Pete stared at the photograph. The girl’s face had a queer effect on him. It wasn’t that she was so pretty; she was pretty, but not more than the average girl you saw around Pacific City. There was something in her eyes that moved him: an eager, joyous expression of someone who found life the most exciting adventure.
Moe watched him. He took in the neat grey flannel suit, the brown brogue shoes and the white shirt and neat blue and red stripe tie. The guy, Moe thought a little enviously, looked like a freshman from some swank college: he talked like one, too.
He couldn’t have been much older than Moe himself; around twenty-two or three. If it hadn’t been for the birth-mark, he would have been good-looking enough to get on the movies, Moe decided, but that stain would have put paid to the best-looking movie actor in the world: bad enough to haunt a house with. Moe told himself.
“Did Seigel say why we had to do this job, Moe?” Pete asked abruptly.
“I didn’t ask him. Yuh only ask that bum a question once, and then yuh go an’ buy yuhself a new set of teeth.” Moe poured himself more coffee. “It’s a job, see? Ain’t nothin’ to worry about. Yuh know how to do it, don’t yer?”
“Yes, I know,” Pete said, and a frozen, hard expression came over his face. As he stood in the light from the window, his eyes staring down into the street, Moe felt an uneasy twinge run through him. This guy could be tough, he told himself. Sort of crazy in the head. When he looked like that Moe didn’t like being in the same room with him.
Just then the telephone bell began to ring.
“I’ll get it,” Moe said, and dived out of the room to the pay booth in the passage.
Pete again looked at the photograph. He imagined how she would regard him when she saw him. That lively look of excitement and interest would drain out of her eyes and would be replaced by the flinching, slightly disgusted look all girls gave him when they came upon him, and he felt a cold hard knotting inside him; a sick rage that made the blood beat against his temples. This time he wouldn’t pretend not to notice the look; he wouldn’t have to force a smile and try to overcome the first impression she would have of him; not that he had ever succeeded in overcoming any first impression; they had never given him the chance.
As if he were some freak, some revolting object of pity, they would hurriedly look away, make some excuse — anything so long as they didn’t have to stay facing him, and she would do that, and when she did, he would kill her.