After Capone’s release in March 1930, I got three escort calls in a month and made myself ask for what I had postponed. I needed permission to approach Bruno as a chosen representative, but I feared what the permission might cost. At the end of an evening assignment I followed Capone into a private sitting room carrying his coat. I placed it over a chair instead of handing it to the attendant. That bought me a moment. He noticed I had stayed and asked what I wanted.
I told Capone about Danny and Walt, then the part I hadn't told Bruno. Paul was there. He took both gloves off and put them on the sill. Neither had a patch. "If you've got a question, ask it," he said. Capone looked at me instead. A few months before, I could have gone to him alone; now he was making me say what I knew in front of the man who had to live with it. I told him I'd seen a glove. I hadn't seen Paul's hand in it. "So you don't know whose seat it was," Capone said. "No." It was the first honest account I'd given anybody.
He pulled the other chair away from the wall for me himself. "Go put the drivers back on the street," he said. "See whether you can get two of them to cross that yard together. Don't tell them who shot anybody for me. I wasn't there." To Paul he said, "One voice for this. His." Paul went over and shut the door for me. It should have felt like a promotion. What I could see, sitting there, was that Danny had never in his life been invited to take that chair.
Outside, Paul caught my elbow. I freed it without turning the encounter into a struggle. “You heard the limits,” I said. “So did you.” The next morning I went to Bruno, then Frank, repeating those limits in the same words. Bruno agreed to attend a working yard where neither man owned the gate. Frank objected to an assessment until I said it would also record the repairs and parts he claimed to have supplied. That interested him. I got more out of the bargain than a price. Frank agreed to let Leo and the mechanic take a van out together without being held over the truck. Bruno agreed his men would let two of Frank’s young drivers cross back through their line without being seized for Danny. I went to each pair myself. Nobody was tied up, but no driver had been willing to make that crossing on his own. Both pairs agreed to go when I gave the word. I found an independent mechanic willing to inspect for a modest fee and paid it myself.
The meeting began with a wagon stuck across the yard entrance. Bruno refused to squeeze past Frank’s car, and Frank refused to move it. I took the car’s front bumper while a yard hand pushed at the fender, shifting it enough for the wagon to clear. Mud sucked at my shoes. By the time I brought the men together beneath an open shed, neither could pretend we were holding a ceremony. Men were still working around us. A foreman warned that we would be put out if we blocked another load.
The mechanic came with Leo carrying the truck lamp. They were to cross from Bruno's side to ours and take an empty van out together. In exchange two of Frank's younger drivers were to walk back across the open yard, unhurt. It was a small job worth doing: four men could go home without somebody else's hand on their collars. I set the lamp down on a crate and put both parties in motion. The younger of Frank's drivers had one white eyebrow; I remember watching that white mark advance until he got level with me and stopped dead. Walt Sayer had come through the shed behind him.
Walt took the boy round the neck and swung him between us. "You'd stand there with the one who saw?" he called to Leo. Leo stepped out where Walt could see him. So did I. The boy had ceased making a sound. I put my hands on his belt and took his weight. I told Walt I had seen him shoot Danny. It cost me my free hand and the shelter of the post and all hope of settling this with a private whisper. He let go when the older driver came at him from the side. The three of us went down beside the crate. By the time we got up Walt was across the street. I could see men starting after him, including Bruno himself.
I sent Leo after the empty van instead. He and the mechanic brought it round; I got the two boys into it and made good on the crossing before anyone could claim a prisoner. Bruno came back without Walt. He let the boys clear the gate. Frank gave his word that Leo could return to inspect the truck in company, and that no driver would be held over Danny. I put the dented lamp back into Frank's hands. There were four men walking free on the strength of the agreement. All four could tell you how little a word weighed beside a man with his arm across your throat.
Paul waited beyond the gate. He had seen enough to know the meeting had not collapsed. “You make a fine replacement,” he said. I told him there had been no promise of regular work. He stepped close, the old scar showing where his cuff had ridden back. I remembered pulling him from heat and broken glass, then hated myself for reaching for that memory again. “This wasn’t about your seat,” I said. He looked through the gate at Leo. “You used the man you saved to take my place.”