THE SUN WAS JUST barely making it above the horizon when I put my key in the front door of my house. The sky was as gray as smoke, with streaks of salmon shot through it.

A few hours before, I’d stopped by Frank Diamond’s room and explained the situation about his fighter using drugs again. He wasn’t happy, of course, but we both agreed it was in everyone’s best interest not to call for a public drug test. Instead, we made a deal to reinstate Elijah as the challenger in the title fight.

I watched a heron rising from a hedge on my front lawn. I was going to make it after all. I’d managed to get back into the fight game and now I stood to make enough money to pay off both Danny Klein and Teddy. I wasn’t going to end up by the side of a road with my vital parts missing. I was going to be able to provide for my family. So why did I still feel so ashamed?

The heron flew over the roof of my house. I wondered if I could still be a good father to my kids after I’d killed a man and used a woman for blackmail. It was a tough sell any way you looked at it. But at the moment, all I wanted to do was see them and hold them. Maybe that would bring me back to the way I was. I tried not to make too much noise as I let myself in.

The living room was dark except for the glowing end of a cigarette. Probably Carla, waiting up for me. Ready to give me hell because I’d left bedsheets on the sofa or, worse, because she’d heard stories about Rosemary and me. I braced for the storm.

But then the cigarette moved. It came toward me and dropped abruptly. I heard a dull muffled sound and felt a blunt massive pain suddenly spreading up my leg. I grabbed my knee and fell to the floor as the overhead light went on.

My father was standing over me, putting a cigarette out on the rug with his foot. In his left hand, he had a golf club.

“Where you been?” he said.

All I could do was moan and think about throwing up.

“I asked you something. Where you been all night?”

The golf club shook in his hand, like it was about to get used again.

“At the casino. I was just at the Doubloon Casino. That’s all.”

Vin went into the kitchen, brought back an ice tray, and threw it at me. “There, put a couple on your knee. Two days you’ll be good as new.”

I looked around, surprised Carla and the kids hadn’t come out with all the noise. But both bedrooms were still quiet and dark.

“Where’s the rest of them?”

“I told them take the night off, ’cause I wanted to talk to you. They’re at the Econo-Lodge near the video arcade, so the kids can play in the morning.”

I propped myself up against one of the old purple stuffed chairs and rolled up my pant leg. My father had hit me just below the knee, but the pain was a steady pulse I could feel all the way up to the back of my neck.

“So what’re you doing?” he said.

“Nothing.”

He touched the edge of my shoe with the head of the club. “Don’t tell me you’re not doing anything. Now why don’t we try and talk honest with each other like a father and son are supposed to, so I don’t have to kick the living shit out of you.”

“All right.”

“So what’re you doing? You getting into the fight game?”

“What? Who told you that?”

“I heard it whispered in the fucking trees,” he said. “What’s your angle?”

I shrugged like I didn’t know what he was talking about and tried to hold those ice cubes on my knee.

“Come on, I know you. You gotta have an angle on this. You shaking somebody down at the casino?”

I watched the golf club warily. “No, it’s not like that.”

My father’s face was impossible to read. The hard cast of his nose and mouth always made him look like he was in a bad mood. The only thing that told me he was feeling worse now was the position of the golf club just over my kneecap.

“It’s no big deal,” I said. “John B. asked me to give him a hand looking after his brother. There’s no money in it yet. So I’m just following through. That’s what you said, right? Always follow through when somebody tells you something.”

I saw my father’s grip on the golf club tighten. “Nah, there’s gotta be more to it than that. I didn’t raise you for nothing. You’ve gotta have an angle on a guy.”

“It’s nothing.”

I didn’t want to outright lie to my father. But if I told him anything, it would get right back to Teddy and he’d sink the whole ship.

“So how much are they gonna give you?” my father said grimly.

“It’s complicated. It’s not like walking into a candy store with a gun in your hand. It’s business. You’re dealing with major corporations and Wall Street lawyers. It takes a certain . . . finesse.”

My father looked at me in a dreamy kind of way before he raised his arms and swung the golf club as hard as he could at my right foot.

My shoe absorbed most of the punishment, but the shock waves traveled up my leg and into my crotch.

“What did I tell you?!” he shouted. “What’d I ever teach you?! Anything you make goes right into the elbow! You understand, you stupid piece of shit! Teddy gets fifty percent of everything you do. That’s the way it is.”

“But Dad...”