“Yeah,” she said, letting smoke out, “we have. Here’s what else we need to establish. If you’re working for the Teamsters or any of those underworld creeps either side of the river, this conversation ends now. I got a little girl to look after, and I know what these people are capable of.”

I raised a courthouse palm. “I don’t represent anyone who means to do you harm. You have a little girl, huh? I have a boy of eleven.”

“Spare me the soft soap. I’m a mommy and you’re a daddy. That supposed to make us two of a kind? A woman reduced to waiting tables and a guy who gets movie stars out of jams?”

“No, but we’re both parents and don’t have to work at it to remember what happened to Bobby Greenlease.”

She drew on the cigarette. Held in smoke, expelled it, adding to the foggy atmosphere. “Is that what this is about?”

“That’s what this is about.”

When she frowned her forehead somehow stayed smooth. “All I’ve ever said to the FBI or that Rackets Committee investigator was Barney told me once he knew something about the Greenlease money. That’s all. Ever since then, the FBI treats me like I got the damn dough, in the attic or under the bed or something.”

“You think Barney had something to do with what became of that money?”

Another drag. “Barney’s no angel. I think I could have straightened him out if I got him away from Hoffa and the rest of those Teamster bums. I mean, he’s not such a bad guy, but he was always ready to let big shots lead him into trouble. He likes to feel like a big operator. Which he isn’t.”

“You’re still fond of him.”

Her smile was slight but it was a smile. “You should have seen him when I met him. He was tall, good-looking. Not fat at all—and a real charming guy. I can tell you one thing—I’m the best wife he ever had.”

That information wasn’t worth a hundred bucks. I almost told her so, but instead put on a smile and applied a needle.

“Have you heard anything from Barney, Mollie, since he married that young blonde in Iowa? Her father Jake is the state Democratic chairman there, and that’s how Barney met her, working for Harriman.”

W. Averell Harriman, governor of New York, had made a bid for the presidential nomination in ’56. You don’t have to be much of a student of history to know how that came out.

Steam damn near streamed out of her ears and nostrils. “He’d better not let that child bride keep him from making his payments for his little girl! If he doesn’t keep up, I’ll track him down wherever he is and put a gun in his big, fat belly and blow his guts out.”

That seemed fair.

She was raving: “Do you know that flabby son of a bitch sent word to me he wanted to get back together at the same time he was planning marriage to that Iowa brat?”