latest repast had been cleared away when Gibson risked a personal question.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “why aren’t you gun-shy about coming to this place?”
“Why should I be?”
“Well...Jack mentioned that you’ve been seeing a dancer who Owney Madden considers his private property....”
Welles sipped a glass of beer. “That’s possibly true.”
“Aren’t you afraid you might run into the guy? I mean, he’s no kid, but his nickname is ‘the Killer.’ Which he earned because, well...he’s a killer.”
“That is the rumor.”
“I don’t think it’s a rumor. He did time for it.”
With grandiose patience, Welles said, “Walter, since Mr. Madden got out of ‘stir,’ as his crowd calls it—on his most recent sojourn of several years—he’s been doing his best to stay out of Winchell’s newspaper column.”
“You mean—he owns the joint, but doesn’t hang around here.”
“That’s right. His cronies may pass along my having frequented his establishment, which I’m sure will give Mr. Madden a few moments of...irritation. Just as I’m enjoying a few moments of amusement, contemplating as much.”
“But you don’t think he’ll do anything about it.”
“What can he do? I’m a public figure. He lays a hand on me, threatens me in any way, and, poof...he’s back in, yes, ‘stir.’ Anyway, I haven’t been seeing Tilly in some time. Weeks. I have other interests now.”
“Like your wife, you mean?”
Welles’s head tilted to one side; he sighed, but smiled as he did. “Do my excesses offend you, Walter?”
“I shouldn’t have said that. My apologies.”
“No, no, I understand. But I ask you to understand—I married too young. Before I’d sown my fair share of wild oats. And my nature is simply not monogamous. I’ve explained this to Virginia, and she must either learn to accept me, as I am, or we will, sadly, have to go our separate ways.”
Welles was intent on walking back to the Mercury, to check on the status of the stage repairs, and asked Gibson to keep him company. Glad for the chance to walk off the big meal, Gibson quickly accepted.
Now approaching two A.M., Broadway was still alive but just starting to wind down a bit. As he strolled alongside the big man in the flowing black cape and slouch hat, Gibson contemplated how successful Welles (that baby nose hidden by a false hawk beak, anyway) might truly be at bringing the Shadow to life on screen.
Of course, the Shadow persona was actually secondary: the suave, sophisticated, man-about-town millionaire who was the Shadow’s secret identity—Lamont Cranston—Welles embodied perfectly, not only physically, but in life.
As they passed a particularly dark alley, a pair of hands reached out and plucked Gibson from Welles’s side, yanking the writer into the darkness. Two other large figures emerged from the shadows and thrust Welles into the alley as well.
Suddenly the two men had their backs to a brick wall and a trio of burly thugs in overcoats and battered hats—two fedoras and a porkpie—stood before them like a tribunal as imagined by Damon Runyon.
The trio was swathed in shadow, but one thing stood out clearly: the .45 automatic in the hand of the largest of them, the fleshy one in the middle, wearing the porkpie hat.
Welles, indignant, said, “What do you want with us? You want our money? You can have it! Then go, and go to hell.”
Gibson said nothing; he was trembling—scared out of his wits.
The man with the gun said, “We don’t want your money. We want your undivided attention—get it?”
“I’ve got it,” Welles said, sneering.
“Think you’re pretty cute, lording it up at the boss’s own place. Well, you lay off that little dancer, or the next time we talk, this rod’ll do the talking.”
“Cheap patter,” Welles said, “from cheap hoods....”
“Orson,” Gibson said. “Let it go...”
The guy with the gun said to the thug at his right, “Give him something to remember us by, Louie...”
Louie raised a fist, but Welles stepped forward and slammed his own fist into the man’s belly. As Louie crumpled, the man with the gun took a step forward and Welles knocked the gun from his grasp, slapping the man’s hand as if knocking a toy from a child’s hand.
The sound of it, spinning away on the cement into the blackness, gave Gibson courage. He shoved the third hood, the one who’d grabbed him in the first place, and then the entire trio of oversized goons were tripping over themselves, as Welles pushed Louie into the fellow with the porkpie.
Then Welles ran from the alley, calling, “Taxi!”
Gibson, right behind him, sharp footsteps on the