Marcone Holds Darian Hostage, Explained：have no truck with

What's really going on

The chapter is the villain at his most comfortable, which is what makes him monstrous. Marcone has Darian beside him as a shield, and he talks about murder the way other men talk about business: Milo in a high place, a rifle, Baynard in the crosshairs. When Jimmy asks why Cory had to die, Marcone's answer is almost worse than the crime — she turned to blackmail, and he has no truck with that — before he insults her memory to Jimmy's face. "Maybe I make it, maybe I don't," Jimmy says, weighing whether he can cross the room, and the threat that stops him is the girl. Joe keeps the talk going for a different reason: he is bluffing about the tape and the money, buying time with a lie. The scene works because everyone in it is calculating, and the only person not playing a game is the child.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• Old-fashioned phrases can make a killing sound principled.
• Holding a child is leverage, not hospitality.
• A bluff only works until someone calls it.
• Nostalgia here is a knife, not a compliment.

発音のポイント

• ain't gonna — Ain't gonna blurs into one chunk with the t's dropped.
• think I'm — Think I'm links up into something like thin-kime.
• what you're up to — What you're runs together and up to weakens to upta.