He and Lighter rolled over once and then again, with Lighter trying to pull Lucas's arms free from his neck, then Del was back and he shouted, "Roll him once more," and Lucas pushed with one leg and rolled Lighter faceup, on top of Lucas, and then Lucas heard a metallic WHANK and Lighter groaned and jerked and pushed against Lucas, and there was another WHANK and Lighter went slack.

Lucas rolled him over one last time, with the last of his strength, and Del, looking crazy, his face a mass of blood, stood there with the cast-iron briquette shovel from the charcoal grill. "Bend his arms back, let's get some cuffs on him."

They did, and then sat there in the snow for a minute, Lighter blowing bubbles of blood into the snow, and Lucas asked Del, "How bad?"

Del said, "My whole face hurts."

Lucas said, "Thanks, man. He was kicking my ass."

Del laughed and licked blood off his lips. "We gotta call somebody. I'm not hauling this asshole back to town."

"Need to get you to a hospital," Lucas said. He fumbled out his cell phone and punched in 911. A woman asked, "Is this an emergency?" WHILE THEY SAT in the snow and waited for the Washington County deputies, the woman came out on the porch and said, "You took him. Didn't think you could."

"Piece of cake," Del said. THE WASHINGTON COUNTY deputies showed up with an ambulance, and one cop car and the ambulance headed to the hospital in St. Paul, Del riding with the cop.

Lucas and the other deputy decided that since the assault took place at the house, they could look around to see if there was evidence that might apply to the crime. They walked through, found a bag of marijuana in the refrigerator and added that to the list, and a bottle of a hundred or so little white pills in the Cadillac, which they agreed was speed, and bagged up for the lab.

They also bagged both Lighter's cell phone and the woman's. Her name, she said, was Butch. Alice, really, but nobody called her that. "Joe never called," she said. "I'll tell you, Phil probably would've helped him out, if he called, but he never called."

No Joe.

The cop asked Lucas, "How bad are you hurt?"

"I'm okay. He backhanded me."

"You're limping."

"I don't know what happened, but the sole of my shoe came off," Lucas said, lifting one foot off the ground. Four hundred and fifty bucks of Italian calfskin, and the shoes looked like suede rags after a car wash.

"Man, I'm glad you took him on. Somebody was going to have to do it, sooner or later. I was afraid it was gonna be me," the cop said. "So, what do you want to do?"

"I'll write up my part, you write up your part. Del can handle the arrest… you can do the search… whatever." He stood up, bent over and touched his toes, then bent backward. Aches and pains. "I'm tired. I'm going home." WHEN HE GOT HOME, Shrake eased out the back door, took a look at Lucas and said, "Holy shit. What happened to you?"

"Tap dancing with a steroid freak," Lucas said. "Del got his face messed up. He's down at Regions."

"How bad?"

"They've got him sitting in the waiting room, waiting, so apparently it's not so bad. He hit the guy with a shovel."

"With a shovel?" Shrake's face lit up. "Man, I miss all the good stuff."

"Yeah, well, I need a shower."

"Listen. Weather's on the warpath," Shrake said, his voice dropping. "That's why I snuck out. Virgil told her what was going on, with the Frenchman, and she freaked out."

"Ah, man. Just what I needed."

Shrake said, "If you wait a minute, I'll get a shovel out of the garage."

Made Lucas smile, for the first time since the fight. WEATHER WAS WAITING in the kitchen, arms crossed under her breasts in what Letty called the "You're goin' down" pose. That fell apart when Lucas dragged in, and she said, "Oh my God-what happened?"

"Fight," he said. He detected the possibility of some sympathy, so he added, "Del's down at Regions. Guy head-butted him, eyebrows got ripped up, just about bit through his lip. Saved my ass. The guy was crazy, a goddamned Frankenstein's monster. Del hit him in the face with a shovel."

"A shovel?"

"Twice."

Shrake, who'd come in behind Lucas, chortled, and said, "Twice? That's my boy."

Weather looked past Lucas and snapped, "Shrake, go play the piano. I need to talk to Lucas. Privately."

Shrake stepped hastily across the kitchen and out, and Weather turned back to Lucas and asked, "Really-you're okay?"

"I'm okay. I need to take a shower. I got blood on my coat and it has to go to the cleaner's, and my shirt and pants are probably ruined, and my shoes are gone."

"So what? You've got more clothes than Brooks Brothers," she said. "Are you hurt? Your forehead's all scraped."

"I'm fine. Del's not so fine. I mean, nothing serious, but he's gonna be in some pain," Lucas said. "The thing is, it was all pointless. The guy freaked and jumped us because he was pissed off about losing a limo-driving job. Ah, Christ, I stink. I had the guy all over me. I smell like the ass-end of a limo driver."

Weather crossed her arms again. "Virgil told me about the French-accent thing. If you think for one second that Gabe had anything to do with it…"

"I don't think it for one second," Lucas said. "I've already got Virgil looking for other people with French accents."

"Well, that's just fine," Weather said. "Virgil told me that. He also told me that he didn't want me alone with Gabe, which means he's thinking about Gabe. I was screaming at him: at Virgil. But he wouldn't budge. You know what he gets like."

Lucas thought, silently, Good. "I'll talk to him."

"Do that," she said. She looked at him for a second, and said, "Don't go telling him behind my back that he's doing the right thing."

"I won't," Lucas lied. They could hear Shrake playing "White Christmas" on the piano, and it echoed strangely through the house. "Listen, you want to come up and wash my back? I'm sorta hurtin' here."

"No, because then you'll try to jump me, to make sure you're still alive. I'm not sure that I'm not still pissed off at you."

"Looking for some comfort," Lucas said, trying to put a little pathos into it.

"Well, I'm going down to Regions and comfort Del," she said. "I bet Cheryl's freaked out. You call Virgil."

"Take Shrake with you." Shrake was banging out "Silent Night" with a jazz beat. He only knew how to play the piano one way, and only knew Christmas tunes, so that was what you got-honky-tonk Baby Jesus.

"And Jenkins," Weather said. "Jenkins is out driving around the block again. This whole thing is driving me insane."

"Crazy is better than dead," Lucas said. "That's my rule of thumb." He sniffed himself again. "Jesus, that guy smelled bad. You know? Some people just stink."

11

TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE Barakat's shift was due to end, a kid was brought in from a back-street traffic accident. He had a couple of cuts on his forehead, probably from airbag shrapnel, and his stomach "felt really bad."

Barakat ran him through the hospital's blunt trauma protocol and learned that he'd been using a laptop in the passenger seat, and when the car hit the truck, the laptop had been jammed into the kid's gut. Barakat thought, Liver, and talked to the shell-shocked mother for a minute, then got the scans going, woke up the radiologist and cranked up a surgeon, just in case.

By the time everything was in place, he was running almost two hours overtime, for which he would not be paid. He went back to the locker room, changed clothes, and did a twist of coke to pick himself up. Hated overtime.

He did another twist, washed his face, got his shoes on, and headed out. On the way, a senior medical guy slapped him on the back and said, "Nice call. The boy's going into the OR right now."