“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 onna fuckin’ boat. All these guys, drinking beer. I look at the guy. What is this?’ I say. ‘I can go the ball game, I want to watch guys drinking beer.’ It was awful. It was rough and all them guys, drinking beer, they all start throwing up. Fuck fishing.”
“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 gonna be as good. So I started, I started up this thing with the cigarettes, and I got that thing going pretty good. Six months after I take it over, it’s going like a bat out of hell. So, good, I hadda get a guy and give him some of it, I still supply him but he runs the locations I got west of here and I just take care of the others. So, it’s getting better. But it drives her batty, we go some place and we get there and then I can’t sleep. I’m not used to going to bed so early, and I stay up and then I sleep late and we can’t do nothing. ‘You’re exhausted,’ she tells me, and I am. But I tried changing it back and forth and I can’t do it. I been at it too long. I oughta get into something else, I guess. Better hours.”
“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 gonna hunt geese. So, we go down there, I, there was probably a couple hundred cops around the place? And we’ve got the shotguns in the trunk. Oh, fuckin’ beautiful. ‘Where’re you going? What’re you gonna do? Where’re you from?’ So we don’t say anything, naturally, I mean, they done a lot of things but this isn’t fuckin’ Russia yet, I think, and everybody’s standing around and now they’re gonna start searching cars. And I’m gonna ask them, they got any warrants or anything, and I’m really gonna do it. Topper takes hold of me. There’s four or five of them standing around, I was really afraid he was going to say something. Just shakes his head. Doesn’t even do that, really. Topper’s all right. I don’t say anything.
“So,” Mitch said, “they open up the cars and there’s the shotguns, me and Topper’s car. It was Topper’s wife’s car, actually. Two shotguns right there. I just bought the fuckin’ shotgun, for Christ sake. I went down the place and I bought the fuckin’ shotgun. I hadda have my wife’s uncle sign for it, of course, but I actually went out and paid for the thing. Nobody gave it to me or anything. I never even used it once. Guy looks at them. Then he comes over. Treasury. I’m under arrest. Felon in possession. You think, you think I said a single word to them? No. But what does he say: ‘Mister Mitchell,’ and then he starts telling me. So, it probably just happened, they know my record and everything. I look at Topper. Nope, they arrest him, too. They know his name. I’m thinking: pretty soon I start asking around, see how come these guys know when I’m gonna take a shit and everything.
“ ‘Just for your information,’ the guy says to me,” Mitch said, “ ‘you might be interested to know, we picked you up at the Throg’s Neck Bridge this morning. You guys’ve got to learn some day, stop having these conventions.’ So there I am. I’m probably gonna go to jail for a fuckin’ shotgun I bought in a fuckin’ store, I was gonna use to shoot geese with, for Christ sake.”
“Jesus,” Cogan said.
Mitch finished the martini. He signaled to the waiter, pointing to Cogan’s empty stein first.
“You’re hitting that stuff pretty hard, aren’t you, Mitch?” Cogan said.
“I was up all night,” Mitch said. “I can never sleep, I’m going some place the next day onna plane. Them things make me nervous. Then, I come in like this, I got to sleep before I’m good for anything that day. I’m gonna go the hotel, we finish here, get some sleep. I told the doctor, he was gonna put me back on the cortisone, it started up again after that thing in Maryland, and I said: ‘No.’ I don’t care what it is, I’ll change my pants three times a day if I have to, I got to get rid of this weight I got on me. Only I think, well, Topper feels responsible. And he looks, he’s little and he’s old and he didn’t take a pinch for about thirty years, I think. So, they’re probably gonna both be his shotguns. I was just doing an old man a favor, driving him down there and all.”
“Yeah,” Cogan said, “but if they don’t …”
“I do time,” Mitch said. “It’s very simple. If they’re not his guns, I do time. I did it before. If I have to, I can do it again. They’re gonna have to practically turn themselves inside out, get me more’n three even with the rap sheet I got, for that. Oh Jesus, do them guys love arresting you. They just love it. They get somebody, they finally get a guy, they know his name, Jesus Christ, you’d think some of them’re little kids. Like to bash them right inna mouth, they like it so much. Bastards. But, big fuckin’ deal. I do a year. I don’t like it, but shit, that’s the way it goes.”
“Rough onna wife, though,” Cogan said. “That’s the one thing, you know, Carol can never get it off of her mind, I might get bagged and have to go to jail. Most of the time she don’t give me any shit, except about the way I’m out all the time and everything. But every so often, well, they hooked four guys there and they got them in front the grand jury and they asked them, who’s the guy they’re looking for, you know? Like you say: the guy, they know who he is. And naturally they don’t say anything. And then they get this immunity.”