“Tell me, Barney. How do you sleep at night?”

“Like a baby, Nate. Like a goddamn baby.”

I pushed back on my chair and got to my feet. “Well, then—you better hope nobody snatches you from your cradle some night.”

I let him pay the check.

But for all my bluster, I wasn’t sure this ton of lard would ever really pay.

* * *

Once again, I was in the Greenlease mansion in Mission Hills, sitting on the leather-upholstered sofa beneath the mural of hunters and hounds heading toward the trees. Bobby Green-lease’s father, seated next to me, was dressed much as he’d been at the beginning of all this, five years ago—a dressing gown (this one black and orange) over pajamas with slippers. I was in a short-sleeve sport shirt and slacks, having just made the four hour-plus drive from St. Louis. At almost ten o’clock P.M., his wife was in bed. He was having bourbon, and had made me a rum and Coke.

His manner was as quiet and friendly as ever. Behind the white-haired, strong-jawed countenance of a successful man of business, he had a kindness, a goodness, that had made him the perfect prey for the slimy likes of Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady.

My host wanted me to be frank about my investigation and I was. In detail, but not in writing. Client confidentiality covered us both, so even last night’s brutal fight in that Ace garage got recounted.

“I don’t know if it’s any consolation,” I said, wrapping up, “but everyone who came into contact with that money had about as much luck as those guys who dug up King Tut.”

His thin lips formed a thin smile. “The Greenlease curse?”

“You could call it that. The money went through so many hands, diminishing each time, nobody made much. That cop Shoulders lost his job, went to prison, and is having heart attacks for a hobby, when he isn’t bawling his eyes out in self-pity. Dolan is a guilt-ridden wreck, living in fear, going from promising police officer to gas station attendant and with a growing family to support. That cabbie Hagan is eking out an existence, afraid of his shadow. I saw the O’Day woman shot and killed right in front of me. Two mob guys are dead because they tried to move that money. And the bank used in the laundering is in trouble with the feds, with the top mobsters feeling the heat. Again, if it’s any solace to you.”

He sipped bourbon. “It would not be to my wife. She is a tender soul, a loving, Christian woman. I, however, am a businessman. A capitalist, unashamed, and for me—who has spent so much effort making money, pursuing money—I cannot stomach the thought of anyone profiting off my boy’s murder. It just leaves too bitter a goddamn taste.”

“I understand. I love my son, too.”

He rested his hand on my arm. Squeezed. “So what you’ve done, what you’ve learned, Mr. Heller…Nate…does provide solace. To me. I can accept the plague of locusts these bastards have brought down upon themselves as their due punishment. I only wish the money that went into the Teamsters coffers could have led to the fall of this Hoffa creature.”