At the same time, Higgins manages the authorial disclosure across con-
versations for an additional communication here, one he triggers through
Dillon’s speculation that Eddie was using his wad of money to buy “a color
tee-vee” (147). Earlier, in chapter 18, Eddie, while commiserating with Scalisi
about how difficult women can be, tells him that he hit the number and won
$650 and that he changed his plans to buy his wife a color television with the
money because she complained about a smoky oil burner when he came in the
door the other night. Chapter 23 transforms this earlier conversational disclo-
sure, a side comment to the more dramatic interchange between Dillon and
Wanda, into the authorial disclosure that Dillon is wrong about what Eddie
was doing with his money. Higgins’s more general disclosure is that Dillon—
and by extension, the network along which news travels in the underworld—
are at least partly unreliable in their reports about characters and events and
especially in their interpretations of them.
A little later, once Dillon accepts the job of killing Eddie, Higgins guides
us to further reconfigure the events of chapter 23. As each character pur-
sues his self-interest, Eddie remains in jeopardy. If Foley were to tell Dillon
about Eddie’s unsuccessful play for clemency, Dillon would have to revise his
hypothesis that Eddie knows he’s not going to jail. If Dillon were to tell Foley
that Eddie’s money comes from supplying guns to Scalisi and that he believes
Eddie has informed on them, Foley would have reason to correct Dillon—
and to pursue the arrests of Eddie and Scalisi. But since self-interest domi-
nates here, as it does everywhere else in this world, Eddie becomes collateral
damage.
In chapter 26, much of the remaining tension about Dillon’s character
gets swiftly resolved through conversational disclosure, as he talks with the
mob boss’s representative about eliminating Coyle and demands that he get to
do the job on his own terms. But again, the conversation includes additional
authorial disclosure that guides rhetorical readers’ configuration and recon-
figuration. The following excerpt comes after Dillon tells the rep that he tried
to warn Scalisi about a possible informer:
“This guy,” the man said, “anybody we know?”
“Could be,” Dillon said. “We hadda break him up a while back here. He
set up Billy Wallace there with a gun that had a history. We hadda teach
him. I thought he learned his lesson. I threw a little work his way myself
now and then.”
“Name of Coyle?” the man said.
“That’s the one,” Dillon said. “I had him driving a truck for me and a
fellow up in New Hampshire there and he got hooked with it. Which wasCONVERSATIONAL AND AUTHORIAL DISCLOSURE IN DIALOgUE • 183