Wolff was against it, I think, but higher authority called the tune. If Wolff had been the kind of man who took an exaggerated pride in his work maybe he could have had his way, but he was no absolute dictator of circumstance. He let it go. Maria Kenrian wasn’t there. She had left it all up to me, for the time being. She had left the conversation of the previous day hanging limp and unfinished. She was waiting. It was my move. I knocked the kid clean off his feet in three. I did it quite calmly and with not the slightest hint of malice aforethought. I could even have pretended I was doing it for his own good, but I didn’t. I pretended, instead, that I was doing it for mine. It was a clean K.O.—I didn’t have to beat him up much to set him up for it. He was then disposed of. He had made his point—or Maria’s point. We washed our collective hands of him and sent him back to oblivion with his fists full of money and his nervous twitch intact.
