Chapter 8: Rule One

Jarek Sobel wrote his resignation four times before breakfast.

The first draft was one line.

The second was a paragraph.

The third ran to a page, and the fourth went into the toilet of his Greenpoint apartment in small wet pieces.

He sat on the edge of the bathtub with his bandaged hands between his knees.

A photographer had been standing at the elevator doors, and for a day and a half nothing had come of it.

No headlines, no call from Quarles, nothing.

That worried him more than a headline would have.

He drove across the river to Red Hook at ten, to a gym called Iron Row.

The cage was empty, and the heavy bags hung in a long row in the dim light.

The owner, a retired welterweight with a gray ponytail, waved him toward the back.

Jarek taped his hands and hit the bag for an hour.

Every punch had the same word behind it.

He had told Averett the truth in that elevator, and he had told it badly.

He had kissed a man he was paid to guard, with his boss on the other end of a radio.

In return Averett had said, "I haven't ever."

Jarek turned it over.

It was a line.

It had to be a line.

The whole country knew what Averett Kingsbury had been doing with his evenings.

Dozens of photographs of him at dozens of restaurants, a different beautiful face on his arm every other Friday.

A man like that knew how to say the sentence that made you feel like the first.

He had said it to dozens of people.

Jarek hit the bag so hard that it swung back and knocked him a step.

His phone buzzed.

It was his old coach in Pittsburgh, who called once a month.