I found Paddy the Mex in Jean Larrouy’s dive. + 

Paddy⁠—an amiable con man who looked like the King of Spain⁠—showed me his big white teeth in a smile, pushed a chair out for me with one foot, and told the girl who shared his table: + 

“Nellie, meet the biggest-hearted dick in San Francisco. This little fat guy will do anything for anybody, if only he can send ’em over for life in the end.” He turned to me, waving his cigar at the girl: “Nellie Wade, and you can’t get anything on her. She don’t have to work⁠—her old man’s a bootlegger.” + 

She was a slim girl in blue⁠—white skin, long green eyes, short chestnut hair. Her sullen face livened into beauty when she put a hand across the table to me, and we both laughed at Paddy. + 

“Five years?” she asked. + 

“Six,” I corrected. + 

“Damn!” said Paddy, grinning and hailing a waiter. “Some day I’m going to fool a sleuth.” + 

So far he had fooled all of them⁠—he had never slept in a hoosegow. + 

I looked at the girl again. Six years before, this Angel Grace Cardigan had buncoed half a dozen Philadelphia boys out of plenty. Dan Morey and I had nailed her, but none of her victims would go to the bat against her, so she had been turned loose. She was a kid of nineteen then, but already a smooth grifter. + 

In the middle of the floor one of Larrouy’s girls began to sing “Tell Me What You Want and I’ll Tell You What You Get.” Paddy the Mex tipped a gin bottle over the glasses of gingerale the waiter had brought. We drank and I gave Paddy a piece of paper with a name and address penciled on it. + 

“Itchy Maker asked me to slip you that,” I explained. “I saw him in the Folsom big house yesterday. It’s his mother, he says, and he wants you to look her up and see if she wants anything. What he means, I suppose, is that you’re to give her his cut from the last trick you and he turned.” + 

“You hurt my feelings,” Paddy said, pocketing the paper and bringing out the gin again. + 

I downed the second gin-gingerale and gathered in my feet, preparing to rise and trot along home. At that moment four of Larrouy’s clients came in from the street. Recognition of one of them kept me in my chair. He was tall and slender and all dolled up in what the well-dressed man should wear. Sharp-eyed, sharp-faced, with lips thin as knife-edges under a small pointed mustache⁠—Bluepoint Vance. I wondered what he was doing three thousand miles away from his New York hunting-grounds. + 

While I wondered I put the back of my head to him, pretending interest in the singer, who was now giving the customers “I Want to Be a Bum.” Beyond her, back in a corner, I spotted another familiar face that belonged in another city⁠—Happy Jim Hacker, round and rosy Detroit gunman, twice sentenced to death and twice pardoned. + 

When I faced front again, Bluepoint Vance and his three companions had come to rest two tables away. His back was to us. I sized up his playmates. + 

Facing Vance sat a wide-shouldered young giant with red hair, blue eyes and a ruddy face that was good-looking in a tough, savage way. On his left was a shifty-eyed dark girl in a floppy hat. She was talking to Vance. The red-haired giant’s attention was all taken by the fourth member of the party, on his right. She deserved it. + 

She was neither tall nor short, thin nor plump. She wore a black Russian tunic affair, green-trimmed and hung with silver dinguses. A black fur coat was spread over the chair behind her. She was probably twenty. Her eyes were blue, her mouth red, her teeth white, the hair-ends showing under her black-green-and-silver turban were brown, and she had a nose. Without getting steamed up over the details, she was nice. I said so. Paddy the Mex agreed with a “That’s what,” and Angel Grace suggested that I go over and tell Red O’Leary I thought her nice. + 

“Red O’Leary the big bird?” I asked, sliding down in my seat so I could stretch a foot under the table between Paddy and Angel Grace. “Who’s his nice girl friend?” + 

“Nancy Regan, and the other one’s Sylvia Yount.” + 

“And the slicker with his back to us?” I probed. + 

Paddy’s foot, hunting the girl’s under the table, bumped mine. + 

“Don’t kick me, Paddy,” I pleaded. “I’ll be good. Anyway, I’m not going to stay here to be bruised. I’m going home.” + 

