I wondered if he meant pick him up or pick him off. I asked:
“Got enough on him to make the rap stick?”
“Enough?” He laughed good-naturedly. “If what the Willsson dame give us ain’t enough to stretch him I’m a pickpocket.”
I thought of a couple of wisecrack answers to that. I kept them to myself.
VI. Whisper’s Joint
Our ride ended under a line of trees in a dark street not far from the center of town. We got out of the car and walked down to the corner.
A burly man in a gray overcoat, with a gray hat pulled down over his eyes, came to meet us.
“Whisper’s hep,” the burly man told the chief. “He phoned Donohoe that he’s going to stay in his joint. If you think you can pull him out, try it, he says.”
Noonan chuckled, scratched an ear, and asked pleasantly:
“How many would you say was in there with him?”
“Fifty, anyhow.”
“Aw, now! There wouldn’t be that many, not at this time of morning.”
“The hell there wouldn’t,” the burly man snarled. “They been drifting in since midnight.”
“Is that so? A leak somewheres. Maybe you oughtn’t to have let them in.”
“Maybe I oughtn’t.” The burly man was angry. “But I did what you told me. You said let anybody go in or out that wanted to, but when Whisper showed to–”
“To pinch him,” the chief said.
“Well, yes,” the burly man agreed, looking savagely at me.
More men joined us and we held a talk-fest. Everybody was in a bad humor except the chief. He seemed to enjoy it all. I didn’t know why.
Whisper’s joint was a three-story brick building in the middle of the block, between two two-story buildings. The ground floor of his joint was occupied by a cigar store that served as entrance and cover for the gambling establishment upstairs. Inside, if the burly man’s information was to be depended on, Whisper had collected half a hundred friends, loaded for a fight. Outside, Noonan’s force was spread around the building, in the street in front, in the alley in back, and on the adjoining roofs.
“Well, boys,” the chief said amiably after everybody had had his say, “I don’t reckon Whisper wants trouble any more than we do, or he’d have tried to shoot his way out before this, if he’s got that many with him, though I don’t mind saying I don’t think he has–not that many.”
The burly man said: “The hell he ain’t.”
“So if he don’t want trouble,” Noonan went on, “maybe talking might do some good. You run over, Nick, and see if you can’t argue him into being peaceable.”
The burly man said: “The hell I will.”
“Phone him, then,” the chief suggested.
The burly man growled: “That’s more like it,” and went away.
When he came back lie looked completely satisfied.
“He says,” he reported, “‘Go to hell.'”
“Get the rest of the boys down here,” Noonan said cheerfully. “We’ll knock it over as soon as it gets light.”
The burly Nick and I went around with the chief while he made sure his men were properly placed. I didn’t think much of them–a shabby, shifty-eyed crew without enthusiasm for the job ahead of them.
The sky became a faded gray. The chief, Nick, and I stopped in a plumber’s doorway diagonally across the street from our target.
Whisper’s joint was dark, the upper windows blank, blinds down over cigar store windows and door.
“I hate to start this without giving Whisper a chance,” Noonan said. “He’s not a bad kid. But there’s no use me trying to talk to him. He never did like me much.”
He looked at me. I said nothing.
“You wouldn’t want to make a stab at it?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ll try it.”
“That’s fine of you. I’ll certainly appreciate it if you will. You just see if you can talk him into coming along without any fuss. You know what to say–for his own good and all that, like it is.”
“Yeah,” I said and walked across to the cigar store, taking pains to let my hands be seen swinging empty at my sides.