“I would imagine you are.”

He pushed at the air. “Now, I’m not full of myself. I don’t have no big head or nothing. It’s a little kingdom, East St. Louis. But my ‘subjects’ are happy as clams. Taxes are low, city coffers overflowing with all kinds of revenue, and I keep the worst elements out. With the help of the local John Law. I’m mostly vending machines now, and I never put up with the dope trade. Sure, we run wide open in the entertainment districts. But drive around my town and see—streets in good repair, beautiful parks with no trash scattered around, grass at public buildings tended like a goddamn golf course. Good schools.”

Why was he telling me all this?

“It’s a fine place to raise a family, Nate…I’ll call you Nate, and you call me Buster. Okay?”

“Okay, Buster.”

“Why, there’s less street crime here than any other city its size in the whole damn country! And less than St. Louis itself! Real crime, I mean. I can see you wondering why I care about your opinion. Somebody in my position can’t be swayed by people who don’t understand what we are trying to accomplish for the community.”

I nodded.

Something sharp came into his tone. “You listen to me. I wouldn’t touch that Greenlease money with a ten-foot pole. When that kid was snatched, I told one and all, everybody around me, that it was the most stinking no-good thing a man could do, steal a kid. I got three of my own! And when that boy turned up dead…”

He crushed the cigar in a fist and flung it to the floor.

“…everybody in my world knew: I would strangle those who did it with my bare hands, my bare fucking hands! I made no secret of it, Nate.”

“I believe you, Buster.”

A slow nod of the fedora-topped head. “All right. Okay. Just so you know. And know this, too: nobody offered me that money. Nobody was dumb enough to. If Joe Costello got it, and some people say he did, he did not bring it to my attention. And I have stayed out of it because there is disagreement about such things.”

I frowned. “What kind of disagreement, Buster?”

A sigh. “Well, over whether handling that money is just as damn bad as ransoming and killing that poor child. To me, it’s blood money. It’s filthy, wicked, ill-gotten gains. And again, I let that be known. But not everybody sees it that way. So I am telling you right now…and would suggest you believe me… that my hands never touched that money.”

“Your word’s good enough for me, Buster.” Particularly sitting in a steam bath with him with that towel settling over what was definitely a .38, and considering the less than gentle way I’d been brought by his emissaries into the court of the king of East St. Louis.

“Now what prompted me,” he said, “to bother you in the wee hours was a phone call I received…actually several phone calls, including more than one from St. Louis police officers who are friendly to me…about the sad event of earlier tonight. Yesterday evening, actually, as we are past the witching hour, aren’t we, into a new day?”