Red scooped the girl up with his left arm. A big automatic blossomed in his right fist. I didn’t pay much attention to him after that. I was busy.
Larrouy’s home was pregnant with weapons—guns, knives, saps, knucks, club-swung chairs and bottles, miscellaneous implements of destruction. Men brought their weapons over to mingle with me. The game was to nudge me away from my door. O’Leary would have liked it. But I was no fire-haired young rowdy. I was pushing forty, and I was twenty pounds overweight. I had the liking for ease that goes with that age and weight. Little ease I got.
A squint-eyed Portuguese slashed at my neck with a knife that spoiled my necktie. I caught him over the ear with the side of my gun before he could get away, saw the ear tear loose. A grinning kid of twenty went down for my legs—football stuff. I felt his teeth in the knee I pumped up, and felt them break. A pockmarked mulatto pushed a gun-barrel over the shoulder of the man in front of him. My blackjack crunched the arm of the man in front. He winced sidewise as the mulatto pulled the trigger—and had the side of his face blown away.
I fired twice—once when a gun was leveled within a foot of my middle, once when I discovered a man standing on a table not far off taking careful aim at my head. For the rest I trusted to my arms and legs, and saved bullets. The night was young and I had only a dozen pills—six in the gun, six my pocket.
It was a swell bag of nails. Swing right, swing left, kick, swing right, swing left, kick. Don’t hesitate, don’t look for targets. God will see that there’s always a mug there for your gun or blackjack to sock, a belly for your foot.
A bottle came through and found my forehead. My hat saved me some, but the crack didn’t do me any good. I swayed and broke a nose where I should have smashed a skull. The room seemed stuffy, poorly ventilated.