Cogan's Trade

“Jesus,” Cogan said, “I wouldn’t think, it’d pay that good.”

“Doesn’t,” Mitch said, “don’t pay for shit. But you’re the guy, owns the thing, all right? Now that guy makes out. Guys that’ve got the same kind of job I have, you really got to hammer ass and get lucky, too, you wa

The waiter brought two more drinks. He was an elderly man, bent in the formal uniform. “Where do you have to go for these?” Mitch said. The waiter straightened up and stared at Mitch. “I said: Where do you have to go for these things?” Mitch said. “I know it’s some place outa the building, here, it’s obviously gotta be. You maybe even got to walk a couple blocks, take a cab or something. I was just wondering.”

“No, sir,” the waiter said, “we only have one man on the service and lunch bars today, and he’s very busy. Are the drinks all right?”

“Well,” Mitch said, “as a matter of fact, no, it’s mostly evaporated by the time it gets here.”

“Mitch,” Cogan said. “Yeah,” he said to the waiter, “the drinks are all right.”

The waiter went away.

“The next one I’m go

“You picked it,” Cogan said.

“The only place in fuckin’ Boston I know about, I could remember, for Christ sake,” Mitch said. “I never come here. You know how many times I come here? I been here, this’s the fourth or fifth time I been here in my whole life. I just never come here, is all. Every time I have to go somewhere, it’s Detroit, it’s Chicago, it’s something like that. I was in St. Louis, the last time I hadda go someplace. I just never come here. Guy asked me the other day, I wa

“You tell him, you’re coming up here?” Cogan said.

“For Christ sake, no,” Mitch said. “I was just saying, I never come up here much. I suppose, when they needed somebody, they usually must’ve had somebody else they used to call. Course I haven’t been doing much except staying away from a lot of things lately anyway. Or things’ve been staying away from me, anyway.”

“Yeah?” Cogan said.

“Yeah,” Mitch said. He finished his drink. He signaled to the waiter and pointed to his glass. The waiter, slowly, began to move toward the service bar. “You don’t mind if I drink one of them beers while I’m waiting for that guy to make it in from the airport, do you?” Mitch said. He was reaching for a stein of dark.

“No,” Cogan said. “It’ll make you fat, though, I thought you said.”

Mitch drank some of the beer. “Yeah,” he said. “First there was that thing on the phones. Jesus, I could’ve killed that guy. I mean it. I could’ve found somebody, gimme the okay, I would’ve done him for nothing. On the fuckin’ cuff. Then, then, well, I hadda leave the hall on account of that. And I wasn’t feeling good, you know? So I go the doctor, and he gives me the stuff, and he asks me: have I been under some kind of tension or something. Of course not, just gettin’ my name in the paper all the time, more’n Rockefeller, I bet, I used to be a guy that could go in and organize something and keep everything going all right, now all of a sudden I don’t do nothing but break people’s legs and stuff and throw bombs or something at them. I forget what it was. And I’m getting hell from my wife all the time, naturally. No, there’s nothing bothering me. And I take the stuff and I get fat and then I got myself a good dose in Saratoga, I was up there with a couple of the guys, and then they grabbed me down in Maryland on that gun thing.”

“What gun thing?” Cogan said.

“I was goin’ huntin’, for Christ sake,” Mitch said. “Me and another guy. You know Topper?”

“No,” Cogan said.

Mitch finished the beer. The waiter arrived with the drink. “You didn’t bring him a beer, I bet,” Mitch said.

“No, sir,” the waiter said. “You only wanted the one, I thought.”

“You thought wrong,” Mitch said. “Bring him a beer, too. I just drank the man’s beer on him.”

“I don’t want any more,” Cogan said to the waiter. “It’s all right.”

The waiter nodded.

Mitch shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “don’t have no more. Yeah. Topper. Nice guy. Lives out on Long Island. We move out there, guy tells me, I should look him up. ‘Getting old,’ he says, ‘still a nice guy.’ So I do. Likes to fish.”

“I went fishing once,” Cogan said. “Got o

“This’s surf casting, he does,” Mitch said. “You go out and you stand on the beach and all. It’s pretty good.” Mitch drank half of the martini. He belched silently. “It’s just, the only thing wrong with it is, you got to get up too early. But what the fuck, he wants to go. My wife starts in on me. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I tell her, ‘leave me alone, all right?’ You ever been shooting geese?”

“No,” Cogan said. “That’s the trouble, I work. I work all night and all day and then I go home and I go to bed. So naturally, I take a few days off, I still live the same way. My wife, now what my wife’s always telling me, I’m working too hard. And that’s true. See, I had this one operation, and it’s all right, but anybody can see what’s happening, it’s just a matter of time, the state starts taking all kinds of action, and it’ll still be there, no question about that, but it’s not go

“You got to change every so often,” Mitch said. “That’s one of things, the union thing? It went to hell, well, I didn’t like it. But I was doing it a long time, I was, in a way I was kind of glad too, you know? That’s what Topper says. He’s seventy, at least, he doesn’t do things any more. He was telling me that. ‘The trouble with you guys,’ he says, ‘you spend your whole life, you’re doing the same thing and all you’re ever doing’s getting old. You’ve got to keep trying new things.’ So I listened to him, we’re goin’ down the Maryland shore, there, a whole bunch of people’re just taking over this motel and they’re all the right kind of guys, we’re go