regular type of repairman, which is true. You are a regular type of repairman, which is also true. The guy who owns the building told me the tenants’re screaming about hot water and he asked me to go over and check out the furnace. Which is a perfectly legitimate thing, because the tenants
have
been screaming about no hot water and unless you get it offa the stove you will generally find that the hot water in most buildings is something that comes out the furnace thing there. They will have this boiler, unless they got gas or electric which these old buildings have not got because the people who live there’d rip the things out and sell them. All right? So anybody who wants to can remember seeing us all they want, and that will be all right too, because we are here on a job that they been screaming about having done. If something else happens in the next few days, then something else happens in the next few days, but that hasn’t got nothing to do with us.”
“I still don’t like it,” Jimmy said. “I am not sure about this. This is exactly the kind of thing I hear about from Bobby Coffey there, when he is telling me he has got a sure thing going and then it turns out that he didn’t, or if he did what was sure about it was that me and him was going to jail, which is what we did.
“ ‘Nothing to worry about, Jimmy,’ he’s always telling me, ‘nothing to worry about at all.’ And I keep thinking, ‘Yeah, but suppose maybe the guy’s not scared of us, and he goes to see the cops and he talks to them, huh? What if that happens?’ And that is exactly what he did, and what I ended up doing was time, and Bobby was still telling me, they’re carting me off to Norfolk, I shouldn’t worry about anything becausehe will get me out. Except he didn’t. It was the parole board that got me out, and they took their own sweet time about it, too. I don’t want no more of that shit, Leo. I don’t want no more that shit at all.”
“Look,” Leo said, “if you’re gonna have your period here, go have it somewhere else, all right? You wanna back out the job, back out the job. Go ahead. Walk right down the street, take a right on Symphony Road, go down Mass Ave there and you come to the place they play the music, you’ll see this subway thing they got there, which says
Symphony
on it, and you go down the steps and give the machine there a quarter and pretty soon a train comes along and you get on it and I will go ahead with this matter and I will get somebody else who will help me with it. Because I can, you know, and he will get the money instead of you and I won’t have to hear no more
fuckin’ bitchin
out of your mouth. All right?”
“I’m not bitchin’, Leo,” Jimmy said. “I am just trying to tell you that I have been on a sure thing before, that was not going to get me in no trouble. And the only thing that was sure about it was that I was going to get in some trouble because exactly what I said to Bobby was exactly what happened. The guy came home early because he didn’t feel good or something and he sees where we got this truck backed up his house and he knows he didn’t order no movers and sure, he thinks it’s his ex-wife who’s taking all his furniture and his rugs and TV’s and stuff, but he didn’t give her no permission either. And he calls the cops, he’s gonna have her ass in a sling before dark, and the cops come and they find out it isn’t her, it’s us. Which I guess kind of disappointed the guy because he really didn’t like her a whole lot, but he took what he had and had us put in jail instead of her, that was perfect strangers to him and he didn’t even know us at all.
“Now,” Jimmy said, “I figure if Bobby Coffey can make amistake, Leo Proctor can make a mistake. And I am sick of doing time because Bobby Coffey made a mistake. I am also not interested in doing no further time because somebody else made a mistake and did not look at things without his eyes being all
have
been screaming about no hot water and unless you get it offa the stove you will generally find that the hot water in most buildings is something that comes out the furnace thing there. They will have this boiler, unless they got gas or electric which these old buildings have not got because the people who live there’d rip the things out and sell them. All right? So anybody who wants to can remember seeing us all they want, and that will be all right too, because we are here on a job that they been screaming about having done. If something else happens in the next few days, then something else happens in the next few days, but that hasn’t got nothing to do with us.”
“I still don’t like it,” Jimmy said. “I am not sure about this. This is exactly the kind of thing I hear about from Bobby Coffey there, when he is telling me he has got a sure thing going and then it turns out that he didn’t, or if he did what was sure about it was that me and him was going to jail, which is what we did.
“ ‘Nothing to worry about, Jimmy,’ he’s always telling me, ‘nothing to worry about at all.’ And I keep thinking, ‘Yeah, but suppose maybe the guy’s not scared of us, and he goes to see the cops and he talks to them, huh? What if that happens?’ And that is exactly what he did, and what I ended up doing was time, and Bobby was still telling me, they’re carting me off to Norfolk, I shouldn’t worry about anything becausehe will get me out. Except he didn’t. It was the parole board that got me out, and they took their own sweet time about it, too. I don’t want no more of that shit, Leo. I don’t want no more that shit at all.”
“Look,” Leo said, “if you’re gonna have your period here, go have it somewhere else, all right? You wanna back out the job, back out the job. Go ahead. Walk right down the street, take a right on Symphony Road, go down Mass Ave there and you come to the place they play the music, you’ll see this subway thing they got there, which says
Symphony
on it, and you go down the steps and give the machine there a quarter and pretty soon a train comes along and you get on it and I will go ahead with this matter and I will get somebody else who will help me with it. Because I can, you know, and he will get the money instead of you and I won’t have to hear no more
fuckin’ bitchin
out of your mouth. All right?”
“I’m not bitchin’, Leo,” Jimmy said. “I am just trying to tell you that I have been on a sure thing before, that was not going to get me in no trouble. And the only thing that was sure about it was that I was going to get in some trouble because exactly what I said to Bobby was exactly what happened. The guy came home early because he didn’t feel good or something and he sees where we got this truck backed up his house and he knows he didn’t order no movers and sure, he thinks it’s his ex-wife who’s taking all his furniture and his rugs and TV’s and stuff, but he didn’t give her no permission either. And he calls the cops, he’s gonna have her ass in a sling before dark, and the cops come and they find out it isn’t her, it’s us. Which I guess kind of disappointed the guy because he really didn’t like her a whole lot, but he took what he had and had us put in jail instead of her, that was perfect strangers to him and he didn’t even know us at all.
“Now,” Jimmy said, “I figure if Bobby Coffey can make amistake, Leo Proctor can make a mistake. And I am sick of doing time because Bobby Coffey made a mistake. I am also not interested in doing no further time because somebody else made a mistake and did not look at things without his eyes being all
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