Free The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

Plymouth?”
    “Yeah,” Jackie Brown said, “but that’s no good for me. Too far from here. I got to be around here by four. I can’t make it. I don’t want, I can’t afford to take no chances. Got to be somewhere around here.”
    “You know where the Fresh Pond Shopping Center is?” the stocky man said. “Cambridge?”
    “Yeah,” Jackie Brown said.
    “There’s a grocery store there,” the stocky man said, “and afive-and-ten. I’ll be in one of the stores there tomorrow at three o’clock. You drive in and park. I’ll see you. If it’s all right, if I think it’s all right, I’ll come out and we can get this thing over with. Don’t wait no more’n ten minutes. If I don’t come out, something isn’t right. Leave and go to where I got that number for you, and I’ll call you there and we’ll set something else up.”
    “You got a tail?” Jackie Brown said.
    “Next month I’m getting sentenced up in New Hampshire,” the stocky man said. “I can’t afford no bust right now, for anything. I got to be careful.”
    “Yeah,” Jackie Brown said, “but if it don’t come off over there, I’m not going back to where you got me before. I can’t do that. It’ll have to be tomorrow night if it burns tomorrow afternoon. You call and say what time, and leave me a number or something, and I’ll be where you say.”
    “All right,” the stocky man said. “I’ll look for you tomorrow.”
    “Have the money,” Jackie Brown said. “Six bucks. Have it there. I work this fast, I’m going to need money fast.”
    “No sweat,” the stocky man said. “I’ll have the money.”

11
     
    Foley explained the delay. “I got your call from the office,” he said. “I was out in the woods there. I came as fast as I could. What’s on your mind?”
    Along the Lafayette Mall, the streetlights disposed of the gloom of the autumn early evening. Near the first subway kiosk the Hare Krishnas sang and danced, wearing saffron robes and tattered gray sweaters and sneakers with no socks.
    “I didn’t mind,” Dillon said. “I’m not in any hurry myself, but I thought, I thought maybe this was something you might be in a hurry about. I been sitting here watching them goddamned fools with their pigtails and paint on their faces, jumping around, and they got this kid with them, looks just like a little German, or a Swede, maybe, and there’s his Mummy and Daddy jumping around like a couple of maniacs, playing Indian. That poor little kid. When he grows up, what the hell is he going to do? I washim, I think I’d shoot somebody. I’d start with Mummy and Daddy, for openers.”
    “Hey look,” Foley said, “they don’t hurt nobody.”
    “I know that,” Dillon said. “I know that all right, but I see them going up to people and they’re really serious, you know? They mean it. They think we all oughta take off our pants and put on them nightgowns and go humping around beating on a god-damned drum. They also think we’re going to do it. Now that’s crazy, isn’t it? Sure it’s crazy, but then I think: I was here when they come up and I see they got this brand-new Olds, which I assume they get with the money they bum off the sensible people, and now I’m wondering, who is it that’s crazy? Is it them getting goose pimples jumping around in front of God and all the people, or is it me? I don’t have a new Olds, all I got is a card for next week on which I was stupid enough to take the Pats again. I never learn.”
    “What’d you want to see me about?” Foley said.
    “Hey,” Dillon said, “remember last time I saw you, you’re giving me a little leg about there’s nothing going on? And I said no, there’s something but I don’t know what it is? Well, I was right, wasn’t I?”
    “Depends on what you mean,” Foley said. “There’s some things going on, but I don’t see any of the boys making a buck out of it.”
    “Well,” Dillon said, “now you never know. But look, you asked me, what’s