He frowned and asked:
“Will you go with me?”
“If you want me.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I–I’ll try it.”
XIX. The Peace Conference
All the other delegates to the peace conference were on hand when Noonan and I arrived at Willsson’s home at the appointed time, nine o’clock that night. Everybody nodded to us, but the greetings didn’t go any further than that.
Pete the Finn was the only one I hadn’t met before. The bootlegger was a big-boned man of fifty with a completely bald head. His forehead was small, his jaws enormous–wide, heavy, bulging with muscle.
We sat around Willsson’s library table.
Old Elihu sat at the head. The short-clipped hair on his round pink skull was like silver in the light. His round blue eyes were hard, domineering, under their bushy white brows. His mouth and chin were horizontal lines.
On his right Pete the Finn sat watching everybody with tiny black eyes that never moved. Reno Starkey sat next to the bootlegger. Reno’s sallow horse face was as stolidly dull as his eyes.
Max Thaler was tilted back in a chair on Willsson’s left. The little gambler’s carefully pressed pants legs were carelessly crossed. A cigarette hung from one corner of his tight-lipped mouth.
I sat next to Thaler. Noonan sat on my other side.
Elihu Willsson opened the meeting.
He said things couldn’t go on the way they were going. We were all sensible men, reasonable men, grown men who had seen enough of the world to know that a man couldn’t have everything his own way, no matter who he was. Compromises were things everybody had to make sometimes. To get what lie wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted. He said he was sure that what we all most wanted now was to stop this insane killing. He said he was sure that everything could be frankly discussed and settled in an hour without turning Personville into a slaughter-house.
It wasn’t a bad oration.
When it was over there was a moment of silence. Thaler looked past me, at Noonan, as if he expected something of him. The rest of us followed his example, looking at the chief of police.
Noonan’s face turned red and he spoke huskily:
“Whisper, I’ll forget you killed Tim.” He stood up and held out a beefy paw. “Here’s my hand on it.”
Thaler’s thin mouth curved into a vicious smile.
“Your bastard of a brother needed killing, but I didn’t kill him,” he whispered coldly.
Red became purple in the chief’s face.
I said loudly:
“Wait, Noonan. We’re going at this wrong. We won’t get anywhere unless everybody comes clean. Otherwise we’ll all be worse off than before. MacSwain killed Tim, and you know it.”
He started at me with dumbfounded eyes. He gaped. He couldn’t understand what I had done to him.
I looked at the others, tried to look virtuous as hell, asked:
“That’s settled, isn’t it? Let’s get the rest of the kicks squared.” I addressed Pete the Finn: “How do you feel about yesterday’s accident to your warehouse and the four men?”
“One hell of an accident,” he rumbled.
I explained:
“Noonan didn’t know you were using the joint. He went there thinking it empty, just to clear the way for a job in town. Your men shot first, and then he really thought he had stumbled into Thaler’s hideout. When he found he’d been stepping in your puddle he lost his head and touched the place off.”
Thaler was watching me with a hard small smile in eyes and mouth. Reno was all dull stolidity. Elihu Willsson was leaning toward me, his old eyes sharp and wary. I don’t know what Noonan was doing. I couldn’t afford to look at him. I was in a good spot if I played my hand right, and in a terrible one if I didn’t.
“The men, they get paid for taking chances,” Pete the Finn said. “For the other, twenty-five grand will make it right.”
Noonan spoke quickly, eagerly:
“All right, Pete, all right, I’ll give it to you.”
I pushed my lips together to keep from laughing at the panic in his voice.