the rain that swirled under its eaves.
“Once ya get t?know the gang, you can come, go as ya please,” Dutch said as we hurried toward the
door. “For now, they ain?t gonna give you a dime for the toilet unless I?m with you.”
I stopped and he almost ran into me. He loomed over me, his hands jammed in his pockets and an
unlit butt in his mouth.
“You got a hard-on for Feds?” I asked.
“Let?s just say we?ve had a few bad rounds with „em,” he said, studying me through eyes the colour of
sapphires. Rainwater dribbled from the brim of his battered brown felt hat.
“Well, who hasn?t?” I said.
“You are the Fed,” he said.
“Look, I?m on your side. I?m not the Feebies or the Leper Colony. You?ve dealt with the Freeze
before. You and Mazzola are practically old pals by now.”
“Like I said, it?s one-on-one in there. These guys don?t even trust each other sometimes.”
“How about you?” I asked. “Am I on probation with you, too? Where do you stand?”
“Out here in the rain getting soaked, „he said. “Can we maybe continue this inside? There?s a lot more
of me getting wet than there is of you.”
And he turned and stomped off toward the door.
5
THE WAREHOUSE
Dutch Morehead herded me toward the door with his sheer bulk. I?d been this route before, getting the
red eye from the local police. Local cops don?t like to deal with Feds because they get treated like
kids and because they get the runaround from the Feebies and the shaft from the Lepers. My outfit,
the Federal Racket Squad, was different. Part of the job was working on the local level, pointing them
in the right direction on interstate cases. Sometimes it took a while for that to sink in.
I decided to save a little time, so I put on my tough-guy act.
“I just like to know where I stand without reading a road map,” I snapped as we hurried along through
the rain. “If I?m on some kind of probation with this bunch of yours, then screw it. I?ll go it alone.”
He stopped me and smiled condescendingly.
“Cut the bullshit,” he said.
“No bullshit,” I said. “The hell with this one-on-one, sink-or-swim crap. I didn?t come here to
audition for you and yours.”
“What the hell got under your saddle all of a sudden?”
