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Neely.
        “Just the meanest bastard that comes in here.”
        “Where is he now?”
        “Home probably.” The worker nodded toward the girl with T.Z. “He goes home to his wife and kids, then sneaks back to see her.”
        “Sounds like an honorable man.”
        The worker scowled. “You wouldn’t take that tone with him.” And then, curiously, he broke into a smile. “And to prove it, here’s Mike now.”
        If you judged him by looks alone, you would have to side with the worker that this Mike did appear to be, anyway, the meanest bastard in the bar.
        He stunk of the preening bully. He was well over six feet, muscled in a fleshy but still firm way, and imposed himself on the scene around him by swaggering, glaring and carrying his right hand fisted, as if he were ready for anything instantly.
        Everybody in the bar knew him and so they watched with inordinate interest as he made his way to the table where his mistress currently sat with T.Z.
        The piano player stopped and the bartender started reaching for the ball bat bartenders always kept on hand.
        “Just who the hell is this?” Mike said.
        The girl, who was pretty in a sickly-kitten sort of way, said, “He’s my friend.”
        “You’re drunk,” Mike said. “You know I hate it when you’re drunk.”
        “I was just telling him how lonely I get.”
        At that, Neely had to smile. That, along with his looks, was one of the ways T.Z. had insinuated himself into so many beds. He loved sad tales-hell, he’d cry right along with his conquests-and so women always thought of him as a sympathetic listener.
        “It’s none of his damn business whether you’re lonely or not.”
        T.Z. said, in a good rich baritone, "You shouldn’t talk to her that way.”
        “You get the hell out of here and right now,” Mike said.
        “Maybe you’d better,” the girl said.
        “I won’t have you talked to that way.”
        By now the crowd was fascinated. T.Z., slender, with long dark hair and the sleek manner of a big-city man, did not look like the kind of man who should be talking back to Mike Dougherty. (If any man should be talking back to Mike Dougherty.)
        And Mike proved the crowd’s assumption correct.
        Faster than a big man should have been able to move, Mike reached down and grabbed T.Z. and jerked him to his feet.
        He had cocked his fist and was about to let go when T.Z. sprang his own surprise.
        He shot the sleeve of his right arm and in so doing placed a derringer right in the face of the meanest bastard in the tavern.
        At this point, Neely moved fast.
        They had work to do tonight and he didn’t want it ruined by some tavern brawl, where the police got dragged in and T.Z. and Neely became familiar to them.
        “You make one more move and you’re dead,” T.Z. said. T.Z.’s voice had the same kind of swagger in it that Mike’s body had had a few minutes ago. T.Z. always felt very good about himself when he had a gun in his hand.
        Neely went over and slid his arm expertly between the two men. He pushed them apart.
        “Now, is this really worth pain and suffering for?” Neely said, sounding not unlike a priest. (Before he’d lost his faith, the year his three-year-old sister died of typhoid thanks to the Chicago sewer system, he had seriously considered being a priest.)
        “He’s with my girl.”
        “Merely talking to her,” Neely said easily. “Merely talking.”
        “Then why’s she bawling?”
        Neely smiled. Looked about. “Is there a man here whom liquor has not turned into a melancholic?”
        No man could deny Neely’s truth.
        “And that’s all that’s happened to your girl. The liquor saddened her heart.”
        “I’m going to sadden her face,” said Mike. This got a laugh from the