Gary, however, had recognized me in the hotel bar and called out a name I hadn’t used since the early ’70s: my real one.

“Jack!” he said, only that wasn’t the name. For the purposes of this narrative, however, we’ll say my real name is Jack Keller.

“Gary,” I said, surprised by the warmth creeping into my voice. “You son of a bitch…you’re still alive.”

Gary was a huge man-six six, weighing in at somewhere between three hundred pounds and a ton; his face was masked in a bristly brown beard, his skull exposed by hair loss, his dark eyes bright, his smile friendly, in a goofy, almost child-like way.

“Thanks to you, asshole,” he said.

We’d been in Vietnam together.

“What the hell have you been doing all these years, Jack?”

“Mostly killing people.”

He boomed a laugh. “Yeah, right!”

“Don’t believe me, then.”

I was, incidentally, pretty drunk. I don’t drink often, but I’d been through the mill lately.

“Are you crying, Jack?”

“Fuck no,” I said.

But I was.

Gary slipped his arm around my shoulder; it was like getting cuddled by God. “Bro-what’s the deal? What shit have you been through?”

“They killed my wife,” I said, and blubbered drunkenly into his shoulder.

“Jesus, Jack-who…?”

“Fucking assholes…fucking assholes…”

We went to his suite. He was supposed to play poker with some buddies but he called it off.

I was very drunk and very morose and Gary was, at one time anyway, my closest friend, and during the most desperate of days.

I told him everything.

I told him how after I got back from Nam, I found my wife-my first wife-shacked up with some guy, some fucking auto mechanic, who was working under a car when I kicked the jack out. The jury let me off, but I was finished in my hometown, and I drifted until the Broker found me. The Broker, who gave me the name Quarry, was the conduit through whom the murder-for-hire contracts came, and, what?