Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 2, April 1961

Johnny lighted a cigarette and watched Harry’s fat figure return to the bar. Hell, is he plugging for Mahoney? He knows better than that. He must be sampling his stuff here.

Johnny’s eyes went back to the stiletto on the table. He used to do some pretty sharp knife-throwing when he was a kid. Just for kicks. But, for some screwy reason, he’d never wanted to throw that stiletto. He glanced at Harry and stiffened against thoughts he couldn’t shake.

Harry was never meant to be any kind of hood. But it was that night in the alley, fifteen years ago, when Johnny had know that he could go only so far with it himself. He could still feel the pain that had filled him when he’d looked at Dom. And he couldn’t forget the dark torture in Harry’s eyes as Johnny had tried to hand him his brother’s knife.

“You keep it,” Harry had said in a trance-like tone. “You... you loved him too.”

At fifteen, they’d long ago forgotten how to cry. But that night as they’d stared through the dark, each had seen the other’s hate for the thing that still hovered in the alley.

And the surest damned way to find that kind of thing, Johnny brought himself angrily from the past, is to try to stop it.

“Never saw you take three in a row before, Johnny,” Harry’s tone seemed odd to Johnny as he set the new drink down.

“You pushing for the temperance league or something?” Johnny asked coldly. But inside every nerve was suddenly raw. I’ve got to get out of this dump, he told himself.

“Johnny Manse,” the bartender smiled, as Johnny swallowed his drink and stood up, “smoothest operator in the business. Dressed like a Wall Street broker and cold as a marble slab.”

The smile never wavered, but Johnny saw now that the dark eyes were studying him. “Don’t nothin’ bug you anymore, Johnny?”

A funny feeling came over him as he realized that Harry was the only guy in the world he couldn’t — or wouldn’t — con. “Sure, Harry — sure, lots of things bug me. Cops, for instance.”

That was an old joke, too, but he saw the tension leave the fat face, and he knew he’d been understood.

Outside, Johnny hailed a cab and climbed in. That damned Harry must be gettin’ squirelly, he told himself, as he settled against the seat. What kind of a crack was that to make? Does he expect me to do something about this? Johnny Manse had stayed alive this long by minding his own business. A guy was either on one side of the fence or the other. He made his choice and took his chances. Pop was no exception.

But inside the con man there was a Johnny who knew different. This Johnny was a ragged little kid on Lacy Street looking up into the face of an Irish cop, who held a bag of peppermint sticks.

“Hell!” Johnny pulled out his cigarettes and jammed one in his mouth. I’m getting sappier than Harry. Mahoney sent Cole to the pen for ten years and no sack of candy is going to make Cole forget it. This is the kind of thing nobody meddles with.

In the living room of his apartment, Johnny stood in his bathrobe trying to open a bottle of cognac, when he decided he needed his knife. He went to the closet and searched the pockets of his suit. Finding nothing, he got his topcoat and went through it. The knife wasn’t there.

An alarm swept over him that seemed unreasonable. He had no need for weapons. He hated them. Yet Dom’s stiletto was something else.

He went slowly back to the living room and poured a drink of bourbon while he thought of the fine bone and tempered steel. He had never been without the little knife since he’d owned it.

Johnny emptied his glass and walked restlessly to the window. Looking out over the smudged and throbbing city, he wondered how Cole planned to give it to Mahoney. Would it be like it had been with Dom?

A little dog wormed his way through the traffic below and Johnny thought of the pup Mahoney had once given him for Christmas. A hundred years ago! Johnny sneered and turned abruptly from the window.

Cole’s good with a shiv — equally good with a rod. Pop’s old — not very quick anymore — he won’t be expecting it. Suddenly Johnny saw the Irish Cop’s face lying in the pool of blood where he’d last seen Dominick Donato.

His hand shook as he poured another drink and tried to remember all the times Pop had hauled him in or fouled up a job for him. But all he could think of were the hundreds of times Mahoney had tried to steer him away from the rackets.