truthful witness to a life that hasn’t been overburdened with refinement and gentility. The evening’s entertainment had decorated me with bruises and scratches, and had done things to what was left of my clothes.
“Percy,” he echoed, showing wide-spaced yellow teeth in a grin. “My Gawd, brother, your folks must of been color-blind!”
“That’s the what and why,” I insisted to the woman, paying no attention to the wheeze from the zoo. “I’m Percy Maguire, and I want my hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
The muscles in her brows came down over her eyes.
“You’ve got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, have you?”
I nodded up into her handsome brutal face.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I came for.”
“Oh, you haven’t got them? You want them?”
“Listen, sister, I want my dough.” I had to get tough if this play was to go over. “This swapping ‘Oh-have-yous’ and ‘Yes-I-haves’ don’t get me anything but a thirst. We were in the big knock-over, see? And after that, when we find the payoff’s a bust, I said to the kid I was training with, ‘Never mind, Kid, we’ll get our whack. Just follow Percy.’ And then Bluepoint comes to me and asks me to throw in with him, and I said, ‘Sure!’ and me and the kid throw in with him until we all come across Red in the dump tonight. Then I told the kid, ‘These coffee-and-doughnut guns are going to rub Red out, and that won’t get us anything. We’ll take him away from ’em and make him steer us to where Big Flora’s sitting on the jack. We ought to be good for a hundred and fifty grand apiece, now that there’s damned few in on it. After we get that, if we want to bump Red off, all right. But business before pleasure, and a