“I just this minute heard about the shooting,” he said. “Now who do you reckon would be after you like that?”
“I couldn’t guess,” I lied.
“None of them touched you?”
“No.”
“Well, that certainly is fine,” he said heartily. “And we’ll nail that baby, whoever he was, you can bet your life on that. Would you like me to leave a couple of the boys with you, just to see nothing else happens?”
“No, thanks.”
“You can have them if you want them,” he insisted.
“No, thanks.”
He made me promise to call on him the first chance I got, told me the Personville police department was at my disposal, gave me to understand that if anything happened to me his whole life would be ruined, and I finally got rid of him.
The police went away. I had my stuff moved into another room, one into which bullets couldn’t be so easily funneled. Then I changed my clothes and set out for Hurricane Street, to keep my date with the whispering gambler.
Dinah Brand opened the door for me. Her big ripe mouth was rouged evenly this evening, but her brown hair still needed trimming, was parted haphazardly, and there were spots down the front of her orange silk dress.
“So you’re still alive,” she said. “I suppose nothing can be done about it. Come on in.”
We went into her cluttered-up living room. Dan Rolff and Max Thaler were playing pinochle there. Rolff nodded to me. Thaler got up to shake hands.
His hoarse whispering voice said:
“I hear you’ve declared war on Poisonville.”
“Don’t blame me. I’ve got a client who wants the place ventilated.”
“Wanted, not wants,” he corrected me as we sat down. “Why don’t you chuck it?”
I made a speech:
“No. I don’t like the way Poisonville has treated me. I’ve got my chance now, and I’m going to even up. I take it you’re back in the club again, all brothers together, let bygones be bygones. You want to be let alone. There was a time when I wanted to be let alone. If I had been, maybe now I’d be riding back to San Francisco. But I wasn’t. Especially I wasn’t let alone by that fat Noonan. He’s had two tries at my scalp in two days. That’s plenty. Now it’s my turn to run him ragged, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Poisonville is ripe for the harvest. It’s a job I like, and I’m going to it.”
“While you last,” the gambler said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I was reading in the paper this morning about a fellow choking to death eating a chocolate eclair in bed.”
“That may be good,” said Dinah Brand, her big body sprawled in an arm-chair, “but it wasn’t in this morning’s paper.”
She lit a cigarette and threw the match out of sight under the Chesterfield. The lunger had gathered up the cards and was shuffling them over and over, purposelessly.
Thaler frowned at me and said:
“Willsson’s willing for you to keep the ten grand. Let it go at that.”
“I’ve got a mean disposition. Attempted assassinations make me mad.”
“That won’t get you anything but a box. I’m for you. You kept Noonan from framing me. That’s why I’m telling you, forget it and go back to Frisco.”
“I’m for you,” I said. “That’s why I’m telling you, split with them. They crossed you up once. It’ll happen again. Anyway, they’re slated for the chutes. Get out while the getting’s good.”
“I’m sitting too pretty,” he said. “And I’m able to take care of myself.”
“Maybe. But you know the racket’s too good to last. You’ve had the cream of the pickings. Now it’s get-away day.”
He shook his little dark head and told me:
“I think you’re pretty good, but I’m damned if I think you’re good enough to crack this camp. It’s too tight. If I thought you could swing it, I’d be with you. You know how I stand with Noonan. But you’ll never make it. Chuck it.”
“No. I’m in it to the last nickel of Elihu’s ten thousand.”
“I told you he was too damned pig-headed to listen to reason,” Dinah Brand said, yawning. “Isn’t there anything to drink in the dump, Dan?”