The car window opened a crack. One of the women said to Murray, “All right, I’ll do it for twenty-five.” “Have you checked with your representative?” he said. She rolled down the window to peer at him. She had the opaque look of a hair-curlered woman on the evening news whose house had been buried in mud. “You know who I mean,” Murray said. “The fellow who sees to your emotional needs in return for one hundred percent of your earnings. The fellow you depend on to beat you up when you’re bad.”
