“What do you think?” he asked. “Should we take him up on it?” O’Shay smoothed the tip of his narrow mustache. He hooked his thumb in his vest pocket. Then he sat still as stone, legs stretched out, heels in the sawdust, and when he finally spoke he stared at his feet as if addressing his fine boots. “Weeks is tired of lying low. He wants to come home from wherever he’s hiding, which is probably Brooklyn. But he’s afraid you’ll kill him.”

“He’s afraid I will kill him on your say-so,” Tommy corrected acidly. “And you will say so.”

“I already have,” Eyes O’Shay answered. “Your so-called Iceman—”

“My so-called Iceman!” Commodore Tommy erupted in tones of wrathful indignation.

“Your so-called Iceman, who you sent to Camden when I paid you five thousand dollars, allowed the only credible witness in that dance hall—a Van Dorn Agency detective, for the love of Mary—to witness him committing murder. When the Van Dorns catch up with him—and we know they will—or the cops nail him for some other transgression, the Van Dorns will ask, ‘Who’d you do murder for?’ And Weeks will answer, ‘Tommy Thompson and his old pal Eyes O’Shay, who we thought was dead but ain’t.’ ”

O’Shay looked up from his boots, expression noncommittal, and added, “Frankly, if I didn’t insist, you’d be screwy not to kill him on your own. You’ve got more to fear than I do. I can disappear, just like I done before. You’re stuck here. Everyone knows where to find the Commodore—on 39th in Commodore Tommy’s Saloon—and pretty soon the word will get around on your new joint on 53rd. Don’t forget, Van Dorns aren’t like cops. You can’t pay Van Dorns to look any other way than at you. Down a gun barrel.”

“So what do you think about Weeks offering to kill the witness?”

Eyes O’Shay pretended to ponder the question.

“I think Weeks is brave. Sensible. Practical. Maybe he has something up his sleeve. If not, then he’s firmly possessed by delusions of grandeur.”

The Gopher Gang boss blinked. “What does that mean?”

“ ‘Delusions of grandeur’? It means Weeks will have to get damned lucky to pull it off. But if he does kill the Van Dorn, your troubles are over.”

“The Iceman is tough,” Tommy said hopefully. “And he’s smart.”

O’Shay shrugged. “With a little luck, who knows?”

“With a little luck, the Van Dorn will kill him, and that it’ll be it for witnesses.”

“Either way, how can you lose? Tell him to give it a whirl.”

Thompson scrawled a cryptic reply on the back of Weeks’s note and shouted for the kid. “Get in here, you little bastard! Take this to wherever that scumbucket is hiding.”