Don raises his eyebrows, studies the glowing tip of his cigarette. Of course. He's been trying to shake Dick Whitman, scrub him off and smoke him out, and here's another kid too scared to raise his voice above a whisper.

"It's a little bit New York," he says, wry but not unsympathetic. "Somewhere there's a deli."

He takes another drag of his cigarette, streams smoke through his nose. "You're in a city by the name of Taxon. Go ahead"--a careless wave, the cigarette caught in his fingers--"and look through the coat."