Page:The Shame of the Cities.djvu/85

 down to South Minneapolis to visit a friend. Norbeck and Detective DeLaittre were on the car. When Norbeck saw me he came up and shook hands, and said, ‘Hullo, Billy, how goes it?’ I said, ‘Not very well.’ Then he says, ‘Things have changed since you went away. Me and Gardner are the whole thing now. Before you left they thought I didn’t know anything, but I turned a few tricks, and now I’m It.’ ‘I’m glad of that, Chris,’ I said. He says, ‘I’ve got great things for you. I’m going to fix up a joint for you.’ ‘That’s good,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe you can do it.’ ‘Oh, yes, I can,’ he replied. ‘I’m It now—Gardner and me.’ ‘Well, if you can do it,’ says I, ‘there’s money in it.’ ‘How much can you pay?’ he asked. ‘Oh, $150 or $200 a week,’ says I. ‘That settles it,’ he said; ‘I’ll take you down to see Gardner, and we’ll fix it up.’ Then he made an appointment to meet me the next night, and we went down to Gardner’s house together.”

There Gardner talked business in general, showed his drawer full of bills, and jokingly asked how Edwards would like to have them. Edwards says:

“I said, ‘That looks pretty good to me,’ and Gardner told us that he had ‘collected’ the money from the women he had on his staff, and that he was going to pay it over to the ‘old man’ when