Icarus

Bingo. One-three-seven Greene – the address of the Hanson Fitness Center, where he'd met Bryan and where Kid had worked. On the ground floor was an art gallery, the one with tons of sand in the window. It wasn't out of business, Jack thought. That was art.

The coincidence was too great. It had to be. He glanced down at her name again. Grace Childress. Yes, Grace had to be the third member of the Team.

She was the Rookie.

– '-'-'THE WINDOW OF the Waggoner Gallery was still filled with sand. Jack spent a moment studying it, realized he could stand there the rest of his life without figuring out what it was meant to say, so opened the gallery's front door and stepped inside.

The artist being displayed was named Pinkney Wallace. Jack learned from browsing through the catalog that his medium was the earth: sand, dirt, mud, grass. His artwork was scattered throughout the spacious ground floor. There were perhaps twenty large glass boxes that looked like fish tanks. Inside each box was a wave of sand or a mountain of mud. One was divided perfectly in half; one half of the box was completely empty, the other was jammed full of cut grass. He was staring at the grass when he heard a woman's voice from behind.

'Like it?'

He turned and Jack knew he had come to the right place. The woman who spoke to him was absolutely stunning. She was not tall, maybe five-foot-four, but somehow she seemed tall; her perfect posture and angular body seemed to add inches to her height. Her hair was hennaed a sparkly copper color, which was the only color on her entire body except for her bright blue eyes and thick, coppery-red glasses surrounding them. Everything else was black: a black tank-top T-shirt, covered by a sheer black blouse, a short black skirt, black tights, and mid-calf- high black boots. Her lips were thin and the tight smile they formed managed to convey an air of both confidence and vulnerability. Jack was dazzled.

'I don't understand it,' he said, gesturing toward the glass box and the grass.

'It's postmodern,' the woman said. 'There is no understanding. Only confusion.'

'Ah. Now that's something I'm familiar with.' Jack stuck his hand out. 'You're Grace Childress, aren't you?'

She nodded, put her hand in his, and they shook. Her grip was hard and firm and Jack felt the same electric shock he'd felt when he'd met the Mortician and the Entertainer. Although this woman was much more appealing. She had the sensual aura that the others had but she did not radiate the same air of danger, of walking too close to the edge.

'I'm Jack Keller,' he continued. The name obviously meant nothing to her so he took a shot in the dark. 'The Butcher,' he said, and this obviously registered, he could see it in her eyes, as they narrowed, and in the curious cock of her head.

'What can I do for you?' she asked.

'I'm a friend of Kid Demeter's. I'm trying to find out what happened to him.'

'He's dead.'

'Yes, I know,' Jack said. 'I mean, I'm trying to find out how. And why.'

'We know how, don't we?'

'Do we?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Somebody killed him.'

Jack stared at her a moment, startled, then he couldn't help himself. A smile of relief spread over his face.

'Would you mind saying that again?'

'Somebody killed him. I think that's pretty obvious, don't you?'

'Yes,' he said, 'I do.'

– '-'-'THEY WERE EATING in Jerry's, a casual place specializing in simple grilled food on Prince Street.

'The Rookie, huh?' Grace was saying. 'Certainly not very descriptive.'

'I think it changed. I think you got another nickname as time went on.'

'Well, whatever it is, it's got to be better than the Rookie.'

'It is,' Jack said. 'It's possible he started calling you the Destination.'

Grace's eyes flickered, and she tilted her head down. 'No,' she told him. 'That wasn't me. Kid told me about the Destination. It was someone from his past. Someone… well, let's just say he told me about her. I don't really feel comfortable sharing his secrets. Even now.'

'He told me about her, too,' Jack said. 'But he also told me that he'd met someone he thought could be a second Destination. I think that could be you.'

'Why do you think that?' Grace asked.

'Just a hunch. He told me a few things… and you seem to fit the description.' Jack raised his hand and when the waiter came over, he ordered a second beer. He looked at Grace, who shook her head. She was still working on her first. 'Do you know why he came up with the nickname 'Destination'?' Jack asked her.

'No.'

'Topeka's a place, Cleveland's a town… Rome is a destination.'

She smiled, a sad smile, and shook her head. 'I don't know if that's me or not,' she told him. 'But he did always have this idealized, dewy-eyed fantasy about me.'

'Maybe it was more accurate than you give him credit for.'

'No. Believe me. I throw things, I bite my nails, I've done my share of things I shouldn't have done. Hell, I still do. I make a lot of mistakes.'

'Maybe he just didn't care about them.'

'No, he didn't see them. He didn't want to see them.'

'How'd you get to know him?'

'He picked me up on the street. I was going into the gallery, he was heading up to the gym. I brushed him off – I'm not big on street pickups – but Kid was extremely persistent. He started coming into the gallery, we talked, and then one night I was out at a club with a girlfriend and he was there. He was by himself, it was late, maybe two or three in the morning, and he looked kind of rattled. I asked him what the matter was and he said he'd just had a fight with someone, an argument. He wouldn't tell me what it was about, not then, but he looked so vulnerable he was hard to resist. We wound up talking almost all night. And then… you know how these things happen.'

'Did he ever tell you what the argument was about? Or who it was with?'

She hesitated. 'I told you. I'm not completely comfortable sharing his secrets.'

'Are there a lot of secrets to know about him?'

'There are a lot of secrets to know about everybody, aren't there?'

'Yes,' Jack said, 'I suppose there are.' He took a long swig of his beer. 'Were you still seeing him when he died?'

'No,' she said. Again, she hesitated, seemed as if she were going to say more, but stopped.

'Who broke it off?' he asked.

'I did. It wasn't right. I mean, Kid was interesting and great-looking and I liked him a lot, but it wasn't going to go anywhere, not for me. He wasn't what I needed or what I wanted.'

'How did he accept that?'

'He didn't accept it at all. I told you, Kid was persistent.' She pursed her lips together. A memory. 'Did you ever see him lift a really heavy weight? Well, that's what I was to him. He thought if he pushed himself harder, worked himself more, eventually it would happen between us. There was no quit in him. That's why I know he'd choose life – if he had a choice.' She drained her beer. 'Is there anything else you'd like to ask me?'

'Where were you when Kid fell?'

'Am I on your suspect list?' When Jack shrugged, she didn't seem offended, just said, 'I had an opening at my gallery that night. Tons of witnesses.' Grace waved her hand in the air, almost apologetically. 'Listen,' she said then, 'Kid was a club guy. He knew every druggie and pervert below Fourteenth Street. It comes with the territory. Whoever did it, you'll never find him.'

'I'm pretty sure that him is a her. There was a woman with him in his apartment the night he died.'

That seemed to surprise her. 'How do you know that?'

'The police.'

'I thought you said the police weren't involved.'

'They're not. But they were involved enough to know that.'

She stuttered a bit over her next few words. The news had clearly thrown her. 'But just being with him, that