He banged the table again. "Ai Kae!"
The place had gained a few patrons since their arrival and people were giving them curious and concerned looks.
"Another Hawaiian term of endearment?"
"What? Yeah. I can stay here only a day or two. You think you could make up the flyers and—?"
Jack was shaking his head. "Not my kind of work. If I come up empty at the hospital, you do it. Start a voice mail account and put that number on the flyers. Get them spread around. Check the voice mail often. If anything promising comes through, call me and I'll see what I can do."
Jack would be delighted if nothing came through. That sword had nearly killed him twice. Damned if he was about to give it another try.
"Jesus, God!"
Jack looked up and saw that Slater's face had gone white. He was staring at the cover of the Post on the next table.
"What?"
"The Black Wind! What happened in Staten Island—it never hit me till now. The Kakureta Kao has brought back the Black Wind!"
Despite Slater's ominous tone, it didn't sound particularly threatening to Jack—like something that might occur after a frijoles negro burrito.
"And that's bad?"
"Very. I didn't make the connection because I thought they were extinct. But now that you've seen someone with their tattoo, it's all coming together. What happened on Staten Island is exactly the effect of the Black Wind as described by my father. If they're planning to use it on the city…"
"But nobody mentioned a wind or wind damage."
"It's been called the Wind-That-Bends-Not-the-Trees."
"Oooookay." Maybe the Jack Daniel's was hitting him.
"I've got to tell someone. But who?"
"Um, try Homeland Security. But don't mention me, okay? Meanwhile, I'm going to check out this Hidden Face guy in the hospital."
He grabbed Jack's arm. "Ask him about the Black Wind. You've got to find out."
The Wind-That-Bends-Not-the-Trees, Jack thought as he reentered Roosevelt Hospital. Where do people come up with this stuff?
He was relieved to find the same clerk at the ER admitting desk. Her name tag read KAESHA and she once might have been called Rubenesque, but she'd moved beyond that. The glazed Krispy Kreme donut sitting next to her keyboard hinted at the how and why.
"Hi, Kaesha. Remember me? I was here earlier about the Asian John Doe?"
She gave him a hard look, then her features softened. "You're the one who thought you might know him."
"Right. Have the hospital attorneys cleared me for a look at him?"
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but the patient died a few hours ago."
Crap.
"But," she added, "it would be a great service to him and to the hospital if you could identify him. And the police want to talk to you as well."
Jack stiffened inside. "The police?"
"Well, I suppose it's okay to tell you, since he's dead. But he also had a gunshot wound. The police are looking for any information available."
Double crap.
"Sure. I'll help any way I can."
Uh-huh.
"We appreciate it. I'll see about arranging a viewing and let the police know you're here."
"While you're doing that," Jack said, forcing a tremor into his voice, "I think I'll step outside for a breath of air. We were very close. Had a lot of laughs together. He was a real cutup."
She gave him a sympathetic smile. "I understand."
As soon as Jack was out the door, he made a beeline through the banished smokers and began quick-walking up Amsterdam Avenue. He pulled off his sling and shoved it inside his shirt, then ducked into the Lincoln Center parking garage and cut through to Columbus Avenue.
As he mingled with the crowd there he called Naka Slater and told him to print up those flyers and Martin Luther them all over town, because his only info source was dead. The body count had moved up to four.
Hank found the perfect spot on Long Island's North Fork.
Somewhere in the tectonic past, Long Island's eastern third split into a pair of peninsulas. While the longer, wider southern division grew crowded and famous for its wealthy Hamptons and remote Montauk, its smaller sister to the north remained fairly rural, becoming the heart of Long Island's wine industry.
Halfway out the fork—shouldn't it be called a tine? he wondered—and a little ways off Middle Road, he came upon a farm with a dozen or so brown-and-white Golden Guernsey cows munching grass in a field adjacent to the road.
He watched them for a moment, then turned and looked at the slim, oblong, blanket-wrapped bundle on the backseat and felt his excitement grow.
This was gonna be good.
He found a spot on the side of the road where his Jeep would be shielded from the farmhouse by an intervening stand of trees.
Perfect.
Except for the wait. Though the sun was well into its slide toward the horizon, the sky was still too bright for what he planned.
So he took a leisurely drive out to Orient Point on the far eastern tip of the fork and parked near the ferry dock. As he stared across the choppy channel to Plum Island, he thought about the strange turns his life had taken since he'd written Kick. From manual laborer to backdoor celebrity.
Life had been simpler and maybe even happier back in his slaughterhouse days. He hadn't had to make decisions for other people, not even for himself. He'd been happy to do what he was told. Some days he'd be a "knocker," using a compressed air gun to shoot a steel bolt into the cow's head to knock it out. Other days he'd be assigned as a "sticker," which he tended to prefer. Once the knocker was through with them, the unconscious cows would be hung upside down by a leg from the overhead rail, and then Hank would come along and slit their throats.
Bloody, bloody work, and hot too because of the rubber jacket and pants. But looking back, Hank realized he'd never felt so at peace with himself, not before, not since.
Peace… He shook his head. Would he ever know peace? Then he heard himself laugh. Did he even want peace again?