He was half-dozing over his puzzle by this time, splinters of shredded wheat clinging to his lips. On the other hand, the somnolent taxi driver, peculiarly enough, suddenly came wide awake and seemed to remember something that required his presence in the washroom. He slipped in there very deftly without making a sound; got as far away from the door as possible, and then just stood around like he was waiting for something to be over. He passed the time away counting over a fairly solid wad of fins and saw-bucks. Then he met his own eyes in the mirror and he quickly turned his head away, like he wasn’t glad to meet himself, for once.
The two came in, and they weren’t in a hurry, and they weren’t trying to sneak up on the quarry now any more. They didn’t have to, they had him. One of them, who went in for artistic flourishes, even hung back a step behind the other and deliberately yanked two bright-green pasteboards from the box near the door, which made a dyspeptic bell sing out a couple of times; as if to show how law-abiding, how house-broken, he and his friend could be when they came in a public place. It was like a rattlesnake warning before it strikes. It couldn’t have made any difference anyway; they each had a right hand stuck deep into their coat pockets, and both pockets were sort of stiff and weighted down.
The bell woke Johnny without registering; by the time his eyes opened, he’d forgotten what did it. Then he saw them sitting at the table with him, one opposite and one right next to him, shoulder to shoulder, so close the loaded pocket dug into his hip. The one across the china table top had his pocket up too, just sort of resting on the lip of the table, pointing Johnny’s way. The counterman was busy transferring pats of butter to little paper rosettes; it wouldn’t have mattered even if he hadn’t been.
Johnny looked from one face to the other, and his own whitened a little. Just for a second, then the color came right back; he’d been expecting this for too long to stay scared.
They looked like three brothers, or three pals, sitting there huddled over the table together, intimate, familiar.
“Put it on the table in front of you,” suggested the one next to Johnny. “Keep the newspaper over it.”
Johnny reached under his left arm and took out something. If his coat hadn’t been buttoned, he could have turned it around and fired through the cloth. He would have gone, but he could have taken one of them with him. But there wasn’t room enough to turn it under his coat, it faced outward where there was nothing but a glass caseful of desserts to get at. He slid it under the newspaper and the one opposite him hauled it out on the other side and it disappeared into his clothing without the light once getting at it.
When this tricky feat had been accomplished satisfactorily, the first one said, “We wanna see you, Donovan.”
“Take a good look,” Johnny said in a low voice. “How does a guy that’s gone straight appeal to you?”
“Dead,” answered the party across the table.
“I’ve got something you can’t kill,” Johnny said. His eyes lit up like radio dials and all of a sudden he was proud of himself for the first time since he was in long pants. “I’m straight now. I’m on the level. Not all the bullets in all the gats in all New York can take that away from me.”
“They can make you smell a lot different in twenty-four hours,” the one next to him said. And the one across the way put in: “He thinks he’s gonna get bullets, no less! Wake up, pogie, this ain’t 1919. You’ll beg for bullets. You’ll get down on your knees and pray for ’em before we get through with you!”
Johnny smiled and said, “When the State turns on the heat, they give a guy a last meal; let him order his head off. This being my last meal, let’s see if you’re big enough to lemme finish what I ordered.” He took up his spoon in his left hand.
“We got all night,” one assured him. “We’ll even pay your check for you. Sing Sing has nothing on us.”
The other one looked at the shredded wheat and laughed. “That’s a hell of a thing to croak with in your guts!”
“They’re my guts,” observed Johnny, chewing away, “and it’s my party.” He took up the pencil in his right hand and went ahead with the puzzle. “What’s a five-letter word for the goddess of love?” he asked nonchalantly.
They exchanged a dubious look, not in reference to the goddess of love however. “Can’t you see he’s stalling you?” one growled. “How do we know what this place is? Let’s go.”
The ticket bell at the door rang and a very pretty girl came in alone. Her face turned very white under the lights, like she’d been up all night. But she wasn’t logy at all. She seemed to know just what she was doing. She glanced over her shoulder just once, at the maroon car outside the door, but did not look at the three men at the table at all. Then she picked up a cup of coffee from the counterman and brushed straight by them without a look, sat down facing them one table further back, and, like any respectable girl that hour of the night, kept her long lashes down over her eyes while she stirred and stirred the java with a tin spoon.
Johnny looked at her and seemed to get an inspiration. “Venus,” he said suddenly, “that’s the word! Why didn’t I think of it?” But instead of “Venus” he scribbled on the margin of the diagram: “Stay back — I’m covered. Goodbye.”
The others had been taking a short, admiring gander at her too. “Momma!” said one of them. “Is that easy to take!”
“Yeah,” agreed the other. “Too bad we’re on business. Y’never see ’em like that when you’re on y’own time!”
“What’s a three-letter word—” Johnny began again. Then suddenly losing his temper, he exclaimed: “Jeeze! I can’t do this damn thing!” He tore the puzzle out of the paper, crumpled it irritably into a ball, and tossed it away from him — toward the next table.
The girl sitting at it dropped her paper napkin at that minute, then stooped to pick it up again.
The three men got up from the table together and started toward the front of the place. They walked fairly slowly, Johnny in the middle, one on each side. Their three bodies were ganged at the hips, where the coat pockets were. The one on the inside, although he hadn’t eaten anything, helped himself to a toothpick from the counter from force of habit and began prodding away with one hand. The washroom door opened on a crack, a nose showed, and then it prudently closed again. The girl at the table was very white and kept stirring her coffee without tasting it, as if she didn’t know what her wrist was doing at all.
The counterman just then was further down the line, hauling a platter of fried eggs through the hole in the wall. It was exactly ten minutes since Johnny Donovan had first come in, five to four in the morning. The short-order cook must have had to heat up the frying pan first.
“Two bright-side up!” bawled the counterman. Then he looked at the table and saw that they weren’t there any more. They were all the way up by the cash register. He came up after them, behind the counter, carrying the eggs. “Hey!” he said. “Don’t you want your eggs?”
“Naw, he’s lost his appetite,” one of them said. “Get in the car with him,” he murmured to his companion. “I’ll pay his check.”
He let electric light in between himself and Johnny, fished out some change, and tossed down the three checks, two blank and one punched. Johnny and the other fellow went out the door, still shoulder to shoulder, drifted across the sidewalk, and got into the back of the maroon car. The door slapped smartly and the curtains dropped down behind the windows.