“Talk with her.”
“Then are you going to tell the man who was going to marry her?”
I grinned and said, “I’ll tell my boss. She’ll tell our client. Our client will use the information any way he damn pleases. I don’t care what he does with it. He pays Bertha Cool, and Bertha Cool pays me money. That’s all there is to it.”
Pug said, “It’s like I tell you, babe. Everybody in this world is on the make. You’ve got to take it where you can find it.”
She grinned across at me. “Pug thinks I’m developing a conscience.”
“On the slot-machine racket?”
“Uh huh.”
Pug said, “Forget it, babe.”
She said, “The machines are all dishonest. They’re stealing from the customer. Why shouldn’t we lift some from the machine?”
“It ain’t stealing,” Pug said. “It’s just taking back some of the public’s investment — and we’re the public, ain’t we? As far as the slot machine is concerned, we are. They use mechanical devices to keep the machines from paying off, and we use mechanical devices to make ’em pay off. It’s fifty-fifty.”