“To Brooklyn.”
“Whereabouts in Brooklyn?”
He looked in his order book and told me it was a certain number on Rockaway avenue, which, by the way, was in that part of Brooklyn then known as East New York.
At that time it was all lots out there, with only a few straggling houses and plenty of geese, goats and pigs. It’s a little better now, but as it was then I wouldn’t have lived there if they’d given me a house rent free.
I went out to East New York late that afternoon, for I wanted to talk to Old King Brady first off, and I had to wait for him to come in.
“You’re on the right track,” he said. “Go, and good luck go with you. Do you think you can arrest him if you happen to get the chance?”
“Well, now, there’ll be a rough fight if he gets away from me,” I says.
“Go on,” he says, “and don’t let me see you again till you have something to report.”
Now that kind of worried me, for I didn’t feel at all sure that I was going to find my man just because I’d got the number of the house where he sent the hat.
On the way out to East New York I got to thinking suppose I was the defaulter what would I do?