I reached for my wallet and got him out a card. “I should be back in Chicago in a day or so, unless you advise otherwise. You need me for a court appearance or anything, I’ll be there with bells on.”

He took the card but shook his head. “That’s doubtful, Heller. Y’see, you was never here.”

“Is that right?”

“Carl is scared as shit of you and the Outfit. And my pal Johnny Hagan and his favorite whore Sandy, they’ll stay mum, too.”

“Like I said, I’m willing to testify.”

He shook the big bucket head. “It’d just open up a whole can of worms. See, we’re taking Carl for a ride…no, not the Chicago kind. We’re hauling him over to the Town House where Johnny Hagan rented him a suite. That’s where the arrest’ll be made.”

“Why not here?”

Shoulders lit up a cigarette and it bobbled as he talked. “Matter of jurisdiction. Marlborough is well outside the St. Louis city limits. Need to make the bust on home soil, so to speak.”

“Ah. You probably want me to clear out of this room and make myself scarce. I’ll check out right away.”

“You’re already checked out. Manager, Jack Carr, is an old pal. He’s helping us keep things on the q.t. This isn’t the kind of publicity a, uh, respectable little Mom-and-Pop shop like the Coral Court needs.”

“You’re saying I should fade.”

His grin was an unsettling array of big yellow teeth. “Heller, you are so close to gone already I can barely see you.”

He gave me a nod and sauntered out, shutting the door soft, like he didn’t want to wake the dead.

* * *

I drove through the night.

No moon, just blackness, the big Cadillac cutting through nothing, farmland rolling flat and anonymous, with only the occasional small-town Main Street to indicate the world hadn’t ended. What seemed a fire in the night was only the lights of Columbia, where a We-Never-Close service station filled the belly of the Caddy. I was hungry too, and had a Baby Ruth bar and a cup of vending machine coffee. The heater put out fine. I found a radio station that wasn’t playing Grand Ole Opry, instead putting me in the soothing company of Johnnie Ray, Rosemary Clooney and Eddie Fisher. I turned it off once, when Patti Page started singing “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window.” The song was worth hating in general, but it reminded me of Carl and Bonnie’s dog Doc and the comforter the animal used to sleep on before it became Bobby Greenlease’s shroud. I thought the veins on the back of my hands would pop, clutching the steering wheel. After a while I switched the radio back on and Frankie Laine was singing “High Noon,” all about killing bastards and that was better.

Then, somehow, it was four hours after I left the Coral Court and I was in Kansas City—or I should say Mission Hills, coming up to the FBI checkpoint at West 53rd and Verona Road, the sleepy affluent neighborhood that at midnight was even sleepier.