Jack let out his breath and looked down at the mugger.

He was whining.

"Hey, man! Can't you take a joke? I was only—"

"Drop the knife."

"Sure, sure."

The bare fingers opened, the big blade slipped from the gloved palm and clattered to the earth.

"Okay? I dropped it, okay? Now let me up."

Jack released his arm but kept a foot on his back.

"Empty your pockets."

"Hey, what—?"

Jack increased the pressure of his foot. "Empty them!"

"Okay! Okay!"

The mugger reached back and pulled a ragged cloth wallet from his hip pocket and slid it across the dirt.

"All of them," Jack said. "Everything."

The guy rolled left and right, pulled a couple of crumpled wads of bills from the front pockets, and dumped them by the wallet.

"You a cop?"

"You wish."

Jack squatted beside him and went through the small pile. About a hundred in cash, half a dozen credit cards, a gold high school ring. The wallet held a couple of twenties, three singles, and no ID.

"I see you've been busy tonight," Jack said.

"Early bird catches the worm."

"No, pal. You're the worm. This all you got?"

"Aw, you ain't gonna rip me off, are ya? I need that money."

"Your jones needs that money."

Actually, the Little League needed that money.

Every year about this time the kids from the local teams that played here in Central Park would come knocking on doors looking for donations for uniforms and equipment. Jack had made it a tradition over the past five or six years to help them out by taking up nocturnal collections in the Park. Repairman Jack's Annual Park-a-thon. Seemed only fair that the slimeballs who prowled the Park at night should make donations to the kids who used it during the day. At least that was the way Jack saw it.

"Let me see those hands," Jack said. He'd noticed an increasingly lower class of mugger over the past few years. Like this guy. Nothing on his fingers but a cheap pewter skull-faced pinky ring with red glass eyes. "How come no gold?" Jack pulled down the back of his collar. "No chains? You're pathetic, you know that? Where's your sense of style?"

"I'm a working man," the guy said, rolling a little and looking up at Jack. "No frills."

"Yeah. What do you work at?"

"This!"

The guy lunged for his knife, grabbed the handle, and stabbed up at Jack's groin. Jack rolled away to his left and kicked him in the face as he lunged again. The guy went down and Jack was on him again with his arm pulled up behind him and his sneaker back in its former spot on his back.

"We've already played this scene once," Jack said through his teeth as the blackness rose again.

"Hey, listen!" the guy said into the dirt. "You can have the dough!"

"No kidding."

"Just let me—"

He screamed as Jack shifted his foot into the rear of his shoulder and kicked down while he gave the arm a sharp twist. The shoulder dislocated with a muffled pop.

The Rambo knife dropped from suddenly limp fingers. Jack kicked it away and released the arm. As the guy retched and writhed in the dirt, Jack scooped up the cash and rings. He emptied the wallet and dropped it onto the guy's back, then headed for the lights.

Jack debated whether to troll for a third mugger or call it a night. He mentally calculated that he had donations of about three hundred or so in cash and maybe an equal amount in pawnable gold. He'd set the goal of this year's Park-a-thon at twelve hundred dollars. Used to be he could clear an easy thousand on a single night on his annual spring troll but it didn't look like he was going to make that this year. Which meant he'd have to come back tomorrow night and bag a couple more. And exhort them to give. Give till it hurts.

As he was coming up the slope to Central Park West in the mid-Sixties, he saw an elderly gent dressed in an expensive-looking blue blazer and gray slacks trudging with a cane along the Park side of the street.

And about a dozen feet to Jack's left, a skinny guy in dirty Levis and a frayed Hawaiian shirt burst from the bushes at a dead run. At first Jack thought he was running from someone, but noticed that he never glanced behind him. Which meant he was running toward something rather than away. He realized the guy was making a beeline for the old man.

Jack paused a second. The smart part of him said to turn and walk back down the slope. It hated when he got involved in things like this, and reminded him of other times he'd played good Samaritan and landed in hot water. Besides, the area here was too open, too exposed. If Jack got involved he'd could be mistaken for the Hawaiian shirt's partner, a description would start circulating, and life would get more complicated than it was already. Butt out.

Sure. Sit back while this galloping glob of Park scum bowled the old guy over, kicked him a few times, grabbed his wallet, then high-tailed it back into the brush. Jack wasn't sure he could stand by and let something like that happen right in front of him. That would be another kind of retreat.

Besides, he was feeling kind of mean tonight.

Jack spurted into a dash of his own toward the old gent. No way he was going to beat the aloha guy with the lead he had, but he could get there right after him and maybe disable him before he did any real damage. Nothing elaborate. Hit him in the back with both feet, break a few ribs and give his spine a whiplash he'd remember the rest of his life. Make sure Aloha was down to stay, then keep right on sprinting across Central Park West and into yuppyville.

Aloha was closing with his target, arms stretched out for the big shove, when the old guy stepped aside and stuck out his cane. Aloha went down on his belly and skidded face first along the sidewalk, screaming curses all the way. When he stopped his slide, he began to roll to his feet. But the old guy was there, holding the bottom end of his cane in a two-handed grip like a golf club. He didn't yell "Fore!" as he swung the heavy metal handle around in a smooth wide arc. Jack heard the crack when it landed against the side of Aloha's skull. The mugger stiffened, then flopped back like a sack of flour.

Jack stopped dead and stared, then he began to laugh. He pumped a fist in the old guy's direction.

"Yes!"

Looked like he wasn't the only one in town who'd had enough.

Still smiling, Jack broke into an easy jog, intending to give the old dude a wide berth on his way by. The fellow eyed him as he neared.

"No worry," Jack said, raising his empty palms, "I'm on your side."

"I know that, Jack."

Jack nearly tripped as he stuttered to a halt and turned. The old guy had his cane by the handle again; he stepped over Aloha like he was so much refuse and strolled Jack's way as if nothing had happened. The guy had style.

"Why'd you call me Jack?"

The old man came abreast of him and stopped. Gray hair, a wrinkled face, pale eyes.

"You are Repairman Jack, aren't you?"

Jack scrutinized the man. Even though stooped, he was still taller than Jack. A big guy. Old, but big. And a complete stranger. Jack didn't like being recognized. It put him on edge. But there was something appealing about that half smile playing about the old dude's lips.

"Do I know you?"

"No. My name's Veilleur, by the way." He offered his hand. "And I've wanted to meet you for some time now. I came out here tonight to remedy that."

Jack shook his hand, baffled. "How did you—?"

"Let's walk, shall we?"

They crossed Central Park West and headed toward Columbus Avenue.

"Want to tell me what's going on?"

"The end of life as we know it."

"Swell." A nut. "Look, it was nice meeting you but I've got a few errands I've got to run and—"

"I'm not crazy."

"I'm sure you're not, but—"

"And I'd think that after your run-in with the rakoshi you'd be more open-minded than most about occurrences that the average person would write off immediately as madness."