“Boy, that’s harsh. After all we’ve been through together.” He went back out into the hall and returned with a duffel bag.
“What’s that?” I asked, staring down at the bag.
“My stuff. I need a place to stay.”
“Not here.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like you.”
“Yeah, but my apartment got blown up. I need to stay with someone who’s got a gun.”
“Oh no. No, no, no, no.”
“I won’t be any trouble. Look at me. I’m little. You won’t even know I’m here.”
“I know you’re here because I have a sharp burning pain behind my left eyeball.”
I grabbed his duffel bag and ran for the door with it. He grabbed my leg, and I went down to one knee a couple feet short of the door.
I tried to shake him loose. “Let go!”
“Not until you say I can stay.”
“Never.”
“Please, please, please. I’ll be nice. You gotta help me. I don’t want to die. Jimmy Poletti is trying to kill me.”
“Jimmy Poletti?”
“Yeah, he looks nice on television but he’s a nasty bugger.”
“Why does he want to kill you?”
“I did his bookkeeping. I know all his secrets. The money laundering, the payoffs, the offshore accounts.”
“He obviously hired you because he knew you were a slime bucket, so why does he suddenly think you’re a threat?”
“When he got arrested, the cops were climbing all over everything. We managed to get rid of the paperwork, but I’m left swinging in the wind.”
“He’s worried you’d rat him out?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
“No. I’m sort of implicated in the cooked books. At first, my choice was to die or try a plea deal, but then I thought of you. If you can bring Poletti in, he’ll get locked up for a hundred years and he won’t kill me. And I won’t have to talk to the police.”
“Okay, I’ll buy all that. But why do you have to stay here?”
“No one else will let me in.”
“I’d buy that too.”