“That’s the situation as it stands now. The police are sweeping the streets, picking up everybody who needs a shave or can’t show a certificate of attendance signed by his parson, with special attention to outward bound trains, boats and automobiles. I sent Jack Counihan and Dick Foley down North Beach way to play the joints and see if they can pick up anything.”
“Do you think Bluepoint Vance was the actual directing intelligence in this robbery?” the Old Man asked.
“I hope so—we know him.”
The Old Man turned his chair so his mild eyes could stare out the window again, and he tapped his desk reflectively with the pencil.
“I’m afraid not,” he said in a gently apologetic tone. “Vance is a shrewd, resourceful and determined criminal, but his weakness is one common to his type. His abilities are all for present action and not for planning ahead. He has executed some large operations, but I’ve always thought I saw in them some other mind at work behind him.”
I couldn’t quarrel with that. If the Old Man said something was so, then it probably was, because he was one of these cautious babies who’ll look out of the window at a cloudburst and say, “It seems to be raining,” on the off-chance that somebody’s pouring water off the roof.
“And who is this arch-gonif?” I asked.
“You’ll probably know that before I do,” he said, smiling benignantly.
IV
I went back to the Hall and helped boil more prisoners in oil until around eight o’clock, when my appetite reminded me I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I attended to that, and then turned down toward Larrouy’s, ambling along leisurely, so the exercise wouldn’t interfere with my digestion. I spent three-quarters of an hour in Larrouy’s, and didn’t see anybody who interested me especially. A few gents I knew were present, but they weren’t anxious to associate with me—it’s not always healthy in criminal circles to be seen wagging your chin with a sleuth right after a job has been turned.
Not getting anything there, I moved up the street to Wop Healy’s—another hole. My reception was the same here—I was given a table and let alone. Healy’s orchestra was giving “Don’t You Cheat,” all they had, while those customers who felt athletic were romping it out on the dance-floor. One of the dancers was Jack Counihan, his arms full of a big olive-skinned girl with a pleasant, thick-featured, stupid face.
Jack was a tall, slender lad of twenty-three or four who had drifted into the Continental’s employ a few months before. It was the first job he’d ever had, and he wouldn’t have had it if his father hadn’t insisted that if sonny wanted to keep his fingers in the family till he’d have to get over the notion that squeezing through a college graduation was enough work for one lifetime. So Jack came to the agency. He thought gumshoeing would be fun. In spite of the fact that he’d rather catch the wrong man than wear the wrong necktie, he was a promising young thief-catcher. A likable youngster, well-muscled for all his slimness, smooth-haired, with a gentleman’s face and a gentleman’s manner, nervy, quick with head and hands, full of the don’t-give-a-damn gaiety that belonged to his youthfulness. He was jingle-brained, of course, and needed holding, but I would rather work with him than with a lot of old-timers I knew.
Half an hour passed with nothing to interest me.
Then a boy came into Healy’s from the street—a small kid, gaudily dressed, very pressed in the pants-legs, very shiny in the shoes, with an impudent sallow face of pronounced cast. This was the boy I had seen sauntering down Broadway a moment after Beno had been rubbed out.
Leaning back in my chair so that a woman’s wide-hatted head was between us, I watched the young Armenian wind between tables to one in a far corner, where three men sat. He spoke to them—offhand—perhaps a dozen words—and moved away to another table where a snub-nosed, black-haired man sat alone. The boy dropped into the chair facing snub-nose, spoke a few words, sneered at snub-nose’s questions, and ordered a drink. When his glass was empty he crossed the room to speak to a lean, buzzard-faced man, and then went out of Healy’s.
I followed him out, passing the table where Jack sat with the girl, catching his eye. Outside, I saw the young Armenian half a block away. Jack Counihan caught up with me, passed me. With a Fatima in my mouth I called to him:
“Got a match, brother?”
While I lighted my cigarette with a match from the box he gave me I spoke behind my hands:
“The goose in the glad rags—tail him. I’ll string behind you. I don’t know him, but if he blipped Beno off for talking to me last night, he knows me. On his heels!”
Jack pocketed his matches and went after the boy. I gave Jack a lead and then followed him. And then an interesting thing happened.
The street was fairly well filled with people, mostly men, some walking, some loafing on corners and in front of soft-drink parlors. As the young Armenian reached the corner of an alley where there was a light, two men came up and spoke to him, moving a little apart so that he was between them. The boy would have kept walking apparently paying no attention to them, but one checked him by stretching an arm out in front of him. The other man took his right hand out of his pocket and flourished it in the boy’s face so
