“Let me tell you, Tapkow.” The voice was like a knife. “There is no difference, Tapkow. There is absolutely no difference, because I tell you where to go in both cases. I tell you what to do.”

“Now, listen, Mr. Pendleton, just wait a minute.”

There suddenly were two sharp lines running from the sides of Pendleton’s nose to the corners of his thin mouth. “Tapkow,” said the mouth, “you are shouting.”

Benny got confused. Had that old bastard forgotten that he wasn’t the chauffeur any more? Did Pendleton think he was talking to just another punk who ran errands? Or worse, this was the sack! The bastard was playing games and was going to give him the sack.

“And if the matter is quite clear to you, Tapkow, I give you this one opportunity to learn what I thought you knew. As of tonight you have your job back. Turk will show you the chauffeur’s uniform.”

“But-listen, the collections-”

“Tapkow. The jobs are the same. Or do you prefer none?”

This was it; or almost. He needed time to set things straight. Seven years of work…

“Yes-no, sir, Mr. Pendleton.”

Pendleton did the thing with his shoulder again and sat down behind his desk. “Turk will show you the uniform. I need you at nine,” and Benny Tapkow was dismissed.

Chapter Two

He did as a chauffeur should and drove in silence. Pendleton sat behind his glass partition in the dark.

They took the Henry Hudson Parkway north, and after the turn into the Cross County Parkway Pendleton used the speaking tube to give directions. When the headlights picked up the massive gate with the big A in the scrollwork, Benny guessed what the place was. He had never been there before and he had never met the man who owned it. But he knew him. Everybody did, one way or the other.

Big Al Alverato.

Nobody ever heard of Pendleton, because that’s the way he handled it. But not Alverato. Since the late twenties, the machine-gun parties, the big war in Chicago, the New York docks, all through until the present time there had been brash and loud Big Al Alverato.