Booth put the envelope in his belt under his sweater.

"And what the fuck took you so long?" the man asked. "I almost got a hernia scrooched up like that."

"Man had to get his last fuck in, blow some coke. I figure there's no rush. He was feeling pretty good anyway. He ask me if I want a job."

"Yeah? You take it?"

"I was thinking about it. This where you want to go?"

The man looked out the window. "Yeah, pull over here. OK, take this load of shit down under the highway, like we said. Make it look like somebody roughed him off. Take the watch and the chains. And don't fuckin let me see you with any of that shit on you, understand?"

"Shit. What you think, I'm a fool?" answered Booth, insulted.

"And this." The shooter held out the empty revolver. He had wrapped it in a piece of rag. "In the river. Ditch the car where we said. Take the subway after. Anybody know you was with him?"

"Just the ho."

"She don't count," said the shooter.

Booth nodded and put the gun next to him on the seat. The shooter slid out of the car without another word and walked a few yards to where a tan Plymouth waited at the curb, its engine running. The shooter got in and the car took off.

Obediently Booth drove east on 96th Street, then north on First to 120th Street, where he turned right and drove until he was under the humming FDR Drive. These truncated streets, which lie in perpetual shadow and endure the stench and noise of a major elevated highway, constitute a sort of grease trap, catching the lumps of urban detritus no longer wanted in the lighted zones. In the especially dark area in which Booth chose now to stash the great automobile, there were, for example, a burned sofa, two cars stripped of everything merchantable, their hoods and trunks gaping like starving seagulls, a coil of rusted mesh fencing, a wooden cable spool, half a dozen fifty-five-gallon drums, windows of corrugated cardboard and paper trash, and any number of dead dogs, cats, pigeons, and rats, slowly decomposing into gritty city humus. All this lay on a surface of crushed glass glittering in the scant light.