Rocco Manupelli was a Vietnam veteran, an ex-con, and a former Mafia wiseguy who had done three years in the Walpole State Prison for armed robbery. Black had convinced himself that it might be good to work with a guy who had done time, because a guy who had done time will do absolutely anything not to do more, including getting something right, listening to the plans, not freelancing at the scene. But when they met, Rocky made only a passing reference to his stint in jail, and it wasn't even a negative one. He had made mention of how much exercise he had in prison, all that weight he had lost, as if he had gone to a frigging health spa. It was as if he hadn't minded, as if jail was as good as anything else he might have done, and remembering that fact was now beginning to scare the bejesus out of Curtis Black.

He took a final sip of whisky, draining the glass. He wanted more but wouldn't allow himself any. The goal was to calm his nerves, not dull them. He had to be aware, to be on top of his game, even if everyone knew that the best part of Curtis Black's game was in the planning, not the execution. One of his old cohorts, out on his own now (aren't they all?), used to say that his planning was always so precise, so exhaustively researched, that a trained ape couldn't screw up the scene. Indeed, it was so good that Black never saw fit to carry a gun.

All that would do was add ten years to the jail term on the off chance he was ever caught, and the guys who worked for him, they were carrying anyways.

He focused for a moment on the traffic jerking up Broadway, at the elderly and unemployed walking along the gum-stained sidewalk, so slowly, because they really had no place they needed to go.