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insult to offer you money,” the man said. “Cop like you don’t care about such things.”
    “I like money,” Dead-Eye said. “Just not your money.”
    “But you want something,” the man said. “And I don’t think killing a room full of runners is what you want.”
    “I wouldn’t throw myself over your coffins either,” Dead-Eye said.
    “We can settle this,” the man said. “Just tell me what it is you want.”
    “Magoo,” Dead-Eye said. “I want you to set him up. Deliver him to me.”
    “That could get me killed faster than the gun in your hand.”
    “Your kind of work doesn’t come with a pension plan,” Dead-Eye said. “Die now, die later, it all works out the same to me.”
    “And if I give you that?” the man asked. “If I give you Magoo?”
    “Then it won’t be my bullet that kills you,” Dead-Eye told him. “Least not today.”
    The man stared into Dead-Eye’s face, looking for signs of weakness.
    He came away empty.
    “I will give you Magoo,” the man said after a few minutes, sending his men back to their places with a quick brush of his hand. “On one condition.”
    “Let’s hear it.”
    “Have a drink with me,” the man said. “Now that we’re friends.”
    •    •    •
    E DDIE W INTHROP WAS a bigger man than his son, the onslaught of age having shaved only half an inch from his powerful six-foot-five frame. He walked with a slight limp, the arthritis having settled in his left knee, the payback for twenty-five years spent working for Con Ed, days and nights in darkness and dampness under the city streets.
    An El Producto cigar was jammed into the corner of his mouth as he sat on the third step of the stoop leading to the four-story Brownsville brownstone he had bought with a G.I. loan and a $2,000 inheritance from his grandmother. He put thirty years into the house, paying off one mortgage and picking up another as soon as a son or daughter was old enough to head for college. He spent his happiest days there, tending his backyard garden, enjoying quiet Sunday afternoons with his wife, Elma.
    His saddest days were spent there too.
    It was on the second floor, in the back bedroom, where Elma died on a warm June day in 1977, three years ago this month, the heart attack stripping her of the smile he loved, taking away the best friend he would ever have.
    A year later, Eddie was in his finished basement, shooting a quiet game of pool. Count Basie was on the turntable, and a cool drink was in his hand, when he got the call about his youngest son, Albert, shot dead on a tree-lined street in a Westchester town whose name he had never heard before.
    Now he sat there, his days winding down, the cancer in his stomach spreading, content that he had done the best he could to raise his family. He looked across at his son Davis and wondered if Davis would someday feel the same. Eddie Winthrop had made his peace with the fact that his son had become a cop. He had never warmed tothe idea, but he did like the way the neighborhood kids looked up to his boy.
    “You want to go sit inside?” Dead-Eye asked his father, buttoning his baseball jacket.
    “No,” Eddie said. “I always liked the cold. You know that. It was your mother couldn’t take it. Thirty years, every winter, had to hear her scream about how we would all be better off in North Carolina. Like it don’t get cold there.”
    Dead-Eye reached into a paper bag by his left leg and pulled out two containers of hot chocolate. He handed one to his father.
    “There any sugar in this?” Eddie asked.
    “Ain’t supposed to be.”
    “Says who?”
    “Your doctor,” Dead-Eye said.
    “What’s he know?” Eddie said.
    “Your blood count, your sugar and cholesterol levels,” Dead-Eye said. “Want me to go on?”
    “Only if you want to bore me to sleep,” Eddie said, sipping his hot chocolate. “Only doctor I know puts a dyin’ man on a diet.”
    The two sat silently together, eyes on the passing traffic, ears