“Rash of the boy. Your wife’s nephew needs a good talking to. If he ever wakes up.”

He just sat there looking at me and trying not to look at the gun I was tempting him with. Then: “Heller…I’m willing to let it go.”

“Let what go?”

“You bashing my wife’s nephew.”

“Howie? What if he doesn’t wake up?”

“These things happen.” He sat forward. His mouth was twitching a little. “I, uh, understand you’ve been going around talking to people on both sides of the river.”

“I have.”

“Come up with anything?”

I flipped my left hand casually. “Just that one crisp fall evening in 1953, you and Lou Shoulders spent an hour at your house…you know, the place where you and your wife and son live?…counting that ‘missing’ three-hundred grand. That kings-in-the-counting house routine covers the missing hour between when Carl Hall was booked and the other half of the ransom finally got logged in.”

“You have no proof that meeting took place.”

“You mean, I have no proof because Johnny Hagan is bought off and afraid? And Lou Shoulders is lying his ass off and bawling his eyes out, tossing in the occasional heart attack as a convincer? Then there’s Sandy O’Day, with a baseball-size hole in the back of her skull at Stan Musial’s. Good thing Stan the Man has an alibi—he’s on the road with the Cardinals. Everybody else’s alibi seems kinda on the shaky side. My smoking isn’t bothering you, is it? This is a small space.”

“No,” he said coldly. “I don’t mind.”

I shrugged. “But proof is beside the point, in a way. I’m not a cop. Yes, I am an officer of the court, and as a licensed private investigator, I have a responsibility to share information with the authorities. Theories, however, I don’t have to share.”

The hooded eyes were boring through me now. He studied me for maybe ten seconds, which is longer than it sounds. “How much?”

“Oh, this isn’t blackmail. I was out with Sandy O’Day earlier, remember? I know how you dealt with her, and really all she wanted was a share of the spoils. No, I have no interest in your money. But I do have a client who will pay to hear what I learned.”

“Some you talked to,” he said, “come away thinking your client is Jimmy Hoffa. Others that you’re working for the Rackets Committee. Or maybe Robert Greenlease.”

“Why not all three? Everybody and his dog is interested in you, Joe. You’re a popular man. I don’t think anybody will be hard to convince that you and Shoulders and poor scared Dolan were divvying that dough up in your rec room back in September ’53. But the sad thing is, I don’t think any of you got much for your trouble. That money was so goddamn hot, it cost so much to launder it, only dribs and drabs came back. And nobody approved of what you’d done—not Vitale or Wortman, and sure as hell not Accardo and Humphreys…all of them saw that three-hundred grand as drenched in the blood of a child.”