“Well — no,” admitted Shires. “There was a car dogging the van. A guy pumped us with a rod that had a silencer on it. We plugged back at him; then we had to beat it.”
“You had to beat it!” retorted Durgan contemptuously. “You — not the gorillas you had with you! I read part of the newspapers, anyway.
“Those guys were nabbed by the coppers. That helped to put the skids under Waldron’s racket. That was the beginning.” Durgan laughed.
“That was the beginning,” he repeated, “and you have the nerve to come around here and want me to take you on! One grand a week, you were getting? No wonder Tim Waldron went blooey!”
A LESS hardened mobster than Ernie Shires would have quailed beneath Killer Durgan’s contempt. But Shires was no ordinary gangster.
“One grand a week!” said Shires slowly. “That’s what I was getting from Waldron — and I’m worth that to you, Durgan! Get me? You want to know why? I’ll tell you!”
He waited a few moments for Durgan to wonder at his words; then:
“You think I fell down on the job last night,” he said. “That’s what they all think — although they don’t know who I was. The coppers don’t know that one guy — that’s me — got away.
“There’s been no squeals from the gorillas. There ain’t nobody that knows who was there — that is, nobody that’s going to talk. I just told you, because I’ve got something else to say.
“I know who queered that job. And it wasn’t the cops or anybody connected with the cops! It was some one else and I know who!”