“Father,” I said, and I let him see I was wearing gloves in August. His eyes figured it out.

“Oh God,” he said. Prayer-soft.

“Let’s go to the can.”

“Oh God.”

“All I want’s what you have. Nothing else is going to happen.”

“Oh God.”

“Stay calm, now, don’t say anything… okay. Okay. You settled down?”

He shivered once. Then he nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll walk to the can and we’ll talk about it. Now get up. Now.”

He stood and I stood and I took his arm. We walked in front of the young couple and I said excuse me and smiled and they smiled back. I ushered him down the hall of empty offices and into the can.

I locked the door.

He ran ahead and opened up the stall and puked in the stool, with the speed and ease of a runner passing a baton in a relay.

When he was through, I said, “Flush it and come out here.”

He did.

The whole damn room stank, now. Like the job itself stank. All I could think was, this isn’t what I do, this isn’t my style. What am I, some kind of shakedown artist? That goddamn Broker’s going to pay for this breach of contract. I work a certain kind of job, and shit like this isn’t part of it.

I said, “Where?”

He was shaking; his cheeks were trying to crawl off his face.

I repeated myself.

He said nothing. He did nothing. He looked at me out of glazed eyes and just stood there.

“Look,” I said. “Nobody’s going to do anything to you if you’re sensible. You took something from some people and they want it back. Return what you took, and you can catch your plane as long as from now on you stay away from these people and theirs. It’s that simple. Hell, you’ll just be out a job you’re out anyway.”

He said, “Please.”

“Stay cool, now. Look at it this way: you’re in possession of a valuable commodity. Hand that commodity over to me and you can walk out of here. An even swap.”