"Is the pope Catholic? Does a bear shit in the woods? Is the sun gonna rise over Ryker's Island?" My sarcasm was lost on him: Danny was the only Mick I'd ever met without a sense of irony. "Of course, I wanna know the skinny on the Paper hit."

"Ya know, Blake, things have been kinda tight around here, even with you comin' in three times a day."

"Okey dokey, Hokey Pokey." I took one of the Grants and waved it under his nose. His little pig eyes got big, and the veins around his eyeballs twisted themselves into dollar signs. "Don't get too greedy, laddy--I gotta pay the rent, ya know. If you got four twentys you can have this C-note."

"Blake," he whinged (the dumb mick had spent a coupla decades in Oz, looking for a brain, I suppose), "this is good stuff--you need it. Believe me, you need it. It's worth every penny of that hundred." Somehow I believed it, so I flapped the bill down on the bar but kept my hand on it. I looked up at him, trying to project skepticism--not that he knew what that was. The silence swelled, the drool started flowing out both sides of that banjo picker's mouth...