“For mine?”

“I think it would be best.”

“Well, I don’t give a shit what you think. Go home, Myron.”

Myron nodded. “Will do.”

Tom waited. Myron started to cross the street, but he stopped and did his best Columbo turn. “Oh, one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Myron tried not to smile. “I saw Win.”

The street went silent. Even the music spilling out of the nightclub seemed to hush.

“You’re lying.”

“No, Tom, I’m not. He’s coming home. And when he does, I’m sure he’ll want to pay you a visit.”

Tom stood there, frozen. Geri, still inside the car, finally lost it and threw up in the loudest way possible. Windows rattled. Tom still didn’t move.

Myron let the smile come to his face as he waved good-bye. “Have a great night.”

Chapter 18

It was a bright, clear New Jersey morning.

Huge neon lettering on the southern side of the Lower Trenton Toll Supported Bridge spelled out the following slogan: TRENTON MAKES, THE WORLD TAKES. The letters were installed in 1935, and maybe back then, with linoleum, ceramics, and other manufacturing plants in full swing, there was a modicum of truth in the wording. Not now. Trenton was the capital of New Jersey, home to the state government and thus filled with politicians and their ensuing scandals, which made the entire city, when you thought about it, as honest as the message on the bridge you crossed to enter it.

Still, Myron loved this state, and anyone with even an inkling of knowledge knew that New Jersey hardly held a patent on governmental corruption. The political scandals might be more colorful here, but then again, everything was. New Jersey was hard to define because it was a hodgepodge. Up north, it was the suburbs of New York City. To the southwest, it was the suburbs of Philadelphia. Those two major cities drained resources and attention from New Jersey’s own urban centers, leaving Newark and Camden and the like sucking for life like a retiree with an oxygen tank at an Atlantic City casino. The suburbs were lush and green. The cities were destitute and concrete. And so it goes.

Still, it was odd. Anyone who lived within a forty-minute drive of Chicago or Los Angeles or Houston said they were from that city. But you could live two miles from New York City and you would say you were from New Jersey. Myron grew up half an hour away from New York City and maybe five miles from Newark. He never said he was from either. Well, one time he said he was from Newark, but that was because he wanted to apply for financial aid.

You put all that together—the beauty, the blight, the sophisticated cities, the inferiority complex, the tacky, the classy—and you got the indefinable color and texture of the great state of New Jersey. Better to find the definition of New Jersey in Sinatra’s voice, in Tony Soprano’s ride, in a Springsteen song. Listen closely. You’ll get it.