I shouldn't have laughed, and I apologize most humbly and sincerely.
I wouldn't want to seem to ridicule anything you'd suggest, Mr. Spade, regardless of how much I disagreed with you, for you must know that I have the greatest respect and admiration for your astuteness.
Now mind you, I don't see how this suggestion of yours can be in any way practical—even leaviug out the fact that I couldn't feel any different towards Wilmer if he was my own flesh and blood—but I'll consider it a personal favor as well as 'a sign that you've accepted my apologies, sir, if you'll go ahead and outline the rest of it."
"Fair enough," Spade said.
"Bryan is like most district attorneys.
He's more interested in how his record will look on paper than in anything else.
He'd rather drop a doubtful case than try it and have it go against him.
I don't know that he ever deliberately framed anybody he believed innocent, but I can't imagine him letting himself believe them innocent if he could scrape up, or twist into shape, proof of their guilt.
To be sure of convicting one man he'll let half a dozen equally guilty accomplices go free—if trying to convict them all might confuse his case.
"That's the choice we'll give him and he'll gobble it up.
He wouldn't want to know about the falcon.
He'll be tickled pink to persuade himself that anything the punk tells him about it is a lot of chewing-gum, an attempt to muddle things up.
Leave that end to me.
I can show him that if he starts fooling around trying to gather up everybody he's going to have a tangled case that no jury will be able to make heads or tails of, while if he sticks to the punk he can get a conviction standing on his head."
Gutman wagged his head sidewise in a slow smiling gesture of benign disapproval.
"No, sir," he said, "I'm afraid that won't do, won't do at all.
I don't see how even this District Attorney of yours can link Thursby and Jacobi and Wilmer together without having to—"
"You don't know district attorneys," Spade told him.
"The Thursby angle is easy.
He was a gunman and so's your punk.
Bryan's already got a theory about that.
There'll be no catch there.
Well, Christ! they can only hang the punk once.
Why try him for Jacobi's murder after he's been convicted of Thursby's?
They simply close the record by writing it up against him and let it go at that.
If, as is likely enough, he used the same gun on both, the bullets will match up.
Everybody will be satisfied."
"Yes, but—" Gutman began, and stopped to look at the boy.
The boy advanced from the doorway, walking stiff-legged, with his legs apart, until he was between Gutman and Cairo, almost in the center of the floor.
He halted there, leaning forward slightly from the waist, his shoulders raised towards the front.
The pistol in his hand still hung at his side, but his knuckles were white over its grip.
His other hand was a small hard fist down at his other side.
The indelible youngness of his face gave an indescribably vicious—and inhuman—turn to the white-hot hatred and the cold white malevolence in his face.
He said to Spade in a voice cramped by passion:
"You bastard, get up on your feet and go for your heater!"
Spade smiled at the boy.
His smile was not broad, but the amusement in it seemed genuine and unalloyed.
The boy said:
"You bastard, get up and shoot it out if you've got the guts.
I've taken all the riding from you I'm going to take."
The amusement in Spade's smile deepened.
He looked at Gutman and said:
"Young Wild West."
His voice matched his smile.
"Maybe you ought to tell him that shooting me before you get your hands on the falcon would be bad for business."
Gutman's attempt at a smile was not successful, but he kept the resultant grimace on his mottled face.
He licked dry lips with a dry tongue.
His voice was too hoarse and gritty for the paternally admonishing tone it tried to achieve,
"Now, now, Wilmer," he said, "we can't have any of that.
You shouldn't let yourself attach so much importance to these things. You—"