The Extinction Event (7 page)

“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.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1

Caroline sat at her desk at Milhet & Alvarez, going over files, one file in particular. She read it, puzzled. Outside a young law clerk, Curtis Lee, passed, pulling his bow tie loose.

“Curtis,” Caroline said.

Unbuttoning his top shirt button and stretching his neck in a circle, Curtis came into Caroline's office.

“These files,” she held them out for him to see, “they were all Robert's, right?”

Curtis nodded. Caroline tapped the file that especially had caught her interest.

“This one,” she said.

Curtis read, “
Gaynor, Jean
. Speeding ticket.” He looked at Caroline. “What's the problem?”

“Is she one of our regular clients?”

“No.”

“Her parents? Are they our clients?”

Curtis shook his head
no
.

“These little
fix-me
cases,” Caroline said. “We do them as a courtesy for our regular clients. Why are we doing this one?”

Curtis shrugged.

“According to this morning's paper, she's the one found dead in Frank's motel room,” Caroline said. “This address, Paul Gaynor…”

“Husband?” Curtis said.

“Could be,” Caroline said. “I think I'll find out.”

2

In the second ring at Geigerman's, Jack, gloved and in street clothes, circled away from Hooper, who, grinning, flicked a few feints. Jack backpedaled.

“So we tango,” Jack said. “What do you got for me?”

“I surely got something for you,” Hooper said.

He popped Jack in his already bruised face. Jack jabbed, but Hooper was too fast. He got in under Jack's left and opened the cut over Jack's right eye.

“I meant information,” Jack said, blinking away the blood.

Hooper cracked Jack's nose, which started to bleed.

Again, Jack jabbed and missed.

“When I was a kid,” Jack said, “I used to be a street fighter.”

“Pity we're not in the street,” Hooper said.

Hooper got inside and hit Jack over the heart. Jack went gray.

“You want to know who beat you up?” Hooper asked.

He thumped Jack over the heart again. Jack rebounded off the ropes.

“Does this feel familiar?” Hooper asked.

He connected with a combination, Jack's kidney and an uppercut to Jack's cut lip, which opened up again.

“What happened to your two-by-four?” Jack asked.

“Wouldn't fit in my glove,” Hooper said.

He swung. Jack sidestepped.

“Who hired you?” Jack gasped.

Hooper hit Jack, a left to the head, a right to the body, another left to the head. Jack staggered back, trying to shield the blows. Hunched, Hooper came in for the kill. Jack put up his gloves.

“Wait,” Jack said. “Wait a minute.”

“Hurt?” Hooper grinned.

“No,” Jack said. “Got to, got to…”

Jack yawned. A big yawn. Yawns are contagious. Hooper yawned—and Jack, who had faked the yawn, used the opening to hit Hooper. A left to the heart, a right to the temple, a left to the jaw, a right to the jaw.

Hooper went down.

Jack hung over him, panting. Out of the corner of his good eye, Jack saw LeVigne, ringside, in a lime green shirt, mustard yellow slacks, and worn but polished tasseled loafers.

“Hooper never could take a punch,” LeVigne said.

“Hooper?” Jack asked.

“Kevin Hooper,” LeVigne said. “Piece of shit. Surprised you let him do you so much damage.”

“He seemed to need the confidence,” Jack said.

“What he needed,” LeVigne said, “you just gave him. About time someone did. But you could've saved yourself a tag or two if you did like I told you and worked on the body.”

“That'd take five rounds,” Jack said. “I'm impatient.”

Jack crouched over Hooper, dripping blood on Hooper's face, his knee on Hooper's neck.

“Now, my friend,” Jack said, “we talk…”

3

Caroline walked up the flagstone path to the white suburban house in Colonie, outside of Albany, and pressed the bell. She heard a ring, muffled by the door. The air was filled with static electricity, which made her dress cling to her pantyhose. She rang the bell again. The door opened, revealing a man in his early sixties, wearing a blue-and-red Hawaiian shirt outside his gray slacks. He was barefoot and holding a newspaper, the
Times-Union
, next to his leg, a finger in the pages saving his place.

“Paul Gaynor?” Caroline asked.

Gaynor nodded.

“I'm looking for Jean Gaynor,” Caroline said. Then, guessing, added, “Your daughter.”

Again, Gaynor nodded.

“I'm a lawyer,” Caroline said. “My firm is handling some business of hers.”

“What is it this time?” Gaynor asked. “Prostitution? Or drugs?”

The small, neat living room was dominated by the huge head of a buck mounted on a walnut panel. A rail like a blackboard chalk tray ran along the bottom of the panel. In it were three arrows, which, Caroline assumed, had been used to bring the buck down.

Gaynor sank into an easy chair. No socks. His pant cuffs were pulled up over his purple-veined, pale ankles. Caroline sat across from him in the middle of the couch. On the coffee table between them was a clear pitcher of water and a pastel plastic dimpled glasses. Half full.

“When Jean got into trouble down in the City…,” Paul began.

“At school?” Caroline asked.

“Pratt Institute,” Gaynor said. He pointed at a chalk portrait of himself, framed, hanging next to the deer head. “She had some talent. But a few months after she went down there, she came home. Or they sent her home. Do they do that today? Send kids home? When they get into trouble? At school?” He sighed. “I couldn't control her. In two months, she's been arrested twice for soliciting in Hudson and once in Mycenae for possession of cocaine.”

“Your wife?” Caroline asked.

“Jean's mother died when Jean was eight,” Gaynor said. “Ever since then, she's pretty much done what she wanted.”

“You haven't heard from the police?” Caroline asked.

Gaynor shook his head
no
.

“Told her last time she got arrested, I was through. No bail. No help. No nothing. Even she could figure that one out. She must've called somebody else to spring her.”

“I'm afraid,” Caroline said, “Jean's dead.”

“Maybe,” Gaynor said, “that's what she wanted.”

“You don't seem—”

“Surprised? A kid like Jean, I been expecting it. The phone rings, I figure…”

He trailed off.

“The police should've called,” he said. “Maybe they did. I got one of those voice-mail services, but I never check it. What for? Just bill collectors and cold calls. They'll be by. For whatever it's worth. I got nothing to tell them. Or you.”

“Your daughter—”

“My wife was pregnant when I married her. I knew about it. But, like her daughter, Jean's mother had a wild streak. I never adopted Jean. Not legally, I mean. But far as she knew, I was her father.”

“Who was her real father?”

“A married man.”

“Local?”

“Not quite.”

“You ever find out his name?”

“I found out all about him. Long time ago. Wasn't hard. He's well known. Massachusetts big shot. Keating Flowers.”

“Keating Flowers?” Caroline said.

“You know him?” Gaynor asked.

“I know his son,” Caroline said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

1

Jack, his face purple and pulpy, right eye swollen to a slit, upper lip crusted with blood and peaked as if he'd been fishhooked, stood in front of Geigerman's Gym on the corner of Horatio Seymour Avenue and Seventh Street across from Seed's Autobody, a junkyard, which had painted on its high wooden fence in big, sloppy red letters
Save Local Businesses—Fight Prop. 65
, a rezoning plan that would close the junkyard on the grounds that it was a blight and allow the adjacent County Hospital complex to expand.

Two nurses, in their crumpled whites, both in their forties, one tall and blond, carrying a Mexican cloth bag as a purse, and the other short with hennaed hair, clutching a small gold purse, stood at the nearby bus stop, ignoring Jack's ruined face.