"Nothing, Lew, I swear. Hey, you one suspicious Polack, you know that?"

"There's got to be something wrong with her, or you wouldn't be asking a Polack to take her out."

"It ain't nothing serious," Gonzalez said. "Maybe she just got a broken collarbone, that's alL"

"A what?"

"You know, a broken collarbone. Her boyfriend messed her up. But he's back in T J. You got nothing to worry about from him."

"Oh, brother," Verbanic said.

"Hey, tomorrow's my night with Rosa, and she won't see me unless I can fix up her friend."

"The one with the broken neck."

"Collarbone. Anyway, she got a great personal-lty.

6

"She in a brace?"

"Kind of. Rosa says it's real cute." "

"No, thanks," Verbanic said.

"Aw, come on. Do it for me, pal. I ain't seen Rosa in two weeks, on account of my mother's birthday last Wednesday. I need it, Lew. Don't forget I lost these teeth for you," he said, pointing at the gaping hole in the middle of his uppers.

"You lost those from picking a fight with Fats Ozepok," Verbanic said.

"Well, you was there," Gonzalez said sullenly. "Fats coulda stepped on your sneakers."

Verbanic waved him away. "We can't go tomorrow anyway," he said. "That's the UCLA pickup. We won't get through till after midnight." He looked at the road signs. "Hey, where are you going? We made the last pickup. The dump's that way." He jerked his thumb toward the right.

'1 got it all figured out," Gonzalez said, smiling. "We pick up the UCLA load tonight. That way we get time and a half for the couple of hours overtime, and we get off by ten tomorrow. Plenty of time to give the. girls some real heavy pipe. How's that?" he said, beaming triumphantly.

"We're supposed to hit UCLA on Wednesdays," Verbanic insisted stubbornly. "What if somebody there calls the dump and complains?"

"Are you kidding? Those college professors wouldn't look at garbage if they was ass deep in it." "Nobody's going to notice if we come a day early. Stop worrying."