“You ain’t that dumb.”
A notion stirred in my noodle. To give it time to crawl around I said: “Sit down. This needs talking over.”
“It don’t need nothing,” he said, looking at me sharply, not moving toward either chair. “You either want him knocked off or you don’t.”
“Then I don’t.”
He said something I didn’t catch, down in his throat, and turned to the door. I got between him and it. He stopped, his eyes fidgeting.
I said:
“So Whisper’s dead?”
He stepped back and put a hand behind him. I poked his jaw, leaning my hundred and ninety pounds on the poke.
He got his legs crossed and went down.
I pulled him up by the wrists, yanked his face close to mine, and growled:
“Come through. What’s the racket?”
“I ain’t done nothing to you.”
“Let me catch you. Who got Whisper?”
“I don’t know nothing a—”
I let go of one of his wrists, slapped his face with my open hand, caught his wrist again, and tried my luck at crunching both of them while I repeated:
“Who got Whisper?”