He shook his head and looked at the sky. “I can’t fuckin’ believe this.”

“Tell me who drives the car,” I said. “Maybe the guy who drives the car should tell me it’s okay.”

“Jumpin’ Jesus fuckin’ Christ with a hard-on.”

“It seems only fair.”

One of the black guys said, “Oo-ee.”

Frank threw down the clipboard and stalked back into the building. The two black guys flashed a lot of inlay work and gave each other the Spike Lee treatment. After a little while Frank came back with a large, bald man in his fifties with pop eyes and a melon head and a voice so soft that it might have come from a sick child. He told me that he was the manager and he gave me his card. It said Michael Vinicotta. Lucerno Meats. Manager. He said that if my insurance company wanted to speak with anyone, they could speak with him. He told me that he very much appreciated my concern and my consideration in trying to make sure I had done right by the owner of the car, but that restitution by me was neither sought nor needed.

I said, “Maybe we should leave the cars where they are and call the police and get an accident report.”

He said, “Get the fuck outta here or there’s gonna be more broken than a goddamned headlight.”

I went back to the Taurus and drove around the block and parked in a garage on Broome Street. I walked back to a pastry shop across from Lucerno’s and bought a double decaf espresso and sat in the window. Maybe I should go back and pretend to be Ed McMahon and tell them that the guy who drove the Lincoln had just won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes for a million bucks. That sounded better than the old busted-headlamp routine, but now they knew I wasn’t Ed McMahon. Probably should’ve tried that one first.

Most of the way through my third espresso the fat guy with the caviar skin came out of Lucerno’s. Joey. He was wearing the white coveralls and insulated work boots and the same blue Navy pea coat that he had worn at the Howard Johnson’s. Well, well. He wasn’t the guy in the Lincoln, but he was close enough.