He plopped his two hundred and thirty-plus pounds down into one of the sofas. “So, why you need a meet with Jack Rouse?”

We told him.

“Doesn’t sound like him. That picture shit, I mean, maybe it’s effective, but it’s far too subtle for Jack.”

“What about Kevin Hurlihy?” Angie said.

“If it’s too subtle for Jack,” he said, “then it’s completely beyond Kevin.” He drank from the bottle. “Come to think of it, most things are beyond Kev. Addition and subtraction, the alphabet, shit like that. Hell, you guys must remember that from the old days.”

“We’d wondered if he’d changed.”

Bubba laughed. “Nope. Gotten worse.”

“So he’s dangerous,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” Bubba said. “Like a junkyard dog. Knows how to rape and fight and scare hell out of people and that’s about it, but he does those things well.” He handed me the bottle and I poured another shot.

I said, “So two people who knowingly took a case that pitted them against him and his boss…”

“Would be morons, yeah.” He took the bottle back.

I glared at Angie and she stuck her tongue out at me.

Bubba said, “Want me to kill him for you?” and stretched out on the couch.

I blinked. “Ahm…”

Bubba yawned. “It’s not a problem.”

Angie touched his knee. “Not at the moment.”

“Really,” he said, sitting up, “no sweat. I built this new thing, and what you do is clamp it around the guy’s skull, right here, and—”

“We’ll let you know,” I said.

“Cool.” He lay back on the couch, looked at us for a moment. “I didn’t figure a freak like Kevin for having a girlfriend, though. He seems like a guy either pays for it or takes it by force.”

“That bothered me too,” I said.

“Anyway,” Bubba said, “you don’t want to meet Jack Rouse and Kevin alone.”

“We don’t?”

He shook his head. “You go up to them, and say, ‘Back off our client,’ they’ll kill you. They’d have to. They ain’t real stable.”

A guy who used a minefield for home protection was telling us Jack and Kevin weren’t stable. This was good news. Now that I knew just how dangerous they really were, I considered walking back into that minefield, doing a jig, getting it over with quick.

“We’ll go through Fat Freddy,” Bubba said.

“Are you serious?” Angie said.

Fat Freddy Constantine was the godfather of the Boston Mafia, the man who’d wrested control from the once preeminent Providence outfit and consolidated his power. Jack Rouse, Kevin Hurlihy, anyone who so much as sold a nickel bag in this city answered to Fat Freddy.

“It’s the only way,” Bubba said. “You go through Fat Freddy, you’re showing him respect, and if I set up the meet, they know you’re friends, they won’t whack you.”

“Bonus,” I said.

“When you want the meet?”

“Soon as possible,” Angie said.

He shrugged and picked up a cordless phone off the floor. He dialed and took another swig from the bottle as he waited. “Lou,” he said, “tell the man I called.” He hung up.