'Catch a lot of static from on top?'
I looked at my coffee and thought about it. A summer night, the heat almost visible in the air, the air conditioning working overtime in the Spectacle, a bar inWashingtonHeights where a cop got his drinks on the house. I was off duty, except you never really are, and two kids picked that night to hold up the place.
They shot the bartender dead on their way out. I chased them into the street, killed one of them, splintered the other one's thigh bone.
But one shot was off and took a richochet that bounced it right into the eye of a seven-year-old girl named Estrellita Rivera. Right in the eye, and through soft tissue and on into the brain.
'That was out of line,' the Spinner said. 'I shouldn'ta brought it up.'
'No, that's all right. I didn't get any static. I got a commendation, as a matter of fact. There was a hearing, and I was completely exonerated.'
'And then you quit the force.'
'I sort of lost my taste for the work. And for other things. A house on theIsland . A wife. My sons.'
'I guess it happens,' he said.
'I guess it does.'
'So what you're doing, you're sort of a private cop, huh?'
I shrugged. 'I don't have a license. Sometimes I do favors for people and they pay me for it.'
'Well, getting back to our little business…' Spin. 'You'd be doing me a favor is what you'd be doing.'
'If you think so.'
He picked up the dollar in mid-spin, looked at it, set it down on the blue-and-white checkered tablecloth.
I said, 'You don't want to get killed, Spinner.'
'Fuck, no.'
'Can't you get out from under?'
'Maybe. Maybe not. Let's don't talk about that part of it, huh?'
'Whatever you say.'
' 'Cause if somebody wants to kill you, what the fuck can you do about it?
Nothin'.'
'You're probably right.'
'You'll handle this for me, Matt?'
'I'll hang on to your envelope. I'm not saying what I'll do if I have to open it, because I don't know what's in it.'
'If it happens, then you'll know.'
'No guarantees I'll do it, whatever it is.'
He took a long look at me, reading something in my face that I didn't know was there. 'You'll do it,' he said.
'Maybe.'
'You'll do it. And if you don't I won't know about it, so what the fuck.
Listen, what do you want in front?'
'I don't know what it is I'm supposed to do.'
'I mean for keeping the envelope. How much do you want?'
I never know how to set fees. I thought for a moment. I said, 'That's a nice suit you're wearing.'
'Huh? Thanks.'
'Where'd you get it?'
'Phil Kronfeld's. Over on Broadway?'
'I know where it is.'
'You really like it?'
'It looks good on you. What did it set you back?'
'Three twenty.'
'Then that's my fee.'
'You want the fuckin' suit?'
'I want three hundred and twenty dollars.'
'Oh.' He tossed his head, amused. 'You had me goin' there for a minute. I couldn't understand what the fuck you'd want with the suit.'
