I looked inside and sure enough, there it was. I slipped it into my jacket pocket. “Good night, gentlemen,” I said.

“Hey,” said Carpington, trying to show me his cuffed wrists. “What about a key?”

I shrugged, smiled. “It’ll just save the cops the trouble when they get here.” And I walked out, past Benedetto, Earl following me. We ran to his truck and got inside, backing out of the lot and heading up the street.

“What about Benedetto?” asked Earl. “Should we have used our last set of cuffs on him?”

I shrugged. “I think we’ve got what we need, regardless of whether he’s walking around free.”

I took a couple of deep breaths, and then, out of nowhere, started making whooping noises.

“Whoa! Jesus! Did you see us in there? Were we bad?”

“We were bad,” Earl said.

“We were baaad!”

“Sure,” he said, lighting up. “We were bad.”

“We were some bad motherfuckers, weren’t we?” I slapped the dashboard. I felt like we’d just walked out of a scene in Pulp Fiction. “I can’t believe we went in there, pushed them around, got some information. We kicked ass, didn’t we?”

Earl nearly smiled. “Yeah, kicked ass. Nearly killed them, too, you dumb fuck.”

We drove along in silence for a moment. I realized we were heading out of the neighborhood, nowhere in particular, it seemed.

“Where we going?” I asked.

“Hey, you’re the navigator. I just wanted to get us away from there. I thought maybe we needed a drink or something.”

“No,” I said. “No. I gotta finish dealing with this. I think I’m ready to go to the cops. I’ve got what I need.”

Earl nodded thoughtfully. “There’s a couple of things,” he said.

“Okay.”

“First, I’d appreciate it if you could keep me out of this. I was happy to help you out tonight, but maybe you can find a way to keep from mentioning my presence to the authorities. I don’t want them coming by and asking a lot of questions. I’ve got a business to run.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do what I can. I guess it depends on how much Greenway and Carpington say. They’ll probably have enough to worry about without filing any sort of charges about our busting into their offices.”

“I expect. And there’s something else, that can’t come from me, since I’d like to keep a low profile.”

“What?”

“When you call the cops, you might want to suggest to them that they check those clowns’ cars. I noticed, when I was moving them, there’s a lot of shit in those cars, books and files and stuff. Might be just the thing they’re looking for.”

I nodded. “Sure, I’ll be happy to pass that along.”

“You want me to drop you at the police station?” he asked.