That’s the only kind of longdistance call I ever get at three o’clock in the morning and often as not it’s from someone I haven’t seen in fifteen years and haven’t thought of in ten. Usually, they just want to talk because they’re about three-fourths of the way through a bottle of bourbon and the wife has gone to bed and it seems like a damned good idea to call up old McCorkle and find out how the hell he is.But sometimes they’ve run into a little trouble and need fifty dollars to get out of jail or a hundred to get to the next town where the new job is waiting and they can’t think of anybody else in the whole world who’ll lend it to them except me and please, for Christ’s sake, would I mind wiring it?So I usually send the money because it’s as cheap a way as I can think of to make sure that they don’t call anymore. After I hang up I sometimes lie there in bed and try to think of whom I could call at three in the morning to send me fifty or a hundred. It’s not a long list.This time it was Padillo and he was calling from New York and after I told the operator that I’d accept the call, I said, “How much do you need?”“I’ve got a little trouble.”“It’s not so little if you’re calling at three in the morning.”“They made a try about two hours ago.”“Where?”“In Delaware,”
