“Man named Lowry — that’s the name on the label of his coat. He’s dead.”
McCary moved a little in his chair but didn’t change his expression.
“I came in on the nine-fifty train,” I went on, “and started walking uptown to a hotel. Lowry came up to me over on Dell Street and said ‘McCary!’ and fell down. He’s outside in a cab — stiff.”
McCary looked up at the ceiling and then down at the desk. He said: “Well, well” — and took a skinny little cigar out of a box in one of the desk-drawers and lighted it. He finally got around to looking at me again and said: “Well, well,” again.
I didn’t say anything.
After he’d got the cigar going, he turned another of his big smiles on and said: “How am I supposed to know you’re on the level?”
I said: “I’ll bite. What do you think?”
He laughed. “I like you,” he said. “By God! I like you.”
I said I thought that was fine and, “Now let’s try to do some business.”
“Listen,” he said. “Luke McCary has run this town for thirty years. He ain’t my old man — he married my mother and insisted on my taking his name.”