“Now, Mr. Milligan—”

“People call me Billy,” Ragen said. “I do not like name Milligan.”

“I understand. I imagine its not your real name. All right, Billy, I can use a man like you—fast, intelligent, strong and damned good with a gun. I need someone who can ride shotgun for me.”

“Vat is ‘ride shotgun?”

“I’m in the shipping business, and my drivers need protection.”

Ragen nodded, feeling the warming effect of the vodka in his chest. “I am protector,” he said.

‘‘Good. I’ll need a number where I can reach you. A day or two before each delivery, you’ll sleep here. We have lots of rooms. You won’t know what’s being shipped or where until you’re on the road with the driver. That way there will be less chance of a leak.”

“Is sound very good,” Ragen said, yawning. On the way back to Lancaster, Ragen slept while Allen drove home, wondering where he had been and what he’d been doing.

In the weeks that followed, Ragen rode shotgun for deliveries of narcotics to various dealers and customers in and around Columbus. He was amused -to find marijuana and cocaine being shipped to prominent people whose names he had seen constantly in the newspapers.

He rode shotgun on a shipment of M-l’s to a group of black men in West Virginia, and wondered what they wanted them for.

Several times Ragen tried to reach Arthur, but either Arthur was being stubborn and wanted nothing to do with him or it was a very bad mix-up time. He knew that Philip and Kevin were stealing time because occasionally he found open containers of barbiturates and amphetamines in the apartment. And once he discovered that one of his guns had been left out on the dresser. He was furious, because someone’s carelessness could harm the children.

He decided that the next time one of the undesirables came on the spot, he would try to be alert and bump them into the wall to teach them a lesson. Drugs were bad for the body; vodka and grass in moderation, having natural ingredients, were not. But he wanted nothing to do with hard drugs. He began to suspect that Philip or Kevin had experimented with LSD.

A week later, after returning from delivering a shipment of marijuana to a car dealer in Indiana, Ragen stopped in Columbus for dinner. As he was getting out of his car, he saw an elderly man and woman distributing Communist party leaflets. There were several hecklers standing around, and Ragen asked the couple if he could help them.

“Are you sympathetic to our cause?” the woman asked. “Yes,” Ragen said. “I am communist. I have seen slave labor in sweatshops and factories.”

The man handed him a stack of leaflets describing the philosophy of the Communist party and attacking the United States for supporting dictatorships. Ragen walked up and down Broad Street, pushing them into the hands of passers-by.

When he was down to the last leaflet, he decided to keep it for himself. He looked around for the old couple, but they were gone. He wandered for several blocks looking for them. If only he could find out where the meetings were held, he would join the Communist party. He had watched Tommy and Allen at Lancaster Electro-Plating and knew that the only way to improve the lot of the down-trodden masses was through the peoples revolution.