“YOU’RE through, Moran. And you can thank me for that.” It made my guts squirm to listen to this creepy cop, this Lieutenant Elmer Hoke.
He was telling me my fortune . . . no future at all! Three years ago I’d come out to the West Coast, had spent all that time and all my dough trying to make a go of the Joe Moran Agency, and now Hoke was running me out of California.
That’s what he thought. The future had its own ideas: a dancing girl playing post office with crime, a redheaded kid dreaming about Three Bears, an ex-carnie hardshot cracking a bullwhip, a deafie reading lips in a night-club, a Mr. Murder spinning the Hot and Cold valves . . .
heLet me tell you about the last, dying hours of Friday, March 19.
Hoke’s a lanky, big-boned cop with a sour look on his hatchet face. As he talke
