I knew other people worked for Froehmer, but he never talked about them except in vague, indirect ways. “I’ll have someone look into that,” he might say, or “I think someone can help with that,” so I knew I was part of a larger organization, but I didn’t really think of myself as part of it, and I didn’t care. I didn’t care who else was part of it or what they did or if I would ever meet them. I did my work and left it at that. I did what Froehmer said, and that was the extent of it. But now there was someone else, sitting in Froehmer’s seat and leaving me with the check for breakfast, and maybe taking something out of the envelope before it got to me. I had to talk about terms and transactions and all those things. Fairness was out of it now. Scores were being kept.

I didn’t care as long as the envelopes kept coming. After Frank joined we never saw Froehmer; it was always the same guy sitting in the diner, Mobley. He was five years older than I was and had been working for Froehmer about as long as I had, I guess. I don’t really know. I don’t know where he came from, or how he got to be with Froehmer. The same way I did, maybe. I didn’t really care. I didn’t know anything about him, other than he was Froehmer’s errand boy. And the fact that he always had an attitude around me, a hostility he figured put me at a disadvantage. He was about the same build, a little taller. I thought I could take him in a fair fight, if it ever came to that. But nothing would be fair with Mobley. You knew that by looking at him. He would do whatever he had to do, or whatever Froehmer told him. Mobley had a face you could put on a penny, calm and composed, but he was not to be fucked with. He had that air about him too, which is why he was sitting there across from us at the diner. “He’s a stick of dynamite,” Frank had said about him. “He looks harmless enough, but you know he can take your head off.” Frank thought it best if I went to the diner by myself. “Why should both of us get blown up?” he half-teased me.

And then Mobley stopped wanting to meet at the diner. He’d pick some parking lot, or driveway, or street corner and I’d have to go out of my way and he’d hand over the envelope and I’d go on my way. It was better. There was never anything to talk with Mobley about anyway, so why have coffee together, why sit across from each other like we knew each other?