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.

"Why 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.