Текст книги "Cogan's Trade "

Автор книги: George Higgins

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

“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.”

“You brought him in,” Amato said. “I asked you all kinds of things about him, you remember. You said he was all right. Remember that?”

“I made a mistake,” Frankie said. “How the fuck’d I know this was gonna happen? He was Mister Tight-Asshole before, there was nothing you could’ve done to the guy, make him say anything. I thought he’d do it and that’d be the end of it. I didn’t know he was gonna go to Confession to Kenny Gill.”

“You used to hand me a good deal of shit about the Doctor,” Amato said. “He was all my fault.”

“He was your mistake,” Frankie said. “I did a lot of time for your mistake. Now what I want, I don’t want to get dead for my mistake. I tell you what, we get this straightened out? You can give me all kinds of shit if you want. I know it. I didn’t know he was motor-mouth, but I brought him in and he was. Okay, so what do we do now? I didn’t know he was gonna start off and be the big operator. ‘I can’t waste no time, I just knock over this guy’s game for a hundred thou.’ I thought he was smart. Now I see, he wasn’t, and he’s gonna save his ass and then we get the shit. Fuck him.”

“You’re sure about this Gill kid,” Amato said.

“I’m surer about him’n I am about fuckin’ God,” Frankie said. “Ever go the zoo, see an ape? That’s Kenny. Looks like a fuckin’ ape, he’s all bowlegged and he’s got real short legs, too. This huge body, and he walks, he walks like a fuckin’ monkey. Hands practically drag onna ground when he walks. You looked at him, you’d think somebody skinned him and put a pair of pants on him and took away his fuckin’ club. And, he’s stupid. He knows things, he knows how to do things, because somebody told him and he listened and the guy talked real slow, too, nice and loud. Kenny can listen. Otherwise, he’s stupid. His idea of talking is, he listens, and somebody asks him something, he goes uh, uh, uh. That’s when he feels good. When he don’t feel good, he don’t say anything. You ask him something, he’ll sit there and he’ll stare at you, and he thinks about it. He tries to think about it. He’s not very good and he’s not very fast. You got an hour or so, he’ll do his best. That’s what he does. Then he might say something. It’ll be just the same thing you said to him. He always agrees with you. Kenny knows about, probably, two things. You hit one of them, you can talk. Otherwise, no. And he breathes. He’s good at breathing.”

“Ah,” Amato said, “well, at least he shouldn’t be too tough.”

“He did work for Dillon,” Frankie said.

“Wyatt Earp did things for Dillon,” Amato said. “The way I get it, I seen him myself, don’t forget, don’t matter what anybody did for Dillon. Dillon’s gonna die.”

“You remember Callahan?” Frankie said.

“No,” Amato said.

“Sure,” Frankie said, “the lawyer, there. Used to work for the man some times. Car blew up.”

“Right,” Amato said.

“Kenny Gill did that,” Frankie said.

“That happened,” Amato said, “we’re inna can.”

“That’s how I found out, it’s Kenny,” Frankie said. “China told me, he was up onna habe and his wife give him the word. Six sticks on the fire wall.”

“That’s an awful way to do a guy,” Amato said.

“Callahan’d agree with you,” Frankie said, “lost most of his stuff in that. Blew his ass off, for one thing. Would’ve gotten all of him if he had the door all the way closed, he hit the switch. China told me: ‘Kenny’s nuts. He’d do anything Dillon told him, Dillon said: “Kenny, cut your dick off,” Kenny’d cut his dick off, take it right out and start chopping away. There’s a lot of guys around that’re afraid of Dillon and they don’t even know it’s Kenny they’re really afraid of.’ ”

“I better have Connie start the car inna morning?” Amato said.

“That’s an idea,” Frankie said, “and if it don’t go off, have her drive over and start mine for me. No, but we got to think of something. I thought, the first thing I thought of, we oughta take Russell out. That’s the very first thing I thought of to do. I don’t like it, I never did nothing like that, but that son of a bitch, if I’m in the hole, he’s the one that got me there, and I could kill him for it, I really could.”

“That gonna be such a good idea?” Amato said.

“No,” Frankie said. “He already did the damage anyway, and if we put him to sleep it’ll just prove it to everybody, that we’re the guys that did it. One way or the other, he’s gonna go anyway. He’s either right, and they’re gonna kill us all, or else he’s gonna go to Canada or he’s gonna get caught with that stuff and go to the jug and he’s never gonna come out again. No, right now the main thing we got to worry about is Kenny. I don’t think they’re gonna send Kenny around to see me. I know him and I wouldn’t let him get inside a block of me, I’d take him out. So they got to get somebody else, and that’s gonna take them a little time.”

