Skip ran for the front of the club, out upon the sidewalk, across Virginia Street, down the block, around the corner beside a bank. Here was a cross street, not as crowded, no gambling clubs but cafés and small stores. He went into a souvenir store and pretended interest in some painted ties; and then in another two minutes the cop was out there, staring in at him.

There wasn’t anything else to do. Skip grabbed for the little gun in his pants pocket, the tiny toy he had inherited from Stolz. The little gun spoke quickly and willingly, and a spray of little holes danced across the plate glass at the front of the store. The cop ducked. Something big and black sprang into his hand. The sound it made was nothing like the small pockety - pock of Skip’s tiny automatic. It went booomp.

Skip went down, clutching the rack of ties.

He had three bullets in his liver, one in his groin, and by the time he reached the hospital in the city ambulance he had only moments to live. A nurse bent over him, asking his name, his home address, and Skip spoke to her in return.

The doctor came toward the stretcher with a hypo in his hand. “What did he tell you?” he asked of the nurse.

“I can’t repeat it,” she said. “It was too nasty.”

The doctor reached for Skip’s arm, then suddenly for his pulse. But Skip was dead.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Eddie woke at about daybreak. He was chilled, his muscles stiffened by the long hours in the seat of the car. He had spent a lot of time in thought; and the conclusion, though he hated to face it, was that he did not have money enough to repair the jalopp, even if the old car had been worth it.

He hitched a ride eastward with a chicken farmer who had a pickup with crates of white leghorn fryers in the back. The old man chewed snuff and talked about raising pullets and the price of chicken feed and how much he got for chicken manure and feathers. Eddie learned for the first time, though he didn’t think about it long, that chicken feathers were used for fertilizer.

At a roadside garage Eddie got out, while the chicken farmer waited for him, and rang the night bell. The mechanic stuck his head out of a window at the back. “Yeah?” Eddie went back there to talk to him. He described what had happened to the car, its age and condition, and the mechanic shook his head. “Tell you what, after I’ve finished breakfast I’ll run out there and take a look at it. Won’t cost you nothing,” he added, perhaps because Eddie showed so few signs of having a bankroll. “Where you headed now?”

“L.A.”