Kevin looked at Honey. He loved looking at her profile. She had a cute nose like the girls in the Jantzen swimming suit ads. She didn’t act like she knew she was a knockout, but he would bet she did and knew how to use her looks without letting on too much.
“You want to meet him if he comes?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Honey said. “But why would he bother seeing me?”
“Walter,” Kevin said. “He wants you along when he talks to him.”
Four
Every time Carl approached the Mayo he thought of the guy who tried to shoot him in the back as he entered the hotel. The Black Hand extortion guy ten years ago. With an Italian name Carl couldn’t think of. The doorman that day had been holding one of the doors open for Carl. He started in and the glass in the door next to him and in the door swinging closed behind him both shattered, blown apart with the sound of high-caliber gunfire and now tires screaming, the Ford coupe gone by the time Carl came around with his Colt revolver.
Today the same doorman was holding the door open, Marvin, a black guy, Marvin asking Carl as he approached the entrance how he was this spring morning. Now looking past Carl and saying, “Uh-oh,” under his breath. “Man has a gun.”
Carl stopped. He heard his name called and turned to see a young guy in black holding a big heavy show-off nickel-plate automatic against his leg, the shoulders of his suit wide, zooty, the pants pegged at his light-tan shoes. There he was, a full head of black hair shining in the hotel lights, a young gangster, Italian or Jewish, here to shoot Carl Webster. If the kid was Jewish he’d be a kin of the Tedesco brothers, Tutti and Frankie Bones from the Purple Gang. That time in Okmulgee they came around on him pulling their guns, Carl fired twice and the Tedescos went down.