Louie sighed for an answer. He raised his hand to his face because he had a gesture of stroking his nose, but halfway up he decided against it.

“This can’t go on,” he said. “All this for who’s gonna put a jukebox in my place, I ask you?”

I walked back and forth in the room a few times, around all the furniture, because I certainly didn’t know what to say to Louie.

When it came to a thing like Benotti, the fact was, we were hardly set up for a thing like that any more. The man had blossomed out on us just a little too fast. He’s a backlot electrician; he’s a hustler who wants to put a jukebox into a bar; then suddenly he turns into a hood who strongarms one of my customers. And all this time, neither Lippit nor I knew who Benotti was.

“Jack,” said Louie. “I’m real sorry, but this can’t go on.”

I nodded but his good eye wasn’t turned my way and he just heard the silence and thought I was thinking.

“So you got something figured?” he asked me.

I didn’t have anything figured. I said, “Have you seen a doctor, Louie?” but that wasn’t the right reply for what he wanted to know, namely what would Lippit and I do about this and how would we help Louie.

He asked all that, a small old man with his face beaten up, sitting there in his old furniture and me shiny and bright with a tuxedo and no answers.

“Not to speak of,” he said, “what this kind of thing’s gonna do to your organization.”

I stopped pacing and feeling like hell. “You didn’t have to say that, Louie. A lousy thing like that.”

I felt angry now, which was better than feeling like hell, because mostly it makes me active. There was a phone in the room and I called up a doctor. I gave him Louie’s address and told him to hurry it up. Then I put the phone down and sat down opposite Louie.

“Now from the beginning,” I said. “This Benotti comes in, gets a no answer, then beats you.”