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his throat.
    “Four to six hundred tablecloths a week once he gets rolling. Plus napkins. All genuine linen. He wants them done in Ivory Snow. I said that was no problem.”
    He was taking a cigarette out of the box now, doing it slowly, so he could read the label. There was something he could really come to dislike about Vinnie Mason: his dipshit cigarettes. The label on the box said:
    PLAYER’S NAVY CUT CIGARETTES MEDIUM
    Now who in God’s world except Vinnie would smoke Player’s Navy Cut? Or King Sano? Or English Ovals? Or Marvels or Murads or Twists? If someone put out a brand called Shit-on-a-Stick or Black Lung, Vinnie would smoke them.
    “I did tell him we might have to give him two-day service until we get switched over,” Vinnie said, giving him a last loving flash of the box as he put it away. “When we go up to Waterford.”
    “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. Shall I blast him, Fred? Sure. Blow him out of the water, George.
    “Really?” He snapped a light to his cigarette with a slim gold Zippo and raised his eyebrows through the smoke like a British character actor.
    “I had a note from Steve Ordner yesterday. He wants me to drop over Friday evening for a little talk about the Waterford plant.”
    “Oh?”
    “This morning I had a phone call from Steve Ordner while I was down talking to Peter Wasserman. Mr. Ordner wants me to call him back. That sounds like he’s awfully anxious to know something, doesn’t it?”
    “I guess it does,” Vinnie said, flashing his number 2 smile— Track wet, proceed with caution.
    “What I want to know is who made Steve Ordner so all-at-once fucking anxious. That’s what I want to know.”
    “Well—”
    “Come on, Vinnie. Let’s not play coy chambermaid. It’s ten o’clock and I’ve got to talk to Ordner, I’ve got to talk to Ron Stone, I’ve got to talk to Ethel Gibbs about burnt shirt collars. Have you been picking my nose while I wasn’t looking?”
    “Well, Sharon and I were over to St—to Mr. Ordner’s house Sunday night for dinner—”
    “And you just happened to mention that Bart Dawes has been laying back on Waterford while the 784 extension gets closer and closer, is that it?”
    “Bart!” Vinnie protested. “It was all perfectly friendly. It was very—”
    “I’m sure it was. So was his little note inviting me to court. I imagine our little phone call will be perfectly friendly, too. That’s not the point. The point is that he invited you and your wife to dinner in hopes that you’d run off at the mouth and he had no cause to be disappointed.”
    “Bart—”
    He leveled his finger at Vinnie. “You listen to me, Vinnie. If you drop any more shit like this for me to walk in, you’ll be looking for a new job. Count on it.”
    Vinnie was shocked. The cigarette was all but forgotten between his fingers.
    “Vinnie, let me tell you something,” he said, dropping his voice back to normal. “I know that a young guy like you has listened to six thousand lectures on how old guys like me tore up the world when they were your age. But you earned this one.”
    Vinnie opened his mouth to protest.
    “I don’t think you slipped the knife into me,” he said, holding up a hand to forestall Vinnie’s protest. “If I thought that, I would have had a pink for you when you walked in here. I just think you were dumb. You got in that great big house and had three drinks before dinner and then a soup course and a salad with Thousand Island dressing and then surf and turf for the main course and it was all served by a maid in a black uniform and Carla was doing her lady-of-the-manor bit—but not being the least bit condescending—and there was a strawberry tort or blueberry buckle with whipped cream for dessert and then a couple of coffee brandies or Tia Maria and you just spilled your guts. Is that about how it went?”
    “Something like that,” Vinnie whispered. His expression was three parts shame and two parts