The Friends of Eddie Coyle

by George V. Higgins

They letting you bring a tee-vee to jail with you now?” “They weren’t,” Foley said, “not the last I heard.” “I don’t think so,” Dillon said. “I didn’t remember anything like that from before when I was in, either. No, I think Eddie thinks probably he isn’t gonna go to jail there, and I wonder why he thinks that.” “I wonder where he got the money,” Foley said.

“He didn’t show up,” Foley said. “I sit there for about half an hour, and I have a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee. Jesus, I forgot how bad a thing a cheese sandwich is to eat. It’s just like eating a piece of linoleum, you know?” “You got to put mayonnaise on it,” Waters said. “It’s never going to have any flavor at all unless you put some mayonnaise on the bread before you put the cheese on.” “I never heard of that,” Foley said. “You put it on the outside, do you?” “Nah,” Waters said, “you put it on the inside. You still put the butter on the outside and all. But when the cheese melts, there, it’s the mayonnaise that gives it the flavor. You got to use real mayonnaise, though, the stuff with eggs in it. You can use that other stuff that most people use when they say they’re using mayonnaise, that salad dressing stuff, you can use it. But it isn’t going to taste the same. I think that other stuff scalds or something. It doesn’t taste right, anyway.”