are fire marshals because they couldn’t find their way out of a phone booth if they had a map and a guide and one of those big dogs with a harness on it, and some desk sergeant got a look at them one night and said to himself, ‘This guy is so fuckin’ stupid he couldn’t fall out of a tree and land on the ground, and I think I will get him out the barracks before he tries to brush his teeth with his revolver and blows somebody else’s head off.’”

“Jesus Christ, John,” Sweeney said, “I don’t know anything about fires. Don doesn’t know anything about fires. Hell, I’m not even sure Don knows anything about getting his pants on, and if he does know anything, it’s what I told him.”

“Sure,” Carbone said, “you’re the guy that told me to pull them on over my head.”

“You’re not investigating fires,” Roscommon said.

“You got to excuse me,” Sweeney said, “I had the distinct impression I been sittin’ here about three weeks listening to you yell about this Mooney kid and the fires and the AG and a whole bunch of other shit, and now I got it wrong?”

“You are not investigating fires,” Roscommon said. “Now, all right? Terry Mooney does not know this, or much of anything else, and I do not tell Terry Mooney much of anything because the first time he finds something else out, he thinks it is a good idea to run around all over town shooting his mouth off about this great thing he just learned that everybody else in town knew for years but nobody could ever prove. What you are investigating is not fires, but fire marshals and people who take money for setting fires and then give some of that there money to fire marshals so that the fire marshals will not be too critical when they come around and look at someplace that was torched. This means that you are investigating Billy Malatesta, who is a fire marshal, and a scumbag loser name of Proctor that I put away once and I will put away again as soon as I get a halfway decent chance, and that will get Mooney and the AG off of my back. What do you guys know about trucks?”