That line, Malone reflected, was beginning to have all the persistence of a bass-bourdon. It droned its melancholy way through anything and everything else. He signed deeply, thought about a cigar and lit a cigarette instead. It tasted awful. "About those buttons—" he said.
"I got nothing to do with buttons," Sand said.
"You do with these," Malone said. "A shipment of buttons from the Nevada desert. You grabbed them from Palveri."
"I got nothing to do with it," Sand said.
Malone looked around and found a chair and an ashtray. He grabbed one and sat down in the other. "I'm not from Castelnuovo," he said. "Or Palveri, or any of the Mafia boys. If I were, you'd know it fast enough."
Sand regarded him from under eyelids made almost entirely of scar-tissue. "I guess so," he said sourly at last. "But what do you want to know about the stuff? And who are you, anyhow?"
"The name's Malone," Malone said. "You might say trouble is my business. Or something like that. I see an opportunity to create a little trouble—but not for you. That is, if you want to hear some more about those buttons. Of course, if you had nothing to do with it—"
"All right," Sand said. "All right. But it was strictly a legitimate proposition, understand?"
"Sure," Malone said. "Strictly legitimate."
"Well, it was," Sand said defensively. "We got to stop scab trucking, don't we? And that Palveri was using nonunion boys on the trucks. We had to stop them; it was a service to the Brotherhood, understand?"