I walked to the back door and pounded on it as if I owned the place. Every knock was like a punch in my left shoulder. I kept knocking until I saw Froehmer make his way toward me. He didn’t look happy. Maybe he knew what had happened already. I didn’t care. I leaned against the door frame and when he opened the door, I handed him the black bag.

He opened it and his eyes lit up like a kid’s at Christmas.

“I took it from Mobley,” I told him. “He had it for someone else.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the thing. I had to get out of there.

“Where’s Mobley now?”

“Dead.” Froehmer’s face didn’t change. Not even a little. Not at all.

“But where is he?”

“I took care of it.”

He looked up. “You need help,” he said. “Let me call somebody.”

“I just need some rest.”

“You have a gun? If you have one, you better give it to me.”

“I took care of it,” I told him. “I took care of everything. And now you have it.”

He put the trophy back in the bag.

“I did it for you,” I told him. “I never…you never…all those years, you never told me you played,” I said.

A spiteful contraction gradually distorted his face. “No one wants to hear about it,” he said. “But I was better than most of them. They knew it. I was better than them. But that’s history.”

“What’s it for then?”

“They owe it to me, so I take it from them,” he said. “It’s not for me. I’m setting the record straight.” He looked at me, right in the eye. “You better go on now.”

“And Frank? And Mobley? What about them?”

“You better go on,” Froehmer said. “You need to take care.”

“You have to answer about Mobley,” I said. “How could you do that? All this time.”

“We’ll talk about that,” he said. “We’ll talk about Mobley. A hard man to replace, you know. But we’ll take care of it. You’ll be all right.”

“I’m done,” I said. I wanted to tell him that I was done with the stealing and done with the killing, but I couldn’t say it right then. “We’ll talk about it,” he said and closed the door and I watched him carry the black bag with him.

I thought I might take the trophy from him, just to get that satisfied look off his face, just to remind him that it wasn’t his, that he wasn’t entitled to it, that having it didn’t mean anything. If it’s what mattered to him, I could show him that I could take it again and again, whenever I wanted.