The man leaned heavily against him and said, “Where’s my partner?”
“In the river,” Kerrigan said.
The man forgot his own pain and weakness. He stepped away from Kerrigan, his eyes dulled with a kind of brute sorrow. Then he shook his head slowly and said, “It just don’t pay to take these jobs. They’re not worth the grief. I’m all banged up inside and he’s food for the fishes. All for a lousy twenty bucks.”
“Is that what she paid you?”
The man nodded.
Kerrigan’s eyes narrowed. “She pay in advance?”
“Yeah.” The man put his hand against his trousers pocket.
“Let’s have it,” Kerrigan said.
It was two fives and a ten. The man handed him the bills and he folded them carefully. He said, “You sure she didn’t give you more?”
The man tried to smile. “If she wanted you rubbed out complete, it would have cost her a hundred. For this kind of job, to put a man outta action, we never charge more than twenty.”