'I'm sorry, Tommy,' I said.
He used a folded paper napkin to blot the perspiration around his hairline. He glanced through the big plate glass window at the back of the restaurant. Outside was a small, dark lake, and dead leaves were falling into the water.
'You still go to Mass?' he said.
'Yes.'
'I mean, for real, not just to make your old lady happy or something like that?'
'What can I do for you?'
'Look, if a guy maybe knows about something, maybe about even some people being clipped, people maybe even that's got it coming, but he don't do it himself, like it's out of his hands, you know what I mean, then it ain't on his soul, right?'
I tried to assimilate what he had said, but that was like trying to make ethical or theological sense out of Sanskrit read backwards.
'You want to float that one by me again?' I said.
'Look, I took out one guy in my life, I mean besides Korea. That was the guy I did with the fire hose. This guy was such a bum even the judge said he ought to be dug up again and electrocuted. I don't go around killing people, Dave. But what if I knew what was going on, maybe like there was other people doing it, and I figure it's their choice, I don't make people do what they got to do, I just hold on to my ass and walk through the smoke, it's a rough
fucking town to keep a piece of, the hair ends up on the wallpaper, that's the way it shakes out sometimes, right?'
'I'm a police officer, Tommy. Maybe you'd better give some thought to what you're telling me.'
'I'm standing on third base here. You gonna come to the bone yard to arrest me? What if I made a contribution to the church? Maybe you know a priest don't go through everything with a garden rake. It ain't easy for me to figure all this stuff out, talk about it with people I don't know. I get a headache.'
His knuckles and eyebrows were half-mooned with scar tissue; his blue eyes had a bright sheen like silk. What do you say to an uneducated, confused, superstitious, angry man, with a frightened child inside him, as he tries to plea-bargain his sins and cop to a fine before he catches the bus?
'I can introduce you to a priest, a friend of mine,' I said. 'Just tell him what you told me. I wouldn't get into the area of contributions at that point, though.'
'What? It sound like bribery?'
'You might say that.'
'Oh.'
'Tommy, do you know something about the vigilante killings? Is that what we're talking about here?'
He wiped at the tip of his nose with one knuckle.
'If that's the case, why not come clean on it, get it out of the way?' I said.
His eyes bulged, and he poked me in the chest with his stiffened finger.
'Hey, I don't dime, I don't rat-fuck, you saying I do, Dave, you and me are about to remodel this place.'
'Adios,' I said.
'Hey, don't be like that,' he said, and grabbed my coat. Then he released it and smoothed the cloth with his hand. 'I'm sorry, I got a Coke bottle up my butt. I don't know how to act sometimes. Look, me and the Calucci brothers are quits. They welsh, they lie, they got no class, they'll blindside you and take you off at the neck. You do business with shit bags and greaseballs, you invite a load of grief into your life.
'I can't change what's already happened, I mean, maybe some stuff I'm part responsible for, but maybe I can make up for it a little bit. Your buddy Purcel… Hey, I got your attention.'
'What about him?'
'He filled up Max and Bobo's Caddy with cement while about a hundred people were laughing and clapping and grabbing themselves. Even the cops were making jokes about it over their radios.'
'What are you saying, partner?'
'You know how many guys in New Orleans would like to take Purcel down? How many guys he's sent up the road or run through glass windows or stuck their heads in toilet bowls? It's an open contract, fifteen large, Dave, he's anybody's fuck. That ain't all, either. There's a ten large bonus if it's in pieces. You know, with Polaroids or a videocassette.'