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narcotics because I don’t want to be associated with something that hurts a lot of people I don’t want to hurt. You understand?”
    I nodded.
    “There’s nothing I do that would foul up kids,” he said. “Besides, the hard stuff is dangerous for guys who run it because the cops’ve got a rod up their ass about narcotics. You know why?”
    I didn’t.
    “Because they’re jealous. You’d be too if you were a cop. You make thirty something a year after a long haul, and some low-level dealer’s making that much a week? A cop does his twenty years, what kind of a civilian job does he get? Directing traffic to a teller’s window in some bank? A drug dealer, if he doesn’t get caught, he’s got a lifetime career. The cops hate dealers for the same reason a lot of people hate Jews, pure jealousy. I don’t want to get in the middle of that kind of psychology. Have a cigar?”
    From the desk he brought over a box of Macanudo coronas.
    “Only after dinner,” I said, waving the box away. Ezra, offered the box as an afterthought, took one.
    “Take another one for later,” Manucci said, clipping off the end of Ezra’s cigar.
    “Can we get back to the business at hand?” I said.
    Manucci’s face froze. He’d offered the cigars. He liked telling me about his business. I’d made a crack about the source of his money, and that opened him up, and now I’d shut him up.
    “Mr. Riller,” he said, “the business at hand was your needing four hundred plus. I was explaining to you that every bill that crosses my desk is as clean as your wife’s face. I don’t think you want to listen, you just want to talk. You think you’re up on a stage or something? You think you’re in charge of this conversation? I’ll tell you something, Riller, you aren’t in charge of anything anymore.”
    My pride forced me to my feet.
    “You going somewhere?”
    How repair this? I looked at Ezra.
    Manucci said, “If you’re going, take your babysitter with you.”
    “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Ezra said.
    I walked the rest of the way to the door as if I were underwater in a diver’s heavy helmet.
    Ezra came after me. “Ben,” he said, “wait a minute.” And in a whisper, “What’ll you tell Sam Glenn?”
    I needed to loosen my tie, undo the top button of my shirt so I could breathe.
    Manucci’s voice caught me. “Hey Riller,” he said, “this is a business discussion, isn’t it?”

4
    Nick Manucci
    Sure everybody said my old man was terrific, did they ever ask my mother or me for a reference?
    With Mama he never went off the wall because she was going to be the mother of his bambinos, right? His fun was other women. With her he was like she was some religious figure who lived in the house. He gave orders to her just like he did to the priest.
    Nice man. You think that body spiked on the iron fence flew there? You crossed Aldo Manucci and you crossed the River Styx at the same time.
    In high school, come my senior year I had to talk college to him. You needed college for anything, right?
    That terrific man didn’t ask for a discussion with me about my life, he had it all figured out. “I want you go first class, Harvard, Yale, something like that. You become bigshot for big company, General Electric, General Motors, something like that.”
    Finished?
    “Papa, with respect,” I said. “I don’t want to be part of General nobody. I want to be on my own like you.”
    “Maybe you don’t have brains to be on your own. Maybe you not smart enough to go Harvard Yale.”
    “If you wanted me to be like you,” I said, “why didn’t you marry a woman as smart as you?”
    “I married your mother!” he shouted.
    “My brain is half yours. Maybe it’s her half that isn’t good enough!”
    The old lion smacked my face so hard the mark stayed for three days.
    *
    I hung in my room like it was a cave, the shade down, the ceiling light off. I pissed in my baseball trophy so I wouldn’t have to go down the hall to the toilet