“So,” Mitch said, “they open up the cars and there’s the shotguns, me and Topper’s car. It was Topper’s wife’s car, actually. Two shotguns right there. I just bought the fuckin’ shotgun, for Christ sake. I went down the place and I bought the fuckin’ shotgun. I hadda have my wife’s uncle sign for it, of course, but I actually went out and paid for the thing. Nobody gave it to me or anything. I never even used it once. Guy looks at them. Then he comes over. Treasury. I’m under arrest. Felon in possession. You think, you think I said a single word to them? No. But what does he say: ‘Mister Mitchell,’ and then he starts telling me. So, it probably just happened, they know my record and everything. I look at Topper. Nope, they arrest him, too. They know his name. I’m thinking: pretty soon I start asking around, see how come these guys know when I’m gonna take a shit and everything.
“ ‘Just for your information,’ the guy says to me,” Mitch said, “ ‘you might be interested to know, we picked you up at the Throg’s Neck Bridge this morning. You guys’ve got to learn some day, stop having these conventions.’ So there I am. I’m probably gonna go to jail for a fuckin’ shotgun I bought in a fuckin’ store, I was gonna use to shoot geese with, for Christ sake.”
“Jesus,” Cogan said.
Mitch finished the martini. He signaled to the waiter, pointing to Cogan’s empty stein first.
“You’re hitting that stuff pretty hard, aren’t you, Mitch?” Cogan said.
“I was up all night,” Mitch said. “I can never sleep, I’m going some place the next day onna plane. Them things make me nervous. Then, I come in like this, I got to sleep before I’m good for anything that day. I’m gonna go the hotel, we finish here, get some sleep. I told the doctor, he was gonna put me back on the cortisone, it started up again after that thing in Maryland, and I said: ‘No.’ I don’t care what it is, I’ll change my pants three times a day if I have to, I got to get rid of this weight I got on me. Only I think, well, Topper feels responsible. And he looks, he’s little and he’s old and he didn’t take a pinch for about thirty years, I think. So, they’re probably gonna both be his shotguns. I was just doing an old man a favor, driving him down there and all.”
“Yeah,” Cogan said, “but if they don’t …”
“I do time,” Mitch said. “It’s very simple. If they’re not his guns, I do time. I did it before. If I have to, I can do it again. They’re gonna have to practically turn themselves inside out, get me more’n three even with the rap sheet I got, for that. Oh Jesus, do them guys love arresting you. They just love it. They get somebody, they finally get a guy, they know his name, Jesus Christ, you’d think some of them’re little kids. Like to bash them right inna mouth, they like it so much. Bastards. But, big fuckin’ deal. I do a year. I don’t like it, but shit, that’s the way it goes.”
“Rough onna wife, though,” Cogan said. “That’s the one thing, you know, Carol can never get it off of her mind, I might get bagged and have to go to jail. Most of the time she don’t give me any shit, except about the way I’m out all the time and everything. But every so often, well, they hooked four guys there and they got them in front the grand jury and they asked them, who’s the guy they’re looking for, you know? Like you say: the guy, they know who he is. And naturally they don’t say anything. And then they get this immunity.”
“They been doing that down in Brooklyn,” Mitch said. “They got everybody in the slammer, and what’d they do? They wouldn’t say anything.”
“Yeah,” Cogan said. “So, the same thing, they go to jail. And if they don’t tell them, which they’re naturally not gonna do, they’re gonna have to stay there. So they’re in the can. And my wife was saying, well, I told her, I said, I’m not big enough. And I’m getting out of it anyway, fast as I can. Guys like me, they don’t even know I’m around. Those’re much bigger guys’n I am. But I can see it. I think, I don’t think she could take it, really, something like that happened. Every time they come in and ask for the toll sheets, there, everybody knows, they talk about it the cafeteria. And she gets all worried and everything. ‘Just promise me one thing, you’ll stay away from phones where they know you.’ So, I do. But I’m almost out of that anyway. I don’t think she could take it, really, something like that happened.”
“None of them can,” Mitch said. The waiter delivered the martini and the beer. Mitch drank the beer. He wiped his mouth. He belched, softly. “The last time, the last time she actually took out the papers. And I didn’t blame her. She was a lot younger then. But when we’re trying that thing, the last day? The jury’s gonna get the case that day. I get up and she’s already up. I dunno how long that is, but I was up at five or so to take a leak, and she wasn’t in bed then. She says: ‘Doesn’t look good, does it?’ Well, what the hell, it didn’t. The cop lied on the stand, of course, put me in the place at nine-thirty, it was at least after ten when I got there that night, and the jury believed him, of course. So, I say, no, it didn’t. And we go in the bedroom, get dressed. And I’m putting my pants on and I’m watching her, she’s getting dressed, I dunno how she does it, the way she drinks and everything, but she always hadda nice body, and I was thinking, you know? Now I’m goin’ away again, and she’ll start beating the shit out of the sauce and everything, and I know she’ll play around. Shit, I mean, I don’t like the feeling it gives me in the nuts, knowing it, but I wouldn’t even ask her, you know? Just because I’m inna can, she’s supposed to go without it just like she’s inna can with me? So she looks at me. ‘This’s the third time I’ve had to do this, Harold,’ she says. She never called me Mitch, and she knows I hate that name.
“ ‘Look,’ I tell her,” Mitch said, “ ‘you never know what’ll happen.’ ” He drank some of the martini. “ ‘What’s gonna happen, you never know.’
“And she says to me,” Mitch said, “ ‘Well, you think you know what’s gonna happen, and I think it’s gonna happen, and I don’t know if I can take it again.’
“So it happened,” Mitch said, “and then the papers come up and I was gonna sign them, let her have what she wants if this’s what she wants. She went through it twice. The girl don’t owe me nothing. She probably is sick of it. But then, I asked her to come up and see me, and I said: ‘Margie, look, you know? You want this, you’re really sure, you can have it. But what’s it gonna get you, huh?’ She was, she was thirty-nine, forty, then. ‘You’re still gonna have the kids, you’re still gonna have to know, I get out, I’m not gonna be in here forever and you’re gonna have to see me when I see them. I’m not gonna stop coming around, seeing them. And, we been together a long time. Unless, unless you really got somebody else you really got to have, okay?’ See, I knew she was seeing this guy. So, she don’t answer me. And I say: ‘Look, do this for me. Don’t do nothing now. You had, you know, when I come out last time, we’re both a lot younger then and all, and you hadda decide then.’ And she looks at me: ‘And you promised me then,’ she says, ‘you promised me then, you were all through. And here I am again, and you’ll promise me now, again, and I’ll wait five years and get six more, and then you’ll do something again.’
“ ‘Margie,’ I said,” Mitch said, “ ‘what can I say to you? I know. You’re right. But all I’m asking, you can do, wait’ll I come out again. Because, I dunno who the guy is,’ ” Mitch said, “and I did, of course. I knew about it two days after she was with him the first time. I don’t blame him, either. ‘I oughta at least, you oughta at least do this for me: I oughta be around the same’s he is. Because we always got along all right.’ And she starts crying and shaking her head, and I really thought. But she didn’t. And it was all right. I think, you know, you know anything about kids? Probably not.” Mitch finished the martini.