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"I know the story"

"The head never turned up Or the body Gone, no forwarding Finito"

"How does he in for so as a house and he was always a tough bastard and he liked the work All those Westies, tough Irish enerations I suspect he was good at it, Ballou Say you borrowed , and this hulk walks in on you wearing a bloody apron and swinging a cleaver in his hand What are you going to do? You want to tell hionna come up with the cash?"

"You said he was a convicted felon What did he go away for?"

"Assault That was early, I don't think he was out of his teens I'm pretty sure he only went away the once I could look it up"

"It's not iarm work?"

He leaned back "I don't think he hires out anymore," he said "You call his broken, I don't think Ballou grabs a hunk of pipe and goes out and does the job hiht send soot a few dollars on the street, earning that six-for-five There's joints he's supposed to have a piece of, but you hear all sorts of shit along those lines, you never knohat to believe His na hijacked, a couple of heavy heists You reuns took off Wells Fargo for three mil?"

"They had somebody on the inside, didn't they?"

"Yeah, but he happened to die before anybody had a chance to ask hiirlfriend on the side, and you'll never guess what happened to her"

"She died?"

"She disappeared A few other people disappeared too, and a couple uy or that guy was one of the guns and o out looking for hiet a call that he was in the trunk of his Chevy Monte Carlo out at Kennedy"

"And Ballou-"

"Was supposed to be the man at the top That was the word, but nobody said it too loud because it was a dangerous thing to do, you could wind up in Long-Ter with all your friends and relations But that was the word, Ballou set it up and ran it, and he may have come out with the whole three mil because there wasn't anybody around to share it with"

"He have anything to do with drugs?"

"Not that I ever heard of"

"Prostitution? White slaving?"

"Not his style" He yawned, ran a hand through his hair "There was another one they called Butcher A ht"

"Dom the Butcher"

"That's the one"

"Bensonhurst"

"Yeah, right Under Carlo G, if I reht And they called him the Butcher because he had some kind of no-show job in the meatcutter's union, that's what he paid his taxes on Do Italian"

"No kidding"

"Soo His line of work, you call that dying of natural causes The thing is, they called him the Butcher because of his cover job, but all the same he was a brutal bastard There was a story, some kids robbed a church and he had 'em skinned alive"

"To teach respect for the cloth"

"Yeah, well, heat, Matt, is when you got a guy they call the Butcher, or the Butcher Boy, or whatever the fuck they call hie, you're talking about the kind of guy eats raw meat for breakfast"

"I know"

"What I'd do in your position," he said, "is I'd take the biggest gun I could find, and right away I'd shoot him in the back of the neck Either that or I'd stay the fuck away from him"

The Mets were back hoht and it didn't look as though anyone was going to catch theh of a fan to shirk them Jim Faber was at his shop, with a job he'd proh my book and called a couple of other fellows I knew from St Paul's, but either they weren't ho out to Shea

I could just stay hoame of the week But I didn't want to sit around all day I had things to do and I couldn't do them Some of them had to wait until dark, and soo so at ame with, and I could only coh atof him I didn't have a number for him, and wouldn't have called it if I had He probably didn't like baseball Even if he did, I so hot dogs and booing a bad call at first base It just showed how strong if illusory the bond between us had been the previous evening for ht of him at all

The other person was Jan Keane I didn't have to look up her nu off before either she or her machine could answer

I rode the subway down to Ti line and rode all the way out to Shea The cashiers were sold out, but there were plenty of kids out front with tickets to sell, and I got a decent seat, up high behind third base Ojeda pitched a three-hit shutout and for a change the teaht to be The new kid, Jefferies, went four-for-five with a double and a home run, and he went to his left for a low liner off Van Slyke's bat and saved Ojeda's shutout for hiht said he'd seen Willie Mays in his rookie season at the Polo Grounds, and he'd been exciting in the same way He'd cos, but it was better than sitting hoht co until they stopped selling it in the seventh He had an extra in the fourth, too, to make up for the half of one that he spilled on his shoes andto sit there and smell it, and then I reenerally smelled of beer when she didn't sht voluntarily breathing stale beer furand tihbor wanted to sink a fehile he watched the hos myself, and drank a root beer, and stood up for the national antheive Ojeda a hand when he got the last Pirate to swing at a curveball low and away "They'll roll right over the Dodgers in the playoffs," my new friend assured me "But I don't know about Oakland"

I'd made a dinner date with Willa earlier I stopped at my hotel to shave and put on a suit, then went over to her place She had her hair braided again, and the braid coiled across her forehead like a tiara I told her how nice it looked

She still had the flowers on the kitchen table They were past their pri their petals I mentioned this, and she said she wanted to keep them another day "It seems cruel to throw them out," she said