Carter shook his head and laughed cynically. “Believe me, he’s been setting you up for this little adventure since day one. That ten bucks he gave you for washing dishes, it was just a down payment. All that waiter training was for one thing: his nieces. Remember, Bobo, I’ve seen them. Twenty bucks. That’s the deal, or find somebody else—if you think you can. I’m telling you, last year every eligible male in a twenty-mile radius went into hiding the weekend they were here. Twenty bucks apiece. All you’ve got to do is say it to him like you’re kidding him. He’ll pick up on it. You don’t know Harry. He’ll go for a bargain like a trout after one of Arch’s flies, and that, my friend, is a bargain. Trust me.”

Carter was right, as usual. The next day I said to Harry, “We need to talk about this date with your nieces.”

“What’s to talk?” Harry said irritably. “I offer you a night out with beautiful women and you want I should talk about it?”

“I figure twenty bucks each for me and Carter, plus expenses,” I said, grinning.

Harry did his dramatic sigh, the one where he rolled his head and his eyes in exasperation. “Ach du lieber Gott,” he muttered. He wagged his cigar like a swagger stick. “You’re a thief, Bobo Murphy, an Irish no-goodnik, but, all right, all right. If I didn’t like you so much, I’d find somebody else for two such beauties.”

Harry gave me the money up front. He said it was because he was an honorable man. Carter said it was because he didn’t want me to renege on the arrangement.

Carter, again, was right.

Harry Burger’s nieces were beyond ugly. They were tragic. Thin, pinched faces, no chins, beaver teeth, tiny eyes behind thick eyeglasses. Coy Helms would have said of them, “You’d have to hang meat around their neck to get a dog to play with them.”

They were waiting with Harry on the porch of the Inn, having arrived an hour earlier, after dinner.

“Take your pick,” Carter mumbled as we approached him.

“I’ll take Harry,” I whispered.

Carter giggled. “Damn, Bobo, you just did a funny.”

“So, boys, you’re in good spirits, I see,” Harry called cheerfully.

“Great,” Carter said.

“Good, good,” Harry chirped. He beamed a smile of joy.

We reached the porch.

“Boys, I want for you to meet Charlotte and Erin,” Harry said. He indicated the girls. Then: “Girls, this is the Georgia boy I’ve been telling you about—Bobo Murphy. He didn’t know a schnitzel from a schnook when he met me. Now, he’s a waiter.” He looked at Carter. “And Carter you know already. He’s the one who dropped the fruit cup down your back last year, Erin.”

The girls smiled.

I thought: Oh, my God.