“It’s still the big one.”

“You button your trap, bitch,” Hinch said.

“You button yours,” Furia said in a flash. “This is between me and Goldie. And don’t call her no more names, Hinch, hear?”

Hinch drove.

“Why I plugged him,” Furia said. “And you had a year college, Goldie.” He sounded like a kindly teacher. “A three-way split is better than four, I make it, and I never even graduated public school. That shlep just bought us an extra six grand.”

Goldie said fretfully, “You sure he’s dead?”

Furia laughed. They were rattling over the bridge spanning the Tonekeneke River that led out of town; beyond lay the cloverleaf interchange and the through road Goldie called The Pike, with its string of dark gas stations. The only light came from an allnight diner with a big neon sign at the other side of the cloverleaf. The neon sign said elwood’s diner. It smeared the aluminum siding a dimestore violet.

“Stop in there, Hinch, I’m hungry.”

“Fure,” Goldie said. “My folks still live here. Suppose somebody spots me?”

“How many years you cut out of this jerk burg? Six?”

“Seven. But-”

“And you used to have like dark brown hair, right? And go around like one of them Girl Scouts? Relax, Goldie. Nobody’s going to make you. I’m starved.”

Goldie licked the scarlet lip under the smudge on her nostril. Furia was always starved after a job. At such times it was as if he had been weaned hungry and had never made up for it. Even Hinch looked doubtful.

“I told you, Hinch, didn’t I? Pull in.”

Hinch skirted the concrete island and drove off the cloverleaf. Neither he nor Goldie said anything more. Goldie’s face screwed smaller. She had a funny feeling about the caper. Fure was flying. It never works out the way I plan it. He always queers it some way, he’s a natural-born loser.