I felt pretty badly about the kid, but I felt worse when Riley, my old partner, visited me. He came through the door of the hospital room, that map of Ireland he uses for a face ruffled up in a wide grin.
"I warned you, Southern," he said, "but you would play with the big boys. Now, look at you—your pants are ripped."
"Oh, shut up and sit down," I snapped from the wheelchair, trying not to grin, "Who the hell do you think you are—Dorothy Dix! Cripes, you've got enough slugs in you to make you rattle like a dice box!"
"My, what a nasty temper. Tch, tch, tch!"
"Okay, okay, go ahead and gloat. But first, let's hear the latest from headquarters."
And then his face wasn't grinning, instead it grew hard like granite. He told me the details that the chief hadn't let me know, for fear that I would get worried. Suddenly, I lost all desire to joke, too.
Tony Flasco, his lieutenant Vance, another killer named Keeper, and an unidentified man were in the mob that shot me down. They had forced the bank's cashier to open the bank for them at night, had murdered the watchman and then left the cashier for dead. He had rallied enough to identify two of the men from pictures. Burke's and my stories had fitted in the other pieces.
Tony and his mob had got away with over fifty thousand in cash and an unnameable sum in bonds. They had disappeared into thin air, were evidently holing up somewhere until the heat died down. Teletype and radio had the country blanketed, but with as much money as they had they would be able to buy their way out of the country.
"So that's that," I said, "not one blasted thing to go on."