“What are you upset about, Quarry?”

“Horse.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about H, Broker. Smack. Heroin, horse, shit, horseshit!”

“Will you please keep your voice down?”

“Christ, Broker. That’s all I need is to get found with a bundle of that on me. I got enough fucking risk going for me as it is.”

“You disappoint me, Quarry.”

“I disappoint you.”

“You were told your man had a valuable package which did not belong to him. You weren’t told to examine the contents of the package.”

“It was a lump of snow in a plastic bag, Broker, it didn’t take a goddamn chemist to tell.”

“Since when are you so God almighty precautious? You complain of risk. Yet you use the same gun from job to job, don’t you? That would seem a dangerous habit to me.”

“That is one thing. This other today is something else.”

“I’m not going to stand here and argue with you, Quarry. My hands are getting puckered from washing.”

“Your hands are getting puckered. My ass is getting puckered! Look, I work one kind of thing, and I work it one kind of way, you know that better than anyone else, but what do you do? You bring me in for a half-ass deal like this one.”

“This was last minute, Quarry, I called you in for something else entirely, and…”

“I don’t like getting brought to town for one job and doing another. I don’t like playing courier with a load of H. You want to play with smack, get a pusher. And this humiliating people, I got no stomach for that. You got somebody who’s going to die, fine, I’ll be the means. You want strong-arm, get a goon.”

“Are you quite finished?”

“Don’t pull that pompous bullshit tone on me, Broker. I’ve known you too long. I know what you are.”

“If you don’t like working for me, Quarry, why don’t you just quit?”