"All of it?" Jaffe said. What was in front of him was two weeks', three weeks', four weeks' work.

"ALL of it," said Homer, and didn't make any attempt to conceal his satisfaction. "All yours. You'll soon get the hang of it. If the envelope's got some kind of government marking, put it in the burn pile. Don't even bother to open it. Fuck 'em, right? But the rest, open. You never know what we're going to find." He grinned conspiratorially. "And what we find, we share," he said.

Jaffe had been working for the U.S. Post Office only nine days, but that was long enough, easily long enough, to know that a lot of mail was intercepted by its hired deliverers. Packets were razored open and their contents filched, checks were cashed, love-letters were laughed over.

"I'm going to be coming back in here on a regular basis," Homer warned. "So don't you try hiding anything from me. I got a nose for stuff. I know when there's bills in an envelope, and I know when there's a thief on the team. Hear me? I got a sixth sense. So don't you try anything clever, bud, 'cause me and the boys don't take kindly to that. And you want to be one of the team, don't you?" He put a wide, heavy hand on Jaffe's shoulder. "Share and share alike, right?"

"I hear," Jaffe said.

"Good," Homer replied. "So—" He opened his arms to the spectacle of piled sacks. "It's all yours." He sniffed, grinned and took his leave.

One of the team, Jaffe thought as the door clicked closed, was what he'd never be. Not that he was about to tell Homer that. He'd let the man patronize him; play the willing slave. But in his heart? In his heart, he had other plans, other ambitions. Problem was, he wasn't any closer to realizing those ambitions than he'd been at twenty. Now he was thirty-seven, going on thirty-eight. Not the kind of man women looked at more than once. Not the kind of character folks found exactly charismatic. Losing his hair the way his father had. Bald at forty, most likely. Bald, and wifeless, and not more than beer-change in his pocket because he'd never been able to hold down a job for more than a year, eighteen months at the outside, so he'd never risen higher than private in the ranks.