He got that word from Herbie Goldstein and prefers it to the alternative words. Frank doesn’t approve of profanity, and somehow saying it in Yiddish is less vulgar.

“You’re terrible,” Patty said.

Yeah, I’m terrible, Frank thinks, but from the last few times he’s balanced her checkbook, he’s noticed she doesn’t give as much to the church as she used to. The priests should know what Italian husbands have always known: Italian wives will always find a way to punish you, and it’s usually in the wallet. You piss her off, she’ll still do the job in the bedroom, but then she goes out and buys a new dinette set. And never says a thing about it, and if you got any brains at all, you won’t, either.

And if the priests have any brains at all, they aren’t going to get in that pulpit and bitch about the shrinking receipts in the collection plate, because they’ll start seeing nickels and dimes in there.

Anyway, church isn’t part of Frank’s routine.

His linen-supply business is.

The first two hours of his post-bait shop day are spent driving around to the various restaurants he serves, making what he calls “happy calls”-that is, talking to the owners and managers and making sure they’re happy with the service, that their orders have come in right, that the tablecloths, napkins, aprons, and kitchen cloths are spotless. If the restaurant is also a fish customer, he goes into the kitchen to say hello to the chef and make sure he’s happy with the quality he’s getting. They usually go into the walk-in refrigerator, where Frank inspects the product personally, and if the chef has any complaints, Frank writes it down in his little notebook and takes care of it right away.

God bless cell phones, Frank thinks, because now he can call Louis from the car and tell him to get some fresh tuna over to the Ocean Grill inside the next twenty minutes and make itgood this time.