“Plus which,” Amato said, “I wonder if they’d do it, the way things’re going right now. Too much noise.”

“They’d do it,” Frankie said. “We got to start being very careful and looking around and everything.”

“No,” Amato said, “nope, I can’t figure it. It was Trattman’s game got hit. It was Trattman got beat up. Trattman didn’t have no other reason, get beat up, and they don’t go around beating guys like that up like that for the fun of it. Nope, they’re not looking for us. Nobody’s even thinking about that thing any more.”

“John,” Frankie said, “look, I hope you’re right. I wanna live a long time. I just got started and I like it.”

“I’m right,” Amato said.

“You don’t mind, though,” Frankie said, “I look around a little.”

“Frankie,” Amato said, “get as nervous as you like. We did it and we’re clear. I’m going over to Brockton a couple more times and tend to business. I’ll let you know when it’s time to stop worrying and go to work again.”

IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON, Cogan drank a stein of dark in Jake Wirth’s. He sat far back, on the bar side, and watched the bar door. In the dining area, beyond the brass rail, medical technicians and the interns hustling them sat in white jackets and drank steins of dark and gossiped about the New England Medical Center.

Mitch came through the bar door. He scanned the room quickly, found Cogan and started across the wooden floor and the sawdust. He wore a plain Harris Tweed sports coat and gray flannel slacks and a dark blue shirt, open at the throat. His hair was black and short. He had very light skin. At the table he offered his hand and said: “Jack.”

They shook hands. Cogan said: “Mitch.” They sat down. Cogan signaled one of the waiters; he raised two fingers.

“Uh uh,” Mitch said.

“Wagon?” Cogan said.

“Gettin’ fat,” Mitch said. The waiter approached. “Beefeater martini,” Mitch said. “Onna rocks. Olive. Right?” The waiter nodded.

“You had lunch?” Cogan said.

“Onna plane,” Mitch said. “I had lunch onna plane. Some lunch.”

“Oughta have the goulash,” Cogan said. “Basically it’s beef stew, but they put tomatoes and stuff in it. It’s pretty good.”

“They still got that place down the alley, all the bums go and you can get beef stew there?” Mitch said.

“Conway and Downey’s,” Cogan said, “yeah. Isn’t that great beef stew?”

“I used to think so,” Mitch said. “Dillon took me in there one time. ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘you know all the good joints, don’t you?’ It was one of those lousy days, snowing and everything, Christ, you couldn’t get around any place, and we’re having all kinds of problems with this guy and Dillon took me in there. He got all pissed off. Any time you want to piss Dillon off, make him think you think he’s doing something bush. Sets him right off. That and telling him there’s nothing the matter with him. I guess there is, though, huh?”

“This time there is,” Cogan said.

“Son of a bitch,” Mitch said. “I dunno, I guess, shit, I’m fifty-one years old and I’m getting fat. I don’t know, I never had no trouble with my weight. I was about thirty, thirty-five, Jesus, you know something? When I was thirty, for Christ sake, you know who was fuckin’ President? Harry fuckin’ Truman.”

“He’s about a hundred years old now,” Cogan said.

“For all I know,” Mitch said, “he’s fuckin’ dead. I dunno. I used to, I used to cut down onna potatoes then, that’s all I had to do. No more problem. Work out now and then, lay off the potatoes. I could always have a glass of beer when I wanted one.”

“Maybe more’n one,” Cogan said.

“Well,” Mitch said, “once or twice, maybe. But I could do it, then. Now, now I can’t do it. Now, I look at a glass of beer, I get fat. Pisses me off. It’s that cortisone I was taking, you know? It bloats you. I was, I said to the doctor, I told him, this stuff’s gonna get me so fat I’ll die of that. And he tells me, no, soon’s I stop taking it, I’ll go right down again. But I didn’t.”

“What’re you on cortisone for?” Cogan said.

“Colitis,” Mitch said. “I was sick last spring, the summer. I really felt shitty. I didn’t take that much of it, you know? I wasn’t on it for that long. Except, well, I almost got real sick. I was, I hadda see the cock doctor and he gimme penicillin, and I didn’t bother to tell him, I’m onna cortisone, and I guess you’re not supposed to do that, mix them two things like that. I was really sick for about a week or so. Couldn’t get or do anything.”

“My wife had to take that stuff,” Cogan said, “that cortisone. I think it was that. Maybe it was something else. She didn’t gain that much weight, though.”

