Spencer was the big shot. It was his job to buy or to sell whatever came into his hands from the various gangs operating throughout the States. With most of the high officials getting a rake-off in the form of dividends, the racket was watertight.
I knew that once Katz got free he’d stop at nothing to finish us both. We knew too much now ever to be safe. There was only one way and that was to see that Katz was under cover long enough to give me the time to bust the racket.
I didn’t fancy knocking him off in cold blood, but at the moment I couldn’t see what else I could do. Ackie was watching me and he understood what I was thinking about.
“Leave it to me,” he said, “I guess it’d be easy to frame him for twenty-four hours.”
I looked at him hard. “Twenty-four hours ain’t so long,” I said. “It’s going to take most of that to get into action.”
Ackie shrugged. “That’s as long as we can hold him, I guess,” he said. “We just gotta make things move.”
The longer we argued about it the more time we wasted, so I let Ackie go ahead with his idea.
“We get this bird down to the station house and book him under assault. I can tip the sergeant to keep him under cover for a bit. He’s a pal of mine an’ he’d lose a rat like that for a little while.”
I stood up. “Okay… let’s go.”
Katz wasn’t putting up a beef. He went with us down the stairs, his hands still tied behind him. Ackie went first, then Katz and then I followed. Before leaving the room I made certain that we’d left no tell-tale clues that might hook us up with Blondie’s death, then with one last look at the still figure in the chair I snapped off the light and followed Katz down.