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‘Listen to me, Handy. I’m going to tell you the same thing I told you two fools twenty-six years ago, and the same thing I would have told either one of you if you’d asked me about it since, but didn’t: We made a mistake. We made a play that turned bad, and some innocent people got hurt. It was fucked up, but that’s how it goes sometimes.’
    Our server chose this moment to deliver our meals, and O’ seemed to find some relief in his timing. He was starting to lose his cool, and the respite gave him a chance to regenerate before any real damage could be done.
    ‘Tell me something, O’,’ I said. ‘Has R.J.’s daughter been around to see you yet?’
    ‘Toni? No. Why should she?’
    ‘Because she’s a private investigator by profession up in Seattle, and she and her mother aren’t going to take R.J.’s murder lying down. I was just up by R.J.’s place to see them and they’re both frothing at the mouth over all the rocks she’s going to turn over searching for his killer on her own.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So you’re going to have to talk to the young lady eventually, brother, and lies aren’t going to fly with her. You want to hand me some line about it being twenty-six years since you last spoke to R.J., fine, but if you try that shit on her —’
    ‘OK, OK. Take it easy, Jesus.’ I’d deliberately let my voice rise above that of mere civil conversation and he took the bait, finally betraying some aggravation for all the effort I’d been putting into provoking it. ‘R.J. called me once or twice over the years, sure. The Times runs a picture of me on the City Hall steps every other month, and he’s three months behind on his mortgage – who else was he going to ask for help? You?’
    ‘I thought you couldn’t afford any contact with the man.’
    ‘I can’t, and I’ve never had any. The two times I loaned him a few dollars, there were two people between me and the bagman who actually handed him the money.’
    ‘How long ago was this?’
    ‘The last time? Two, maybe three years ago, I’m not sure.’
    ‘And how much was a “few dollars”?’
    ‘Ten bills the last time, and six before that, about fifteen years ago. Look, Handy, this is ridiculous. Why in the hell should you, or R.J.’s daughter, or anyone else be trying to connect his murder to people he last knew almost thirty years ago? R.J. was always a magnet for trouble, and he’d had a hell of lot of time to find more since we all said our goodbyes to each other. Even if he didn’t die exactly the way the police think he did, it’s sure as hell safe to say one thing about their theory of the crime is dead-on: However all that blow got in that car that night, some of it went up homeboy’s nose. That sound like a man who wasn’t asking for what happened to him to you?’
    ‘Waitaminute. You’re saying he was loaded when he died?’
    ‘Damn straight.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘It’s in the coroner’s report. I’ve got a man close to the investigation. You’re making me repeat everything I tell you twice, Handy, damn.’
    Neither R.J.’s widow nor his daughter had said anything to me that morning about cocaine being found in R.J.’s system, only that traces of the drug had been discovered in the car in which he died.
    ‘Don’t look so damn surprised,’ O’ said. ‘You said it yourself: The man always took what happened back in the day harder than us. If somewhere down the line he got in the habit of doing a little blow to help him forget now and then, it wouldn’t have been entirely unlike him. And R.J. under the influence of an illegal narcotic, well . . . If that’s not a formula for disaster, I don’t know what is.’
    He was right. I couldn’t envision any scenario in which a combination of R.J. and blow would not have eventually resulted in either his death or incarceration, no matter how much he might have mellowed over the years.
    ‘I want to talk to him,’ I said.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Your man “close