Sportcoat wants Hot Sausage to ask Deems to meet Sportcoat in private so they can clear up any bad feelings about the shooting. Sausage initially refuses, not wanting to get mixed up with Deems, but after Sportcoat says he’ll have his other friend Rufus do it, Sausage drunkenly agrees.

Meanwhile, Deems is worried about cutting Bunch out of the dealing operation. Ever deliberate about his business actions, Deems is biding his time until he’s ready to make the request to Joe Peck. He also knows that someone double-crossed him by telling Bunch that Deems is trying to cut him out, and he suspects Lightbulb. He’s worried, too, because one of his associates has warned him about the Virginia hit man Bunch has brought to the city, and consequently has hired more men to watch the Cause and act as his bodyguards.

To take his mind off his troubles, Deems takes Phyllis—a new girl in the Cause he’s interested in—out to the river. Phyllis is staying with family in the Cause and has bought drugs from Deems while she’s been there. As he and Phyllis are sitting on a pier with one of Deems’s friends guarding them from a distance, Hot Sausage, heavily drunk, comes staggering up dressed in Sportcoat’s

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