At four o’clock that afternoon Jack Counihan and I brought our hired automobile to rest within sight of the front door of the Stockton Street hotel.
“He cleared himself with the police, so there’s no reason why he should have moved, maybe,” I told Jack, “and I’d rather not monkey with the hotel people, not knowing them. If he doesn’t show by late we’ll have to go up against them then.”
We settled down to cigarettes, guesses on who’d be the next heavyweight champion and when, the possibilities of Prohibition being either abolished or practiced, where to get good gin and what to do with it, the injustice of the new agency ruling that for purposes of expense accounts Oakland was not to be considered out of town, and similar exciting topics, which carried us from four o’clock to ten minutes past nine.
At 9:10 Red O’Leary came out of the hotel.
“God is good,” said Jack as he jumped out of the machine to do the footwork while I stirred the motor.
The fire-topped giant didn’t take us far. Larrouy’s front door gobbled him. By the time I had parked the car and gone into the dive, both O’Leary and Jack had found seats. Jack’s table was on the edge of the dance-floor. O’Leary’s was on the other side of the establishment, against the wall, near a corner. A fat blond couple were leaving the table back in that corner when I came in, so I persuaded the waiter who was guiding me to a table to make it that one.
O’Leary’s face was three-quarters turned away from me. He was watching the front door, watching it with an earnestness that turned