“Now it’s my turn to tell you a story,” Tunney said to me.

“All right.”

“Once upon a time there was a man who grew up in Chicago, and whose father and grandfather were part of the old Irish gangs that were part of the city even earlier than Prohibition. This man was pretty smart and pretty lucky and by the time he was thirty was running most of what was left of the Irish gangs’ interests in the city and most of the state. You with me so far?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because what eventually happens is this man has a son. And the son says to the father, come on, Pop, stop being lucky and start being smart. So together the father and son start moving the family’s interests toward the legitimate side. It takes a while, it’s not a smooth process and—” here Tunney smiled as if to acknowledge the current situation, “—certain old habits die hard.”

“Like inviting people to discussions at a point of a gun,” I offered.

“Sure, like that. Or, for another example, like using dispatchers under the table to help out certain employees who have gotten themselves in a bad way and need to be saved from themselves.”

“Someone who might have overdosed, for example.”

“That’s a very good example. And as you know, dispatching isn’t a one hundred percent perfect science. Sometimes people die and stay dead.”

“Yes, they do.”

“And then that’s a mark on the dispatcher’s permanent record.”

“I suppose so.”

“Okay. So, let’s say in this story that this company, which is mostly straight but still has some kinks to work out, was sharing a dispatcher with a certain older gentleman who had a sick wife. The association, as it happens, is completely coincidental—the dispatcher came to the jobs through entirely separate channels.”

“That’s some coincidence.”

Tunney cocked his head at this. “Is it? Or is it that, ultimately, business—legitimate or not—is a small world, and sooner or later everyone knows everyone. You’ve seen both sides of the business world, haven’t you, Mr. Valdez? Can you say there’s a bright line where one side ends and the other begins? Or is it that there’s a big fat gray area in the middle? A gray area you yourself have spent a lot of time in?”

“I take your point,” I said.

“I thought you might. So, coincidence, but it hardly matters. Because the chairman of the mostly-straight company and the older gentleman with the sick wife are friends. Have been since high school. And after the wife passes the chairman goes to visit his friend, and the friend discovers that the dispatcher who couldn’t save his wife also didn’t save the company’s employee. And what are the odds of that? Two failed dispatches one right after the other?”

“One in a million.”