When the tab finally came, I ripped it out of Bubba’s hand. “On us,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You two haven’t worked in four months.”

“Until today,” Angie said. “Today we got a big job. Big money. So let us pay for you, big boy.”

I gave the waitress my credit card (after making sure they knew what one was in this place) and she came back a few minutes later to tell me it had been declined.

Bubba loved that. “Big job,” he crowed. “Big money.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

The waitress was wide and old with skin as hard and beaten as a Hell’s Angel’s leather jacket. She said, “You’re right. Maybe the first six times I punched your number in, I did it wrong. Lemmee try again.”

I took the card from her as Nelson and the Twoomey brothers joined in Bubba’s snickering.

“Moneybags,” one of the Twoomey nitwits cackled. “Musta maxed out the card buying that jet last week.”

“Funny,” I said. “Ha,” I said.

Angie paid the tab with some of the cash we’d gotten from Trevor Stone that morning and we all stumbled out of the place.

On Stoughton Street, Bubba and Nelson argued over which strip club best fit their refined aesthetic tastes, and the Twoomey brothers tackled each other in a pile of frozen snow, started rabbit-punching each other.

“Which creditor did you piss off this time?” Angie said.

“That’s the thing,” I said, “I’m sure this is paid off.”

“Patrick,” she said in a tone my mother used to use. She even wore the same frown.

“You’re not going to shake your finger at me and call me by my first, middle, and last name, are you, Ange?”

“Obviously they didn’t get the check,” she said.

“Hmm,” I said because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“So you guys coming with us?” Bubba said.

“Where?” I asked, just to be polite.

“Mons Honey. In Saugus.”

“Yeah,” Angie said. “Sure, Bubba. Let me just go break a fifty so I have something to shove in their G-strings.”

“Okay.” Bubba leaned back on his heels.

“Bubba,” I said.

He looked at me, then at Angie, then back at me. “Oh,” he said suddenly, throwing back his head, “you were kidding.”

“Was I?” Angie said, touching her hand to her chest.

Bubba grabbed her by the waist and scooped her off the ground, hugged her to him one-handed, her heels up by his knees. “I’m going to miss you.”

“We’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. “Now put me down.”

“Tomorrow?”

“We agreed to drive you to jail,” I reminded him.

“Oh, yeah. Cool.”

He dropped Angie and she said, “Maybe you need some time away.”

“I do.” Bubba sighed. “It’s hard being the guy who does all the thinking for everybody.”