I bring the bat back with one hand and give it a swing. And I get him in the arm and he starts cursing at me and he swings that suitcase at me and he slams me, he slams me. He gets me on the shoulder and it hurts, and I get pissed at this little pissant and I want to shut him up. Sos I grab the bat with my other hand and I take it back and I was never much with a bat and sos I figure I better put some oomph into it. And so I does.

“And he ducks, and it’s like he ducks right into it.

“In Little League I couldn’t hit a basketball with a rake, but this time, with this swing, I get him flush on the face and something gives, I feel it, and down he goes, as if a string keeping him up had been cut, down he goes, like a magic trick. Except it isn’t magic, is it? I give the bat a swing and it smacks up against his head and the string is cut and he’s on the ground and there’s blood, shit. And then we see, see that, see that he’s, that he’s…”

“Say it,” I said.

“Fuck you, Victor.”

“You sure?”

“No doubt about it. Blood everywhere.”

“What happened to the body?”

“Splash, man, if you get the picture. Hey, don’t look at me like that. I been sick about it every day from the time it happened. It wasn’t supposed to be like it turned out. We was just supposed to take the suitcase from him, is all.”

“What was inside it?”

“I wasn’t supposed to know, we wasn’t supposed to open it. But we did, didn’t we? His keys was in his pockets, we was supposed to get them too, and so when we found them we opened the thing.”

“And?”

“Loaded to the gills.”

“With what?”

“Cash.”

“Joey.”

“And it was heavy, too.”

“What was this guy doing with all that cash?”

“Who knows? But he wasn’t up to no good, that’s for sure. Just the way he tried to charm us, the bastard, you could tell he was into something and thought he knew how to handle himself. Son of a bitch, if he just hadn’t of ducked.”