Killing Them Softly (Cogan's Trade Movie Tie-in Edition)

you go in again, use up all your luck thinking. So then it’s very fuckin’ nice. Don’t slow you down. Just makes you feel good, and that’s what I was after.”
    â€œSure,” Amato said, “and that’s what you’re gonna be after when you’re getting ready to go in on this thing I got, and you’re gonna get it and you’re gonna be flying and you’re gonna go in stoned up to your ass and some poor bastard’s gonna start hollering or something and he’s gonna get shot, and a very good thing that a kid in his fuckin’ right mind couldn’t fuck up is gonna get fucked up. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
    â€œHe’ll be all right, John,” Frankie said.
    â€œ
Maybe
he’ll be all right,” Amato said. “Maybe he won’t be all right. Maybe
you
won’t be. I don’t want nobody getting hurt on this. There’s nothing, there’s no reason why anybody oughta get hurt on this, the guys that go in or the guys that’re in there when the guys go in. This’s money, just money, nothing else. No fuckin’
shit
and stuff that’s gonna get everybody all pissed off and everything. It was something that was gonna be around, it was something like that, all right, I could maybe take a chance. I could take a couple guys that I was afraid’d maybe cock off and wreck it, and take their word for it, they’re gonna be all right. So all right, they go in, and they cock off and wreck it, it was a bank or something, it’s gonna be there next week for two guys that’ve got more sense, all right. But this isn’t. It’s not like that. You fuck it up, it’s fuckin’ gone, it’s gonna disappear. I got to think about this. I got to be sure. I’m gonna talk to some people.I’m gonna take my time about this thing, as much time I got, anyway.”
    â€œJohn,” Frankie said, “I need dough. I was in the can a long time and I haven’t found anything. You can’t fuck around with me like this.”
    â€œMy friend,” Amato said, “my wife, Connie? Makes great roast pork. She stuffs it, you know? It’s really great. The other night she makes roast pork. First time since I been home. I couldn’t eat it. I told her, I said: ‘Connie, don’t make no pork for me, ever again.’ But I used to love it, I always said it’s the best thing she makes, and she’s a good cook. I mean, a really good cook. That’s why she’s so fuckin’ fat all the time, she likes to eat and she likes to cook and she cooks great and she eats it. ‘Bacon,’ I said, ‘ham, I don’t care if it does come off a pig. But no kind of pork. You make baked beans, all right? Don’t gimme none with the pork on it. The beans I’ll eat. Not the pork.’ And, well, I went down the clamstand and I ate in my fuckin’ car, and I haven’t, until a month ago I didn’t eat with my family for almost seven years. I still ate down the clamstand. Something got fucked up once, you remember that? I picked a wrong guy for something, everybody’s in a hurry, we got to move, we need the dough, this and that, he’ll be all right, and I, it, I was worse’n the rest of you. So we take him, and I knew, he’s a guy I’m really not sure about. I couldn’t tell you what it was, I just knew it, this was a wrong guy. But I take him anyway. And he was a wrong guy, and I eat greasy, shitty pork, seems like every day, almost seven years, and my kids’re growing up and my business, it’s all right, it’s not doing as good as it should be, and I’m in the can, and now, I can’t get that back, you know? So now, I can’t eat my favorite things any more, because they remind me, I’m, fromnow on I’m taking my time, and that’s all there is to it. No, I don’t care about you, what’s bothering you. We can do something, great, we’ll do something. If we can do it safe and without fucking up something that’s really good and getting ourselves in the shit again. But I ate the last fuckin’ pork I’m ever gonna eat. I had my last fuck-up. Call me Thursday. Thursday I’ll know. I’ll let you know.”

R USSELL STOPPED about four feet from Frankie on the second underground platform of the Park Street MBTA station. “All right,” he said, “I’m here.