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that. As you get older, you find out that that’s what life is really all about. And now that you’re about to be middle-aged, I think you ought to realize that.” The bastard was laughing. He thought this was real funny.
    “Fuck you, Gibbons.”
    “Hey, I’m just telling you the way it is, Toz.”
    “Look, Ivers told me he wanted the report ASAP. When a mob boss gets shot, the Bureau has to make some kind of statement to the press, and he wants to know what he’s talking about for a change.”
    Roy, the regular bartender here, came toward them, wiping his way down the bar. Tozzi guessed Roy to be in his late twenties, maybe thirty. He had longish blond hair, big biceps, and a small waist, and he always looked happy. Tozzi watched his big arm running the rag along the bar. Why the hell shouldn’t the guy be happy? He’s not gonna be forty.
    “Another round, gentlemen?” Roy asked.
    Gibbons picked up Tozzi’s beer. It had hardly been touched. “Another one for me, Roy. Maybe a cup of herb tea for my friend here since he’s not drinking tonight. He must be watching his health.”
    Roy snorted out a laugh and revealed an army of perfect white teeth. He laughed like a donkey, but a good-looking donkey. Tozzi made up his mind then and there that he really did hate this guy’s guts.
    The muscle-bound donkey was still laughing as he brought up another bottle of Rolling Rock from under the bar. Gibbons drained his old one, then looked at his watch. Roy caught his eye and suddenly went poker-faced, nodding once.
    Tozzi frowned. Were these two supposed to be subtle or what? He swore to Christ that if someone came out with a friggin’ birthday cake, he was walking outta here. Poor sport or not, he wasn’t in the mood. Anyway, his birthday was still two weeks away.
    Roy went down to the end of the bar and reached up to turn up the sound on the TV. He looked like a goddamn orangutan with those arms of his. On the screen, the anchorman was kibitzing with the sportscaster and the weatherman. They cut away for a commercial then, and the sound was suddenly blaring as a red convertible raced through fall leaves on a country road.
    “What’s the story, Gib? Why’s he got that thing turned up like that?”
    “What? I can’t hear you.”
    “You’re not funny, Gibbons. Not fanny at all.”
    “Whad’ja say?”
    The car commercial played out, and the next one began. As soon as Tozzi heard the music—the sinewy beat against a thumping, gyrating bass—he knew what it was. The camera panned that huge weight room with all the sparkling chrome-plated exercise equipment. Tozzi didn’t even have to look. Everyone knew this commercial.
    “Is this supposed to be for my benefit, Gibbons?”
    “Shut up, Tozzi, I’m trying to listen to this.”
    Tozzi looked back up at the TV. The camera stopped panning, and there she was in her metallic purple Lycra tights, the tits hanging out of her matching purple tank top with the fuchsia thunderbolts zapping down her lateral obliques, the pouty red lips, the come-hither eyes, the curly mess of long, two-tone blond hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back as she worked that crooked barbell up and down, doing her curls up and down, up and down, making her tits bobble with each jerk.
    Gibbons was wearing a big shit-eating grin, and Roy had his thumb and forefinger over his eyes, trying not to laugh.
    “ … Knickerbocker Spas,” the voice-over shouted, “with fourteen convenient locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and New Jersey. At Knickerbocker Spas, we invite you to come on in and—”
    “PUMP IT UP!” Everyone at the bar yelled out the tag line, the line that the blonde always said with that look in her eye, that come-on-big-boy-I-dare-you-to-pump-it-up-for- me look. They even called her the Pump-It-Up Girl. Knickerbocker Spas had been blitzing the airwaves with this commercial all spring, and every straight guy in New York was in lust with this girl.