Manelli took another swallow of his drink, fished in a jacket pocket and brought out two cigars. “Smoke, Mr. Malone?” he said. “The very best, from Havana, Cuba. Cost me a dollar and a half each.” Malone looked with longing at the cigar. But it was okay for Manelli to smoke cigars, he thought bitterly. Manelli was a gangster, and who cared how he looked? Malone was an FBI man, and FBI men didn’t smoke cigars. Particularly Havana cigars. That, he told himself with regretful firmness, was that. “No, thanks,” he said. “I never smoke on duty.” Manelli shrugged and put one cigar away. He lit the other one and dense clouds of smoke began to rise in the room. Malone breathed deeply. “I understand you’ve been having troubles,” he said. Manelli nodded. “Now, you see, Mr. Malone?” he said. “You tell me you don’t know what’s happening, but you know I got troubles. How come, Mr. Malone? How come?” “Because you have got troubles,” Malone said. “But I have nothing to do with them.” He hesitated, thought of adding: “Yet,” and decided against it. “Now, Mr. Malone,” Manelli said. “You know better than that.” “I do?” Malone said. Manelli sighed, took another swallow of his drink and dragged deeply on the cigar. “Let’s take a for-instance,” he said. “Now, you understand my business is advertising, Mr. Malone?” “It’s in your blood,” Malone said, involuntarily. “Right,” Manelli said. “But I think about things. I like to figure things out. In a sort of a theoretical way, like a for-instance. Understand?” “What sort of theoretical story are you going to tell me?” Malone said. Manelli leaned back in his chair. “Let’s take, for instance, some numbers runners who had some trouble the other day, got beat up and money taken from them. Maybe you read about it in the papers.” “I haven’t been following the papers much,” Malone said. “That’s all right,” Manelli said grandly. “Maybe it wasn’t _in_ the papers. But anyhow, I figured out maybe that happened. I had nothing to do with this, Mr. Malone; you understand that? But I figured out how maybe it happened.” “How?” Malone said. Manelli took another puff on his cigar. “Maybe there was an error at a racetrack—we could say Jamaica, for instance, just for laughs. And maybe two different totals were published for the pari-mutuel numbers, and both got given out. So the numbers runners got all fouled up, so they got beat up and money taken from them.” “It could have happened that way,” Malone said. “I figure maybe the FBI had something to do with this,” Manelli said. “We didn’t,” Malone said. “Frankly.” “And that’s not all,” Manelli said. “Let’s say at Jamaica one day there was a race.” “All right,” Malone said agreeably. “That doesn’t require a whole lot of imagination.” “And let’s say,” Manelli went on, “that the bookies—if there are any bookies in this town; who knows?—that they got the word about who came in, win, place and show.” “Sounds natural,” Malone said.