One of the men laughed and they both came in beside him again and very close.
“We’ve been chasing you, stupid,” the one who was laughing told him. “Mae’s got a party going and she asked me to bring you. Seeing as how we’ve been watching you buy that red thing, you can’t pretend to us you won’t be in the mood for the Mae bit tonight.”
The big fellow didn’t relax the scowl. “If you move so I can get out,” he said, “I’ll see you over at Mae’s later.” It was still the husky whisper. He sounded as though he had lost his voice, was trying to get it back, and wasn’t making it.
They moved over as far as the convertible where they held a whispered huddle. After a moment, the huddle at the curb broke up. More exactly it moved around the Cadillac to the car that was double-parked outside it. They went in that same formation they had held in crossing to the curb. The big man was in the middle. The two others were beside him, one on either side, and they walked close. The one who had done all the laughing and talking got in the car and big boy got in beside him. He was still clutching his parcel in his massive mitt. With his free hand he was passing over a ring with keys on it to the remaining man. That third one hadn’t gotten into the car.
Gibby made a quick dash out into the street. I went with him. We met the one with the key ring just as he was turning toward the Cadillac. It was close quarters there between the parked cars and Gibby kept going almost as though the man wasn’t there. Gibby rammed right into him and pushed him backwards. When Gibby came to a standstill, he had the man backed tight against the car and there was no question that he was holding him there.
“What the hell?” the man said, clawing ineffectually at Gibby’s arm.
Gibby ignored him and talked past him to the big boy with the yellow face.
“Anything we can do for you, mister?” he asked. “It looks as though you’re in trouble.”
The big boy went some shades yellower. “Trouble?” he repeated, stupidly echoing Gibby’s word.
“These two ganging up on you?” Gibby asked.
The vocal one of the pair had had his foot on the starter. Now he took it off and laughed again.
“Us gang up on him?” he said. “He could whip the two of us with one hand tied behind his back.”
“How about taking him with both hands tied behind his back?” Gibby asked. “You could handle him then, couldn’t you? Especially with a gun.”
The man stopped laughing. “Look, mister,” he growled, “maybe you’re drunk or something. Maybe you’ll go away now and bother someone else.”
“Your buddy here hasn’t the gun,” Gibby said. “He’s clean.”
As though he were demonstrating the fact on the man he had crowded against the side of the car, Gibby slapped him smartly in all the standard, concealed-weapons places.
“You’re not drunk,” the man behind the wheel said. “I can see that. What’s with you anyway? You take it in the arm?”
“District Attorney’s Office,” Gibby said and brought out his credentials.
None of the three even bothered to look at them. I’ve never seen people more easily convinced.
The man who had been doing the talking climbed out from behind the wheel.
He was talking as he came. “I suppose I could start yelling,” he said. “I have a hunch there’s all kinds of rights I have in a thing like this, but what the hell, you want to feel me up, mister, go ahead. Have your fun. Only look out you don’t tickle. People tickle me, I get the hiccups and when I get them I go on forever.”
He came around into that narrow space between the cars and he put his arms up at his sides. Gibby ran him over.
I don’t know whether I had been expecting a gun or just hoping for one. This was one of those limbs Gibby goes out on and when you’re out that far, brother, look out. You had better be right. This character did have all kinds of rights and Gibby was walking over every last one of them. He didn’t find a gun. He didn’t yield an inch. He wasn’t letting them see it was bothering him. I hoped vaguely that I was managing to play it as deadpan. I had a feeling anyone could have seen how much it was bothering me.
“No gun,” Gibby said. “What’s the setup?”
“Setup? We’re friends. We spot his car in traffic. You’ll give us that. It’s no trouble to spot. We want him on a party we’re having, so we pick him up. I know we’re double-parked, but it’s only for a minute and since when is the DA’s office handing out the traffic tickets?”
Gibby looked to the big boy. He was still hanging on to his package and he hadn’t found his voice. He had to try twice before he made even the husky whisper come.
“They’re my friends,” he said. “We’re going to be late for the party. The dames, they’ll get sore we keep them waiting.”
“Okay,” Gibby said, stepping back out of it. “Have fun.”
“We can go now?” It was the man who hadn’t bothered to yell for his rights who did the speaking.
Gibby nodded.
“Thanks,” the man murmured with only the smallest edge of sarcasm on it. He slid back behind the wheel and put his foot on the starter again. “See you,” he said to the man he was leaving with us.
With a wave of his hand, he pulled away. He was carrying New York plates. Gibby wrote down the number.
The man who had the Cadillac keys shook them and made them jingle. “Brother,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. “You nearly tore that one.”
Gibby looked at him coldly. “Feel like talking?” he asked.
“Only to ask how come you didn’t smell the liquor on his breath,” the man said. “How far do you think he can drive with all that liquor in him before he’s pinched or even has an accident? This isn’t the first time we’ve talked him out from behind the wheel. You don’t know, but I do. He can be stubborn. Stubborn, and how. He’s all right now. I’ll put the Caddy in the garage for him and I don’t turn up with the keys till he’s slept it off. What did you think we were doing? Kidnaping the little fellow?”
“I didn’t like his looking so yellow,” Gibby said, “and getting much yellower the minute he saw you.”
“It’s an old story with him. He isn’t pretty when he’s drinking.”
The man got into the Cadillac. He was all affability now. He even asked if he couldn’t drop us off somewhere.
We weren’t going anywhere just then. I shook myself to get some of the creep out of my flesh. “It’s a good thing they were that nice about it,” I said. “There’s the time you really went overboard.”
He talked right past my words. “They didn’t look like male nurses,” he said. “Even working in pairs, male nurses should be bigger.”
“They said they were his friends and so did he,” I said. “You went over both of them and no guns. What’s wrong with believing them?”
“They didn’t look like friends,” Gibby insisted. “When two men close in on a third that way and crowd him that close, they’re letting him feel that they’ve got guns on him and he hasn’t got a chance.”
I didn’t even attempt to argue that the thing hadn’t looked that way. Just on the way the men had closed in on either side of Yellowface, on the way they had moved with him to the curb, on the way they had taken him to the car, it could have been a Police Academy demonstration of how a pair of gangsters might pull off a snatch out in the public street. I stuck with the point I could make. Appearances had been deceptive. It hadn’t been at all as it had looked. Gibby