think we’ll have to bother ourselves about that. We can leave the handling of the police to you, all right. You won’t need any of our inexpert help.”
“If that’s what you think,” Spade said, “you haven’t seen or heard enough.”
“Now come, Mr. Spade. You can’t expect us to believe at this late date that you are the least bit afraid of the police, or that you are not quite able to handle—”
Spade snorted with throat and nose. He bent forward, resting forearms on knees again, and interrupted Gutman irritably: “I’m not a damned bit afraid of them and I know how to handle them. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The way to handle them is to toss them a victim, somebody they can hang the works on.”
“Well, sir, I grant you that’s one way of doing it, but—”
“ ‘But’ hell!” Spade said. “It’s the only way.” His eyes were hot and earnest under a reddening forehead. The bruise on his temple was liver-colored. “I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been through it all before and expect to go through it again. At one time or another I’ve had to tell everybody from the Supreme Court down to go to hell, and I’ve got away with it. I got away with it because I never let myself forget that a day of reckoning was coming. I never forget that when the day of reckoning comes I want to be all set to march into headquarters pushing a victim in front of me, saying: ‘Here, you chumps, is your criminal.’ As long as I can do that I can put my thumb to my nose and wriggle my fingers at all the laws in the book. The first time I can’t do it my name’s Mud. There hasn’t been a first time yet. This isn’t going to be it. That’s flat.”
Gutman’s eyes flickered and their sleekness became dubious, but he held his other features in their bulbous pink smiling complacent cast and