Russo, with sweat beaded on his round brow and pit stains bleeding through his suit coat, stood swaying for a moment, puffed his thin lips, and then hurried off.

“You’ll have to start getting used to good cigars, Raymond,” Rangle said, finishing off the pint in front of him and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “You’ve already got a fine woman.”

I pressed my lips together and stared flatly at him.

“Lucky in life and lucky in love,” Rangle said, his teeth glinting.

I cast a look at Frank to see if he was in on the fun.

“In today’s politics, the first lady is essential,” Rangle said, belching quietly and loosening his tie before he clutched his fingers. “That’s insider information. The kind of stuff my father taught me. The kind of stuff I’m going to share with you during the campaign and even when you’re in Washington…”

Russo returned, staggering like a goblin slave with a quartet of glasses and a pocketful of cigars stuffed in with the burgundy handkerchief that matched his tie. I passed on the Montecristo, but drank half of the Hefeweizen before setting the glass down on the metal mesh tabletop.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, looking at my watch. “But I’ve really got to get going.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Rangle said with a wink, “that little secret errand to run, right? Secret’s safe with me, that’s for sure…”

Rangle started to chuckle. It infected Russo, who wheezed through that big nose. Frank just stared down at the pint glass between his thick hands.

“I guess you don’t get to where you are without doing some favors, eh?” Rangle said, clipping the end off his cigar. One eyebrow crept upward and he narrowed his big dark eyes.

“Meaning?”

“Nothing bad,” Rangle said, looking up from behind the flame and smoke. Puffing. “We all do favors for people. Look at us…”

He pointed the butt of his cigar around the table and said, “Four CBA grads. Did anyone think of that? You wore the purple and gold too. A little behind us, but a brother is a brother. The next generation… We have to stick together, no matter what our differences. That’s what the Brothers taught us.”

Christian Brothers Academy was a parochial high school. Almost every Italian American family in Syracuse, as well as others that could afford it, wanted their kids to go there. It was also a sports power and I attended on a soccer scholarship.

I drained my beer and stood up. The first half had already gone to my head.

“You’re right. Thanks for the beer,” I said.

“But we’re just starting,” Rangle said, rising up, reaching for my sleeve.

“No, I’ve got to.”

“Leave it to Raymond,” he said to the others, “to worry about keeping his promise to a guy who’s already dead.”

“Leave it to me,” I said, forcing a smile as I backed away, wishing I hadn’t asked Rangle about the address. “Keeping your word is an odd concept for some people.”

I ducked between two parked cars and waited for a motorcycle to sputter by before crossing. One of the lawyers from my firm walked out of a bar across the street and I was forced to politely accept his congratulations on the Iroquois deal. When I got to the corner, I looked back at the sidewalk table where Rangle, Frank, and Russo still sat. They weren’t looking at me anymore. Instead, the three of them held their glasses high and touched them together in a toast.

I KNOW THEY THINK I’m crazy, and maybe that’s true. Sometimes they take the punishment I give them in order to subdue me. It takes five men. After a time, though, strong as I am, they are able to chain me up and fasten a leather mask over my face to keep me from biting. Then they’ll carry me to a room and chain me down to a chair that’s bolted to the floor.

The first time they did this, I thought they were going to torture me. But all they did was bring in a psychiatrist. I still have to fight them when they come for me with the mask, otherwise they might not keep me here. But the truth is, I enjoy talking to the doctors. Four other times they gave me to a priest.

My point is this: I may very well be crazy, and maybe it’s just crazy for me to believe that I know what happened all those years ago when I wasn’t even there. But there were scraps of things I later heard. Before the trial. And for the rest… Well, I’ve had plenty of time to think.

These things are never clear during the night. It’s during my one hour of daylight that they come to me. I don’t want to know them. They just come, intruders lurking in the woods around the cabin of my boyhood Adirondack vacations.

And when these intruders commandeer my thoughts, what really happened comes to me in a way that leaves me as certain of the truth as if I were there myself. Listening. Seeing…

“That was cute,” Frank said, his bulk shifting forward, his olive skin reddening. “I hope you enjoyed yourself, asshole.”

The smell of spilled beer and laughter and smoke whirled around them. Rangle leaned across the table with his cigar stuck deep into the corner of his mouth and said, “I mean, how does a guy like you lose that girl to a guy like him?”

“Yeah,” Russo said.

“Shut up.”

Russo scratched the stubble surrounding his bald head and looked away with his ears sticking out from the sides of his head like two hunks of cauliflower.

“Who understands pussy?” Frank asked. He upended the rest of his old pint and started in on the new one.

The shadow of the building had shifted with the sun. They were in darkness now and their metal table was cooling rapidly. Only the smoke from Rangle’s cigar drifted toward the street and into the sunlight, a twisting shimmering cloud.

“Hey,” Rangle said, raising his hands, palms up. A strand of slicked-back hair had fallen from its ranks, and it hung limp from his high hairline. “No problem. We’re friends.”

Frank’s thick fingers were clamped around the glass. His knuckles pale. His cigar lay there in front of him, untouched. Russo held his between his thumb and forefinger, caressing the Montecristo between his upper lip and the overhang of his nose. Sniffing it. Rangle leaned forward again, his silver cuff links clinking against the metal tabletop.

“How much do you hate him?” he asked. “What does it feel like in your chest and in your crotch… when you think about him fucking her?”

Frank’s jaw went taut. He shoved the glass away from him with waves of beer sloshing up and over its rim. He picked up the cigar, crushing and twisting it until small brown flecks of tobacco fell to the table like snowflakes.

“That could be you,” he said. His mouth was pulled down at the corners and his pale eyes bored into Rangle. The veins in his bull neck bulged. “I’ll buckle down all over your ass, mayor or not.”

“Hold that thought,” Rangle said, showing Frank his sharp teeth without the smile. “But now think Raymond. It’s him, not me. What if we did something about him?”

“Someone could find his head in a Dumpster with three slugs in it,” Frank said. He was leaning forward too, speaking barely above his breath.

“Arrogant bastard,” Russo said. “Guy thinks I’m his personal fucking banker.”

“No one asked you,” Frank said.

Russo frowned and said he was sorry.

“What if you could do something even worse than that?” Rangle asked, slicking back his thin hair. His eyes glittered. “Would you?”

“What’s worse?”

“What if it was Raymond that had to think about you fucking Lexis?”

Frank’s hand darted across the table, latched on to Rangle’s tie, and yanked him across the table until his face smashed into the cluster of empty glasses. Frank’s thick lips brushed up against Rangle’s forehead.

Overhead, Bryan Adams sang “Cuts Like a Knife.”

“You don’t ever talk about her,” Frank said in a throaty whisper. “Never ever again. Her name doesn’t come out of your filthy mouth or I’ll beat you to a fucking pulp and throw you in jail for assaulting an officer. You got that?”