He started to get bored fast the next day. He rode downtown with Louis and they went over to that same East side hotel and Louis went upstairs. He was gone a long time. Lamb said to himself, "That dope goes around in a rut and I'll get in one too just following him and then I will get sore." Eventually Louis the Goon came back down into the lobby. The tall, swarthy man he had met there the day before was with him.
"Well, I guess there'll be nothing doing today," Louis the Goon said.
"Nope, nothing," the other said.
They parted. Louis went down to the telephones, used one after consulting a little black book. When he came out, he bought a white carnation for his button-hole in the florist shop, then treated himself to three twenty-five-center Perfectos.
"Something builds," Lamb told himself. Outside, when Louis the Goon got a taxi, there was something positively cocky about him. Lamb was humming his "Come to Papa" again as he took another and trailed him eastward this time. Louis got out at a Third Avenue bar and grill and went in. Lamb gave him five minutes and strayed in himself. There was no Louis. Not at first, anyway. Lamb could feel his pulse beat faster.
Then he spotted the dim backroom with the booths. And he went through it to the Men's Room. And there was Louis the Goon—his little clay pigeon—in one of the booths with a doll. She was red-haired by courtesy of the local beauty parlor, cuddling up in a flashy little leopard fur number. She looked like a dance-hall hostess from one of those joints where everything goes so long as you keep time to the music.
As Lamb passed, she was saying, "Now, Daddy—" That almost unbuttoned Lamb. Daddy! On his way back, he noticed there were two others in the backroom, a couple of men gnawing on pretzels over beers.
He stepped back into the bar just in time. Three men had entered. They headed straight for the rear. One of them shouldered Wilson Lamb from his path as if he did not see him. The second one pulled out a cannon and poked it at the bartender and told him to keep his britches on. Then the other two were in the rear and letting go with their cannon.
Slammed over against the bar, Lamb had a split-second glimpse of it. For a moment, it almost seemed as if the damn fools were out after Engel. One shot smashed the table lamp in the booth where he sat. Then the two beer drinkers back in there were around and swapping it out with cannon of their own with the newcomers.
Lamb got out of there fast. He got across the street. He saw two men dash out of a side entrance and into a dark sedan that roared away. He did not see Louis the Goon get out. Then the howling prowl cars converged on the scene. And there was an ambulance. It took one guy away. Another guy, it didn't. Lamb worked his way up into the throng and got a glimpse of the other guy getting stiff on the backroom floor. Everybody else was lined up in the bar for questioning. Engel was not among them. So Lamb knew he must have gotten away all right.