excerpt
“I’m afraid there will always be prostitution underground,
George. That old place is kind of pitiful these days, isn’t it?”
“It has a good poker game, Jeremy. That’s all I want to know.”
“I think I’ve heard that our mayor has been known to turn a card
or two down there.”
“I’ve turned a few myself,” Pearson said. “That’s no secret. We
had a little game the other night and it led to something I don’t feel
quite right about. Pete Torgerson asked me to show up at the
council meeting and speak against hobos. I’ve never lost much
sleep over a few vagrants spending the night in the open and getting
free transportation, but I said I’d weigh in. We go back a long
way.”
“Why he thinks it’s an election issue escapes me,” Jeremy said. “I
have a feeling that he’s using the hobo matter to get at little Poodie
James. Poodie sticks in Torgerson’s craw somehow. You know,
when my boy Sonny’s kids were little, Poodie helped them learn to
swim. He taught half the kids in town, I think.”
“Yes, I thought about that, “ Pearson said. “If Poodie’s caught in
the net, it’ll upset my daughter something awful. We haven’t done
right by Poodie.”
“Who hasn’t?” Jeremy said.
“The town. He deserved better treatment.”
“As far as I know,” Jeremy said, “the last time anyone had anything
against Poodie was back in the twenties. He had been in
town only a few months. Some fellas beat him up in the middle of
the night, pulled him right out of his little pickers cabin and
clubbed him. The same thing happened to some hobos around that
time. Every few weeks, one of them would turn up at the hospital
all bloodied and bruised. There was a pattern. It always happened
when they were asleep, they were always alone and a big man in
black clubbed them. But with Poodie, it was different. There were
three of them. Dan Thorp was mad as hell, but he had no idea who
did it. All he knew was that some hobo friends of Poodie’s heard
the commotion and came down from the jungle and chased the
fellas out of there. Poodie said the hobos had one of the thugs
Libros Libertad 