Duke met me just inside the door, and this host of hosts looked uncharacteristically uneasy; stout, bald with a trim mustache, he had been described as looking like a cross between Ben Franklin and a race-track tout. As always, he was in a white dinner jacket and black bow tie.

“He’s waiting in the kitchen,” Duke said, and I didn’t bother asking who. Not that I had any idea, but if Duke had wanted to give me more information than that, he would have.

He stayed behind as I passed by the glass trophy case of Redskins memorabilia and into the blue-and-brown-hued dining room. I headed down an aisle between tables toward the back, just a handful of early diners present, though the bar off to one side was doing the usual good business. No one paid notice—the restrooms were back here, after all.

So was the kitchen, and I went through the double doors into the steaming, clanging world of white-coated minions doing prep. The long-faced head chef, whose tall hat made him Alice-in-Wonderland absurd, directed me to the double wooden doors of their walk-in cooler. I paused and frowned and got an impatient look and a head bob to get in there.

I got in there.

Jimmy Hoffa did not smoke but his breath did—it must have been 35 degrees among the high racks of vegetables and low racks of butchered meat. Didn’t take long for my breath to make itself visible, too. He was in the same dark off-the-rack suit as at the Caucus Room.

We shook hands—his usual vise-like grip—and I grunted a laugh. “So you finally wound up in the cooler.”

He grinned, but his grins rarely showed many teeth and this was no exception—just a slice of white in that wide unhealed cut that served as a mouth in a well-tanned face. “That’s no joke, if those silver-spoon Kennedy pricks get their way.”

Right behind him were shelves of the kind of produce he loaded off trucks as a kid. That had been his sole connection to such vehicles—he’d never driven a truck in his life.

“Hope you haven’t been waiting long,” I said. “Freezer burn’s an embarrassing way to go.”

“There’s worse ways. And you and me, Nate, it’s not like we can be seen together. Not without riskin’ Booby gettin’ wise.”

That was how he referred to Robert Kennedy: “Booby.” Until fairly recently Hoffa had been paying me two grand a month, starting early last year, when I was working close to full-time as an investigator for Arkansas Senator John McClellan’s Rackets Committee.

“Jimmy, you know damn well I’m not on their regular payroll anymore.”

His features clenched. “Well, get back on. Just temporary. I got a job for you.”

It was cold enough in there that I was already shaking. Or maybe it wasn’t the cold. “What kind of job?”

“This kind,” Hoffa said, and dug in his pants pocket and came back with a roll of bills. He thumbed off hundreds like a banker, then thrust a stack toward me. “That should be two grand. Like the old days.”