"Bigger. The police are afraid of him."
"Why?"
"Because he is the boss. He is the district leader. What he says goes."
She went on to explain that he was the local chieftain of the dominant "politician party," as she termed it
"What is a politician party?" I asked
She tried to define it and, failing in her attempt, she said, with a giggle: "Oh, you are a boob. You certainly are a green one. Why, it's an organization, a lot of people who stick together, don't you know."
She talked on, and the upshot was that I formed a conception of political parties as of a kind of competing business companies whose specialty it was to make millions by ruling some big city, levying tribute on fallen women, thieves, and liquor-dealers, doing favors to friends and meting out punishment to foes. I learned also that District-Leader Leary owed his surname to a celebrated pair of diamond cuff-buttons, said to have cost him fifteen thousand dollars, from which he never was separated, and by the blaze of which he could be recognized at a distance. "Well, shall I speak to him about you?" she asked. I gave her an evasive answer
"Why, don't you want to have favors from a girl like me?" she laughed
I colored, whereupon she remarked, reflectively: "I don't blame you, either."
She never tired talking of our birthplace.