Sammy Weiss once made seventeen passes in a row in a crap game where “two bits” meant twenty-five dollars, not a quarter. It was the event of his life, and they still tell the story around the Village and Lower East Side. It does not impress me. I was there.

But Sammy never forgot that once, briefly, he had been a big man. He was being the big man now where he sat in the only other chair in my one-room office.

“You swear I was with you twelve noon to two P.M.,” Weiss said, “and it’s a C-note for you.”

He was expansive, come to buy the services of a poor detective, but his shadowed Levantine eyes did not look at me. Weiss is short, fat and soft, and his eyes never look at anyone. He wears a clean shirt, but his suits never fit. His floral ties sport a diamond stickpin that went out of style long ago. His overcoat is too long and has a fur collar. The fur shows bare hide where it has rubbed so long against his fat neck.

“Make it two hundred,” he said. “I was with you, right?”

“You haven’t had two hundred at one time in ten years,” I said. “And I don’t buy.”

“Danny the Pirate, he’s so honest?”

The old nickname showed how long Weiss has known me. A relic of the ancient career in juvenile thievery that had cost me my arm. Unrecorded history, I’ve got no police record. All I have is a missing arm and old acquaintances like Weiss.

“I lost my arm, not my brains. My mother didn’t raise me to sell an alibi for two bills, and not in the dark.”

“Your mother I could of bought for a dollar!”

I closed my eyes. A cold wind was blowing down the air-shaft and through my single window. A Siberian blast that made my stump ache. I opened my eyes. You can’t really feel better by hitting a man weaker than you. At least, I never could. Maybe that’s why I never made my mark in the world.