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

thinks: it’s the niggers. But it’s not. New York, maybe some place else it is. But not New York. New York it’s PRs. I dunno what the fuck it is. I been there, I been in New York almost twenty years. The whole time I been there, somebody’s been howling for something. It’s not the niggers, it’s the PRs. Those bastards, they come in onna plane, they own the whole fuckin’ town all of a sudden. All of a sudden everybody’s got to get down and kiss the goddamned PRs’ ass. You get yourself a sandwich and there’s a hungry PR around, because, of course, there’s
always
gonna be a hungry PR around, they’re too fuckin’ good-looking to go to work or anything, forget your sandwich. There’s gonna be some guy from Washington standing around, giving you the hardeyes. ‘Leave him have the sandwich, Jason. He’s a spic and he’s entitled.’ I look around, you look around in New York and all you can see is spics, wall-to-wall spics wiggling their ass. I swear they’re all queer. No, I’m selling cars.”
    â€œJesus,” Cogan said, “I wouldn’t think, it’d pay that good.”
    â€œDoesn’t,” Mitch said, “don’t pay for shit. But you’re the guy, owns the thing, all right? Now that guy makes out. Guys that’ve got the same kind of job I have, you really got to hammer ass and get lucky, too, you wanna make a buck. But the guy, he’s my wife’s uncle, right? I should’ve married him. Him and me get along fine. So I do all right, and I’m outdoors and you get to go to the meetings and all. It’s just for the time being. I gonear one of them fuckin’ jobs now and everybody’s screaming fuckin’ bloody murder. I got a record and I got this and I got that, and that asshole in New Jersey, I swear every time the guy picked the phone up he was telling somebody what a hot shit I am, oh, he was a great one. So, you got to wait, it’ll die down. It always does. The fuckin’ Chinks’ll be next. What the fuck, I mean, sooner or later they’re probably gonna
have
a fuckin’ election and that crazy fuckin’ guy that wants to give the world away to somebody, anybody, so long’s he’s a nigger himself and thinks the niggers oughta own the world, he’ll get his ass whipped and then things’ll quiet down again. I’ll find something.”
    The waiter brought two more drinks. He was an elderly man, bent in the formal uniform. “Where do you have to go for these?” Mitch said. The waiter straightened up and stared at Mitch. “I said: Where do you have to go for these things?” Mitch said. “I know it’s some place outa the building, here, it’s obviously gotta be. You maybe even got to walk a couple blocks, take a cab or something. I was just wondering.”
    â€œNo, sir,” the waiter said, “we only have one man on the service and lunch bars today, and he’s very busy. Are the drinks all right?”
    â€œWell,” Mitch said, “as a matter of fact, no, it’s mostly evaporated by the time it gets here.”
    â€œMitch,” Cogan said. “Yeah,” he said to the waiter, “the drinks are all right.”
    The waiter went away.
    â€œThe next one I’m gonna send in for,” Mitch said. “They probably got an order blank in a magazine or something, you can mail it in and then when you get here it only takes them about a week to get you what you want.”
    â€œYou picked it,” Cogan said.
    â€œThe only place in fuckin’ Boston I know about, I could remember, for Christ sake,” Mitch said. “I never come here. You know how many times I come here? I been here, this’s the fourth or fifth time I been here in my whole life. I just never come here, is all. Every time I have to go somewhere, it’s Detroit, it’s Chicago, it’s something like that. I was in St. Louis, the last time I hadda go someplace. I just never come here. Guy asked me the other day, I wanna do something. I told him no, I was gonna be out of town. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘you going all the way to Brooklyn or something?’ ”
    â€œYou tell him, you’re coming up here?” Cogan said.
    â€œFor Christ sake, no,” Mitch said. “I was just saying, I never come up here much. I suppose, when they needed somebody, they usually must’ve