“What? What did you say?”

“I said if you don’t like working for me you can always quit.”

“Now that tears it. Now that really fucking tears it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“ You work for me, Broker, don’t forget that… I work for you like Richard Burton works for his agent.”

Broker sighed. “Where’s the stuff, Quarry?”

“Never do this to me again, Broker. Understand? Nothing else like this. Or you’re going to see the side of this business you don’t like seeing.”

“Where’s the stuff?”

“Do you get my meaning, Broker?”

“Yes. Where’s the stuff?”

“Where’s my money?”

Broker turned off the faucet and wiped his hands on a paper towel. He took an envelope from his inside jacket pocket. He handed the envelope to me and I looked inside: three thousand in hundreds. I put the envelope in my inside pocket.

“I’m still at the Howard Johnson’s,” I said. “You come talk to me there. You know what room I’m in. I’m sick of using cans for my office.”

“What?”

“And don’t send anybody around to see me, Broker, or I’ll do bad things to them. You come. We got talking to do.”

“Don’t play with me, Quarry.”

“Who’s playing? Better zip up, Broker.”

“Quarry…”

I dried my hands and left.

4

I suppose at this point I should be filling you in on my background and telling you how I got into such a specialized line of work. Don’t count on it. There are two things you won’t get from me and that’s details about my past and my real name. The closest you’ll get to a name is Quarry, which is an alias suggested by the Broker and I always kind of liked it, as aliases go. Or I did until I asked Broker why he suggested an offbeat name like that one and he chuckled and said, “Know what a quarry is, don’t you? It’s rock and it’s hollowed out.” Broker isn’t known for his sense of humor.