“What’s the problem?” the driver said.

“The guy’s the problem,” Cogan said. “The guy I’m talking to. Dillon give me a couple names and I saw them and they’re all-right guys but they don’t know shit from Shinola about this thing. This guy I got on my own. But I don’t know about him. He’s close to sixty, at least, and I bet he didn’t put in more’n twenty years all told on the street. Every time he did something he got nailed. So he’s not very bright to begin with and now he’s crazy, and I don’t know about the guy, is all. I do know he’s queer. He’s had everything up his ass. If they’re still making Packards he’d have a Packard up his ass. He’s soft. You never know whether he’s telling you something that happened or he’s telling you something he probably dreamed was happening while nine guys’re taking turns with him. I don’t blame him. He’s as soft as a sneaker fulla shit and he can’t help it. But you got to think about what he tells you.”

“What’s he tell you?” the driver said.

“There’s this other kid,” Cogan said, “this kid he knows, he knows him from the can. He probably used to blow him. He says the kid’s a filthy rotten bastard, but the poor guy’s scared of shadows and he’d blow dead cats if a tough kid said to, and he wants this guy, get some stuff for him. It’s, he says he can get stuff like that, that you mix with the shit you’re selling, and the kid asked him. Only the guy says the kid, he wanted the stuff, it’s some kind of stuff dentists use, right? Makes your mouth cold.”

“Novocaine,” the driver said.

“That’s what I keep thinking it is,” Cogan said. “It’s not. He told me what it is, but I can’t remember. Anyway, it don’t matter, it’s like that, and the kid said he’s gonna need about two pounds of the stuff. Now he wants four. So the guy tells me. Which means, if the guy’s got it right, the kid’s coming in with twice as much junk as he was gonna.”

“And that means he’s got twice as much money to buy dope with,” the driver said.

“Right,” Cogan said. “And, well, that’s really all it means. I got no way of knowing, where the kid gets the dough. I’m trying to find that out. I’m also trying, find the kid. I haven’t even got his whole name. This guy, ah, you can’t depend on him. Either way. You can’t depend on him to give you the straight shit and you can’t depend on him to blow smoke up your ass. It’s just a fuckin’ thing, is all, and I dunno what I’m gonna end up doing about it.

“Now this other kid,” Cogan said, “him I know. He was on the jobs that the Squirrel and him went in for, and he got out about the same time, and I heard it and I sent down to China and, what about this kid, could it be him? And China said: ‘Certainly could be.’ So, him I’m sure of. All we got to do now, we got to think about that other kid. He bothers me.”

“Should we move now?” the driver said. “Or, do you want to wait.”

“I talked to Dillon about that,” Cogan said. “Him and me, we both think: now. Games’re closed, right?”

“Grant’s Tomb,” the driver said.

“People’re losing money,” Cogan said.

“A fair inference,” the driver said.

“They don’t like losing money,” Cogan said.

“Except for Testa,” the driver said. “He’s still open.”

“So what we oughta do,” Cogan said, “and me and Dillon both think this, you think about it and it’s the only thing to do. We oughta hit Trattman now and get things started so people can get back to doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

“Trattman?” the driver said. “What brings Trattman into this? You told me yourself, it’s this Amato fellow and his friends.”

“It is,” Cogan said. “Trattman didn’t have anything to do with it. This stuff I’m getting, plus I had Trattman talked to, you’re right. I had him asked and I’m sure.”

“You ought to be,” the driver said. “Your boys went a little bit overboard there. They damn near killed the man.”

“When I talked to Steve,” Cogan said, “I didn’t know that. When I talked to you. All he told me was they worked him over and he said he didn’t know anything. That’s all I knew.”

“I had one hell of a time understanding him,” the driver said. “The first time he called, I was out. My secretary talked to him. She didn’t get more’n a third of what he said. I had to call him back and I had trouble understanding him. Hell, I had trouble, calling him back. The numbers he left, she couldn’t understand what he was saying. I finally figured it out. It had to be Trattman. Cangelisi called me, all upset, and said Trattman called him and he gave me to Trattman, gave him my number. ‘Thanks a lot,’ I said. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I didn’t sic those monkeys on him. If you didn’t, you know who did. You take care of him.’ Then when I finally reached him, I understood why the kid had trouble. He’s got a broken jaw.”

“I heard that,” Cogan said.

“He’s also got broken ribs and a broken nose and he got three or four teeth broken and there’s something wrong with his septum,” the driver said. “And he told me, there was some question about his spleen. He was in the hospital when I talked to him.”

“I heard some of that,” Cogan said. “He’s out now, I understand.”

“Must be his spleen’s all right then,” the driver said. “He’s not happy, though.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Cogan said. “We aim to please.”

“He’ll be sorry to hear it too,” the driver said. “When I tell him. I have to tell him.”

“Tell him anything you want,” Cogan said. “You’re his lawyer and all.”

“Trattman blames him,” the driver said. “I didn’t tell Trattman anything, of course, but you and I both know, you weren’t authorized to go that far.”

“You know how guys are,” Cogan said. “They go out to do something and they get all excited and everything. When I found out, I called Steve. He said Barry, Barry, look, Barry’s an ironworker, all right? He’s a very tough guy. All of them guys carry, for Christ sake. They’re always falling off something or getting into fights and stuff. He’s a tough guy. That’s why I use him. And Steve said, well, apparently they’re about halfway along and things’re going all right, and then Barry decided, Barry’s very nutty about his wife. You can’t talk to the guy about her. I dunno what she is, she’s an angel or something. At least he says so. So, things’re going along, Steve said, and Barry decides Trattman fucked his wife. She was staying some place with her mother, Barry’s up in Maine on some kind of a beef, and I dunno how the hell it got started, Steve don’t know either. But Barry gets this idea in his head, Trattman fucked his wife, and that’s when the guy got his jaw broken and the ribs. Barry kicked him. ‘I oughta bitch too,’ Steve said to me, ‘I was standing too close to him and the cocksucker threw his cookies on my pants.’ I told him, go fuck himself.”

“Is that what I’m supposed to tell him?” the driver said. “I was very specific when I talked to you. He told me to be. Shove him around if you want, but don’t hurt him too badly. I told you he didn’t want him hurt.”

“Ah, come on,” Cogan said, “of course you did.”

“All right,” the driver said.

“You guys always do that,” Cogan said. “I know that. You guys, you don’t know how to break an egg. You want things done all right, you know what you want and the guys to go get it, and you take what you get because that’s what you wanted, but you always go out after and you say, you didn’t want nobody, do that. Quit shittin’ me, all right? They know, they know who Steve is. They know what him and Barry do. Shit, I mean, they’re guys that’ve always been around. When Jimmy the Fox, there, he started to get all jumpy, I had three hundred locations and there wasn’t nothing left for nice ghinny boys like him, there, he started making a lot of noise and I heard about it, I turned over forty joints to Steve just like that. They all know who Steve is. They know what he does. He don’t know anything. He’s just a good guy to have around, and all the guys’ve used him.”