Thrown-away Child

said to me, lips pursed. He stood close to me, close enough so I could smell Tabasco on his breath.
    Vonny stopped pinwheeling as he regained his breath. He reached out for a nearby cuff of Hippo’s striped trousers though, like a drowning man grasping after a life preserver. Hippo moved his foot away.
    “You got me wrong, Hippo,” I said. “If I was a poltroon, I’d do this.” Whereupon I kicked Vonny in his side, just below his rib cage so as not to leave a bruise—which is another useful academy lesson that works every time. Vonny lost his breath all over again.
    “Vonny,” Hippo said, bending slightly from his plentiful waist to be sure he was heard, “don’t you think it’s time you toddled on out of here? Let me alone for a chin with our distinguished visitor from New York City?”
    Sergeant LeMay recovered enough of his dignity to reach for his revolver. I let him pull it out from his belt before kicking the thing out of his hand, not caring this time if I bruised him. The gun went flying from Vonny’s hand past the big aldermanic desk to the other side, but not without first discharging and making a rude hole in one of the leaded-glass windows gracing Hippo’s Tammany Heaven.
    “Gott-dammit, Vonny!” Hippo stepped over and gave the fallen sergeant a kick of his own. “Now look what you done.”
    “Oh—Hippo, you’re all right?” Pretty came bustling into the office, hands wild with fright, yellow hair flying. She paid no mind to Vonny pulling himself up from the floor. “Did I just hear what I thought I heard?”
    “You surely did, gal.” Hippo pointed to the hole in the window. “Look what this moron here done to my office.”
    “Which moron?” Pretty asked.
    “Come on now, that’s easy. Which of these here two po-lice officers looks like he’s got a head full of room to rent?”
    The blonde pointed to Vonny.
    “Notice how she didn’t hesitate,” I said to Vonny. Vonny had learned some sense by now and kept quiet. He rubbed his sore breastbone. I picked his panama up off the floor and handed it to him.
    “I’d like you to show this here no-color moron the hell out of my office,” Hippo said to Pretty. “Looking at him’s giving me the all-over creeps.” He walked around back of Vonny and gave him a shove in the general direction of the door while giving his receptionist some further instructions. “Then I’d like for you to locate the damn po-lice commissioner down to whatever whorehouse he’s patronizing these days. Get him on the blower. I got a po-lice abuse complaint to pass along to him.”
    “The Chrysler’s down in the driveway waiting for you,” I said to Vonny’s back. “Later when I’m downstairs myself, I’ll be asking the old fellow in the uniform how you treated him—what sort of tip you gave him. Make me proud, Vonny.”
    “Darling, you best call up a glazier, too,” Hippo called after Pretty as she closed the door on us. “Get him over here fast as you can.”
    Hippo put his hands on his hips, turned, and looked up at the bullet hole in his window. “Damn, that’s not good, not good a-tall.”
    “That kind of pane in a fancy lead frame like that, it’s going to take a real artisan to fix it,” I said. “Which is going to cost you plenty.”
    “Price don’t matter. But breaking glass, that’s ominous.”
    “It is?”
    “I don’t mean just something you drink out of and maybe you so drunk you let it slip out your hand and it smashes to the floor. I’m talking about the window to a man’s place of bidness.”
    Hippo shook his head and rubbed his hands together. His face was flushed and sweaty. So it was not hard to sense that the man was genuinely upset about the broken window, not to mention that he was superstitious. He just stood there staring at the laser of sunlight piercing through into his Tammany Heaven.
    “Man, I need me a capital-D drink,” he said.
    Hippo hurried over to the office bar. This was a handsome wedge of mahogany with a brass rail in front and a smoky mirror in back. There were glass shelves under the mirror with a stock of everything— including, I noticed, my old friend Mr. Walker’s red and black labels. Hippo stepped around to the back of the bar and took down a fifth of Jack Daniel’s. The bottle had one of those bartender spouts fitted into the neck. Hippo ripped this out and gurgled the whiskey good and fast into a tumbler.
    “ ’Scuse me to hell and back.” He took a long swai low, then put a