Dead Harvest

  When I left Penn Station, I headed straight to Mulgheney's, but by the time I got there it was nearly 6am, and they'd been closed for hours. I parked the car out of sight around the block, and plopped myself down on a stoop across the street that afforded me a decent view of the entrance to the bar. I was determined to sit here for as long as it took, and anyways, what choice did I have? Dumas never gave me his number or address, so all I had to go on was that Mulgheney's was his favorite watering hole, and he had the look of a guy who had himself one hell of a thirst. The way I figured, it was only a matter of time before he showed.

  Eventually, though, the waiting wore on me, and I realized if I was gonna last the day, I was gonna need a little pickme-up, and a bite to eat as well. So I moved camp to a lunch counter just a couple doors down, and ordered up a cup of coffee and a plate of steak and eggs, rare and over easy. The eggs came over hard, and the steak well, but the coffee did the trick, and the refills were free. Two hours later, though, the guy behind the counter lost his patience with me and quit topping me up, hence the cold and bitter. Didn't matter, though. Just as I was beginning to contemplate the odds on another sip being any better than the last, I spotted my mark.

  Dumas was half a block away, slouching toward the bar in a sweat-stained camel-colored suit, a matching cap atop his head. I tossed a couple bills onto the counter and slid off of my stool. As I approached, he pulled the cap off of his head and mopped his brow with his sleeve. The cap blocked his view of the street. He never saw me coming.

  I caught up to him just steps from the entrance of the bar, grabbing a fistful of lapel and pinning him to the wall. His face was a mask of shock and surprise, and his eyes glinted in sudden anger. Still, he made no move to stop me.

  "You set me up, you son of a bitch!"

  His prodigious brow furrowed. "Sammy, what is this about? Set you up how?"

  "Don't play dumb with me. That package I was picking up? It was smack."

  "Now how the hell would you know that? Your orders were to pick it up and drop it off, not to open it."

  "Yeah, well, I did."

  "Why on Earth would you go and do a thing like that?"

  "Why doesn't matter – what matters is what was inside."

  "Believe me when I tell you, Sam, it matters very much. That dope, it belongs to some pretty dangerous people – people who would not take kindly to you messin' with their product."

  "It didn't fit," I said.