Both Guido and Nunzio were thinking, and it was obvious the process hurt.
“I dunno,” Nunzio squeaked at last. “Sumpin’ sounds kinda funny about that plan.”
“Crime wouldn’t pay if the government ran it,” I murmured helpfully.
“What’s that?” Shai-ster snapped.
“Oh, just something my teacher told me once.” I shrugged.
“Hey! Skeeve’s right,” Guido exclaimed. “What you’re sayin’ is that we’re going to be policemen and insurance investigators.”
“Well, I wouldn’t use those words….”
“Well nothin’! We ain’t gonna do it!”
“Why not?”
“C’mon, Shai-ster. We’re the bad guys. You know, crooks. What’s it going to do to our reputation if it gets back to the Mob that we’ve turned into policemen?”
“They’ll think we’re valuable employees who are working hard to protect their investment.”
“Yeah?” Guido frowned, unconvinced.
“Besides, it’s only temporary,” Shai-ster soothed. “Not only that, it’s a smoke screen for what we’ll really be doing.”
“What’s that?” I asked blandly.
Shai-ster shot a quick look around the restaurant, then leaned forward, lowering his voice.
“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but remember that I was telling you about how the Mob focuses on one field at a time? The way I see it, maybe we picked the wrong field here at Deva. Maybe we shouldn’t have tried the protection racket.”
“So you’re going to change fields?” I urged.
“Right,” Shai-ster smiled. “We’ll put the protection racket on slow-down mode for a while, and in the meantime start leaning on the bookies.”
“Now you’re talking,” Guido crowed. “There’s always good money to be made at gambling.”