The Peace Conference
All the other delegates to the peace conference were on hand when Noonan and I arrived at Willsson’s home at the appointed time, nine o’clock that night. Everybody nodded to us, but the greetings didn’t go any further than that.
Pete the Finn was the only one I hadn’t met before. The bootlegger was a big-boned man of fifty with a completely bald head. His forehead was small, his jaws enormous—wide, heavy, bulging with muscle.
We sat around Willsson’s library table.
Old Elihu sat at the head. The short-clipped hair on his round pink skull was like silver in the light. His round blue eyes were hard, domineering, under their bushy white brows. His mouth and chin were horizontal lines.
On his right Pete the Finn sat watching everybody with tiny black eyes that never moved. Reno Starkey sat next to the bootlegger. Reno’s sallow horse face was as stolidly dull as his eyes.
Max Thaler was tilted back in a chair on Willsson’s left. The little gambler’s carefully pressed pants legs were carelessly crossed. A cigarette hung from one corner of his tight-lipped mouth.
I sat next to Thaler. Noonan sat on my other side.
Elihu Willsson opened the meeting.
He said things couldn’t go on the way they were going. We were all sensible men, reasonable men, grown men who had seen enough of the