“She got arthritis or something?” Mitch said.

“Poison oak,” Cogan said. “She likes to be outdoors all the time she can, she’s got this real nice garden. And she was out there and she got this poison oak. So, she didn’t think anything about it, probably pulled some roots or something she shouldn’t’ve, and the next thing you know, well, she’s covered with that calomine lotion all the time and she’s itchy and it just wouldn’t go away. So she finally went the doctor, and he tells her, it’s in her bloodstream, and that’s when she started taking the stuff. It got in her hair, you know? It was all over her scalp and down behind her ears and everything. She gets up before me, she goes to work earlier’n I do, and it used to wake me up, she was in the bathroom, crying, it hurt so bad to comb her hair. So they said, we’re never gonna beat it putting things on it, we’re gonna have to have you take something. I think it was cortisone. She really went through hell there, for a while.”

“She’ll probably get it again next year, too, then,” Mitch said.

“I know it,” Cogan said. “I asked the doctor that, and he said no, that’s just if it gets in your blood and you don’t take nothing for it to kill it, then it comes back again if you just put stuff on it. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Them guys don’t always know what they’re doing. See, the big problem with her, is, she’s got, she’s always had this real bad problem with bugs, you know? Bees and hornets and stuff. She’s allergic to them.”

“Swells all up and everything?” Mitch said. “When I was a kid I used to do that.”

“Worse’n that,” Cogan said, “she could actually die. She’s got, she never leaves the house, she hasn’t got a needle with her, adrenalin, I got one in the glove box in the car, I got one in the truck. They told her, you get stung, you get stung above the neck, you got five minutes to get that shot. Twenny minutes below the neck. They told me: ‘Hit her the shot. Don’t try to get her to the hospital. You won’t have time. Her heart’ll stop.’ ”

“Jesus,” Mitch said, “that’s a tough thing.”

“She’s a tough girl,” Cogan said. “She’s lived like that most of her life. ‘There’re bees in the world,’ she says. 1 can’t stay inside all my life. What if a bee comes inside?’ She told me, she got stung a couple years ago, we’re having dinner, this place right on the water and I guess they’re hiving underneath it or something and, she don’t wear no perfume, of course, and I generally got more brains but somebody gave me some of that Brut and I had it on, and one of the bees comes out and I guess he was probably looking for me. So he lands on her neck and the waiter sees it and, he’s gonna be helpful, he tries to brush it away. I didn’t see what he was doing, he was already doing it. Well, he missed, and the way he did it, he drove the stinger right in and she screams. And she goes for her bag and she starts to turn blue. Well, I had the one I carry, and I practically knock the tables over, getting around to her, and she can’t get no breath, you know? So I give her the shot and she’s all right. ‘Feels just like everybody took all the air out of the world,’ she says.

“And every so often,” Cogan said, “she puts up with all of this, she knows what can happen to her, we got to go down and see her old lady, and Carol’s got two sisters, all right? And they each got about a million kids and Carol’s good with them. And her mother hasn’t got no sense. She gets this look on her face. She don’t have to say anything. Just sits there. And she knows what Carol’s got, of course, but she looks at her and my wife’s tough. ‘Ma,’ she’ll say, ‘Aunt Carol’ll have to be the limit, is all. You can’t always do the things you’d like to do.’ ”

“You can’t never do the things you’d like to do,” Mitch said. “Never. Every time you do, you get inna shit. Look at Dillon.”

The waiter, having served the interns and technicians twice, brought the drinks to Cogan and Mitch.

“First of the day,” Mitch said. “Except for the ones I had on the plane, anyway.” He drank. “Buck and a half for a stinking drink,” he said. “They oughta be ashamed of themselves. Fuckin’ bandits. No, look at Dillon. There’s a guy. I never seen the guy do too much of anything. He’d take a drink, he liked a big meal now and then, I guess he used to get a broad when he needed one. I dunno, I never saw him, but I assume he did.”

“He used to go and see his wife some times,” Cogan said.

“She was a beauty,” Mitch said. He finished the drink. He signaled the waiter. “He told me once, he caught her going through his pockets. I told him: I’d kill a broad I caught doing that.’ And you know what he told me? ‘No,’ he says, ‘I always like to know, anybody that’s around me, how far he’s willing to go. Now, about her, I know.’ I dunno, I think Dillon’s had a pretty lousy time. The only time I ever saw him doing anything, have any fun, was that time he was down in Florida, there. Too bad for the guy. Did the same thing all his life, I dunno. I wouldn’t’ve done it.”

