Looking back on that crippled conversation with Verdun in New York, it occurs to me that almost everybody must have been in on the joke.

Everyone except me.

So understandably my sense of outrage encouraged a more aggressive approach.

I glanced across at Heinfield. He's laughing. His eyes are bright and he's writing something in his notebook.

You bastard, I thought.

Alas, poor Heinfield. I knew him well.

I knew him so well that he'd be dead soon enough. I have contacts.

The limo oozed out of West 47th onto Broadway.

Sitting tense in the cream leather, I was starting to feel a rising edge of panic.

Shit!

I shook my head. Open the tequila. Better now.

None of Verdun's goons had turned up to shoot. This was good.

I reached into my pocket and brought out the Mob money.

I almost didn't want to look at it.

I poured another tequila and, in my head, Nobody Smiled.

They owed me. I'd done their dirty work for six years and now it was time to...

To what? Get far away from the city. I was weary. But I had plans.

"You enjoy your sunset on the beach," Verdun drawled.

"You vindictive bastard," were my last words to him.

Years later and ten thousand miles away, I walk in the warm night rain, I see shapes and shrouds, and I always know what that sick lunatic meant.

I am a dead man.