“You broke it!” He rolled onto his belly and then back onto his side. “I’ll have your ass for this, pig!” He moaned and whined and swore incoherently, all the while cradling his injured hand.

“Pig?” Jack said in his softest voice. “No such luck, friend. This is personal.”

The moaning stopped. Patch peered through the darkness with his good eye, a worried look on his face. As he placed his good hand against the wall to prop himself up, Jack raised the sap for another blow.

“No fair, man!” He quickly withdrew the hand and lay down again. “No fair!”

“Fair?” Jack laughed as nastily as he could. “Were you going to be fair to the old lady you thought you had trapped here? No rules in this alley, friend. Just you and me. And I’m here to get you.”

He saw Patch’s eye widen; his tone echoed the fear in his face.

“Look, man. I don’t know what’s goin’ down here, but you got the wrong guy. I only came in from Michigan last week.”

“Not interested in last week, friend. Just last night… the old lady you rolled.”

“Hey, I didn’t roll no old lady! No way!” Patch flinched and whimpered as Jack raised the sap menacingly. “I swear to God, man! I swear!”

Jack had to admit the guy was good. Very convincing. “I’ll help your memory a little: Her car broke down; she wore a heavy necklace that looked like silver and had two yellow stones in the middle; and she used her fingernails on your eye.” As he saw comprehension begin to dawn in Patch’s eye, he felt his anger climbing towards the danger point. “She wasn’t in the hospital yesterday, but she is today. And you put her there. She may kick off any time. And if she does, it’s your fault.”

“No, wait, man! Listen—”

He grabbed Patch by the hair at the top of his head and rapped his skull against the brick wall. “You listen! I want the necklace. Where’d you fence it?”

“Fence it? That piece of shit? I threw it away!”

“Where?”

“I don’t know!”

“Remember!” Jack rapped Patch’s head against the wall again for emphasis.

He kept seeing that frail old lady fading into the hospital bed, barely able to speak because of the beating she had received at this creep’s hands. A dark place was opening up inside him. Careful! Control! He needed Patch conscious.

“Alright! Lemme think!”

Jack managed a slow, deep breath. Then another.

“Think. You’ve got thirty seconds.”

It didn’t take that long.

“I thought it was silver. But when I got it under a light I saw it wasn’t.”

“You want me to believe you didn’t even try to get a few bucks for it?”

“I… I didn’t like it.”

Jack hesitated, not sure of how to take that.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t like it, man. Something about it didn’t feel right. I just threw it in some bushes.”