I was thinking about what suckers we’d been. I’d popped Raines and Card had popped me and Mrs. Healey had popped Card — all of us. One, two, three. Tinker to Evers to Chance — only more so.
I think we were all pretty washed up with La Belle Healey. It was a cinch Card wouldn’t want any more of her. I don’t know about Raines, but I know I didn’t.
We finished the bottle and Raines snooped around and found a full one and we did a little business with that.
I didn’t find out I had a concussion till next morning. I was a week and two days in the hospital at twenty dollars a day, and the doctor nicked me two-fifty. He’ll get the rest of it when he catches me.
The whole Healey play, what with one thing and another, cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a grand. I got a lame skull and about two-bits’ worth of fun out of it. I pass.
Murder In Blue
Coleman said: “Eight ball in the corner.” There was soft click of ball against ball and then sharper click as the black ball dropped into the pocket Coleman had called.
Coleman put his cue in the rack. He rolled down the sleeves of his vividly striped silk shirt and put on his coat and a pearl gray velour hat. He went to the pale fat man who slouched against a neighboring table and took two crisp hundred dollar notes from the fat man’s outstretched hand, glanced at the slim, pimpled youth who had been his opponent, smiled thinly, said: “So long,” went to the door, out into the street.
There was sudden roar from a black, curtained roadster on the other side of the street; the sudden ragged roar of four or five shots close together, a white pulsing finger of flame in the dusk, and Coleman sank to his knees. He swayed backwards once, fell forward onto his face hard; his gray hat rolled slowly across the sidewalk. The roadster was moving, had disappeared before Coleman was entirely still. It became very quiet in the street.
Mazie Decker curved her orange mouth to its best “Customer” smile. She took the little green ticket that the dark-haired boy held out to her and tore off one corner and dropped the rest into the slot. He took her tightly in his arms and as the violins melted to sound and the lights dimmed they swung out across the crowded floor.