Cogan's Trade

“He’ll be all right, John,” Frankie said.

“Maybe he’ll be all right,” Amato said. “Maybe he won’t be all right. Maybe you won’t be. I don’t want nobody getting hurt on this. There’s nothing, there’s no reason why anybody oughta get hurt on this, the guys that go in or the guys that’re in there when the guys go in. This’s money, just money, nothing else. No fuckin’ shit and stuff that’s go

“John,” Frankie said, “I need dough. I was in the can a long time and I haven’t found anything. You can’t fuck around with me like this.”

“My friend,” Amato said, “my wife, Co

RUSSELL STOPPED about four feet from Frankie on the second underground platform of the Park Street MBTA station. “All right,” he said, “I’m here. We going out there or what?”

Frankie leaned against one of the red and white pillars. “Depends,” he said.

“Don’t depend on me,” Russell said. “I been up since quarter five. I’m all beat to shit. And I also, I got a chance to get laid if I don’t go out there.”

“Don’t people get laid at night any more?” Frankie said. “My sister, we’re kids, you couldn’t keep Sandy i

“Must be a fireman,” Russell said, “night guy i

“Or a fuckin’ cop,” Frankie said. “It’d be the same thing with a cop. I said to her: ‘None of my business, Sandy, I just hope you’re not rolling around with some fuckin’ cop, is all.’ She looks at me. ‘Why?’ she says. ‘What’ve you guys got that cops haven’t?’ I pity that kid.”

“You oughta pity yourself,” Russell said.

“I do,” Frankie said. “She never had a clean shot, though. She always got around pretty good, I don’t mean that. She just never hadda clean shot.”

“Nobody ever had a clean shot,” Russell said. “What the fuck else is new? I was talking to this girl, she wants me to come over there this after. I said to her, look, I hadda be some place. What’s the matter, tonight? She’s gotta work. She gets off late. I don’t care. I been up late myself before. She’s a nurse. She says: ‘Look, I’m go

“That oughta be something,” Frankie said. “I can just see what kind of broad she’s go

“Look,” Russell said, “you ought to know. I was pounding sand up my ass almost four years. I would’ve fucked a snake, I could’ve got somebody, hold it for me. These broads, okay, you wouldn’t want to rape them if you saw them, you know? But they got the fuckin’ plumbing.”

A badly coordinated heavyset man appeared on the southerly platform across the tracks. He wore white coveralls and carried a blue plastic pail. He turned his back and stared at the tile wall. He put the pail down. He put his hands on his hips. On the wall in red spray paint were irregular letters eighteen inches tall. They read: SOUTHIE EATS IT. He stooped and removed a steel brush and a can of solvent from the pail.

“I wished I could look at things like that,” Frankie said. “I can’t seem to get my mind on anything. I thought, I used to think, boy, if I ever get out of this fuckin’ place, they just better get all the women out of town that day, you know? But you know what I do? I sleep all the time. You were to just leave me alone, I think that’s really what I’d do, the way I feel right now at least. Just sleep and sleep and sleep. That’s why, this thing, I du