“Well, that’s fine.” Snope lit their cigars with a silver lighter. “I’m glad to know that you’ve settled down and aren’t planning any more mischief.”

“I’m settled down, all right,” Willy said.

“You were a good man, a clever man, in your day. But we all get old. We all get to a certain point, and then it’s time to take stock and think a bit and figure what the odds are. Sometimes the odds are such that we have to quit taking chances.” Under Snope’s mild tone was a warning, and Willy sensed it.

“I know I’m too old to plan any more jobs. I haven’t any ideas along that line at all.”

“Fine, fine. You’re looking well, too. Taking on a little tan.”

“That’s the yard work,” Willy explained. “What I came about is something else entirely. Not a job of mine. It’s one I got wind of by accident.”

Snope’s face closed coldly and he inspected the cigar as if he thought it might harbor some species of insect life. “Now . . . Willy, I’ve advised you to the best of my knowledge——”

“It’s not my job,” Willy insisted. “I wouldn’t touch it, in fact. But the thing is, the people who are planning it are punks. They don’t know how to organize. It’s going to skyrocket unless somebody with know-how takes over.” He waited, a careful moment. “If someone with experience, the right person, got into it there might be a big payoff.”

There was a tick-tock of such silence that Willy could hear Miss Redhead typing rattledy-clack in the outer office.

“Well, then——” Snope put his cigar into a crystal ash tray and stuck his hands palm down on the desk. His mouth had tightened. “Whom do you want to see?”

“I thought, well . . . Big Tom, if he isn’t too busy.”

“Big Tom.” Snope thought about Big Tom, revolved Big Tom in his brain and inspected him from various angles. “It’s his kind of job?”

“No.”

Snope allowed a touch of suspicion to come up under the juvenile cheer, and Willy saw as usual and with the usual surprise that the youthful optimism was as false, really, as Mr. Snope’s beautiful white teeth.

“I owe Big Tom a favor,” Willy explained. “I’ve waited a long time to pay off. You know, when that last job went sour, when we were keeping our heads down and the heat was so bad we could hardly breathe, it was Big Tom did me a good turn. He loaned me a car and some money and it was just chance he didn’t get pinched over it.”

“I see.” Snope twiddled his fingers on the mahogany. Then he said abruptly, “How big?”

“I don’t know that yet.”

“Will you know it before you pull the job?”

“Hope to.”