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switch to Scotch but he wasn’t there yet.
    â€œSo where is it?” Mick asked.
    â€œStashed.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œHuh? You know what it is.”
    â€œI never saw it though. What does it look like?”
    â€œI don’t know. It’s about four feet long.” Hoffman held his hands up, fingers spread. “This big around. Got two handles, like loops, welded to it. And heavy. Unbelievably fucking heavy. Strained my guts getting it out of the goddamn boat.”
    â€œWhat boat?”
    â€œLong story. The dummy who found it, I had to seize his boat.”
    â€œIt’s got a lid of some kind?”
    â€œNothing. Welded shut, tight as a nun’s snatch.”
    The waitress brought the drinks and Mick checked out her legs while she put them down. She was wearing a short red skirt and a white dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up and the top couple buttons undone to show some cleavage even though she didn’t have much to show.
    â€œYou think she’s wearing panties?” Mick asked, watching her walk away. “Bobby Simmons says sometimes she doesn’t wear panties when she works.”
    â€œHow would Bobby Simmons know?”
    â€œGood question. She wouldn’t let him anywhere near her little cooch.”
    Hoffman took a drink of rye. He wanted to get back to the subject at hand. He never remembered Mick as a guy who talked about sex much, not before the shooting that put him in the chair. Now he did it all the time. Hoffman suspected it was because talking about it was all he could do nowadays.
    â€œSo does that sound like it?”
    â€œMaybe,” Mick said. “I told you—I never saw the thing. It was pitch dark that night, that’s how Parson gave us the slip. He tossed the thing and followed it overboard. Shit, night like that, dark as coal, how you going to see a nigger in the water?”
    Mick finished one beer and started on the other.
    â€œAnd this was where?” Hoffman asked. “Because apparently this hick fisherman is saying he hooked it out from Kimball’s Point. Just above Athens.”
    â€œIt was near Coxsackie,” Mick said. “Deep water.”
    â€œThen how did it get to Kimball’s Point?”
    â€œThe current. Been seven years, right? Give it enough time and the thing would’ve ended up in Yonkers.”
    â€œIt’s too heavy. Maybe this is the wrong cylinder.”
    â€œYou figure the Hudson River’s full of them?” Mick asked. “Moving water is a powerful thing. You ever see those tsunami pictures? Besides, you’ll know soon enough, once you cut it open.”
    â€œAnd what’s supposed to be in there?”
    â€œAccording to the snitch, a hundred pounds of pure coke. Straight from Colombia.”
    â€œSnitches lie all the time.”
    â€œYeah, they do. But whatever it was, it was enough for Parson to haul it all the way from the islands and when thingsgot hot, to dive into some deep fucking waters and swim for shore in the middle of the night. So I’m thinking it wasn’t piña colada mix he was transporting.”
    â€œWho was the snitch?”
    â€œSome semirespectable businessman-slash-dealer, a real tough guy who folded like a tent in the wind when we found pictures of naked little boys on his home computer. He had all the details. The dope went from Colombia to the Bahamas and up the intercoastal. On a boat called Down Along Coast . McGarry was running the department at the time and he wanted the bust. He could’ve informed the feds and they could’ve busted Parson anyway between here and Florida. But McGarry kept it quiet, let them sail right up the river.”
    â€œWhy did you hit him that night?”
    â€œHe’d sailed into the Hudson that morning and he was going to be in Albany the next day. We didn’t know where he was going to dock. We couldn’t risk losing him. That night was our chance. And then we