Outside the restaurant Keaton’s town car crept along the curb, checking addresses, collecting floppy wet spring snowflakes. By this time in March, the Cleveland
winter seemed endless. Lucille’s was just a cut above a diner and didn’t see a lot of limo customers, so Crump, sitting inside in a yellow plastic booth, knew it was Keaton. He felt the twinge of excitement and dread traveling along his centerline, a twinge that he remembered from the big showdowns of earlier years. He welcomed it back—things had often turned out well that started with that.
It was Crump’s kind of fun: no briefcases, no assistants, no papers. Just two grown men who had been around and knew what they were doing, and a pile of money in the balance. He set his face into the mask he would wear until Keaton had gone, a blend of detached calm and faint amusement.
