“I hear you’ve declared war on Poisonville.”
“Don’t blame me. I’ve got a client who wants the place ventilated.”
“Wanted, not wants,” he corrected me as we sat down. “Why don’t you chuck it?”
I made a speech:
“No. I don’t like the way Poisonville has treated me. I’ve got my chance now, and I’m going to even up. I take it you’re back in the club again, all brothers together, let bygones be bygones. You want to be let alone. There was a time when I wanted to be let alone. If I had been, maybe now I’d be riding back to San Francisco. But I wasn’t. Especially I wasn’t let alone by that fat Noonan. He’s had two tries at my scalp in two days. That’s plenty. Now it’s my turn to run him ragged, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Poisonville is ripe for the harvest. It’s a job I like, and I’m going to it.”
“While you last,” the gambler said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I was reading in the paper this morning about a fellow choking to death eating a chocolate eclair in bed.”
“That may be good,” said Dinah Brand, her big body sprawled in an armchair, “but it wasn’t in this morning’s paper.”
She lit a cigarette and threw the match out of sight under the Chesterfield. The lunger had gathered up the cards and was shuffling them over and over, purposelessly.
Thaler frowned at me and said:
“Willsson’s willing for you to keep the ten grand. Let it go at that.”
“I’ve got a mean disposition. Attempted assassinations make me mad.”