“I win myself six hundred iron men.” He pushed his hat back and scratched his forehead with the chewed end of his match. “And then I lose myself that and my own two hundred and some in a crap game. What do you think of that? I pick up six hundred berries like shooting fish, and have to bum four bits for breakfast.”

I said it was a tough break but that was the kind of a world we lived in.

He said, “Uh-huh,” put the match back in his mouth, ground it some more, and added, “That’s why I thought I’d come to see you. I used to be in the racket myself and⁠—”

“What did Noonan put the skids under you for?”

“Skids? What skids? I quit. I come into a piece of change when the wife got killed in an automobile accident⁠—insurance⁠—and I quit.”

“I heard he kicked you out the time his brother shot himself.”