“Maybe we don’t want you, Vine. You a gambling man?”
“Where there’s an element of judgment involved.” I couldn’t figure what difference it made. “Any further details, see my bookie.”
“Horses, huh?” He mulled it over as if it was something serious. “You happen to read that guff about Johnny the Grocer?”
I had. “Fixer who got himself riddled in some East Side hotspot, three or four days ago?” I began to connect up his queries about gambling. “Payoff lad for a policy ring. Supposed to deliver protection lettuce to cops. Held out some green goods he’d been told to pass along. Big boys got him for it.”
Hacklin waggled his hand in derision. “That’s what the newspapers said. Fact is, Johnny’d been taking singing lessons, was all set to give a recital. He’d been through a couple rehearsals, in the Prosecutor’s office. Real performance was to have been Wednesday morning at headquarters. Rumor was, he’d finger some high-ups on the Commissioner’s Confidential Squad. Tuesday night somebody played the drum for him. Boom! Only testimony he gave was to the docs when they cut him up, on the slab.”
“From what I read, nobody saw who gunned him.” The picture was beginning to take shape in my mind, a little blurred. “Or was that more newspaper mahooley?”
“Yeah.” Hacklin took out a cigar, stuck it in his mouth at an angle like a schooner’s bowsprit. “I got to tell you this so you’ll see why it was prob’ly an inside job.”
I said I wouldn’t guarantee to go along on that.
“You’ll go along — or come along, don’t worry about that.” He flexed the fingers I’d punished. “It was given out officially that nobody saw the actual shooting or the crut who used the gun. But there was one witness.”
“Tildy Millett.” I’d seen that coming.