“Leave our livers out of it, baldy. What you got on your mind this time?”
“Dixie’s here again, Lefty.”
“What! For Chrissakes! What does the schmuck want this time?”
“I donno. He just says it’s very important he talks to you Both him and The Dummy look all shook up about something.”
The big left-hander emitted a long, tolerant sigh. “All right, Sol,” he said patiently, “send the phonies in.”
Dixie Dan Shivers and The Dummy came in with their hats in their hands, and it was obvious they were in a state of very nervous disorder.
Big Lefty looked them over sardonically. “What’s the matter with you two jackasses?” he demanded. “You act like you got a bad case of the galloping crud.”
His lean frame shaking visibly, Dixie Dan eyed the paper on the table. Then, his voice nasal and quivering, he said: “You... you’ll probably kill us, Lefty.”
The giant nodded. “I probably will,” be agreed. “And in damn short order too, if you don’t tell me what’s on your mind”
Dixie Dan Shivers pointed a nervous finger at the diagram on the table. “D— Did you get that from the Caser?”
Big Lefty scowled mockingly. “Y-Yes, I g-got it from the Caser! So what? We paid five grand for it!”
“Oh!”
“Whaddaya mean, ‘oh?’ ”
“I mean... I mean... well — we were over at Chippy Parkington’s dice game and we heard the latest Word.”
Big Lefty’s cruel black eyes narrowed and the scars on his saturnine features paled.
“Go ahead, Dixie,” he said slowly, “tell me about that Word.”
“You ain’t gonna like this. The Word is that a professional con man has come to town looking for the first hoods lie can score on before he takes off like a big bird.”
I began to get a queasy feeling in my stomach.
Big Lefty’s venomous voice seemed to emanate directly from hell as he said: “Go on, Dixie baby.”
Dixie Dan Shivers’ eyes widened in fear. He gulped twice, gave a nervous look at The Dummy and then panned jerkily back to Big Lefty. “This con-artist,” he stuttered, “is posing as the Ca-Caser. And what’s worse, he goes by th-the name of Brockman!”
Well, it is almost impossible for me to record the next few seconds accurately, as I was in a temporary state of apoplexy. I do recall, however, the blood-red face of the infuriated Indian as he crumpled up the diagram and hurled it with tremendous force at hapless Dixie Dan, the balled up paper striking the latter in his narrow chest to drop into the hat he was holding.
He yelled wildly, then he and The Dummy beat a hasty retreat from our accumulating wrath while they were still in one piece and we were temporarily immobilized with stupification.
It was a full five minutes before I could locate my tongue, and when I found it I rolled it around in a dry mouth as I mentally framed the scathing words I wanted to spit out. I kicked the gaping door shut and glared hotly at the hulking, brooding Big Lefty.
“Well, hot shot,” I finally spat, “this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into’”
“Ah, shut up’” he growled.
“Yeah,” I went on heatedly, “there he sits’ Behold the big schlemiel in his brutish idiocy! There he presides at the table — a fugitive lord from the lunatic ward! The big brain. ‘Lucky,’ he says, ‘this time tomorrow,’ he says, ‘this time tomorrow we’ll be forty five thousand dollars richer,’ he says! Horsecrap, I say! Not only this time tomorrow but right here and now we are five thousand dollars poorer!”
“I told you to shut up!”
“I’ll set you on fire first! You fouled up good and proper this time, baby. This time you did it up real brown. Only the brown is on us, you imbecile! We have been thoroughly and totally messed upon!”
The big goon jumped to his feet and his chair clattered back against the wall. He leaned across the table and shook his bowling ball fist in my fist.
“I told you to shut up, you hard-headed jackass’” he bellowed. “How in the hell can I think with you shooting off your mouth all the time?”
I jumped up and shouted right back: “Whoever heard of a rhino thinking!? You couldn’t think if you were in a monastary!”
“Listen here, you dumb son of a—” He pulled up short, cocked his head and held up his platter-sized hand for silence. “Did you hear something, Lucky?”
“Not with your liver-lipped mouth flapping, no!”
“Listen!”
Then I did hear it. It was our secret knock on the alley door. That would be Little Manuel back with the unneeded luggage. Boy, I thought, just wait till the little sidewinder finds out how we’ve been taken Man, was he in for a surprise!
But I was in for a surprise myself.
Big Lefty stalked over, slid back the heavy bolt and swung the door open. In walked Little Manuel looking a mite disheveled, a cold, impassive expression on his dark, aquiline features. He held his open stiletto to one side, the long blade dripping fresh, rich red blood.
“Goddam, Manuel!” Lefty exclaimed. “What in the continental hell have you been into?”
Silently, Little Manuel shut the door, bolted it, then crossed the wooden floor to a small wash basin and began washing off the gleaming steel as Big Lefty and I watched him in mute fascination. He dried the wicked looking blade on a paper towel, then deftly flicked it shut with an ominous clack. He regarded us with cool, impersonal eyes and then blandly announced “I just killed Dixie and The Dummy.”
Surprisingly enough, Big Lefty looked aghast. “You — what?”
“You heard me, jumbo. Even now the two dead bastards are laying out there in the alley waiting for the bus to hell.”
“I’ll be double damned,” I said.
“And you deserve it,” Big Lefty agreed, then turned back to Little Manuel. “Tell us what happened, pal. I don’t quite get it. I know we was hot at Dixie Dan for steering us into a con man, but not enough to— Hey! Wait a minute! Manuel, how’d you know about them telling us the Caser was a phoney?”
Declining to answer immediately, the little killer took a wad of crumpled paper from his breast pocket and spread it open on the table. It was the diagram Big Lefty had flung at Shivers a short time ago, and we both stared at it stupidly.
Little Manuel watched our confoundedness with something akin to amusement, then smiling enigmatically, he re marked casually “Who said anything about the Caser being phoney?”
“Why,” said Big Lefty, “Dixie Dan came in right after you left and told us as much. He said Brockman was a ringer.”
Little Manuel snorted. “Sure,” he smirked. “And do you know why? I’ll tell you why. He was making a do-or-die attempt to get his hands on this bank layout we got. That’s why. And he was succesful too, up to a point. A stiletto point, that, is.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, scratching my head.
“I know you don’t,” Little Manuel conceded “But you will when I tell you what happened.”
“So tell us already, you little shrimp!”
“So I will already, if you guys will just sit down and open those potato farms you call ears.”
Big Lefty retrieved his fallen chair, replaced it at the table and sat down. I poured out three rounds and sat also
Little Manuel snapped off his slug quickly and then helped himself to another Still standing, he places his slender-fingered hands on the table, leaned over it like a junior executive about to deliver a progress report, and then with a great deal of gesticulations that reminded me of an Italian I once knew, he proceeded to give us an accounting.
“Well,” began Little Manuel, waving his frail arms, “I am heading for Lucky’s pad when who do I see coming toward me but No-name. He seems all excited about something, and signals me into a dark doorway where we can talk. He says he wants to return us a favor from the time we save him from that big Courthouse in the Sky. Then he goes on to tell me that he overhears Dixie Dan talking to The Dummy a while ago as they are standing over the grate that is just above No-name’s basement room window in Fu’s flophouse on Eighth.” He paused, and then proceeded.