By now there was blood on his face where his nose had been, and, seeing my client head for the door, I resolved to roll the credits, and I hit him just a little too hard with my right. Too hard for my fist, that is. Even as Primo was going down like a telegraph pole, I was shaking my hand. It already showed a degree of swelling. Meanwhile, something hit the floor of the gym like a coconut falling off a docker’s hoist—his head, probably—and the fight, such as it was, had ended.

For a moment I stood over my latest victim like the Colossus at Rhodes, but I might as easily have looked like the outsized doorman at the Rio Rita bar down the street. There was a short murmur of approval, not for my triumph, but for the delivery of a well-executed hook, and, still flexing my hand, I knelt down anxiously to see what damage I had caused. Another man got there before me. It was the man with the face like a medicine ball.

“Is he all right?” I asked, genuinely concerned.

“He’ll be fine,” was the reply. “You just knocked some sense into him, that’s all. Give him a couple of minutes, he’ll be telling us all how you caught him with a lucky one.”

He took hold of my hand and looked at it.

“Sure, it’s some ice you’ll be needing on that handle, and no mistake. Here. Come with me. But make it quick. Before that idiot comes around. Frankel’s the boss here.”

I followed my Samaritan into a small kitchen, where he opened a refrigerator and then handed me a canvas bag full of ice cubes.

“Keep your hand in there for as long as you can bear it,” he ordered.

“Thanks.” I put my hand in the bag.

He shook his head. “You were looking for the Turk, you said.”

I nodded.

“He’s not in any trouble, is he?” In the corner of his mouth was a ten-pfennig Lilliput, which he now removed and inspected critically.

“Not from me. I just wanted him to look at a picture and see if he recognizes the guy.”