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