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undisputed boss, when the plans for the operation were marked with his personal and careful attention to detail. Finally, the job had to feel good to him, had to appeal to some internal gauge that, as indescribable and indefinable as it was, had never yet failed him. He rejected a great many deals that ultimately worked out for other people. He passed up potentially rewarding opportunities. However, his caution and his three criteria had thus far kept him out of jail.
        "Something else about you," Meyers said, still looking at him over the whiskey glass.
        Tucker waited.
        "You don't look like what you are."
        Tucker still said nothing.
        "What do I look like?" Meyers asked. Then he answered his own question: "Muscle. I look like a cheap hood. That's how I got started, and I'll never shake the image." He finished his drink and put the glass on the water-ringed coffee table. "Everyone I ever worked with… You could tell they were in the business. It was stamped on them. But you look like some hot-shot young executive."
        "Thanks," Tucker said.
        "No offense meant."
        "Or taken."
        "I just meant that you don't look like a hood. And that's just great. That's a plus in this business."
        "I'm not a hood," Tucker said. "I'm a thief."
        "Same thing," Meyers said, though it was not the same thing at all to Tucker. "As clean cut as you look, you'd make a good front man in an operation."
        Tucker had been holding his vodka, but he had not drunk much of it. The day was too new to support liquor. Besides, after studying Frank Meyers and the man's apartment, Tucker wondered how well the glass had been washed. He finally put it down. "Speaking of operations, what about this one of yours?"
        "I still don't know much about you," the big man said, shifting uncomfortably in the easy chair.
        "What do you need to know?"
        "Clitus recommended you. I guess that ought to be enough… But what are some things you've done? Who have you worked with?"
        Reluctantly, Tucker leaned back in the stale-smelling couch. He did not want to stay here any longer than he had to, for the disorder and filth put him on edge. However, Meyers was beginning, just beginning, to sound like a careful man. Perhaps he was more and better than he appeared to be. There might be a safe profit in the job after all. "You ever hear about the armored car hit in Boston two years ago? Allied Transport truck was knocked over for six hundred thousand. Four men did the job."
        "I heard of it. That was yours?" Meyers leaned forward, shoulders hunched, interested.
        Tucker explained how it had been done, whom he had worked with. He did not try to make it sound better than it was. He did not need to gloss it over, for it had been a perfect caper, cleverly planned from the start. There was no way, in the telling, to improve upon it.
        "Now you," Tucker said when he finished talking about himself.
        Whether he had planned them or not, Frank Meyers had been in on some good bits of business over the years. And he had worked with many of the right people. He did not appear to be a sound, seasoned, successful operator, but apparently he was. In his retellings he was as straightforward and brief as Tucker had been. His record was not as flashy as the younger man's, but it was solid and impressive in its own way.
        "Anything else you want to know about me?" Meyers asked.
        "Yes. What's the job you've got now?"
        "You don't like the preliminaries, do you?" Meyers asked, smiling.
        "No."
        The big man drained the water from the melted ice cubes in his whiskey glass, shoved to his feet. "Come on out to the kitchen. It'll be easier to go over the plans."
        The kitchen was small and certainly as poorly kept as the living room had been. Dirty dishes filled the sink. The waste-basket was overflowing with used paper towels,