Just as I reached his side he turned his head to see if he was being followed.
“Hello, Micky!” I hailed him. “How’s everything in Chi?”
“You got me wrong.” He spoke out of the side of his gray-lipped mouth, not stopping. “I don’t know nothin’ about Chi.”
His eyes were pale blue, with needlepoint pupils—the eyes of a heroin or morphine user.
“Quit stalling.” I walked along at his side. We had left the building by this time and were going down Mission Street. “You fell off the rattler only this morning.”
He stopped on the sidewalk and faced me.
“Me? Who do you think I am?”
“You’re Micky Parker. The Dutchman gave us the rap that you were headed here. They got him—if you don’t already know it.”
“You’re cuckoo,” he sneered. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about!”
That was nothing—neither did I. I raised my right hand in my overcoat pocket.
“Now I’ll tell one,” I growled at him. “And keep your hands away from your clothes or I’ll let the guts out of you.”
He flinched away from my bulging pocket.
“Hey, listen, brother!” he begged. “You got me wrong—on the level. My name ain’t Micky Parker, an’ I ain’t been in Chi in six years. I been here in Frisco for a solid year, an’ that’s the truth.”