I started for the door, glad to be rid of the lot of them. Peno Rose beat me to it. He showed me several rows of teeth, the way sharks will. "Half of this joint is mine," he snarled, holding a hand lightly against my chest. He knew me better than to push. "My half is hiring you."
The whiff of garlic over my shoulder told me that Simonetti had followed me, too. He didn't have any reservations about grabbing me and twisting me around and giving me a real face-full.
"If you know what's good for you, you'll get out of here."
"Freak?" I said, laying it on his mitral valve. After his heart had missed about eight beats, he started to sink, and I quit the lift. "Be polite, Simonetti," I said to the panic in his yellowish face. "Next time I'll pinch down tight. The coroner will call it heart failure. Tough."
He wanted his stiletto. He needed it. He was sorry he had ever quit carrying it. A couple seconds of reflection told him I was too tough for him. He went for his partner, his face darkening with rage now that his heart could get some blood to it. He had his hands out, for Rose's throat, I guess. For my dough it took guts to put fingers that close to all those teeth. But he never got a chance to try it. An ashtray, one of those things with a shot-loaded cloth bag under it, flew off a desk, smacked him in the back of the head, and dropped to the floor with a thump.
It wasn't a hard blow, but an upsetting one. Fowler Smythe grinned at him from where he was sitting in one of the leather divans. "Sit down and shut up, Sime," he suggested coolly.
Simonetti sagged with defeat. "Look, Rose," he gasped. "I want out. Bad enough that our losses can't be stopped by this creep Smythe. Now you drag in another TK. Buy me out!"
"What's a business worth that's losing its shirt?" Rose sneered. "We were in clover, you fool, till this cross-roader got to us. This is our only chance to get even."
That finished Simonetti. He went back to his desk and slumped against it, scowling at the points of his handtooled boots.