Standing by the door, he said: “I heard maybe you sold things.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Cars. I sell cars.”

“No,” he said. “Other stuff. Stuff like…” He looked around at the fakepine-paneled walls. God knew how many agencies were bugging this place. “Just stuff,” he finished, and the words came out on crutches.

“You mean stuff like dope and whores ('hoors') and off-track betting? Or did you want to buy a hitter to knock off your wife or your boss?” Magliore saw him wince and laughed harshly. “That’s not too bad, mister, not bad at all for a shitbird. That’s the big 'What if this place is bugged' act, right? That’s number one at the police academy, am I right?”

“Look, I’m not a-”

“Shut up,” Mansey said. He was holding the J.C. Whitney catalogue in his hands. His fingernails were manicured. He had never seen manicured nails exactly like that except on TV commercials where the announcer had to hold a bottle of aspirin or something. “If Sal wants you to talk, he’ll tell you to talk.”

He blinked and shut his mouth. This was like a bad dream.

“You guys get dumber every day,” Magliore said. “That’s all right. I like to deal with dummies. I’m used to dealing with dummies. I’m good at it. Now. Not that you don’t know it, but this office is as clean as a whistle. We wash it every week. I got a cigar box full of bugs at home. Contact mikes, button mikes, pressure mikes, Sony tape recorders no bigger than your hand. They don’t even try that much anymore. Now they send shitbirds like you.”

He heard himself say: “I’m not a shitbird.”

An expression of exaggerated surprise spread across Magliore’s face. He turned to Mansey. “Did you hear that? He said he wasn’t a shitbird.”

“Yeah, I heard that,” Mansey said.

“Does he look like a shitbird to you?”

“Yeah, he does,” Mansey said.

“Even talks like a shitbird, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“So if you’re not a shitbird,” Magliore said, turning back to him, “what are you?”

“I’m-” he began, not sure of just what to say. What was he? Fred, where are you when I need you?

“Come on, come on,” Magliore said. “State Police? City? IRS? FBI? He look like prime Effa Bee Eye to you, Pete?”

“Yeah,” Pete said.

“Not even the city police would send out a shitbird like you, mister. You must be Effa Bee Eye or a private detective. Which is it?”

He began to feel angry.

“Throw him out, Pete,” Magliore said, losing interest. Mansey started forward, still holding the J.C. Whitney catalogue.

“You stupid dork!” He suddenly yelled at Magliore. “You probably see policemen under your bed, you’re so stupid!You probably think they’re home screwing your wife when you’re here!”

Magliore looked at him, magnified eyes widening. Mansey froze, a look of unbelief on his face.

“Dork?” Magliore said, turning the word over in his mouth the way a carpenter will turn a tool he doesn’t know over in his hands. “Did he call me a dork?”

He was stunned by what he had said.

“I’ll take him around back,” Mansey said, starting forward again.

“Hold it,” Magliore breathed. He looked at him with honest curiosity. “Did you call me a dork?”

“I’m not a cop,” he said. “I’m not a crook, either. I’m just a guy that heard you sold stuff to people who had the money to buy it. Well, I’ve got the money. I didn’t know you had to say the secret word or have a Captain Midnight decoder ring or all that silly shit. Yes, I called you a dork. I’m sorry I did if it will stop this man from beating me up. I’m…” He wet his lips and could think of no way to continue. Magliore and Mansey were looking at him with fascination, as if he had just turned into a Greek marble statue before their very eyes.

“Dork,” Magliore breathed. “Frisk this guy, Pete.

Pete’s hands slapped his shoulders and he turned around.

“Put your hands on the wall,” Mansey said, his mouth beside his ear. He smelled like Listerine. “Feet out behind you. Just like on the cop shows.”

“I don’t watch the cop shows,” he said, but he knew what Mansey meant, and he put himself in the frisk position. Mansey ran his hands up his legs, patted his crotch with all the impersonality of a doctor, slipped a hand into his belt, ran his hands up his sides, slipped a finger under his collar.

“Clean,” Mansey said.

“Turn around, you,” Magliore said.

He turned around. Magliore was still regarding him with fascination.

“Come here.”

He walked over.

Magliore tapped the glass top of his desk. Under the glass there were several snapshots: A dark woman who was grinning into the camera with sunglasses pushed back on top of her wiry hair; olive-skinned kids splashing in a pool; Magliore himself walking along the beach in a black bathing suit, looking like King Farouk, a large collie at his heel.

“Dump out,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Everything in your pockets. Dump it out.”

He thought of protesting, then thought of Mansey, who was hovering just behind his left shoulder. He dumped out.

From his topcoat pockets, the stubs of the tickets from the last movie he and Mary had gone to. Something with a lot of singing in it, he couldn’t remember the name.

He took the his topcoat. From his suit coat, a Zippo lighter with his initials-BGD-engraved on it. A package of flints. A single Phillies Cheroot. A tin of Phillips milk of magnesia tablets. A receipt from A amp;S Tires, the place that had put on his snow tires. Mansey looked at it and said with some satisfaction: “Christ you got burned.”

He took off his jacket. Nothing in his shirt breast pocket but a ball of lint. From the right front pocket of his pants he produced his car keys and forty cents in change, mostly in nickles. For some reason he had never been able to fathom, pickles seemed to gravitate to him. There was never a dime for the parking meter; only nickles, which wouldn’t fit. He put his wallet on the glass-topped desk with the rest of his things.

Magliore picked up the wallet and looked at the faded monogram on it-Mary had given it to him on their anniversary four years ago.

“What’s the G for?” Magliore asked.

“George.”

He opened the wallet and dealt the contents out in front of him like a solitaire hand.

Forty-three dollars in twenties and ones.

Credit cards: Shell, Sunoco, Arco, Grant’s, Sears, Carey’s Department Store, American Express.

Driver’s license. Social Security. A blood donor cans, type A-positive. Library card. A plastic flip-folder. A photostated birth certificate card. Several old receipted bills, some of them falling apart along the fold seams from age. Stamped checking account deposit slips, some of them going back to June.

“What’s the matter with you?” Magliore asked irritably. “Don’t you ever clean out your wallet? You load a wallet up like this and carry it around for a year, that wallet’s hurting.”

He shrugged. “I hate to throw things away.” He was thinking that it was strange, how Magliore calling him a shitbird had made him angry, but Magliore criticizing his wallet didn’t bother him at all.

Magliore opened the flip-folder, which was filled with snapshots. The top one was of Mary, her eyes crossed, her tongue popped out at the camera. An old picture. She had been slimmer then.

“This your wife?”

“Yeah.”

“Bet she’s pretty when there ain’t a camera stuck in her face.”

He flipped up another one and smiled.

“Your little boy? I got one about that age. Can he hit a baseball? Whacko! I guess he can.”

“That was my son, yes. He’s dead now.”

“Too bad. Accident?”

“Brain tumor.”

Magliore nodded and looked at the other pictures. Fingernail clippings of a life: The house on Crestallen Street West, he and Tom Granger standing in the laundry washroom, a picture of him at the podium of the launderers’ convention the year it had been held in the city (he had introduced the keynote speaker), a backyard barbecue with him standing by the grill in a chef’s hat and an apron that said: DAD’s COOKIN', MOM’s LOOKIN'.