“What was the row about?” I asked.
“Whitey Louie. The Gophers was goin' to hand it to him; but just then Ike comes through th' door on th' run, an' wit' that they outs wit' their rods an' goes to peggin' at him. Then Ike gets to goin' an' cops Ledwich.”
“Th' best th' Gophers can get,” observed Slimmy—and his manner was as the manner of one balancing an account—“th' best th' Gophers can get is an even break; an' to do that they'll have to cash on Ike. Whitey Louie? He makes his get-away all right. Say, Whitey, let's beat it round to the Tenderloin Station, an' get th' finish.”
The finish was soon told. Ike the Blood lay dead on the station house floor; a bullet had drilled its dull way through his lungs. An officer was just telephoning his people in Chrystie Street.
“Now do youse see?” said Whitey Dutch, correcting what he conceived to be Slimmy's skepticism; “that fortune tellin' skirt handed out th' right dope. 'One croaked!—Ike in th' hurry-up wagon!—no trial!' That's th' spiel she makes; an' it falls true, see!”
“Ike oughter have dug down for another bone,” returned Slimmy, more than half convinced; “she'd have put him hep to that bullet in his breather, mebby.”
“W'at good 'ud that have done?”
“Good? If he'd got th' tip, he might have ducked—you can't tell.”
“It's a bad business,” I commented to my friend, who had rejoined me.
“It would be a good thing”—shrugging his cynical Central Office shoulders—“if, with a change of names, it could happen every day in the year. By the way, I forgot my umbrella; let's go back to the Bal Tabarin.”