I sat there smoking quietly and soon I was enveloped by a night deeper than any I could remember. I stole away into it and thought back over what my visitor had said.
Did the White House really know nothing about any of this?
Had no one there ever heard of Just John or Phony Frank, or about the murders of Dollar Dunne or Howard the Roach or Barry Gale?
Maybe he had told me the truth. Maybe nobody there knew anything.
But then again, maybe somebody there knew everything.
What else would he have said if they had?
Tilting my head back, I looked up at a canopy of stars that was so radiant, so lustrously deep and rich that all at once I felt a sensation of being released from the world. It was as if at any moment I was about to be lifted gently away from the earth and drawn straight up into the sky.
I took a deep draw on my cigar. The wet ocean air collected the gray wisps of smoke and tugged them away into the night.