“He probably won’t be able to handle anything for a while, then,” the driver said. He stopped at the red light at the Kneeland Street intersection.

“He sure can’t right now,” Cogan said. “I think, I personally think the guy’s in very bad shape. He was, you know, every time I ever saw the guy he was always bitching about how he felt lousy and everything, his stomach was bothering him and if it wasn’t that it was something else. But he’s really sick now, and you can tell because he don’t say anything about it unless you come right out and ask him, and even then he doesn’t really want to talk about it. I think he’s worried himself.”

The light changed and the Toronado crossed the intersection and the driver said: “He told me, when he heard, that if Dillon wasn’t available I was to talk to the fellow he sent.”

“When you get up the movie place there,” Cogan said, “see that? Go down the right there, and there’ll be a place you can park.”

“Is that you?” the driver said.

“Dillon said where you’d be and for me to go there and wait for you,” Cogan said. “I looked around all right, I didn’t see nobody else that might’ve been there to see you. Did you?”

The driver parked the Toronado behind a pink Thunderbird sedan. “Mark Trattman’s game got hit a couple nights ago,” the driver said.

“I heard that,” Cogan said. “Somewhere around fifty-three thousand they got?”

“Well,” the driver said, “probably closer to fifty. Two kids.”

“Yeah,” Cogan said.

“You or Dillon heard anything about two kids?” the driver said.

“You hear lots of things,” Cogan said. “I heard they had masks on, for one thing.”

“Correct,” the driver said.

“So,” Cogan said, “maybe they’re not kids.”

“They had long hair,” the driver said. “The people could see it sticking out, from under.”

“Look,” Cogan said, “my wife’s mother’s sick and we hadda go over and see her Sunday, so of course we hadda go to church, too, the old bat doesn’t get any wrong ideas. And the priest had long hair, for God’s sake. And they could’ve been wearing wigs or something. You can’t tell.”

“Well,” the driver said, “they were dressed like kids. They had dungarees on and they smelled like animals, Trattman said.”

“Trattman said,” Cogan said. “Look, anyway, there’s lots of guys that stink.”

“Trattman also said,” the driver said, “the one that talked had a voice like a kid.”

“Trattman said,” Cogan said.

“So far’s I know,” the driver said, “there’s nothing wrong with Trattman’s hearing, or his nose or anything.”

“Nope,” Cogan said. “Nothing I ever heard about, anyway.”

“But then, of course, when I talked to him …”

“You talked to Trattman?” Cogan said.

“No, of course not,” the driver said. “Trattman called Cangelisi, and they got word to him and then I talked to him.”

“Oh,” Cogan said.

“Is that important?” the driver said.

“Probably not,” Cogan said. “I was just wondering, how Trattman decided to call you. I wouldn’t’ve done that.”

“Well, I do talk to him,” the driver said.

“Yeah,” Cogan said, “but I don’t, and I didn’t know you, I knew there was somebody, of course, but I never heard of you before in my life. Just seemed funny, is all.”

“Well, I didn’t talk to him,” the driver said. “Trattman. But I talked to him last night and I talked to him again this morning.”

“So nobody,” Cogan said, “nobody’s actually talked to Trattman about this.”

“Just Cangelisi,” the driver said. “Trattman called him from the place and he couldn’t get him and he woke his wife up and everything.”

“Yeah,” Cogan said. “So all we got right now, to go on, is what Trattman told some guy. And that’s what I’m supposed to go out and find two kids on, what Trattman told some guy, I never even talked to.”

“That’s not what he said,” the driver said. “He said that I was to call Dillon, and I called Dillon, and then I talked to him and he told me to talk to the fellow that Dillon sent and see what you thought, I assume it’s you, anyway, what you thought ought to be done next.”

“What happened to Zach?” Cogan said.

“I’m not really sure,” the driver said. “They had some kind of a disagreement. I think it was about the way he handled the petition for cert. Zach. He didn’t tell me very much about it, but he did say he couldn’t represent him any more. I called Zach when he first called me, naturally.”