“You still in the union?” Cogan said.

“Nah,” Mitch said. “I hadda give that up. There’s too many, you know what they’re doing now? It’s the fuckin’ PRs, mostly. You hear about it and everybody thinks: it’s the niggers. But it’s not. New York, maybe some place else it is. But not New York. New York it’s PRs. I dunno what the fuck it is. I been there, I been in New York almost twenty years. The whole time I been there, somebody’s been howling for something. It’s not the niggers, it’s the PRs. Those bastards, they come in onna plane, they own the whole fuckin’ town all of a sudden. All of a sudden everybody’s got to get down and kiss the goddamned PRs’ ass. You get yourself a sandwich and there’s a hungry PR around, because, of course, there’s always gonna be a hungry PR around, they’re too fuckin’ good-looking to go to work or anything, forget your sandwich. There’s gonna be some guy from Washington standing around, giving you the hardeyes. ‘Leave him have the sandwich, Jason. He’s a spic and he’s entitled.’ I look around, you look around in New York and all you can see is spics, wall-to-wall spics wiggling their ass. I swear they’re all queer. No, I’m selling cars.”

“Jesus,” Cogan said, “I wouldn’t think, it’d pay that good.”

“Doesn’t,” Mitch said, “don’t pay for shit. But you’re the guy, owns the thing, all right? Now that guy makes out. Guys that’ve got the same kind of job I have, you really got to hammer ass and get lucky, too, you wanna make a buck. But the guy, he’s my wife’s uncle, right? I should’ve married him. Him and me get along fine. So I do all right, and I’m outdoors and you get to go to the meetings and all. It’s just for the time being. I go near one of them fuckin’ jobs now and everybody’s screaming fuckin’ bloody murder. I got a record and I got this and I got that, and that asshole in New Jersey, I swear every time the guy picked the phone up he was telling somebody what a hot shit I am, oh, he was a great one. So, you got to wait, it’ll die down. It always does. The fuckin’ Chinks’ll be next. What the fuck, I mean, sooner or later they’re probably gonna have a fuckin’ election and that crazy fuckin’ guy that wants to give the world away to somebody, anybody, so long’s he’s a nigger himself and thinks the niggers oughta own the world, he’ll get his ass whipped and then things’ll quiet down again. I’ll find something.”

The waiter brought two more drinks. He was an elderly man, bent in the formal uniform. “Where do you have to go for these?” Mitch said. The waiter straightened up and stared at Mitch. “I said: Where do you have to go for these things?” Mitch said. “I know it’s some place outa the building, here, it’s obviously gotta be. You maybe even got to walk a couple blocks, take a cab or something. I was just wondering.”

“No, sir,” the waiter said, “we only have one man on the service and lunch bars today, and he’s very busy. Are the drinks all right?”

“Well,” Mitch said, “as a matter of fact, no, it’s mostly evaporated by the time it gets here.”

“Mitch,” Cogan said. “Yeah,” he said to the waiter, “the drinks are all right.”

The waiter went away.

“The next one I’m gonna send in for,” Mitch said. “They probably got an order blank in a magazine or something, you can mail it in and then when you get here it only takes them about a week to get you what you want.”

“You picked it,” Cogan said.

“The only place in fuckin’ Boston I know about, I could remember, for Christ sake,” Mitch said. “I never come here. You know how many times I come here? I been here, this’s the fourth or fifth time I been here in my whole life. I just never come here, is all. Every time I have to go somewhere, it’s Detroit, it’s Chicago, it’s something like that. I was in St. Louis, the last time I hadda go someplace. I just never come here. Guy asked me the other day, I wanna do something. I told him no, I was gonna be out of town. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘you going all the way to Brooklyn or something?’ ”

“You tell him, you’re coming up here?” Cogan said.

“For Christ sake, no,” Mitch said. “I was just saying, I never come up here much. I suppose, when they needed somebody, they usually must’ve had somebody else they used to call. Course I haven’t been doing much except staying away from a lot of things lately anyway. Or things’ve been staying away from me, anyway.”

“Yeah?” Cogan said.

“Yeah,” Mitch said. He finished his drink. He signaled to the waiter and pointed to his glass. The waiter, slowly, began to move toward the service bar. “You don’t mind if I drink one of them beers while I’m waiting for that guy to make it in from the airport, do you?” Mitch said. He was reaching for a stein of dark.

“No,” Cogan said. “It’ll make you fat, though, I thought you said.”

