After that, by not quite getting the Boss’ orders straight once or twice, he had unwittingly made himself liable to another sentence, overstepped the line of the law. The Boss would never explain in what way, though. “Just a technicality,” he’d say, and give Tommy the wink. The Errand Boy knew that as long as he stayed in good with the Boss, everything would be okay.
He went in to the Boss’ private room and Tommy the Twitch closed the door and came in after him.
The Boss had been rolling cigarettes or something, and was just putting a very small bottle away in the drawer under him when The Errand Boy came in. The Boss usually only smoked the most expensive Havana cigars. It was funny, him rolling cigarettes, but this was another of those things it was wiser not to ask questions about.
On the table in front of the Boss was a flat tin of cigarettes, the ready-made kind that come by fifties, with a handful scooped out. There were also a pair of nail scissors, a small eye-dropper, some wooden toothpicks, a little bottle of mucilage, a great many grains of spilled tobacco, and a quantity of spoiled cigarette papers — which is why The Errand Boy thought the Boss had been rolling cigarettes. Lastly there was a brand new but not very expensive looking flat enamel cigarette case, with The Errand Boy’s own initials, E. D., Eddie Dean, stamped up in one corner.
The Boss swept everything off the table into the drawer but the initialed case, then turned to The Errand Boy and held out his hand in his friendly, cheery way like he always did.
“Hello, Eddie,” he said. “Glad to see you. Sit down.”
Tommy the Twitch, who was always with the Boss, shoved forward a chair, like an executioner, for Eddie. A bullet had done something to his spinal cord and he never stopped shaking. Eddie sat as near to the edge of it as he could without falling off.
The Boss pivoted on one elbow and smiled benignly at Eddie. Then he said, “Eddie, I’ve got a little present for you,” and picked up the flat case from the table and showed it to him. “Notice how you work it.”
He pressed the catch with his thumb, and instead of opening up the way most cases do, a single cigarette shot up at the top of it, ready to be pulled out. “Tricky little gadget, isn’t it?” the Boss grinned. He opened it with his thumbnail, carefully patted the protruding cigarette back in line, then clicked it shut.
Eddie stammered his thanks. He didn’t smoke, but this was no time to bring that up; the Boss was in good humor, was highly pleased with him, to treat him this way. But it turned out the Boss knew that, anyway, like he knew everything else.
“You don’t smoke, do you, Eddie?”
“N-no,” Eddie faltered, afraid of getting him sore, “I can’t on account of my bellows—”
“I know you don’t,” the Boss told him enigmatically, “that’s why I’m giving you this.” He looked down at it for awhile and seemed to change the subject “That guy — that Mr. Miller, that I told you to strike up an acquaintanceship with about a month ago — how you getting along with him?”
“He don’t warm up to people very easy. He seems to be sort of—” Eddie groped for the right word, “sort of a suspicious guy; sort of leery of people. Then another thing, he’s always got three or four guys with him and they won’t let you get very near him.”
“He thinks you want some sort of favor out of him,” the Boss prodded, “some sort of job or graft, isn’t that it?”
“Yeah, like you told me to,” Eddie nodded.
The Boss stroked his chin, as though he were anxious to help Eddie solve his problem of getting close to Mr. Miller, when as a matter of fact it had been the Boss’ own suggestion to start with.
“He’s a big shot, Eddie,” he said softly. “You want to get in good with him; get on the right side of him. Did you offer to stand him and his friends a round of drinks last time, like I told you to?”
“They let me,” said Eddie simply. “Only they laughed about it, like they knew I didn’t have much money. One of them followed me home afterwards, I saw him from my room.”
“That’s all right. That’s just so they could be sure who you were,” the Boss reassured him. “Tell you what you do, you go back there again tonight. I want you to keep on being nice to this guy Miller. Stand him and his crowd another round of drinks. Pass around your cigarettes—” he stopped and tapped the case slowly for emphasis, “only whatever you do, be sure you offer Miller one first before you do the others. If he’s got one in his hand, wait till he’s through with it before you offer yours. Don’t give anyone ahead of him — he’s likely to get sore at that. Got it? And if he refuses, don’t offer anybody else, but wait until he’ll take one from you later on. Keep offering until he takes one — the first one in the case.”
Eddie pondered, screwed up his courage, finally went to the unparalleled length of asking a question on his own hook. “But... but suppose he gets feeling good-natured and asts me what the favor is I’m sucking around for? What’ll I say it is? You ain’t told me what to ast for?”
A spasm of white rage flickered across the Boss’ face for a moment. Eddie, of course, didn’t know it wasn’t meant for him. “He won’t ask you, no danger! If his own mother was drowning he’d pitch a glass of water in her face.” He shoved the case at Eddie, stripped a ten-spot off a hefty roll. “This buys the drinks. Now get going and remember what I told you — see that Miller takes a cigarette from you if you gotta stick with him all night, and see that he gets first choice ahead of any of the others. Another thing, if he asks you, you bought the case yourself. You paid two-fifty for it at Dinglemann’s. Now stay with all I been telling you and see that you get it right!”
Eddie slipped the case inside his coat, folded the ten-spot to a postage stamp and tucked it into his watch pocket, stood up.
“Gee, thanks, Boss,” he stammered. “Thanks a lot for the sawbuck and the present,” he murmured gratefully. Aiming to please, to show that he was worthy of the Boss’ confidence, he ventured, “Want me to give you a ring after I leave them, so you can be sure I done what you told me?”
A look of saturnine amusement appeared on both their faces, Tommy’s and the Boss’. “Okay, lemme hear from you afterwards,” the Boss consented, and Tommy added something that sounded like, “if you’re not too far away.”
As the door closed after Eddie, they both roared with laughter.
“He’ll ring up from hell,” choked Tommy, “wonder what the toll charges are?”
“That’s what’s so beautiful about it,” agreed the Boss. “There’s no use trying to get Miller any other way — you saw what happened those last two times. Since my mouthpiece sprang me out of the pen last year, I don’t think Miller even goes to the bathroom without his bodyguard. But this way, you can’t even pin it on me afterwards. Instead of stopping to think that maybe they could beat something out of that chump just went out of here if they saved him long enough, the whole bunch is going to lose their heads when they see what happens to Miller and plug him so full of holes it’ll set some new kind of a record. Then they’ll have a fat chance of getting him to talk!”
He gazed complacently at the chair The Errand Boy had recently been sitting on. “How can anyone be that dumb and live? I hadn’t been talking to him five minutes up in the pen, when I knew he was going to come in handy some day. He’s even got the right kind of a face to go with this job — so absolutely harmless that even Miller, y’notice, will let him stand next to him taking a drink. He’s a natural. And he thanks me yet — for putting him in the way of committing suicide!” He shook with huge enjoyment; so did Tommy, but then he was always shaking anyway.