Ned Beaumont, reaching for the cocktail-shaker, said irritably: “All right, I’m just guessing. Forget it.”
“Cut it out, Ned. You know your guesses are good enough for me. If you’ve got anything on your mind, spill it.”
Ned Beaumont set the shaker down without having poured a drink and said: “It might be just a guess, at that, Paul, but this is the way it looks to me. Everybody knows Walt Ivans’s been working for you down in the Third Ward and is a member of the Club and everything and that you’d do anything you could to get his brother out of a jam if he asked you. Well, everybody, or a lot of them, is going to start wondering whether you didn’t have the witnesses against his brother shot and frightened into silence. That goes for the outsiders, the women’s clubs you’re getting so afraid of these days, and the respectable citizens. The insiders–the ones that mostly wouldn’t care if you had done that–are going to get something like the real news. They’re going to know that one of your boys had to go to Shad to get fixed up and that Shad fixed him up. Well, that’s the hole Shad’s put you in–or don’t you think he’d go that far to put you in a hole?”
Madvig growled through his teeth: “I know damned well he would, the louse.” He was lowering down at a green leaf worked in the rug at his feet.
Ned Beaumont, after looking intently at the blond man, went on: “And there’s another angle to look for. Maybe it won’t happen, but you’re open to it if Shad wants to work it.”
Madvig looked up to ask: “What?”
“Walt Ivans was at the Club all last night, till two this morning. That’s about three hours later than he ever stayed there before except on election- or banquet-nights. Understand? He was making himself an alibi–in our Club. Suppose”–Ned Beaumont’s voice sank to a lower key and his dark eyes were round and grave–“Shad jobs Walt by planting evidence that he killed West? Your women’s clubs and all the people who like to squaw-k about things like that are going to ti-mink that Walt’s alibi is phony–that we fixed it up to shield him.”
Madvig said: “The louse.” He stood up and thrust his hands into his trousers-pockets. “I wish to Christ the election was either over or further away.”
“None of this would’ve happened then.”
Madvig took two steps into the center of the room. He muttered, “God damn him,” and stood frowning at the telephone on the stand beside the bedroom-door. His huge chest moved with his breathing. He said from the side of his mouth, without looking at Ned Beaumont: “Figure out a way of blocking that angle.” He took a step towards the telephone and halted. “Never mind,” he said and turned to face Ned Beaumont. “I think I’ll knock Shad loose from our little city. I’m tired of having him around. I think I’ll knock him loose right away, starting tonight.”
Ned Beaumont asked: “For instance?”
Madvig grinned. “For instance,” he replied, “I think I’ll have Rainey close up the Dog House and Paradise Gardens and every dive that we know Shad or any of his friends are interested in. I think I’ll have Rainey smack them over in one long row, one after the other, this very same night.”
Ned Beaumont spoke hesitantly’: “You’re putting Rainey in a tough spot. Our coppers aren’t used to bothering with Prohibition-enforcement. They’re not going to like it very much.”
“They can do it once for me,” Madvig said, “without feeling that they’ve paid all their debts.”
“Maybe.” Ned Beaumont’s face and voice were dubious still. “But this wholesale stuff is too much like using a cyclone shot to blow off a safe-door when you could get it off without any fuss by using a come-along.”
“Have you got something up your sleeve, Ned?”
Ned Beaumont shook his head. “Nothing I’m sure of, but it wouldn’t hurt to wait a couple of days till–”
Now Madvig shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want action. I don’t know a damned thing about opening safes, Ned, but I do know fighting– my kind–going in with both hands working. I never could learn to box and the only times I ever tried I got licked. We’ll give Mr. O’Rory the cyclone shot.”