Mitch drank some of the beer. “Yeah,” he said. “First there was that thing on the phones. Jesus, I could’ve killed that guy. I mean it. I could’ve found somebody, gimme the okay, I would’ve done him for nothing. On the fuckin’ cuff. Then, then, well, I hadda leave the hall on account of that. And I wasn’t feeling good, you know? So I go the doctor, and he gives me the stuff, and he asks me: have I been under some kind of tension or something. Of course not, just gettin’ my name in the paper all the time, more’n Rockefeller, I bet, I used to be a guy that could go in and organize something and keep everything going all right, now all of a sudden I don’t do nothing but break people’s legs and stuff and throw bombs or something at them. I forget what it was. And I’m getting hell from my wife all the time, naturally. No, there’s nothing bothering me. And I take the stuff and I get fat and then I got myself a good dose in Saratoga, I was up there with a couple of the guys, and then they grabbed me down in Maryland on that gun thing.”

“What gun thing?” Cogan said.

“I was goin’ huntin’, for Christ sake,” Mitch said. “Me and another guy. You know Topper?”

“No,” Cogan said.

Mitch finished the beer. The waiter arrived with the drink. “You didn’t bring him a beer, I bet,” Mitch said.

“No, sir,” the waiter said. “You only wanted the one, I thought.”

“You thought wrong,” Mitch said. “Bring him a beer, too. I just drank the man’s beer on him.”

“I don’t want any more,” Cogan said to the waiter. “It’s all right.”

The waiter nodded.

Mitch shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “don’t have no more. Yeah. Topper. Nice guy. Lives out on Long Island. We move out there, guy tells me, I should look him up. ‘Getting old,’ he says, ‘still a nice guy.’ So I do. Likes to fish.”

“I went fishing once,” Cogan said. “Got onna fuckin’ boat. All these guys, drinking beer. I look at the guy. What is this?’ I say. ‘I can go the ball game, I want to watch guys drinking beer.’ It was awful. It was rough and all them guys, drinking beer, they all start throwing up. Fuck fishing.”

“This’s surf casting, he does,” Mitch said. “You go out and you stand on the beach and all. It’s pretty good.” Mitch drank half of the martini. He belched silently. “It’s just, the only thing wrong with it is, you got to get up too early. But what the fuck, he wants to go. My wife starts in on me. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I tell her, ‘leave me alone, all right?’ You ever been shooting geese?”

“No,” Cogan said. “That’s the trouble, I work. I work all night and all day and then I go home and I go to bed. So naturally, I take a few days off, I still live the same way. My wife, now what my wife’s always telling me, I’m working too hard. And that’s true. See, I had this one operation, and it’s all right, but anybody can see what’s happening, it’s just a matter of time, the state starts taking all kinds of action, and it’ll still be there, no question about that, but it’s not gonna be as good. So I started, I started up this thing with the cigarettes, and I got that thing going pretty good. Six months after I take it over, it’s going like a bat out of hell. So, good, I hadda get a guy and give him some of it, I still supply him but he runs the locations I got west of here and I just take care of the others. So, it’s getting better. But it drives her batty, we go some place and we get there and then I can’t sleep. I’m not used to going to bed so early, and I stay up and then I sleep late and we can’t do nothing. ‘You’re exhausted,’ she tells me, and I am. But I tried changing it back and forth and I can’t do it. I been at it too long. I oughta get into something else, I guess. Better hours.”

“You got to change every so often,” Mitch said. “That’s one of things, the union thing? It went to hell, well, I didn’t like it. But I was doing it a long time, I was, in a way I was kind of glad too, you know? That’s what Topper says. He’s seventy, at least, he doesn’t do things any more. He was telling me that. ‘The trouble with you guys,’ he says, ‘you spend your whole life, you’re doing the same thing and all you’re ever doing’s getting old. You’ve got to keep trying new things.’ So I listened to him, we’re goin’ down the Maryland shore, there, a whole bunch of people’re just taking over this motel and they’re all the right kind of guys, we’re gonna hunt geese. So, we go down there, I, there was probably a couple hundred cops around the place? And we’ve got the shotguns in the trunk. Oh, fuckin’ beautiful. ‘Where’re you going? What’re you gonna do? Where’re you from?’ So we don’t say anything, naturally, I mean, they done a lot of things but this isn’t fuckin’ Russia yet, I think, and everybody’s standing around and now they’re gonna start searching cars. And I’m gonna ask them, they got any warrants or anything, and I’m really gonna do it. Topper takes hold of me. There’s four or five of them standing around, I was really afraid he was going to say something. Just shakes his head. Doesn’t even do that, really. Topper’s all right. I don’t say anything.