His eyes, as black as the eyebrows, narrowed in their pouches. “I don’t have to talk to you.”

“My client would like you to.”

“That right?” The hoarse voice was a growl now. “And who would that be? And why should I give a damn?”

I raised my palms chest-high in mild surrender. “Up to you, Lou. You still involved in union work?”

He shook his head, folded his arms. “Not as much. My son, Lou, is. He’s security chief with the Pipefitters. What’s that got to do with the price of beans?”

“My client is somebody worried about the Greenlease money getting tied to the Teamsters. The Rackets Committee is sniffing around, which you may have heard. Be a hell of a black eye. He’d appreciate your cooperation.”

The heavy brows knit. “You’re talkin’ about…Mr. Hoffa?”

I raised the palms again, higher. “Hey. I didn’t mention any names.” I nodded toward the street. “I saw a saloon on the corner, just up the block. Why don’t we find someplace quiet to talk?”

We did, in a booth in back of the Tamm Avenue Tap.

We both had beers. He was smoking a Camel. Not really what a guy with a heart condition should be doing, but I wasn’t his doctor, despite what I’d said.

“I have no idea what became of that money,” he said. “I swear on the life of my wife and my children.”

He didn’t say which wife—he’d been married four times. The fourth had been the “landlady” of one of his two bawdy houses. Of course, Lou was still married to his third wife then, and the landlady had also been his mistress. Who, after the Hall arrest, Shoulders had taken to Hawaii on a vacation.

I didn’t rub any of that in his face. But Grapp had filled me in on this colorful ex-cop, with whom I had briefly but memorably intersected five years ago, and the only question I really had for him was, Why should I believe anything you say, you lying son of a bitch?

“If you ask me,” he said, after a gulp of beer, “the only person who knows where that money is, is Carl Hall. And haven’t you heard? Dead men don’t talk.”

“He didn’t say anything worth listening to,” I said, “when he was breathing. Anyway, what makes you think Carl would know where that dough went? What, a little mud on his trousers?”

He leaned in, his big head hovering over the booth’s scarred tabletop like a window-peeker getting a gander. “I’m gonna tell you something I never told nobody before, Heller, nobody.”

“Please.”

One black eyebrow went up. “You remember I said I’d have somebody shadow that creep, once we had eyes on him? That afternoon of the day we got him that night?”

I followed that. Barely, but I followed it.

“Well,” he said, still hovering, “I shadowed him myself.”

Who knows what evil lurks…?

“He went to a hardware store on Chippewa,” Shoulders said, as if reading it off a report, “and bought two iron garbage cans.”