“You look all beat to shit,” Frankie said.

“Yeah,” Russell said, “and the hell of it is, I been up for about a week, you know? And I shouldn’t’ve even slept last night, only I hadda or I would’ve just fallen down. I got to keep moving till I finish this thing off. I thought I was gonna see the guy with the other stuff this morning, but I couldn’t raise him.”

“You haven’t dumped the stuff?” Frankie said.

“Dump it,” Russell said, “Christ, no. I didn’t hit it yet. I can’t, I probably won’t be able to move it till tonight, now, by the time I see him and everything. I know where it is. I can get it, and I haven’t got it on me.

“Down the bus station,” Frankie said.

“Never mind,” Russell said. “I know where it is.”

“You’re just an asshole,” Frankie said. “You know that, you asshole? The kind of chances you’re taking, they’re gonna forget about putting you away for the stuff when they catch you. They’re gonna put you away for being nuts.”

“Talk to me about that when I get the dough,” Russell said.

“Russ,” Frankie said, “this whole town’s dry, and it’s been dry for three or four weeks. There’s more guys running into drugstores now with guns’n you ever saw. They got Goldfinger and that was the end of that. They tossed three guys with shipments this week, for Christ sake. The minute the word gets out, somebody’s in with something, everybody goes right out of their minds. There’s more heat in this town on that’n there is in the FBI, for Christ sake. Unload, Russ. Let somebody else do a hundred years or so, they catch him with it.”

“Not till I hit it,” Russell said. “Look, I’m into this, over twelve K, right? I put it to a guy, fast, I don’t hit it, what do I get? I’m gonna get, even with things the way they are, no more’n fifteen, sixteen. I take it up a step, I can hit that stuff a whole step with the stuff I’m getting, I can move it to two guys and get twenny-five.”

“It’s stupid,” Frankie said. “It’s fuckin’ stupid. That’s a thousand dollars a year.”

“Look,” Russell said, “I don’t need nothing, make me dumb. You know that, you and Squirrel. Squirrel knows it, at least. Maybe you still think we were smart, doing that. You’re just as dumb as I am. You just come around and stroke me some, I’ll do any dumb fuckin’ thing you can think of. The thing is, though, you and me’re different. When this’s over, I’m through, doing dumb things for guys. I do dumb things for me, maybe, and then, I get grabbed, okay, at least I was doing them for me. Which means, I get to keep all the fuckin’ money. I don’t have to give Squirrel nothing for being smart enough to see I’m stupid any more.”

“That worked out beautiful,” Frankie said.

“Sure,” Russell said, “fuckin’ cheesecake. Of course there’s a contract out on us and all, but it worked beautiful. You and me, we got different ideas of beautiful, too.”

“The fuck’re you talking about?” Frankie said.

“You,” Russell said, “me, and the Squirrel. There’s a contract out on us. I hang around here too long, which I’m not gonna do, I’m gonna be as dead as you guys are. I’m gonna go to Montreal. I know a guy that’s got something going up there and that’s where I’m gonna go. And I’ll tell you something: if I didn’t, I’d still go.”

“For what?” Frankie said.

“Cut the shit, Frank,” Russell said, “for the Trattman game. The fuck’s the matter with you?”

“What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Frankie said. “You’re the one that’s got something the matter with him. Where’re you getting this fairy story? You flying or something?”

“Frank,” Russell said, “I can add and subtract. There’s gotta be a contract. Has to be one.”

“Nobody knows we did it,” Frankie said.

“I think they do,” Russell said.

“They went for it,” Frankie said.

“That’s good,” Russell said. “You go ahead and believe that. It’ll make you feel better while the guy’s catching up with you. Who’s the guy that does the work? Tell him when he sees you, sorry I couldn’t wait around. Tell him I went to, tell him I went back inna service, I liked it better when it was a pretty good chance I’d at least get a chance to shoot back if they missed me the first time.”

“Russell,” Frankie said, “Trattman’s practically dead. They beat him shitless. You didn’t know that, did you?”

“Shit,” Russell said, “of course I knew that. Kenny told me that.”

“Kenny,” Frankie said, “this’s Kenny Gill we’re talking about, right?”

“Right,” Russell said. “Kenny was telling me, well, he didn’t give me the guy’s name, but it hadda be Trattman. We’re talking, we got all them fuckin’ dogs inna car and we got all this time and it’s raining and everything, I said to him: ‘You know, this really sucks. This is really a shitty way to make a couple dollars. I thought it was gonna be easy, and it fuckin’ sucks.’

“ ‘Well,’ he tells me, we get to talking, ‘there’s not very many things a guy can do.’ And he tells me, there’s a guy, runs a card game some place, Kenny don’t even know who he is.”

“Bullshit,” Frankie said.

“No bullshit,” Russell said, “he didn’t know the guy’s name.”

“Kenny Gill works for Dillon,” Frankie said.

“So fuckin’ what?” Russell said.

“Anything Kenny knows, he got from Dillon,” Frankie said. “He’s too goddamned stupid to figure out anything for himself. If Kenny knows a guy who runs a card game, Dillon knows, and there was some kind of reason he had for telling Kenny. Nobody ever tells Kenny nothing unless it’s something they got to tell him because they want him to do something for them.”

“They did,” Russell said, “that’s what he said. He said there’s this guy, he knows these two guys, him and his brother hadda go out and do the number onna guy that runs a card game. Hadda be Trattman. Because the guy knocked over his own game and they hadda teach him something for a change. And them guys, well, Kenny knows them, is all, and they asked him if he wanted to come along, they’d give him some of the money, but he was going with me and the dogs and he couldn’t. That’s all. ‘I give that up,’ he was saying. ‘It don’t pay anything and it’s dangerous. I bet them guys didn’t get more’n two hundred bucks, and look at the chances they hadda take, huh? The fuck can you do with a hundred bucks. Nothin’.’ That’s all he said.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said, “and what’d you say, case Dillon didn’t have the whole story before?”

“I didn’t say shit,” Russell said.

“You horse’s cock,” Frankie said.

“I didn’t say fuckin’ shit,” Russell said. “The guy told me something. I listened. He never even, I didn’t, if I didn’t already know something, I wouldn’t even’ve known it was Trattman. You think I was gonna say something, the guy’s telling me they just beat up a guy that they know did it before? They just beat him up? Is that all they’re gonna do to him? No, I said nothing. Shit, all I could think about was not saying anything, and getting out of here before they find out I’m back.”

“You better not’ve,” Frankie said. “John’s gonna be mad as hell about this.”

“Oh,” Russell said, “big fuckin’ deal. I got the Squirrel mad. I’ll probably have to go to bed without no fuckin’ supper. Fuck him.”

“YOU THINK HE DID,” Amato said.

“John,” Frankie said, “I know he did. Him and Kenny’re in that car for three days. Non-fuckin’-stop. He mustVe spilled his fuckin’ guts. I know the guy. I never would’ve figured him for it, but it’s the only thing that could’ve happened. He was trying to warn me, is all. He finally seen what he did and he was trying to tell me, I’m inna shit. You and me both.”

“So’s he,” Amato said.

“Not in Montreal,” Frankie said. “In Montreal he’s as clean as he can be.”

“There’s guys in Montreal, too, you know,” Amato said.

“I know it,” Frankie said, “and you know it. He apparently doesn’t. It don’t make no difference. It’s what he thinks. He thinks we’re inna shit around here, and the thing that proves it is, he thinks he is, and he thinks so from talking too much to a guy that works for Dillon. Kenny must’ve said something, finally, that tipped him. That’s why.”