A lawyer, who once specialized in mediation, gave up his practice when his wife died of cancer. Now he occasionally does favors for friends and the people at McGinty's, the bar where he spends many of his waking hours. Stella Carter wants something from her estranged husband—a mobster named John Carter—and asks the narrator to get it. The price he pays for agreeing to help is a cancer he can only hope to drink into remission.

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