“So he couldn’t stop payment. Because he couldn’t have used the stuff I sold him. It was good, all right. It was too good. It would have put his old man in jail with the rest of them. It would have nailed Papa Elihu tighter than anyone else.”

I laughed with her while I tried to keep my head above the gin I had guzzled.

“Who else would it nail?” I asked.

“The whole damned lot of them.” She waved a hand. “Max, Lew Yard, Pete, Noonan, and Elihu Willsson⁠—the whole damned lot of them.”

“Did Max Thaler know what you were doing?”

“Of course not⁠—nobody but Donald Willsson.”

“Sure of that?”

“Sure I’m sure. You don’t think I was going around bragging about it ahead of time, do you?”