"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.

"Sure it does," Manelli said. "But there was a foul-up someplace,
because the win animal was disqualified and nobody heard about it
until after a lot of payoffs were made. That costs money." He stopped.
"I mean it would cost money, if it happened," he finished.

"Sure," Malone said. "Certainly would."

"And you tell me it's not the FBI?" Manelli said.

"That's right," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, we're investigating
things like these confusions and inefficiencies all over."

Manelli finished his drink in one long, amazed swallow. "Now, wait a
minute,