Jack stopped at the doorway of the town's only topless joint, where an old man wearing electric blue polyester pants and a striped pajama top, Skinny Wecht, lounged. When he spotted Jack, he grinned, showing a mouthful of gold teeth.

"Hey, Jackie-boy," Skinny said, "long time."

"I've been busy, Skinny," Jack said. "Mama Lucky in?"

"'Til she dies," Skinny said.

2.

Inside Mama Lucky's Topless, three girls wearing not much more than a smile shuffled on top of the bar. In the corners, a few girls were lap dancing. A man sitting by himself patted Caroline's ass as she passed. She glared at him and moved closer to Jack.

"You spend a lot of time here?" Caroline asked.

"Skinny taught me how to play pool," Jack said.

"What else did he teach you?" Caroline asked.

"You notice his teeth?" Jack asked. "Got them all drilled and filled with gold. That's where he carries his stake. Figures that way he'll never get his pocket picked."

"He bets the gold in his teeth?" Caroline asked. "What happens if he loses?"

"Skinny never loses," Jack said.

A blond, six-and-a-half feet tall, stood against the wall. She gestured to Caroline.

"Honey," the blond asked, "do I have anything on the back of my dress?"

Languidly, the blond turned around.

"A smudge?" she asked. "Some soot? Nothing? Could you just smooth it out in back?"

Uneasy at the request, Caroline glanced at Jack, who shrugged.

"It gets so wrinkled in this heat," the blond said.

Caroline straightened the back of the blond's dress. The woman undulated under Caroline's hand, like a cat arching. Caroline stepped back.

"You look uncomfortable," Jack said.

"It was just so odd," Caroline said, "having a woman react that way to my touch."

"Don't worry," Jack said. "Tiny there isn't a woman."

Caroline took Jack's arm. Jack glanced down at how she was clutching him and smiled as they passed other women and transvestites, who all greeted Jack: "Hey, there, Jackie ... Hey, Jack ... Jack, boy...!"

At the back of the room, two thugs flanked a door. When Jack and Caroline approached, the thug on the left murmured, "Where you been?" The thug on the right murmured, "Hey, you, Jack...." They stood aside to let Jack and Caroline pass.

Through the door was a dark stairway. As they started climbing, Caroline pressed even closer to Jack.

"You're popular around here," Caroline said.

"I once did someone a favor," Jack said.

"I shouldn't ask, right?"

"Right."

3.

On the other side of a metal door at the top of the stairs was an office. Despite the desk and file cabinets, the place looked more like a bedroom. Dominating the space was a huge bed, and in the bed was the fattest woman Caroline had ever seen. Mama Lucky. Propped up on half-a-dozen pillows and sweating profusely despite the air conditioning and the five electric fans, which were arranged around her in a semicircle. Near her was a magnum of Jack Daniel's.

"That you, Jack Slidell?" Mama Lucky said. "I won't ask how the hell you been. You been up to your stubble in trouble, and you come to Mama Lucky like they always do for a little consolation and advice." She nodded to a chair. "Put it down."

Jack sat, gestured for Caroline to sit, which she did, primly. Mama Lucky stared at Caroline. Hard.

"Girl," she said to Caroline, "you too good for him. Never been a girl that wasn't."

"You're looking well, Mama Lucky," Jack said.

"You always was a liar, Jack Slidell," Mama Lucky said. "How much longer do I have? Five, ten more years. Sometimes I want to die just to get over the suspense."

"You're going to live forever, Mama Lucky," Jack said.

"Don't threaten me, Jack Slidell. I seen too much, heard too much."

"What have you heard about a girl beaten up at the Dutch Village Motel?"

Mama said to Caroline, "That man always do come right to the point." To Jack, she said, "You come right to the point with this gal, Jack Slidell?"

Mama Lucky took a swig from the big square bottle of Jack Black and handed it to Jack.

"Someone sent her a bouquet in the hospital," Jack said.

"You want a fortune-teller, you go out Avondale way," Mama Lucky said. "You know the place."

"Mama Lucky knows more than any fortune-teller," Jack said.

Mama Lucky wheezed a laugh.

"Ain't that the lick that killed Dick," Mama Lucky said. "Jack Slidell, you're a bucketful."

Jack took a swig from the whiskey bottle and handed it to Caroline, who looked at it as if Jack had just given her a live snake. Jack noticed and was amused by her hesitation to drink. He gestured for her to go ahead. Caroline wiped the mouth of the bottle. Twice. And using two hands to raise the heavy bottle took a hesitant swig.

"Ain't no one taught this girl how to put down a thirst?" Mama Lucky said. "Aim it at the sky, girl."

Caroline tilted the bottle higher, got a mouthful, and forced herself to swallow. Trying to suppress a gag, she handed the bottle back to Mama Lucky, who, gently mocking, wiped the bottle mouth just like Caroline had.

"No insult, girl," Mama Lucky said, "but I don't know where your lips have been."

One-handed, Mama raised the bottle and took a few gulps.

"That stuff who was beat up," Mama Lucky said. "She wasn't no regular trade. A college student, they say."

"You know what school?" Jack asked.

"Yale, Princeton," Mama Lucky said. "Local talent, sent off for a proper education. What she learned, she'd be better off ignorant. Kicked out, they say. Chipping for nickel, dime bags, she was. At school, then down home." To Caroline, she said, "Stuff like that give the good girls on the corner a bad reputation, don't you say so, honey?"

Caroline stammered, "I ... I..."

"Speak up, girl," Mama Lucky said. "Didn't your mama teach you nothing 'bout conversation?" To Jack, she said, "I'll bet that gal knows how to dance. You always pick the dancers. But she don't know how to sing."

"The blow Frank was doing," Jack said. "It had cyanide in it."

"What folks won't do these days to get high," Mama Lucky said.

"Or dead," Jack said.

"Come to the same in the end," Mama Lucky said. "No, nothing on the street about that. But, Jack Slidell, you know people don't get their highs just from the street. Your boss-you ask his clients, his friends about him?"

"That's a long list, Mama Lucky," Jack said. "Frank had a lot of friends."

"Then," Mama Lucky said, "I don't care how he died. He was a lucky man!"

On her massive bed, Mama Lucky leaned forward and said, "You unwax your ears, Jack Slidell. About that bouquet. Go listen to Lafayette King, Gainsvoort Gardens." To Caroline, Mama Lucky said, "That's what they call an old folks' home. Where I should be. A better waiting room for heaven than this dump."

Jack stood.