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noses for HoBroken.
    “Ice tonight was fuckin’ awesome best!” Sam smacked his helmet into Joey’s as the team dragged themselves back down the corridor to the locker room.
    “Yeah! Slam!” Joey enthused.
    Their teammates were not so exuberant.
    “Fuckin’ Sam! Why the fuck don’t you pass the puck!” a fellow HoBroken admonished, pointing his stick.
    “’Cause you can’t shoot worth a fuck, that’s what.” Sam pointed back. “Fuck.”
    “Fuck you, Sam,” another teammate accused, a bloody tooth in his hand. “You Pazzo brothers act like you’re the only ones on the ice. Joey shouldn’ta passed all the way out to center field. He did that to get the puck to you.”
    “Fuck you,” Joey retorted, then flashed a smile at his older brother.
    “Yeah, fuck you,” Sam agreed. “You guys wanna play ice or what? Out there, you gotta do what you gotta do to put the puck in the goal, end of story.”
    “Fuck you, Sam,” several teammates muttered.
    When they entered the locker room, next to the Pazzo brothers’ lockers stood someone they didn’t expect to see: a boyish-looking guy with graying temples, a brown leather flight jacket, a Greek fisherman’s cap, and a cup of coffee. He was lanky, and he leaned against the lockers with the waggish ease of a hick-town gas-pump jockey, hands thrust into his front pants pockets. But there was a sparkle in his blue eyes that belied this pump jockey was a man with a plan.
    “Whoa!” Sam exclaimed, arms spread in confusion.
    “Fuck!” Joey remarked. “It’s Barney.”
    “Fellahs.” Barney saluted by bowing his head.
    “Joey, remember that tunnel fuckin’ job out on 41st Street? Fuckin’ almost froze my hands off that day looking for that vault. Bent a rod that day, and the truck broke down. Barney, that was you who was the inspector that day, am I right?” Sam tossed his helmet on the concrete floor.
    Barney nodded.
    “You was the one at Third Avenue, looking for some old elevated train foundations.” Joey pointed at Barney with his gloves before throwing them onto the growing pile of sweaty armor.
    Barney nodded.
    “And that other time, we were pumpin’ away, Barney warned us we’re drilling into an electric conduit, we didn’t believe it. ’Member?” Sam shed his pads onto the heap.
    “Yeah, well…” Barney crossed his legs, dug his hands deeper into his pockets. “That’d been a DC power line and you’d be Pop-Tarts, for sure.”
    Sam pulled his jersey up over his head. “What’re you doin’ here?” he asked, voice muffled.
    “Well…” Barney pulled a hand out of his pocket and rubbed his jaw in thought. “I figured that the Pazzo brothers play hockey, and, well, they live in Hoboken. Hell, I just worked it out.”
    “What’d you come out here for? You coulda called the company.” Joey looked confused, his muscular body swaddled only in a yellowed jockstrap. “I don’t get it.”
    “Fuck, you didn’t come all the way to Jersey just to see us play ice.” Sam snorted, wiping some blood from his upper lip.
    “Yeah,” Joey agreed.
    The Pazzo brothers exchanged confused shrugs and wandered off to the showers. When they came back, most of their teammates had left, but Barney was still there, admiring the splintered end of Sam’s hockey stick.
    “That’s the third stick this season,” Sam boasted.
    “Uh huh.” Barney nodded to himself, pursing his lips, eyes turning toward the ceiling tiles as though he were enjoying a sunset sky. “Say, fellahs. Might you be interested in, say, a little night drilling? Work on the side. Though to think of it, you guys look a little beat up, a little tired.” Barney gently set the stick against the wall and shrugged. “Maybe you’re not up to it.”
    “Night drilling?” Sam’s frog fingers fastened the buttons on his shirt with remarkable agility. “Where?”
    “Just a big open space.” Barney dug his hand back in his pocket, squinting at the floor. “No utilities, really, so