I still don’t know any of those things, though I believe I now know him better than any other man alive.
It was four years before I ran into that redheaded Irishman again. A coincidence? Sure. This story is full of crazy coincidences — the sort that happen in real life but that no writer would dare put between the covers of a book.
It was in New Orleans, and I was four years older and maybe a little wiser. I was broke and jobless, and I wandered into a Rampart Street bar on a foggy night. There he was, sitting alone at a rear table with a bottle in front of him and two water glasses. One of them was half full of ice water, and he was sipping cognac from the other.
He didn’t recognize me, of course, but he did remember the fight in Tampico, and he grinned and gave me a drink of cognac when I thanked him for that time. He didn’t talk much, but he did say he was working as a private detective. He was friendly, and we were getting along fine until a girl walked in and stood at the bar, looking the place over.
I saw his big frame stiffen and the lines in his cheeks deepen into trenches as she walked toward us. His left thumb and forefinger went up to rub the lobe of his ear as she stopped beside our table and leaned forward and said, “Hello, Mike,” in a throaty voice.
That was all. He didn’t reply, and in a moment she turned away and went swiftly out the door. Two men had followed her inside, and they began to move slowly toward us — casually but purposefully.
That’s when he leaned forward and told me swiftly to get out of town fast and forget I’d seen him.
He stood up before I could ask any questions, strolled forward, and the two men closed in on each side of him. They went out in a group and disappeared in the swirling fog of Rampart Street.
That was our second meeting. I didn’t know who the girl and the two men were, or why Mike walked out with them so quietly.
I still don’t know, though I have a feeling that things happened then that had some bearing on the feud between him and Captain Denton of the New Orleans police — a feud which flared up anew during a case described in the book I titled Michael Shayne’s Long Chance.