I swapped so-longs with them and moved toward the street, keeping my back to Bluepoint Vance. + 

At the door I had to step aside to let two men come in. Both knew me, but neither gave me a tumble⁠—Sheeny Holmes (not the old-timer who staged the Moose Jaw looting back in the buggy-riding days) and Denny Burke, Baltimore’s King of Frog Island. A good pair⁠—neither of them would think of taking a life unless assured of profit and political protection. + 

Outside, I turned down toward Kearny Street, strolling along, thinking that Larrouy’s joint had been full of crooks this one night, and that there seemed to be more than a sprinkling of prominent visitors in our midst. A shadow in a doorway interrupted my brain-work. + 

The shadow said, “Ps‑s‑s‑s! Ps‑s‑s‑s!” + 

Stopping, I examined the shadow until I saw it was Beno, a hophead newsie who had given me a tip now and then in the past⁠—some good, some phony. + 

“I’m sleepy,” I growled as I joined Beno and his arm-load of newspapers in the doorway, “and I’ve heard the story about the Mormon who stuttered, so if that’s what’s on your mind, say so, and I’ll keep going.” + 

“I don’t know nothin’ about no Mormons,” he protested, “but I know somethin’ else.” + 

“Well?” + 

“ ’S all right for you to say ‘Well,’ but what I want to know is, what am I gonna get out of it?” + 

“Flop in the nice doorway and go shuteye,” I advised him, moving toward the street again. “You’ll be all right when you wake up.” + 

“Hey! Listen, I got somethin’ for you. Hones’ to Gawd!” + 

“Well?” + 

“Listen!” He came close, whispering. “There’s a caper rigged for the Seaman’s National. I don’t know what’s the racket, but it’s real. Hones’ to Gawd! I ain’t stringin’ you. I can’t give you no monickers. You know I would if I knowed ’em. Hones’ to Gawd! Gimme ten bucks. It’s worth that to you, ain’t it? This is straight dope⁠—hones’ to Gawd!” + 

“Yeah, straight from the nose-candy!” + 

“No! Hones’ to Gawd! I⁠—” + 

“What is the caper, then?” + 

“I don’t know. All I got was that the Seaman’s is gonna be nicked. Hones’ to⁠—” + 

“Where’d you get it?” + 

Beno shook his head. I put a silver dollar in his hand. + 

“Get another shot and think up the rest of it,” I told him, “and if it’s amusing enough I’ll give you the other nine bucks.” + 

I walked on down to the corner, screwing up my forehead over Beno’s tale. By itself, it sounded like what it probably was⁠—a yarn designed to get a dollar out of a trusting gumshoe. But it wasn’t altogether by itself. Larrouy’s⁠—just one drum in a city that had a number⁠—had been heavy with grifters who were threats against life and property. It was worth a look-see, especially since the insurance company covering the Seaman’s National Bank was a Continental Detective Agency client. + 

Around the corner, twenty feet or so along Kearny Street, I stopped. + 

From the street I had just quit came two bangs⁠—the reports of a heavy pistol. I went back the way I had come. As I rounded the corner I saw men gathering in a group up the street. A young Armenian⁠—a dapper boy of nineteen or twenty⁠—passed me, going the other way, sauntering along, hands in pockets, softly whistling “Brokenhearted Sue.” + 

I joined the group⁠—now becoming a crowd⁠—around Beno. Beno was dead, blood from two holes in his chest staining the crumpled newspapers under him. + 

I went up to Larrouy’s and looked in. Red O’Leary, Bluepoint Vance, Nancy Regan, Sylvia Yount, Paddy the Mex, Angel Grace, Denny Burke, Sheeny Holmes, Happy Jim Hacker⁠—not one of them was there. + 

Returning to Beno’s vicinity, I loitered with my back to a wall while the police arrived, asked questions, learned nothing, found no witnesses, and departed, taking what was left of the newsie with them. + 

I went home and to bed. + 