The first thing he did after shaking Freddy’s hand was sit down beside me and put his cigarette out in my coffee cup. Then he ran a hand through his coarse, thick hair and stared at me.

Freddy said, “Jack, Kevin, you know Mr. Kenzie and Ms. Gennaro, don’t you?”

“Old friends, sure,” Jack said as he took the seat beside Angie. “Neighborhood kids like Kevin.” Rouse shrugged off an old blue Members’ Only jacket and hung it behind him on his chair. “Ain’t that the God’s truth, Kev?”

Kevin was too busy staring at me to comment.

Far Freddy said, “I like everything to be above board. Rogowski says you two are okay, and maybe you got a problem I can help you with—so be it. But you two come from Jack’s neighborhood, so I ask Jack if he’d like to sit in. You see what I’m saying?”

We nodded.

Kevin lit another cigarette, blew the smoke into my hair.

Freddy turned his palms up on the table. “We’re all agreed, then. So, tell me what you need, Mr. Kenzie.”

“We’ve been hired by a client,” I said, “who—”

“How’s your coffee, Jack?” Freddy said. “Enough cream?”

“It’s fine, Mr. Constantine. Very good.”

“Who,” I repeated, “is under the impression she annoyed one of Jack’s men.”

“Men?” Freddy said and raised his eyebrows, looked at Jack, then back at me. “We’re small businessmen, Mr. Kenzie. We have employees, but their loyalties stop with their paychecks.” He looked at Jack again. “Men?” he said and they both chuckled.

Angie sighed.

Kevin blew some more smoke into my hair.

I was tired, and the last vestiges of Bubba’s vodka were chewing at the base of my brain, so I really wasn’t in the mood to play cute with a bunch of cut-rate psychopaths who’d seen The Godfather too many times and thought they were respectable. But I reminded myself that Freddy, at least, was a very powerful psychopath who could be dining on my spleen tomorrow night if he wanted to.

“Mr. Constantine, one of Mr. Rouse’s…associates, then, has expressed anger at our client, made certain threats—”

“Threats?” Freddy said. “Threats?”

“Threats?” Jack said, smiled at Freddy.

“Threats,” Angie said. “Seems our client had the misfortune of speaking with your associate’s girlfriend, who claimed to know of her boyfriend’s criminal activities, including the—how can I put it?” She met Freddy’s eyes. “The waste management of some formerly animate tissue?”

It took him a minute to get it, but then his small eyes narrowed and he threw back his massive head and laughed, booming it up into the ceiling, sending it halfway down Prince Street. Jack looked confused. Kevin looked pissed off, but that’s the only way Kevin’s ever looked.

“Pine,” Freddy said. “You hear that?”

Pine made no indication he’d heard anything. He made no indication he was breathing. He sat there, immobile, simultaneously looking and not looking in our direction.

“’Waste management of formerly animate tissue,’” Freddy repeated, gasping. He looked at Jack, realized he hadn’t gotten the joke yet. “Fuck, Jack, go out and pick up a brain, huh?”