Ned Beaumont shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Can’t you be wrong?” Whisky demanded.
“Sure,” the man in bed confessed. “Once back in 1912 I was. I forget what it was about.”
Whisky rose to mash his cigarette in one of the dishes on the tray. Standing beside the bed, close to the table, he said: “Why don’t you try it, Ned?”
Ned Beaumont frowned. “Looks like a waste of time, Whisky. I don’t think Shad and I could get along together.”
Whisky sucked a tooth noisily. The downward curve of his thick lips gave the noise a scornful cast. “SI-mad thinks you could,” he said.
Ned Beaumont opened his eyes. “Yes?” he asked. “He sent you here?”
“Hell, yes,” Whisky said. “You don’t think I’d be here talking like this if he hadn’t.”
Ned Beaumont narrowed his eyes again and asked: “Why?”
“Because he thought him and you could do business together.”
“I mean,” Ned Beaumont explained, “why did he think I’d want to do business with him?”
Whisky made a disgusted face. “Are you trying to kid me, Ned?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well, for the love of Christ, don’t you think everybody in town knows about you and Paul having it out at Pip Carson’s yesterday?”
Ned Beaumont nodded. “So that’s it,” he said softly, as if to himself.
“That’s it,” the man with the rasping voice assured him, “and Shad happens to know you fell out over thinking Paul hadn’t ought to’ve had Shad’s joints smeared. So you’re sitting pretty with Shad now if you use your head.”
Ned Beaumont said thoughtfully: “I don’t know. I’d like to get out of here, get back to the big city.”
“Use your head,” Whisky rasped. “The big city’ll still be there after election. Stick around. You know Shad’s dough-heavy and’s putting it out in chunks to beat Madvig. Stick around and get yourself a slice of it.”
“Well,” Ned Beaumont said slowly, “it wouldn’t hurt to talk it over with him.”
“You’re damned right it wouldn’t,” Whisky said heartily. “Pin your diapers on and we’ll go now.”
Ned Beaumont said, “Right,” and got out of bed.
2
Shad O’Rory rose and bowed. “Glad to see you, Beaumont,” he said. “Drop your hat and coat anywhere.” He did not offer to shake hands.
Ned Beaumont said, “Good morning,” and began to take off his overcoat.
Whisky, in the doorway, said: “Well, I’ll be seeing you guys later.”
O’Rory said, “Yes, do,” and Whisky, drawing the door shut as he backed out, left them.
Ned Beaumont dropped his overcoat on the arm of a sofa, put his hat on the overcoat, and sat down beside them. He looked without curiosity at O’Rory.
O’Rory had returned to his chair, a deeply padded squat affair of dull wine and gold. He crossed his knees and put his hands together–tips of fingers and thumbs touching–atop his uppermost knee. He let his finely sculptured head sink down towards his chest so that his grey-blue eyes looked upward under his brows at Ned Beaumont. He said, in his pleasantly modulated Irish voice: “I owe you something for trying to talk Paul out of–”
“You don’t,” Ned Beaumont said.
O’Rory asked: “I don’t?”
“No. I was with him then. What I told him was for his own good. I thought he was making a bad play.”
O’Rory smiled gently. “And he’ll know it before he’s through,” he said.
Silence was between them awhile then. O’Rory sat half-buried in his chair smiling at Ned Beaumont. Ned Beaumont sat on the sofa looking, with eves that gave no indication of what he thought, at O’Rory.
The silence was broken by O’Rory asking: “How much did Whisky tell you?”
“Nothing. He said you wanted to see me.”
“He was right enough as far as he went,” O’Rory said. He took his finger-tips apart and patted the back of one slender hand with the palm of the other. “Is it so that you and Paul have broken for good and all?”
“I thought you knew it,” Ned Beaumont replied. “I thought that’s why you sent for me.”
“I heard it;” O’Rory said, “but that’s not always the same thing. What were you thinking you might do now?”