The same shoulder he'd hit before. In the same spot.

When the bigger man recovered from his swing, he couldn't lift that arm anymore. Couldn't even hold it out in front of him. His fingers seemed to writhe with a life of their own, autonomi-cally, no longer under his control.

His supporters groaned and swore disgustedly. Money changed hands as a few spectators paid off.

Ignoring everything else, Sternway drifted around the ring like he was gamboling inside.

His opponent bared his teeth and moved to attack again, but I didn't want to watch. While Sternway systematically reduced the bigger man to rubble, I made a show of looking for the waitress. Actually I was trying to think of an excuse to leave.

Eventually Sternway's opponent lay on the canvas, still conscious, not obviously bleeding, but as slack as a man with a broken neck.

As the bouncers removed him, a movement behind them caught my eye. The alleged fire exit opened and closed. The ring blocked my view, but I thought I spotted the top of a head enter the room. Then it dropped out of sight as the new arrival took a seat.

I felt a sudden tingling in my guts the first cold touch of premonition, intuitive alarm.

Acting detached, Sternway left the ring and headed for the punter who held his bet. Then he returned to my table. For the moment, at least, he'd hidden away his eagerness. Only a smolder of it showed in his eyes as he sat down.

He wasn't sweating. Hell, he wasn't even breathing hard. Apparently he found no-rules fighting about as aerobic not to mention stressful as a walk in the park.

He leaned toward me to say something, but the waitress interrupted him with my drink. He ordered a diet Coke, paid her out of his winnings.

Judging by his wad of bills, I guessed he'd just made a couple of hundred bucks.

"Feel like trying it?" he asked. The noise in the room covered his tone, but it sounded like a taunt nevertheless.

I gave him a grin as sharp as I could make it.

"This is your idea of fun, not mine. When I'm in the mood for excitement" I pretended to laugh "I lie down until I feel better."

His upper lip hinted at a sneer, but he didn't argue.

By then another challenger approached the ring. The pang in my stomach tightened as I recognized the bouncer who'd let us in.

I looked a question at Sternway. The fight club could lose control of its patrons if it let the bouncers get pounded.

He shrugged. The issue didn't interest him.

Deliberately I asked, "You going to take him on?"

He didn't answer.

The tattooed bouncer climbed between the ropes like a man with a mission and planted himself in the ring. His eyes in their claws glared right at Sternway and me. I assumed or hoped that he wanted to know if Sternway accepted his challenge. But before Sternway could react, the man's gravel-sifter voice grated out, "Not you. Him." He pointed straight at me.

"I want you, motherfucker."

I might as well have had a spotlight on me. Suddenly every head in the room turned in my direction. Tension or anticipation spattered through the smoke like overheated oil.

Sternway made a sound like the bark of a raptor.

"Up to you," he told me.

"You have the stones for it?"

On some other occasion, I might've said, Fuck you, and gone home. But not this time. The premonition clutching at my insides didn't let me.

The room held dangers I couldn't identify.

"I said I want you!" the bouncer announced. Just in case I hadn't understood him.

I still had no clue what I was looking for, but I got to my feet anyway.

A few men shouted approval when they noticed my size. Sounds of interest scattered through the room. Bookies and punters went to work.

But I ignored everything around me.

For the first time since I'd sat down, I could see past the ring to the people at the far tables.

"I'm new at this," I said, pitching my voice to carry.

"Let me see if I've got it straight." I spoke to the bouncer, but I hardly glanced at him. Past his bulk I scrutinized every face that wasn't turned away or hidden.

"No rules. Is that right? And we go at it until one of us surrenders?"

"That's right, motherfucker," my challenger snarled. Maybe he thought his tattoo made him an actual dragon.

Casually Sternway offered, "Or until one of you can't continue."

At first I saw nothing beyond the ring except more people, none of them distinguishable from the rest of the club's patrons. They regarded me with a kind of conflicted hunger, a desire composed of bloodthirstiness, greed, and scorn. Some of them didn't care who won, as long as fighters got hurt. Others scurried around inside themselves, trying to calculate odds for and against.

But then the man I didn't know I was looking for raised his head, and suddenly everyone else seemed to recede, leaving him alone across the canvas from me, isolated by lights and smoke and butchery.

A big man, dull eyes floating above a heavyset frame. Jowls like fanny packs strapped to his jaws. A forehead suited for battering down doors. A pile of debris instead of a nose.

I answered the bouncer without paying any attention to him.

"Fine. I surrender. You win."

I wasn't sure that the heavyset man had actually focused on me yet.

Hell, I wasn't sure that he'd gotten a good enough look at me the other day to recognize me now. But I turned away quickly, just in case.

While the tattoo roared obscenities, and his disgusted audience volleyed contempt at my head, I ducked down to tell Stern-way, "I think I'll go puke." Throwing as much chaff in his eyes as I could.

"If I'm not back in a couple minutes, order me a stomach pump. And some Valium."

Then I headed for the restroom.

It was a tactical decision, and I hated it already. Bernie's death burned holes in my gut. I wanted to go after that thieving goon now, right now, drop him where he sat before he could so much as think about trying to get away. In an earlier life as recently as two months ago I wouldn't have hesitated.

But I didn't have all my strength back. When the cops found out that I'd been withholding information, I'd be in trouble. And I wasn't after the heavyset man himself. I only cared about him because he could lead me to my real target.

Also I didn't have the .45.