“Zach was with him for a long time,” Cogan said. “I talked to Zach a lot.”

“Not so long, actually,” the driver said. “About five years. No more’n that. When he first started out he had McGonigle.”

“Magoo?” Cogan said. “He came up here for a guy and they practically hadda carry him in court in a basket.”

“He’s had some bad luck,” the driver said. “And that was probably before you were born, when he had McGonigle. Then, Zach told me, well, he didn’t have as many problems then. That was really before he really needed a lot of legal work done. But then he had Mindich and then he had the fellow from New York, Mendoza, and then he used Zach. It’s good trade,’ Zach told me. Tor five years it’s good business. It’ll drive you nuts, but the money’s good.’ See, according to Zach, he blames you when things don’t come out the way he wants them to, and then he gets a new lawyer.”

“Zach was the guy I had to talk to,” Cogan said. “Nice guy. He helped me set my thing up. Say hello to Zach for me, you happen to see him.”

“I will,” the driver said. “Now, what do I tell him?”

“Well,” Cogan said, “the games’re shut down, right?”

“Most of them,” the driver said. “Somebody called Testa and he said he’d like to see somebody try to come into his operation. So I guess he’s still working. The rest of them’re pretty much closed.”

“Same thing that happened the last time,” Cogan said.

“It’s temporary,” the driver said. “He told me that. He said as soon as I talked to you, to let the fellows know what you want. Or Dillon, rather. Originally it was to’ve been Dillon.”

“I talked to Dillon,” Cogan said.

“What does he think?” the driver said.

“Well, the first thing that anybody’d think about in a thing like this,” Cogan said.

“This is the second time,” the driver said. “That’s what he said.”

“It happened before,” Cogan said. “Four years ago, and now it happened again.”

“The last time, I gather,” the driver said, “the man who did it actually was Trattman himself.”

“With a couple Indians,” Cogan said. “He put on a big show and all, but it was Trattman. Dillon said he even used to brag about it some times.”

“And nobody found out about it,” the driver said.

“Not till after,” Cogan said.

“Well,” the driver said, “this time they worked him over a little.”

“Once,” Cogan said. “They hit him one rap. One. I think, if I was Trattman and I was doing it again, I’d probably get at least one rap myself.”

“Well,” the driver said, “where do we go from here? What do you think?”

“I don’t know enough yet, do much thinking,” Cogan said. “Because, see, I don’t necessarily think this, but it still might’ve really been two kids this time. Or else it might’ve been Trattman. But it could’ve been some guys that knew he did it before. So it’s one of two things here. Mark’s been spending it a little more lately. He could’ve decided, do it again, nobody’d ever think he’d do it twice. But, you ever been up that place?”

“No,” the driver said.

“You know something?” Cogan said. “Nobody’s ever been up that place. Nobody but Trattman. It’s, it’s just not the kind of place that guys go. Except, I was checking around, Dillon mentioned this guy he knew, he used to know, guy was in Walpole and when he come out, they taught him landscaping, and when he come out that’s what he did, and Dillon said he thought maybe that guy did some work up there. So I called him. There’s eighty-six rooms in that place. It’s way the hell off in the woods, and there’s eighty-six rooms in it, and except for Markie’s game there’s not one single thing going on in that place. In the middle of the week the guys that’re using those rooms’re guys that’re selling things, and they work all night. That’s all they do. I talked to Gordon and he said he, when the place first opened up, he put a couple his girls in there. ‘They went nuts,’ he told me. ‘All they did all night was sit in the bar all by themselves and drink. The only guy they ever saw was the bartender. They’re getting fat and I’m losing dough hand over fist, it was awful.’ The place moves a little on the weekends, but then it’s guys that come in with girls. ‘Or fuckin’ amateurs,’ Gordon said. ‘Between the fuckin’ amateurs and the fuckin’ niggers you can’t do squat anyway these days.’ But during the week? Forget it. Nothing. There isn’t even a regular guy taking action in there, ’s how bad it is.