“Yeah,” Hoppy corroborated. “De Angel stinks out loud! Why, dat bum can’t fight.”
“How can you say that,” Connie objected tensely, “when he just killed a man in the ring?”
“That was an accident.” Mullins waved away her fears with an impatient gesture of one thin hairy hand. “That crook Spangler will be eatin’ off’n his social security when we get through with him, huh, Champ? You’ll murder that big beef he stole from me!”
His hatchet face was venomous, as though distorted by an inward vision of vengeance.
“Whitey,” Connie said, “what did you do with that gun?”
Whitey’s rapt stare came back to earth and jerked in her direction.
“Gun?” he said blankly, and followed her glance at the table. “Oh, that.”
He looked quickly at Steve, at Simon, and Hoppy, and back to Connie again.
“Yes, that,” she said. “I told you to get rid of it.”
“I did,” Whitey said. “How did it get here?”