the Nuck ambush: the attackers revealed as Nucks — the fight goes national — "Nucks really do pronounce the with…"

The street-fight's political turn: what looks like a drug-beef resolves, mid-scene, into a national one — "it emerges on Gately it's Nucks," Canadians, "the trio Lenz has managed to somehow enrage." The tell is dialect — "Nucks really do pronounce the with a z" (the roster's flagged line) — so nationality announces itself in a phoneme before any flag or oath. A Boston halfway-house parking scuffle is, without anyone planning it, an incident in the U.S.-Canada antagonism the whole book runs on; the border reaches even here, into a fight over a coke dealer, and marks itself in the sound of a definite article.