Hagan shook the paper bag off the bottle—I.W. Harper again—and handed it toward Steve, who grinned like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Johnny, I won’t soon forget you!”

Then Steve was passing around drinking glasses in which he’d poured several fingers of amber liquid, like the pacing father’s baby had finally been delivered. Crossing her nice long legs, Sandy replaced me in the seat of honor next to Steve on the edge of the Beautyrest while Johnny and I found chairs.

“Stick by me a few days,” Steve said to the cabbie, between generous gulps, “and see me through this rough patch, you can be damn sure I’ll take care of you.”

What rough patch exactly?

Steve went on: “Sandy here wants a bull to hey-diddle-diddle the cows on her farm. What’s your dream, Johnny?”

The cabbie gestured around him, sloshing the whiskey in hand; his eyes traveled to where the walls met the ceiling as if that were where heaven began.

“Place of my own like this would be just about goddamn perfect,” Hagan mused. “Can you picture it? Motel down in Florida, beach for a back yard, away from the Saint fuckin’ Looie snow.” He snorted in self-contempt. “Rolling drunks in your cab only takes a guy so far. Why hustle johns for whores out of a Chevy… no offense, Sandy…when you can run a ring of ’em right out of your own clean and comfy motel? Drivin’ cab is no kind of life for a real man. A place like the Coral Court—hell, half as nice—would cover what it takes for a guy to make his support payments and make a bet when he feels like it, maybe buy a new suit of clothes now and again, and never feel the pinch.”

“Everybody needs a dream,” I agreed.

“Well, yours is gonna come true, Johnny,” Steve said, saluting him with an already empty whiskey glass. “Like Sandy and her farm and that male nympho bull I’m gonna buy her… I’m gonna set you up for life, kid. And Nate, you are not forgotten in this—I’m gonna kick back ten percent of whatever you arrange for me with the Chicago boys. Consider that a promise.”

Sandy, not too subtly, said to Steve, “That new bag you had Johnny buy? You need help shifting the money into it from that footlocker and suitcase?”

Steve took no offense at this breach of etiquette. He just shook his head gently and said, “No, suit bag’s for clothes we’re gonna buy this afternoon, me and Johnny. Now, Johnny boy, first you should drop Sandy off at a cab stand, where she can get a ride to the airport for her L.A. trip. Use the car you rented and come back here after. Sandy, I got a couple more letters for you to mail from out there. Then, Johnny, rent me a nice apartment in a quiet, refined neighborhood where I can lay low for a while. If it hadn’t been for one man’s slip-up, none of this would be necessary. But it is. Pay a month’s rent if you have to.”