“We get more if we tie him,” W-J objected. “Let me persuade him.”
“Lay off,” Skinny commanded him.
“I don’t want any trouble either,” I stated. “How about this? I sit in the chair and you fix the cord to look right but so I’m free to move in case of fire. There’s a hundred bucks in the wallet in my breast pocket. Before you leave you help yourselves.”
“A lousy C?” W-J sneered. “For Chrissake shut up and sit down.”
“He has his choice,” Skinny said reprovingly.
I did indeed. It was a swell illustration of how much good it does to try to consider contingencies in advance. In all our discussions that day none of us had put the question, what to do if a pair of smooks offered me my pick of being tied in a chair or going home to bed. As far as I could see, standing there looking them over, that was all there was to it, and it was too early to go home to bed.
Thinking it would help to know whether they really were smooks or merely a couple of rummies on the payroll of some fly-specked agency, I decided to try something. Not letting my eyes know what my hand was about to do, I suddenly reached inside my coat to the holster, and then they had something more interesting than my face to look at: Saul’s clean shiny automatic.
The wrestler-jockey put his hands up high and froze. Skinny looked irritated.
“For why?” he demanded.
“I thought we might all go for a walk down to my car. Then to the Fourteenth Precinct, which is the closest.”