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

Mitch said. “It’s very simple. If they’re not his guns, I do time. I did it before. If I have to, I can do it again. They’re gonna have to practically turn themselves inside out, get me more’n three even with the rap sheet I got, for that. Oh Jesus, do them guys love arresting you. They just love it. They get somebody, they finally get a guy, they know his name, Jesus Christ, you’d think some of them’re little kids. Like to bash them right inna mouth, they like it so much. Bastards. But, big fuckin’ deal. I do a year. I don’t like it, but shit, that’s the way it goes.”
    â€œRough onna wife, though,” Cogan said. “That’s the one thing, you know, Carol can never get it off of her mind, I might get bagged and have to go to jail. Most of the time she don’t give me any shit, except about the way I’m out all the time and everything. But every so often, well, they hooked four guys there and they got them in front the grand jury and they asked them, who’s the guy they’re looking for, you know? Like you say: the guy, they know who he is. And naturally they don’t say anything. And then they get this immunity.”
    â€œThey been doing that down in Brooklyn,” Mitch said. “They got everybody in the slammer, and what’d they do? They wouldn’t say anything.”
    â€œYeah,” Cogan said. “So, the same thing, they go to jail. And if they don’t tell them, which they’re naturally not gonna do, they’re gonna have to stay there. So they’re in the can. And my wife was saying, well, I told her, I said, I’m not big enough. And I’m getting out of it anyway, fast as I can. Guys like me, they don’t even know I’m around. Those’re much bigger guys’n I am. But I can see it. I think, I don’t think she could take it, really, something like that happened. Every time theycome in and ask for the toll sheets, there, everybody knows, they talk about it the cafeteria. And she gets all worried and everything. ‘Just promise me one thing, you’ll stay away from phones where they know you.’ So, I do. But I’m almost out of that anyway. I don’t think she could take it, really, something like that happened.”
    â€œNone of them can,” Mitch said. The waiter delivered the martini and the beer. Mitch drank the beer. He wiped his mouth. He belched, softly. “The last time, the last time she actually took out the papers. And I didn’t blame her. She was a lot younger then. But when we’re trying that thing, the last day? The jury’s gonna get the case that day. I get up and she’s already up. I dunno how long that is, but I was up at five or so to take a leak, and she wasn’t in bed then. She says: ‘Doesn’t look good, does it?’ Well, what the hell, it didn’t. The cop lied on the stand, of course, put me in the place at nine-thirty, it was at least after ten when I got there that night, and the jury believed him, of course. So, I say, no, it didn’t. And we go in the bedroom, get dressed. And I’m putting my pants on and I’m watching her, she’s getting dressed, I dunno how she does it, the way she drinks and everything, but she always hadda nice body, and I was thinking, you know? Now I’m goin’ away again, and she’ll start beating the shit out of the sauce and everything, and I know she’ll play around. Shit, I mean, I don’t like the feeling it gives me in the nuts, knowing it, but I wouldn’t even ask her, you know? Just because I’m inna can, she’s supposed to go without it just like she’s inna can with me? So she looks at me. ‘This’s the third time I’ve had to do this, Harold,’ she says. She never called me Mitch, and she knows I hate that name.
    â€œÂ â€˜Look,’ I tell her,” Mitch said, “ ‘you never knowwhat’ll happen.’ ” He drank some of the martini. “ ‘What’s gonna happen, you never know.’
    â€œAnd she says to me,” Mitch said, “ ‘Well, you think you know what’s gonna happen, and I think it’s gonna happen, and I don’t know if I can take it again.’
    â€œSo it happened,” Mitch said, “and then the papers come up and I was gonna sign them, let her have what she wants if this’s what she wants. She went