“Probably.”

“But even so, who gives a shit, right? Who cares if his wife’s a Taurus? She’s a good-looking bitch, I’ll give her that much. But Loren, shit, he was ready to search you. Just now when you said ‘Search me.’ The putz woulda done it.”

“I had that feeling.”

“The one good thing, he’s reasonable. They gave me this straight arrow a while back and you couldn’t do nothing with him. I mean he even paid for his coffee. At least Loren, when somebody puts money in his hand he knows to close his fist around it.”

“Thank God for that.”

“That’s what I say. If anything, he likes the bread too much, but I guess his wife is good at spending it fast as he brings it home. You figure it’s on account of she’s a Taurus?”

“You’d have to ask Loren.”

“He might tell me. But you can put up with a lot of stupidity in exchange for a little reasonableness, I have to say that for him. Just so he don’t kill hisself with that nightstick of his, bouncing it off his knee or something. Bernie? Take the gloves off.”

“Huh?”

“The rubber gloves. You don’t want to wear those on the street.”

“Oh,” I said, and stripped them off. Somewhere in the inner recesses of the apartment Loren coughed and bumped into something. I stuffed my gloves into my pocket. “All the tools of the trade,” Ray said. “Jesus, I’d always rather deal with pros, guys like you. Like even if we had to bag you tonight. Say I had the doorman backing my play and there was no way to cool it off. No money in it that way but at least I’m dealing with a professional.”

Somewhere a toilet flushed. I resisted an impulse to look at my watch.

“You feel comfortable about it,” he went on. “Know what I mean? Like tonight, coming through that door. I didn’t know what we was gonna find on the other side of it.”

“I know the feeling,” I assured him, and started to reach for my shopping bag. I caught a glimpse of Ray’s face that made me turn to see what he was staring at, and what he was staring at was Loren at the far end of the room with a mouth as wide as the Holland Tunnel and a face as white as a surgical mask.