I shook my head slightly and waited.
“Ben and the old man don’t get along — they’ve been raising hell the last couple of weeks. This is the fourth.” He jerked his head towards the corpse beside me.
“Know him?”
He shook his head and then — to be sure — took a flashlight out of the side-pocket and stuck it back through the opening and looked at the man’s dead face. He shook his head again.
I said: “Let’s go see Ben.”
“You’re crazy, Mister. If this is one of Ben’s boys he’ll tie you up to it, and if it ain’t...”
“Let’s go see Ben.”
Ben McCary was a blond fat man, about forty — he smiled a great deal.
We sat in a little office above his pool-hall and he smiled heartily across all his face and said: “Well, sir — what can I do for you?”
“My name is Black. I came over from St. Paul — got in about a half hour ago.”