table, though there were a few scattered pens and pencils. This was a wireroom, all right. The smoking wastebasket next to the table agreed with me.
The guy in shirt sleeves at the table was the only one I recognized: Joe Palumbo. He was a heavyset man with bulging eyes and a vein-shot nose; at about forty-five, the oldest man in the room with the exception of Nitti, who was pushing fifty gracefully. The hood in the Capone hat was about thirty-five, small, swarthy, smoking- and probably Little New York Campagna. The accountant in the cage was in his thirties, too; and the kid at the ticker tape, with curly dark hair and a mustache, couldn't have been twenty-five. Lang ordered the accountant out of the cage; he was a little man with round shoulders and he took a seat at the table, across from Palumbo, next to the man I assumed (rightly) to be Campagna, who looked at the two Harrys and me with cold dark eyes that might have been glass. Miller told the runners to take seats at the table; they did. Then he had the others stand and take a frisk, Campagna first. Clean.
'What's this about?' Nitti asked. He was standing near the head of the table.
Lang and Miller exchanged glances; it seemed to mean something.
My hand was sweating around the automatic's grip. The men at the table weren't doing anything suspicious; their hands were on the table, near the phones. Everyone had been properly searched. Everyone except Nitti, that is, though the coat and vest hung on him in such a way that a shoulder holster seemed out of the question.
He was just standing there, staring at Lang and Miller, and I could feel it starting to work on them. Campagna's gaze was no picnic, either. The room seemed warm, suddenly; a radiator was hissing- or was that Nitti?
Finally Lang said 'Heller?'
'Yes?' I said. My voice broke, like a kid's.
'Frisk Nitti. Do it out in the other room.'
I stepped forward and, gun in hand but not threateningly, asked Nitti to come with me.
He shrugged again and came along; he seemed to be having trouble deciding just how irritated to be.
In the outer office he held his coat open as if showing off the lining- it was jade-green silk- and I patted him down. No gun.
The cuffs were in my topcoat. Nitti turned his back to me and held his wrists behind him while I fished for the cuffs. He glanced back and said. '
I said. 'Not really,' getting the cuffs out, and noticed he was chewing something.
'Hey,' I said. 'What the hell are you doing? Spit that out!'
He kept chewing and, Frank Nitti or not, I slapped him on the back and he spit it out: a piece of paper: a wad of paper, now. He must've had a bet written down and palmed it when we came in: hadn't had a chance to burn it like the boys inside did theirs.
'Nice try. Frank,' I said, grasping his wrists, cuffs ready, feeling tough, and Lang came in from the bigger room, shut the door, came up beside me and shot Nitti in the back. The sound of it shook the pebbled glass around us; the bullet went through Nitti and snicked into some woodwork.
I pulled away, saying, 'Jesus!'
Nitti turned as he fell, and Lang pumped two more slugs into him: one in his chest, one in the neck. The.38 blasts sounded like a cannon going off in the small room; a derby dropped off the coatrack. Worst of all was the sound the bullets made going in: a soft sound, like shooting into mud.
I grabbed Lang by the wrist before he could shoot again.
'What the hell are you'
He jerked away from me. 'Easy, Red. You got that snubnose?'
I could hear the men yelling in the adjacent room; Miller was keeping them back, presumably.
'Yes,' I said.
Nitti was on the floor; so was a lot of his blood.
'Give it here.' Lang said.
I handed it to him.
'Now go in and help Harry,' he said.
I went back in the wire room. Miller had his gun on the men. all of whom were standing now. though still grouped around the table.
'Nitti's been shot,' I said. I don't know who I was saying it to, exactly.
Campagna spat something in Sicilian.
Palumbo, eyes bulging even more than usual, furious, his face red, said, 'Is he dead?'
'I don't know. I don't think he's going to be alive long, though.' I looked at Miller; his face was impassive. 'Call an ambulance.'
He just looked at me.
I looked at Palumbo. 'Call an ambulance.'
He sat back down and reached for one of the many phones before him.
Then there was another shot.
I rushed back out there and Lang was holding his wrist; his right hand was bleeding- a fairly deep graze alongside the knuckle of his forefinger.
