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direction of the cook shack.
    Did they have questions for me? Yeah, I suppose… I mean, they bought me some coffee and picked my brain about turning a tip, my escape stunts and… hmmm. I guess a little bit about this new guy Frank, who’s on the payroll now. I guess, thinking about it, I don’t know if they were trying to keep me from something in the back yard, or if they really wanted to know about this guy.
    So, while I was mad at having been pulled away from seeing Delilah, it led me to something else.
    Remember how I told you Charlie hasn’t been around much since Frank has been working the top? Well, you can imagine my surprise when I finally pulled myself away from the cook shack and headed back to our joint. As I was walking up, I could hear voices talking inside – not real loud, mind you – but raised up like they were trying to keep it quiet so no one could overhear, even though they were mad. So I snuck up to the laces, you know, around the edge where the sides of the top lace up together, and stuck my ear up to it to listen in.
    It was Charlie and Frank having a beef. And, I mean, really getting into it. I don’t know what started the whole thing, but by the time I got up to it, this is what I heard:
    First thing I hear Charlie say is, ‘Just who do you think you are? No one is going to go for that!’
    Then Frank came back with, ‘Oh, I think they will. If you didn’t think so, then they’d all know, wouldn’t they?’
    ‘Doesn’t matter what they know,’ Charlie told him. ‘Or what someone thinks they know.’
    Frank started to answer, ‘Yeah, you can say…’
    But Charlie interrupted him, saying, ‘Things are a lot different now than they used to be. And don’t you think for a moment that I’m going to let you say a damn thing to Tony! You just stay away from him! He knows all he needs to know.’
    And Frank, he said, ‘That boy don’t know much of anything, does he? Or you would’ve spoke up when you saw me on the lot that day. But you’d had a few, hadn’t you Charlie? Yeah, you had all right. I’ve seen it before and I know just what happens when you do that, don’t I?’
    I couldn’t see the look on my pops’ faceat that point; but I had a pretty good idea what his face looked like right then. Like a bad dog caught piddling on the rug or something. I’ve seen him with that look plenty of times. I closed my eyes, trying to picture the inside of the top, imagining the two of them facing off on the little stage.
    Now Charlie ain’t no slouch, mind you – but the years of
running
the show rather than setting it up have left him a little soft. My pops stood a good few inches taller than this guy, Frank. But Frank carries himself in that wiry kind of way that only a carny in his prime seems to have. Tight, corded muscles used to lifting rope, his arms ending in the big worn and beaten hands that come from heaving the big pipes, stakes and sledgehammers. A dark look on his permanently sunburned face makes his bright blue eyes burn with an empty flame. Broken nose. A few tattoos. Just looking at Frank made me think of what someone who spent his whole life with bar fights and hard living should look like. Next to him, Charlie looks kind of like a desk-jockeying marshmallow.
    I was surprised then that I could hear Charlie muttering something to Frank under his breath then… something dark, mean and ugly. I don’t know what he was saying, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up just to hear the sounds coming from him. Never, ever have I heard my pops talk to anyone like that. Not even at his angriest.
    And I guess Frank wasn’t used to being talked to like that either, because by the time I heard Frank answer, his voice wasn’t filled with the bravado it had had before. There was something else in it. Fear? Maybe. Respect? Definitely. I heard him answer my pops, saying, ‘I’ll do what I promised you I would. You keep up your end of our bargain, and I’ll keep up