He laughed once, contemptuously. “They thought they could smack it out of me. Ask ’em what they think now. You’re a right guy, I don’t–” He broke off, took the cigarette from between his lips. “The earysipelas kid,” he said and put out a hand to touch the ear of a man who, sitting at one of the tables we had been squeezed in between, had been leaning further and further back towards us.
The man jumped and turned a startled pale pinched face around over his shoulder at Morelli.
Morelli said: “Pull in that lug–it’s getting in our drinks.”
The man stammered, “I d-didn’t mean nothing, Shep,” and rammed his belly into his table trying to get as far as possible from us, which still did not take him out of ear-shot.
Morelli said, “You won’t ever mean nothing, but that don’t keep you from trying,” and returned his attention to me. “I’m willing to go all the way with you–the kid’s dead, it’s not going to hurt her any–but Mulrooney ain’t got a wrecking crew that can get it out of me.”
“Swell,” I said. “Tell me about her, where you first ran into her, what she did before she tied up with Wynant, where he found her.”
“I ought to have a drink.” He twisted himself around in his chair and called: “Hey, garsong–you with the boy on your back!”
The somewhat hunchbacked waiter Studsy had called Pete pushed through people to our table and grinned affectionately down at Morelli. “What’ll it be?” He sucked a tooth noisily.
We gave our orders and the waiter went away.
Morelli said: “Me and Nancy lived in the same block. Old man Kane had a candy store on the corner. She used to pinch cigarettes for me.” He laughed. “Her old man kicked hell out of me once for showing her how to get nickels out of the telephone with a piece of wire. You know, the old style ones. Jesus, we couldn’t’ve been more than in the third grade.” He laughed again, low in his throat. “I wanted to glaum some fixtures from a row of houses they were building around the corner and plant ’em in his cellar and tell Schultz, the cop on the beat, to pay him back, but she wouldn’t let nie.”
Nora said: “You must’ve been a little darling.”
“I was that,” he said fondly. “Listen. Once when I was no more’n five or–”
A feminine voice said: “I thought that was you.”
I looked up and saw it was red-haired Miriam speaking to me. I said: “Hello.”
She put her hands on her hips and stared somberly at me. “So he knew too much for you.”
“Maybe, but he took it on the lam down the fire-escape with his shoes in his hand before he told us any of it.”
“Balls!”
“All right. What do you think he knew that was too much for us?”
“Where Wynant is,” she said.
“So? Where is he?”
“I don’t know. Art knew.”
“I wish he’d told us. We–”
“Balls!” she said again. “You know and the police know. Who do you think you’re kidding?”
“I’m not kidding. I don’t know where Wynant is.”
“You’re working for him and the police are working with you. Don’t kid me. Art thought knowing was going to get him a lot of money, poor sap. He didn’t know what it was going to get him.”
“Did he tell you he knew?” I asked.
“I’m not as dumb as you think. He told me he knew something that was going to get him big dough and I’ve seen how it worked out. I guess I can put two and two together.”
“Sometimes the answer’s four,” I said, “and sometimes it’s twentytwo. I’m not working for Wynant. Now don’t say, ‘Balls,’ again. Do you want to help–”
“No. He was a rat and he held out on the people he was ratting for. He asked for what he got, only don’t expect me to forget that I left him with you and Guild, and the next time anybody saw him he was dead.”
“I don’t want you to forget anything. I’d like you to remember whether–“