“Those greasy sons of bitches would need my know-how at first,” Ragen told me, “but then some fine morning you’d find me gutted in an alley, with my dick stuffed in my mouth.”

“And then what would you have to say for yourself?” I asked.

“And this guy Siegel is a fruitcake,” Ragen said, distastefully, ignoring my remark, shifting in the client’s chair across from my desk. “They call him ‘Bugsy’ and it fits.”

It seems Guzik, in response to Ragen’s rebuffs, had set up a rival wire, Trans-American, in cooperation with the East Coast version of the Outfit, the Combination; the West Coast branch of Trans-American was under this fellow Ben Siegel.

I nodded. “I’ve heard of the guy. Out of the old ‘Bugs and Meyer’ gang in New York. What’s he doing in California, anyway?”

Ragen snorted. “Hanging around with movie stars. Screwing starlets. Pushing his wire service down people’s throats. He’s a thug in a two-hundred-dollar suit.”

“Have you had any run-ins with him?”

“His people roughed up my son-in-law out there-pretty bad,” he said, referring to Russell Brophy, who ran the L.A. Continental office. “The lad went to the hospital over it.”

“No offense, Jim,” I said, with gentle sarcasm, “but there was a day when you used the strongarm approach yourself-back when you were circulation chief for the Herald and Examiner? It proved successful, as I recall.”

Ragen waved that off; then he smirked humorlessly, saying, “Well, the crazy bastard has cut into me, some-in California and other points west. He owns a horse store downtown in Las Vegas, and he’s got that little desert flyspeck in his pocket…” Some humor drifted into the smirk. “…though some of the Vegas boys are paying for my wire, too.”

I tapped my finger on my desk. Said, “I think you should consider selling out. You’re, what? Sixty-five? You can retire and take the Outfit’s dough and get your sons into something legitimate.”