[John Cronin Private Eye 01] • Barbary Street Incident, a John Cronin Private Eye Short Story

"Ten minutes can be a long time. I guess it was even longer for Caesar than it was for me. He was the one that was to get it. Even at that, he was taking it better than I was. Everything seemed calm. Little Caesar played solitaire, back to the door. The bartender watched him as he turned the cards slowly. Mona breathed regularly against my chest, soundly sleeping. Only I was nervous. My thoughts rambled. I wondered where Mona lived, and what she was doing mixed up with a gang of murderers. She looked like a nice kid. She hadn’t lived an easy life, I could tell. Just a poor, lonely girl struggling to live in a damned rough world. And Little Caesar — he must have had a mother. Someone to love him, to rock him to sleep when he was a kid. But now look at him. A giant who could rule the world, just sitting there waiting to die by the hand of some gunman."