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course he has two banks. He might try the same trick with the other bank.”
    “Maybe in ten years,” Giordano said. “Not before then.”
    “Because they would make a connection, Louis?”
    “They’d have to, sir. This Platt, I would guess he’s hoping nobody else just happens to knock off one of his banks. Because if either one of them gets hit, a lot of people are going to take a long look at Mr. Platt.”
    He studied the colonel. There was the ghost of a smile on the colonel’s lips, and Giordano got it. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.”
    The colonel said, “Operation Bankroll.”
    Giordano was nodding to himself. He looked around the table, one face after another, and now they all got it.
    “Operation Bankroll,” the colonel repeated. “The Commercial Bank of New Cornwall. That’s Mr. Platt’s bank, gentlemen, and we are going to roll right over it.”

EIGHT
    The pickup truck was blue, with STEDMAN’S TREE SURGERY / LAMBERTVILLE, PA . lettered in white on the sides. The back of the truck held a couple of saws, a bucket of creosote, a stepladder, and a mound of branches and odd cuttings. Simmons, dressed in overalls and a denim cap, sat behind the wheel. Murdock was at the side door of the house talking to the woman.
    “See, my helper, he noticed it from the road,” Murdock was saying. “Tell the truth, I wouldn’t of seen it myself, but then he’s got sharp eyes for a nigger.”
    “A Negro,” the woman said.
    “Yes, ma’am. Anyway, he seen it and slowed down, and I took a look, and that limb’s got to come off, ma’am. The borers is into it so bad there’s no saving it. The rest of the tree is sound, they’ll do like that sometimes, but that one limb is rotten with borers, and all they can do is spread. I ain’t saying she’s got to come off this minute or the tree’ll be gone tomorrow, nothing like that. But I will say that they’ll be on into the trunk by fall and be killing that tree by next spring.”
    The woman said, “Termites.”
    “No, borers is what they are. Termites you’ll get in houses, in dead wood, but borers——”
    “We had a man who insisted the house was crawly with termites. He offered to clear them out for three hundred dollars.” The woman smiled frigidly. “We found out it was a racket.”
    Murdock had his cap in his hands. He was twisting it, and Simmons fought back a laugh. Thick-soled boots and blue jeans and that flannel shirt and twisting his cap—the perfect redneck, Simmons thought.
    “Well, Miz Tuthill,” Murdock said. “Well, now. Termite inspectors, well you don’t have to tell me about them.”
    “He said he was just passing through,” Mrs. Tuthill said. “And for that reason he would do the job at a special rate. We didn’t even have any termites, as it happened.”
    “Well,” Murdock said. “Well, borers you sure do have, Miz Tuthill. You come and look at that tree and you’ll see them borers. Why, from where you’re standing you can see how the leaves is growing funny. You see that big red oak there? See where I’m pointing? Now can you see the second branch from the bottom on the right? See those leaves, how they’re a sort of a paler shade of green, kind of on the sick side?”
    The woman was nodding.
    “Now I’ll tell you true, Miz Tuthill, ma’am, not like any old termite inspector. We don’t entirely wait for work to come our way. You can’t, not in this business. Mr. Stedman, what he says——”
    “Oh, then you’re not Mr. Stedman?”
    “No, ma’am.” Murdock smiled. “Why, there’s better than twenty of us works for Mr. Stedman, he’s the biggest tree surgeon in all eastern Pennsylvania. What he says, he says you have to look for work that has to be done. He says by the time the average person notices something wrong with a tree, why, it’s too late to do more than cut the whole thing down. An oak like that, an oak must of took forty, fifty years to grow, it’s a powerful shame to lose it.”
    “Perhaps if my