“I'm here to keep out everybody I know,” said he simply.
There was a pathetic side to this which, in his ingenuousness, Frank failed wholly to remark.
“About Indian Louie?” I at last said.
It was within an hour after Louie had been killed.
“I'll tell youse about Louie,” returned Frank. “Of course, he's dead, an' lyin' on a slab in th' morgue right now. They 'phoned me woid ten minutes ago. But that don't make no difference. He was a bluff; he wasn't th' goods. He went around wit' his hat over his eyes, bulldozin' everybody he could, an' lettin' on to be a hero. An' he's got what heroes get.”
“Did you ever get tangled up with him?” I asked.
“Let me show you,” and Frank became confidential. “This'll give youse a line. One time he's got two hundred bones. Mollie Squint climbs into a yap-wagon an' touches a rube for it. Louie takes it, an' plants it wit' Nigger Mike. That's about six months ago. Th' next night, me bein' wise to it, I chases to Mike an' says, 'Louie's over to Jigger's, pointin' stuss, an' he wants th' two hundred.' So Mike hands me th' dough. I splits it five ways wit' th' gang who's along, each of us gettin' his little old bit of forty dollars apiece.
“Louie, when he finds out next day, makes an awful beef. He tells everybody he's goin' to hand it to me—goin' to cook me on sight, see? I hears of it, an' I hunts Louie up in Jack Sirocco's.
“'Say, Louie,' I says, 'about that cookin' me. Th' bully way would be to come right now over to Hoboken, an' bump me off to-night. I'll go wit' youse. An' there won't be no hang-over, see; 'cause no one in Joisey'll care, an' no one in New York'll know.'
“Do youse think Louie'll come? Not on your necktie! He didn't want me game—just wanted to talk, that's all.