A laugh rumbled up out of his barrel chest. “I was fuckin’ lucky, Quarry. Did you ever work with Nick Varnos?”

Nick Varnos was the guy I’d been shadowing in Vegas for the past month.

“Never heard of him,” I said. “But then, how would I? Broker kept us away from the rest of his crew, unless you were working with somebody.”

Jerry nodded his shaggy head. He sipped Scotch. “I been with Nick all these years. Great fuckin’ guy. He gets more tail than Sinatra, that boy, and none of them bitches have ever managed to tie his ass down. Lives like a king. He’s got a boat, and a timeshare in Aspen. You should see the kind of car he drives.”

Varnos drove a 1976 Excalibur sports, modeled on the pre-war Mercedes Benz SSK, but with a Chevy Corvette engine under its old-fashioned hood. That was at home. Right now, on the job, Varnos was driving a ’78 Buick Century, a nothing two-door coupe. Light blue.

There was something I’d been wondering about, and I took a chance and asked, “Where’s Nick live?”

“Just over in Vegas.”

I frowned. “And you’re doing a job here? Just sixty miles down the road?”

Jerry shrugged. “It is close to home for Nick. Does break the don’t-shit-where-you-eat rule, I grant you. But Nick and me, we’ve done this our own way, for a lot of years. The Broker and his rules and ideas, lot of that went out the window a way long time ago for us two… So-are you still in the trade?”

I shook my head. “After the Broker got himself killed, I took what I’d saved up and bought a little business.”

“Yeah? What kinda business?”

“Used books and records. In Illinois. Little college town — Dekalb?”

None of that was true, of course. Well, Dekalb is a college town.

“That’s the life,” Jerry said, shaking his shaggy head again, loosening a couple tendrils of comb-over, and flashing the expensive grin. “I bet you got yourself hot-and-cold runnin’ coeds.”