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toss me in prison in a heartbeat.” Marisa just didn’t get it. I was getting irritated and soaking wet. “Why didn’t you get me a car again?”
    “You told me not to. Twice. Even though I told you the weather was going to be bad in New York. You act like you’re poor and it’s annoying,” Marisa said.
    “I’m having no luck with a ride.” I went back inside the terminal to dry off, or at least stop from getting wet.
    “I have one on standby. He’ll be there in fifteen minutes. You owe me,” Marisa said.
    I owed her for many, many times she’d bailed me out of messes, small ones like this and much larger ones. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
    “When we hang up you need to pull the battery and chip from the phone and drop all the pieces in different garbage cans. Can you handle it?”
    “Of course.” I’d stopped asking her the why of certain things. I had so many of these burner phones and when Marisa deemed it time to destroy another one I went with the program. If there was even a hint we’d been hacked or someone was listening she wanted the phone gone. She’d done something to each of them to make it harder to listen to our conversations and to hack them, but I’d stared at her blankly when she tried to explain it once. Now, she just told me what to do.
    And I happily did it.
    By the time I’d gotten rid of the phone parts a car had pulled up and I was on my way to Manhattan. I was still wet but didn’t want to waste time going to the hotel and getting changed first. I knew once I was in for the night I wasn’t going back out. It would be room service and finding a game on the television for me.
    I had three addresses for Will (or Little Chenzo?) I needed to check out, all in a bad area of the Bowery. I didn’t expect the guy to be hanging out in the nicer spots, but with the rain and only a couple of hours until darkness, I instructed the driver to cruise past the three addresses so I could get a feel for them. At night the streets would be alive with people coming and going, hustling and making a not-so-honest living.
    I knew I was wasting time. It wasn’t like I was going to cruise by the right address and someone would come running out of the building, dramatically in the rain, and hand me a clue before disappearing into the night.
    I didn’t want to spend another night in a hotel by myself.
    I wasn’t the kind of guy to go find a street walker or call an escort service or hang out in sleazy bars and try to find someone drunk and easy. I also didn’t want to find something long-term, but sometimes a friend to share a couple of drinks with and a laugh wasn’t so bad. I traveled too much and with so many homes spread out across the U.S. I never had time to get real roots into any one area.
    The sports card community was excellent and I had plenty of people in the business and as customers I could have a great time with at a show, but there were no social calls. I spent my life watching a ballgame or reading a book on my Kindle about sports. What a life.
    “Are you familiar with New York City?” I asked the driver as we slowed in front of the first stop, a dilapidated two-story with boarded up windows. It looked like every other building on the block. If Will had spent time inside it was sucking on a crack pipe.
    “What are you looking for?” the driver asked and I could almost see the smile. I’m sure he catered to rich, married men who got off a plane, called an expensive car service like this and part of the high cost was the fact the driver knew where to go no matter what you were looking for and could keep his mouth shut no matter what.
    “I need a drink.”
    He shrugged in the driver’s seat. “I could name fifty bars within a square mile. What exactly are you looking for, or does it matter? This isn’t really a good neighborhood.”
    “I need someplace decent. Not too fancy but not a dump,” I said.
    He was driving again and glanced in the rearview mirror at me. “Do you