Everything brown for Mr. Canino."
"Let's have Act Two," I said.
"Without some dough that's all."
"I don't see two hundred bucks in it.
Mrs. Regan married an ex-bootlegger out of the joints.
She'd know other people of his sort.
She knows Eddie Mars well.
If she thought anything had happened to Regan, Eddie would be the very man she'd go to, and Canino might be the man Eddie would pick to handle the assignment.
Is that all you have?"
"Would you give the two hundred to know where Eddie's wife is?" the little man asked calmly.
He had all my attention now.
I almost cracked the arms of my chair leaning on them.
"Even if she was alone?" Harry Jones added in a soft, rather sinister tone. "Even if she never run away with Regan at all, and was being kept now about forty miles from LA. in a hideout — so the law would keep on thinking she had dusted with him?
Would you pay two hundred bucks for that, shamus?"
I licked my lips.
They tasted dry and salty.
"I think I would," I said. "Where?"
"Agnes found her," he said grimly. "Just by a lucky break. Saw her out riding and managed to tail her home.
Agnes will tell you where that is — when she's holding the money in her hand."
I made a hard face at him.
"You could tell the coppers for nothing, Harry.
They have some good wreckers down at Central these days.
If they killed you trying they still have Agnes."
"Let 'em try," he said. "I ain't so brittle."
"Agnes must have something I didn't notice."
"She's a grifter, shamus.
I'm a grifter.
We're all grifters.
So we sell each other out for a nickel.
Okey.
See can you make me."
He reached for another of my cigarettes, placed it neatly between his lips and lit it with a match the way I do myself, missing twice on his thumbnail and then using his foot.
He puffed evenly and stared at me level-eyed, a funny little hard guy I could have thrown from home plate to second base.
A small man in a big man's world.
There was some thing I liked about him.
"I haven't pulled anything in here," he said steadily. "I come in talking two C's.
That's still the price.
I come because I thought I'd get a take it or leave it, one right gee to another.
Now you're waving cops at me.
You oughta be ashamed of yourself."
I said: "You'll get the two hundred — for that information. I have to get the money myself first."
He stood up and nodded and pulled his worn little Irish tweed coat tight around his chest
"That's okey.
After dark is better anyway.
It's a leery job — buckin' guys like Eddie Mars.
But a guy has to eat. The book's been pretty dull lately. I think the big boys have told Puss Walgreen to move on.
Suppose you come over there to the office, Fulwider Building, Western and Santa Monica, four-twenty-eight at the back.
You bring the money, I'll take you to Agnes."
"Can't you tell me yourself?
I've seen Agnes."