Free Cogan's Trade by George V Higgins Page A

working. The rest of them’re pretty much closed.”
    “Same thing that happened the last time,” Cogan said.
    “It’s temporary,” the driver said. “He told me that. He said as soon as I talked to you, to let the fellows knowwhat you want. Or Dillon, rather. Originally it was to’ve been Dillon.”
    “I talked to Dillon,” Cogan said.
    “What does he think?” the driver said.
    “Well, the first thing that anybody’d think about in a thing like this,” Cogan said.
    “This is the second time,” the driver said. “That’s what he said.”
    “It happened before,” Cogan said. “Four years ago, and now it happened again.”
    “The last time, I gather,” the driver said, “the man who did it actually was Trattman himself.”
    “With a couple Indians,” Cogan said. “He put on a big show and all, but it was Trattman. Dillon said he even used to brag about it some times.”
    “And nobody found out about it,” the driver said.
    “Not till after,” Cogan said.
    “Well,” the driver said, “this time they worked him over a little.”
    “Once,” Cogan said. “They hit him one rap. One. I think, if I was Trattman and I was doing it again, I’d probably get at least one rap myself.”
    “Well,” the driver said, “where do we go from here? What do you think?”
    “I don’t know enough yet, do much thinking,” Cogan said. “Because, see, I don’t necessarily think this, but it still might’ve really been two kids this time. Or else it might’ve been Trattman. But it could’ve been some guys that knew he did it before. So it’s one of two things here. Mark’s been spending it a little more lately. He could’ve decided, do it again, nobody’d ever think he’d do it twice. But, you ever been up that place?”
    “No,” the driver said.
    “You know something?” Cogan said. “Nobody’s everbeen up that place. Nobody but Trattman. It’s, it’s just not the kind of place that guys go. Except, I was checking around, Dillon mentioned this guy he knew, he used to know, guy was in Walpole and when he come out, they taught him landscaping, and when he come out that’s what he did, and Dillon said he thought maybe that guy did some work up there. So I called him. There’s eighty-six rooms in that place. It’s way the hell off in the woods, and there’s eighty-six rooms in it, and except for Markie’s game there’s not one single thing going on in that place. In the middle of the week the guys that’re using those rooms’re guys that’re selling things, and they work all night. That’s all they do. I talked to Gordon and he said he, when the place first opened up, he put a couple his girls in there. ‘They went nuts,’ he told me. ‘All they did all night was sit in the bar all by themselves and drink. The only guy they ever saw was the bartender. They’re getting fat and I’m losing dough hand over fist, it was awful.’ The place moves a little on the weekends, but then it’s guys that come in with girls. ‘Or fuckin’ amateurs,’ Gordon said. ‘Between the fuckin’ amateurs and the fuckin’ niggers you can’t do squat anyway these days.’ But during the week? Forget it. Nothing. There isn’t even a regular guy taking action in there, ’s how bad it is.
    “Now you think about that,” Cogan said, “and keep in mind, I got absolutely no reason, think the guy’s dancing me around. You think about that for a minute. When’d that game go over? Right around midnight, am I right?”
    “Around eleven-thirty, I guess,” the driver said.
    “Right,” Cogan said. “They go up there and all, most of the lights’re on. ‘The place does a good business,’ Gordon tells me, ‘it’s full almost all the time. It justdon’t do no other business.’ So these kids, if that’s what they are, they go there on the right night and they go to the exact room where it is and they go right in, the door’s open, and they take everybody’s money. How about that,