“Get out of here!” I said. “Both of you, before I toss you out.”
“Toss us out,” Benno said, and a blue-nosed automatic jumped into his hand. “You heard
us the first time. Get your clothes on or you’ll stop a slug with your belly!”
His still glittering eyes warned me he wasn’t bluffing.
Without moving his lips, Waller mumbled, “Don’t be a fool, Farrar. Go with them. I know
these two.”
Pepi smiled.
“Wise guy. Sure he knows us. He knows Benno’s been mixed up in three shooting
accidents already this year. Better not make a fourth.”
I got dressed while they stood around and watched me, then we went down the alley to
where a big Cadillac was parked. Benno kept the gun in his hand. There was a cop standing
on the edge of the kerb right by the car. He looked at Benno, looked at the gun, then hurriedly
walked away. That told me faster than anything that had yet happened just what kind of a jam
I was in. I got into the car and sat beside Pepi who drove. Benno sat at the back and breathed
down my neck. It took less than a minute to reach the Ocean Hotel. We went in by a side
entrance and rode up in a gilt-painted elevator. Neither Benno nor Pepi said anything, but
Benno kept the gun pointing at me. We walked down a long corridor to a polished mahogany
door marked Private. Pepi tapped, turned the handle and walked in.
The room was small, oak-panelled, and fitted up like an office.
A blonde sat pounding a typewriter, and chewing gum. She glanced up, gave me a swift,
indifferent stare, seemed to think nothing of the gun in Benno’s hand, and jerked her blonde
head to the door behind her.
“Go on in,” she said to Pepi. “He’s waiting.”
Pepi scratched on the door panel with his fingernails, opened the door and glanced in.
Then he stood aside.
22
“In on your own steam,” he said to me, “and behave.”
I walked past him into one of those vast rooms you rarely see outside a movie set. The
enormous expanse of bottle-green carpet was thick enough to cut with a lawn-mower. A
couple of dozen lounging chairs, two big chesterfields, a number of lamp standards and an
odd table or two scarcely dented the space they were supposed to fill. Around the walls hung
gilt-framed mirrors that caught my reflection as I moved forward, and reminded me how
shabby I looked.
At a desk, big enough to play ping-pong on, sat Petelli. He was smoking a cigar, and the
white slouch hat he had worn when he had come to the gym still rested at the back of his
head. He waited, sitting forward, his elbows on the desk, until I was within a yard of him,
then he stopped me by pointing his cigar at me.
“I’ll do the talking; you do the listening,” he said, his voice curt and cold. “You’re a good
fighter, Farrar, and I could have used you, but Brant tells me you want to stay out of the
game. Right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“The Kid is a good boy, too, but I don’t think he’s got the punch you carry. Well, if I can’t
have you, I’ll have to make do with him. This will be his first fight as far north as Pelotta. It
wouldn’t look good for him to get licked, so he’s got to win. I’ve ten grand spread on the
fight, and I don’t intend to lose it. I told Brant you’re to take a dive in the third round. Now
I’m telling you. Brant says you don’t like the idea. Well, that’s your own private grief, not
mine. You’ve had your chance to come in with me and you’ve passed it up,” He paused to tap
ash on the carpet. “This happens to be my town. I run it, see? What I say goes. I have an
organization that takes care of guys who don’t do what I tell them. We’ll take care of you,
