“This I have not heard before,” Manuel admitted wryly.
“Jimmy Rogers couldn't locate you,” Johnny said easily.
“I know Rogers,” the chubby gambler said warily. “I'd talk to him. I think.” He stabbed at Johnny with the cigar. “Just where the hell do you wire into Rogers?” he demanded in a hard tone.
“Roketenetz was the kid brother of a good friend of mine. I'd like to find out who killed him. Or had him killed.”
Manfredi looked skeptical until he encountered Manuel's confirming nod. For a count of twenty he thought it over; then his head moved fractionally and Manuel left the room quietly by another door. The gambler seated himself, crossed his legs and made a thorough inspection of Johnny in the chair opposite. “I could be makin' a mistake talkin' to you, Killain,” he said finally. “I wouldn't like to find out later that I had.” The dark eyes were like twin bits of quartz. “If Manuel says you're all right, you're all right, see? But you better be all right.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I don't want no beef with Rogers I can help. Now. How did I get into the act?”
“It's all over town you dropped a ton on the kid to go by the fourth. Since he didn't, it could leave you with an itch.”
“Not that kind of an itch, mister. I'm a gambler, not a hood. I've made losin' bets before. You got me wrong, you an' Rogers, too. I don't go for that kind of action.” He gestured impatiently. “Now this damn fight. I got no use for fights, see? I was touted onto the thing, an' I got burned. I should've known better. That's all there is to it.”
“But you're makin' like hard to find,” Johnny said quietly.
“So I'll tell you,” the gambler said resignedly, “an' you can believe it or don't. I'm clean, where it counts. The fix was in, see? The kid was supposed to go in the fourth. That's from next door to the horse's mouth. I didn't fix it, and I don't know who did, but I had the program. Like I said, it's not my game-horses and cards are my action-but when you get it like that, what're you gonna do? I went but good. So it didn't come off. I was touted in the first place against my better judgment. With fights I'm through. Right?”
“Still no reason to hide,” Johnny observed.
The gambler grimaced. “Like the hog that I am, I bet too much. Nobody bets like that unless they think they know somethin'. Whoever rigged it originally-an', so help me, I never did know-must've decided to show me they didn't appreciate my tryin' to freeload. A couple of little things have happened that made me decide I'd just as soon let things quiet down.”
“You figure they put on a special for you an' changed the round?”
“At first I thought so,” Rick Manfredi admitted. “But after a fight like that it's never too hard to find out which way the big money went. It all went the same way I did. Nobody made a dime but the slobs.” His shoulders lifted and fell. “I don't know what happened. As it stands, somebody went to a hell of a lot of trouble to lose some money.”
“Maybe it was the kid's own idea, an' they gunned him for takin' it to the sixth.”
“They had a better reason than that. A real investigation, with no cuffs on, could've burned up a few licenses.”
“Maybe Gidlow tried to pull a double cross, an' that's why he bought himself a cold slab,” Johnny said.
Rick Manfredi held his nose. “Gidlow was a wart. I don't know why he got it, but it was too good for him.” The gambler stirred uneasily in his chair and looked at the door. “I've got to get back inside.”
“Good game?”
“Fair.” The chubby man looked at Johnny speculatively. “Whyn't you drop around some night an' get your feet wet?”
“Too rich for my blood.”
“Only a couple times a month, probably. Manuel always knows where to find me. I got a dozen, fifteen fleabags like this willin' to let me roost a night for double the rate. Keepin' the game on the trot discourages the cops, both kinds, an' it don't give the heisters much of a shot, either.” In a hurry a second before, he leaned back expansively and smiled as though at some secret joke. “You know Manuel's sister, Consuelo?”
“I've met her.”
Rick Manfredi beamed. “A great kid.” Bosses me around like I was a four-year-old. She picked out these clothes.” He glanced down at himself almost in surprise. “'Course to her I'm a juvenile delinquent, but I'm a friend of her brother's. Hell, Killain, I needed someone like her to show me the score. I been out on this town since I was fourteen, I mean twenty hours a day, the next race, the next game, the next bet. I'd walk up the street with four, five thousand in my kick an' no seat to my pants. Who had time for clothes?” He laughed at himself comfortably. “To her I'm still a jerk, but anyways a better dressed jerk.” He rolled the cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, and his voice changed. “You tell Rogers what I told you. If he finds out any different — about me, I mean-I'll kiss his butt in the Garden lobby.” He stood up abruptly. “Don't be a stranger.”
“I might cash that ticket, Rick.”
In the room beyond Manuel joined Johnny silently, and in the corridor waiting for the elevator he shook his head. “In the china shop, seizor, you are not an easy man on the nerves.”
“Whose side were you on back there, Manuel?”
“Do not make the mistake,” Manuel warned him. “I have not forgotten la savate on the street, but Rick is my friend from a long while. He comes first.” The white teeth glinted suddenly. “Still, it's jus' as well I did not 'ave to choose.”
The subdued illumination furnished by the filigreed hurricane lamps in the Copper Bowl Cocktail Lounge discreetly shaded the weary five o'clock faces in the booths about them, but Johnny noticed that Stacy Bartlett's fresh young complexion needed no such assistance. The girl was sitting bolt upright across from him, slim fingers idling with the stem of the glass of her pink Clover Club, her eyes roaming booths and room, plainly determined to miss nothing.
“It's such a nice place, really,” she said finally, with a little sigh. “Even if everyone is drinking. It's a shame a girl can't come to a nice place like this by herself sometimes.”
“Some do,” Johnny told her.
“I know,” she admitted. Her glance shifted to the end of the bar where half a dozen well-glazed females with elaborate hair-dos mingled on the bar stools with dark-suited males. “I'm afraid I couldn't compete.”
“In attitude, maybe.”
“Well… thanks.” Her color bloomed. “It must take- practice.” She blushed anew at the sound of her own words. “Isn't that Dr. McDevitt?” she asked hurriedly, nodding at the other end of the bar.
“Who's Dr. McDevitt?” Johnny inquired, not intending to be distracted by this offering. In the direction indicated he caught sight of the dapper, pink-cheeked man he had seen in Lonnie Turner's office. “Oh, him. The man who says 'no' to your boss.”
“And that's Mr. Keith with him,” Stacy continued. Johnny's glance moved along to take in the bulk of the crew-cut sportswriter.
“He spend much time at Lonnie's?” he asked the girl.
“He helps out on various things when Mr. Munson's busy,” she explained.
I wonder, Johnny thought. I wonder if Ed Keith has anyone looking over his shoulder when he writes his column. Or thinks he might have…
Stacy Bartlett placed her elbows on the table top as she leaned forward to command Johnny's full attention. “You don't think too highly of us at the office, do you?” she accused him.
“Present company excepted, sis.” He shrugged under the steady gaze of the brown eyes. “That's a different breed of cats over there from what you're used to down on the farm. I'd remember it, was I you.”
“They've all treated me very nicely,” she said loyally. “Even Monk-”
“Even Monk?” Johnny interjected into her confused pause. He examined her searchingly. “You don't like Monk?”
“He doesn't bother me,” she said hastily, but she was pink again. “Mr. Turner was very much provoked with you the other day,” she continued quickly.
“Mr. Turner needs to watch his blood pressure,” Johnny said. “How'd you hear about it?”
“Oh, I always do. Eventually.”
Is that right, now, Johnny thought. He looked from the girl to the bar. “Didn't I hear somethin' about an accident to someone in the crowd?” he asked casually.
