He turned to see his older sister standing in the doorway. And she took up most of that doorway. Christ, his sister the eternal hippie had really let herself go to hell lately. She'd had a second chin for some time, but now it looked like she was well on her way to a third. And if she was going to dye her hair, at least keep it up. Long gray roots and long red ends—was that a look for aging hippie chicks?
Karen said, "You'd know all about Janey if you visited more often."
"Lay off," he said. "I get here when I can. I don't see you coming up with a check every month."
It was an old argument, and he was sick of it. The nursing home was in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Karen lived in the next town. Baker had to trek out from the city.
She pointed to his seltzer bottle. "You on a diet or something?"
Yeah, he thought. I bet you know all about diets.
"No. I'm just thirsty."
He wasn't about to tell her that he was treating a badly bruised kidney. He kept drinking because it kept him running to the head. And every time he took a leak, he saw red—in the water and in his mind. He hadn't checked with a doctor but he figured anything that flushed the blood out of his aching right kidney couldn't be all bad.
Karen stepped closer and stared at his face. "What happened to your nose?"
Broken—for about the fifth time. But this was a bad one.
Another thing he owed that guy, that cabbie or whatever he was. He'd done a real number on him.
Serves me right for letting myself get caught flat-footed, he thought, but it won't happen next time. And there will be a next time.
Baker would make sure of that.
And then his little filleting knife would come into play…
"Ran into a door."
"No, Sam. You got hurt." Her face showed concern, but he knew it wasn't for him. "What about Kenny? Did he get hurt too?"
"Kenny's fine."
In fact, Baker wished Kenny had been driving the van instead of Chuck. Kenny wouldn't have gotten suckered by that cabbie.
"He'd better be. I don't know what you've gotten him into this time, but if anything happens to him…"
I cut him in on a sweet deal, Sam thought. Because he's family. Because you look out for your own.
Same with the other guys in the crew. He'd worked with them all at one time or another. They formed a small fraternity. If something like this Clayton thing fell into their laps, they'd call him.
"He's a grown man, Karen."
"He's still my baby!" she said, her face screwing up.
Oh, no, he thought. Not another crying scene.
"He's my baby and you made a monster out of him. I'll never know why he looked up to you."
"Maybe because I was the only man who stayed in his life for more than a year or two."
"You made him join the marines!"
"I didn't make him do anything. He didn't want to be like all those creeps who kept coming and going through that revolving door in your place. He wanted a little stability. The marines made a man out of him."
"Some man! He's a goddamn mercenary! If anything happens to him, Sam, I'm holding you responsible."
"Don't worry. I'll take good care of him. Better care than you ever did when he was growing up."
She let out a loud sob and hurried from the room.
Baker sat and stared at his mother. Go ahead, Karen. Say it like it's a dirty word, but this gig is going to assure that Mom's taken good care of for the rest of her life. And even if something happens to me, my life insurance policy will do the same thing.
You look out for your own. Whatever it takes.
He rose, wincing at the pain in his kidney. He took another swig of seltzer. He'd switch to beer when he got back to his place in the city. If he hurried he could catch the Giants-Cowboys kickoff.
"Bye, Ma. See you next week."
Mom looked around. "Where's Janey?"
5.
Yoshio Takita could not locate Sam Baker, so he chose Thomas Clayton as his surveillance subject for the day. He consumed a bag of Krispy Kreme donuts as he sat outside Clayton's apartment building on Eighth Avenue. They were all delightfully heavy, but the blueberry glazed were the best.
He was about to give up and call it a day when he spotted Clayton stepping from his building. He walked east. He seemed to be in no hurry.
Yoshio followed him to the West Twenties where he saw him enter a club called Prancers—"All Live! All Nude! All Day!"
Yoshio sighed. He knew this routine.
He spotted the sign for a dojo spread across a set of second-floor windows down the block. To kill some time, he climbed the steps and peeked in. After only a few minutes of watching the lazy, overweight instructor, Yoshio left in a fury. If this was a representative example of the way the martial arts were being taught in America, then… then…
Then they needed someone who really knew what he was doing. Someone like…
Me. Yoshio grinned at the thought. My students would be the best in the country. My dojo would kick the rice out of every other dojo.
And I would have all this delicious food at my fingertips, every day, for the rest of my life.
It was a thought worth pondering…
6.
"You're really going to Florida?" Gia said.
Jack lay on the couch in his apartment, content and thoroughly spent after a leisurely hour of lovemaking with Gia. She lay curled against him, her head on his shoulder, her breath warm on his chest.
"Just to make him happy."
"And maybe just to shut him up?"
"Hopefully, that too."
"What happened to this firm resolve to tell him in no ' uncertain terms that you would never move to Florida?"
Jack shrugged, and the motion lifted Gia's head.
"I tried," he said, "but I just couldn't do it. The poor guy is so sincere. He wants so badly for me to succeed."
"Does he think you're such a failure?"
"Not so much a failure as a guy with no plan, no agenda, no rudder, so to speak. And in that sense I think he feels he failed me." Jack felt his contentment slipping away. Why had Gia brought this up? "That's what makes it so hard. It'd be easy to blow him off if he'd been a bad father. But he was a good one, always making an effort to be involved with his kids, and he can't understand where he went wrong with his youngest. So he keeps trying, figuring sooner or later he'll get it right."
"He did leave you a rudder of sorts," Gia said, staring at him with those blue wonders. "You've got a moral compass, a value system. That must have come from someone."
"Not him. He's a citizen. A white-collar, churchgoing, taxpaying veteran of Korea. He'd have a stroke if he knew the truth."
"You're sure of that?"
"Absolutely, positutely, one hundred percent sure."
"And so you're going down to Florida."
"Sure as hell looks that way."
"Can Vicky and I come along? At least as far as Orlando?"
"Hey, now there's an idea," he said, brightening. He kissed her forehead. "Disney World. We've never been there. And the Universal place. I want to see 'Terminator 3-D.'"
Maybe Florida wouldn't be so bad after all. For a week.
"Let's do it."
And then it was time to get dressed and pick up Vicky.
But "3-D" stuck in Jack's brain for some reason, and he treated Gia and Vicky to a late-afternoon IMAX 3-D movie.
Vicky loved it, but Jack came away disappointed. All that screen, those neat 3-D glasses… you'd think they could do something better than close-ups of bugs and fish. Why not a real movie—like a 3-D IMAX haunted house? That would be something to see.