Fenner glanced at Noolen, who sat in a heap, rubbing his jaw. All the fight had gone out of him. “Okay,” he said. “Now maybe I can get down to things. You and me are goin’ to run Carlos and his mob out of town. Bugsey here can either come in on our side, or go back to Carlos. I don’t care a lot what he does. If he goes back he’ll have a lot of explaining. If he sticks, he’ll pick up five hundred bucks a week until the job’s cleaned up.”
Bugsey’s eyes brightened. “I’ll stick for that amount,” he said.
Fenner felt in his wallet, took out a sheaf of notes, crumpled them into a ball and tossed them at Bugsey. “That’s something to go on with,” he said.
Noolen watched all this in silence. Fenner came across and sat on the desk again. “How would you like to be the king-pin in this burg?” he said. “That’s what you can be if you work with me.”
“How?” Noolen’s voice was very husky.
“We’ll get your little mob and me and Bugsey and we’ll make the town very hot for Carlos. We’ll hi-jack his boats, we’ll sabotage his organization and we’ll go gunning for him.”
Noolen shook his head. “No, we won’t,” he said.
Fenner said evenly, “You yellow big shot! Still scared?”
“I’ve never worked with the cops an’ I never will.”
“You don’t understand. Four days ago, Carlos had me in his waterfront place. He made things pretty tough, but I got away. I’m making this a personal business. I’m not inviting the law to come along.”