“You’re damn fucking right,” Buster said, belching into his fist and then running his tongue over his back teeth for some loose meat. “The dumb shit hillbilly went and got himself caught, not two miles from my fucking castle. He’d reached out to me, trying to make some kind of amends for fucking me right in the ass. Claimed stealing the tractor trailer wasn’t his idea, he’d been set up. When he got busted, he had a cute little piece of tail with him from up in Jericho. What’s her name, Amber? Cherry?”

“Twilight.”

“Oh, Christ. Are you fucking kidding me? He should’ve known the puss would be his undoing. What do I always say, don’t shit where you eat and don’t fucking let the puss go to your brain. It makes you goddamn soft and fucking stupid. Hey? Aren’t you gonna eat? Don’t you like your steak? I hired this guy right from Pascal Manale’s, doubled his salary after he cooked for me and the missus one night. Sharp black guy. Talks just like a white man.”

“Wes Taggart won’t talk.”

“Glad you got the faith, Ray,” White said. “But these younger guys ain’t from the same mold as you and me. We were all raised different, from a different time, a different era. We knew all this shit would go around and come back around. You get caught, you shut your mouth, you do your time, and when you’re out you get your reward. But Taggart and that shit-for-brains J. B. Hood . . . Christ Almighty, why did we ever send those guys up to north Mississippi? All they did was rob me fucking blind.”

Ray had to be careful of what he said. He never liked or trusted those guys or ever thought in a damn million years they could do a better job than Fannie Hathcock. But goddamn Buster was sure of it at the time, although he wouldn’t say shit now even if his mouth was crammed full of it. So Ray did what Ray had always done ever since he and Buster had been boosting cars from the airmen on the Coast and running shithole clip joints on Beach Boulevard. Back then they were full of piss and vinegar and wore crew cuts and worked out with weights and ate nothing but steak and pussy. But, goddamn, times had changed. Buster belched again and pointed to Ray again with the end of an empty fork.