“Go on.”

“When I got out after fifteen months—it was December ’55—Joe Costello wanted to meet with me at Ruggeri’s restaurant. He said he’d sold my share while I was inside, and offered me ten grand. I turned it down, but…I’m not proud of this…it was Christmas and I’d been doing time and had no job. I asked for fifteen-hundred dollars for living expenses and…to buy presents for the wife and kids.”

He started to cry.

Him I could feel for. Shoulders could go fuck himself.

I said, “Is that everything, son?”

“N…no. Not quite. A guy was already there when we got to Costello’s that night.”

“What guy?”

Steam hissed, a librarian asking for quiet.

He obeyed, keeping his voice down, saying, “A big guy with connections. You know? Connections. He helped Joe count the money. And was good at it, like a banker. Then he took the money with him, the other half of it, before we left with the rest, to turn in at the station.”

I leaned forward and put an edge in my voice. “What guy, Elmer?”

He shook his head. “Can’t tell you, Mr. Heller. Not even if Joe Costello and Lou Shoulders were dead and gone. Not even…not even if this big mob guy himself was dead and gone, because he’s so connected it would come back on me, sure as hell. My kids would not have a father and my wife would not have a husband.”

“Okay, Elmer.”

“The rest of it? You can tell Mr. Greenlease, but not before he swears on his life to keep it to himself. Maybe someday I’ll go public. But till then, he has to swear. On his daughter’s life, ’cause I read he has one. On her life, Mr. Heller.”

He was getting worked up.

I said, “All right, Elmer.”

“Because if you don’t keep your word, I’m a dead man.”

And he probably would be.

As he walked me out of the work area, I said, “You have a solid crew working back there. Business good?”

“I thought it was. But we’ve just sold the place.”

I frowned at him. “Why, if you’re doing well?”

He shook his head. “Our silent partners are people in Chicago who know the laundry business. They insisted we sell. They were disappointed with how we were doing.”

He opened the gate in the counter for me and we stepped through and I said, “Would one of those silent partners be named Humphreys, by any chance?”

“Murray Humphreys, yes. His people came in and set everything up for us, when we started out last year.”

And that explained it. The Murray Humphreys chain of dry-cleaning establishments laundered more than clothes.

At the door I asked, “Tell me, did the feds take an interest in your books?”

He laughed, once. “Oh, they’ve been all over us. But they didn’t find a thing. We’re squeaky clean. It’s disappointing, ’cause we were really making a go of it. Now I start at a service station next month, pumping gas.”