Free Killing Them Softly (Cogan's Trade Movie Tie-in Edition) by George V. Higgins Page A

assume,” he said.
    â€œNah,” Cogan said. “Just a big hole. All the construction jocks, that’s all there is. There’s always three or four of them, sitting in their cars, trying to get warm. Forget it.”
    The driver turned the Toronado right on Tremont Street. “He was very concerned,” he said. “When I told him I called and Dillon said to see you, he was very concerned. How is the fellow?”
    â€œHe’s not good,” Cogan said. “He came in Monday, he was out about three weeks and he came in Monday and he hadda have a guy come in and take over for him. I don’t think he was in at all, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then yesterday he called me, the guy he had those days was tied up and could I get somebody. So I did. He’s not in today, either. They told, the doctor said if he took things easy, he was inna hospitalover two and a half weeks, and then if he took it easy, he oughta be all right this week. So, he’s around but he looks shitty, and I saw him, I saw him yesterday. He’s still getting it in the arm and he says it makes him nervous, still, not smoking, he’d probably be better off if he was. Says it feels like somebody stuck a knife in his chest.”
    â€œHe probably won’t be able to handle anything for a while, then,” the driver said. He stopped at the red light at the Kneeland Street intersection.
    â€œHe sure can’t right now,” Cogan said. “I think, I personally think the guy’s in very bad shape. He was, you know, every time I ever saw the guy he was always bitching about how he felt lousy and everything, his stomach was bothering him and if it wasn’t that it was something else. But he’s really sick now, and you can tell because he don’t say anything about it unless you come right out and ask him, and even then he doesn’t really want to talk about it. I think he’s worried himself.”
    The light changed and the Toronado crossed the intersection and the driver said: “He told me, when he heard, that if Dillon wasn’t available I was to talk to the fellow he sent.”
    â€œWhen you get up the movie place there,” Cogan said, “see that? Go down the right there, and there’ll be a place you can park.”
    â€œIs that you?” the driver said.
    â€œDillon said where you’d be and for me to go there and wait for you,” Cogan said. “I looked around all right, I didn’t see nobody else that might’ve been there to see you. Did you?”
    The driver parked the Toronado behind a pink Thunderbird sedan. “Mark Trattman’s game got hit a couple nights ago,” the driver said.
    â€œI heard that,” Cogan said. “Somewhere around fifty-three thousand they got?”
    â€œWell,” the driver said, “probably closer to fifty. Two kids.”
    â€œYeah,” Cogan said.
    â€œYou or Dillon heard anything about two kids?” the driver said.
    â€œYou hear lots of things,” Cogan said. “I heard they had masks on, for one thing.”
    â€œCorrect,” the driver said.
    â€œSo,” Cogan said, “maybe they’re not kids.”
    â€œThey had long hair,” the driver said. “The people could see it sticking out, from under.”
    â€œLook,” Cogan said, “my wife’s mother’s sick and we hadda go over and see her Sunday, so of course we hadda go to church, too, the old bat doesn’t get any wrong ideas. And the priest had long hair, for God’s sake. And they could’ve been wearing wigs or something. You can’t tell.”
    â€œWell,” the driver said, “they were dressed like kids. They had dungarees on and they smelled like
animals
, Trattman said.”
    â€œTrattman said,” Cogan said. “Look, anyway, there’s lots of guys that stink.”
    â€œTrattman also said,” the driver said, “the one that talked had a