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There were 20 or so folk lined up at the bar of the Florida when I steered Lola to one of the individually-lighted side tables. She was a sweet kid. I’d known her since she was 12 and wearing pig-tails, and she looked upon me as a big brother.

‘What’ll it be?’ asked the waiter, as he turned on the table lamp and dabbed at imaginary crumbs.

‘Two Old-Fashioneds and sandwiches,’ I told him. ‘Okay with you, Lola?’

‘Suits me fine,’ she said and began pushing her hair about with the tips of her fingers in the way that women do. She looked right cute, sitting there with her big eyes smiling over towards the bar. I reminded myself again that I’d have to give this big brother stuff the pay-off. I’d been meaning to do so a long time, but being away from home so long hadn’t given me a chance to get stuck into the idea.

Lola was cute enough to have lots of fellas playing around in her back garden, although it never got so crowded she couldn’t spend an evening with me whenever I got back into town.

‘Those guys sure are stewed,’ she commented, nodding her bead towards the bar.

I took a quick gander at them. Judging by the way the bartender sweated, they’d been keeping him busy.

‘He sets ’em up; we drink ’em down,’ Lola murmured.

‘What a job,’ I said, thinking of the bartender.

‘Yeah. It’s hell to live,’ she said, and there was bitterness in her voice.

‘Isn’t that Arden Jnr over there?’ I said quickly, to change the conversation. Lola was always bitter about her job. She’d had a fine chance of graduating to college after passing her exams with honours. But just then her father had died and Lola had elected to go out to work to keep her bedridden mother. I reckoned modelling dresses was a job Lola could do ten times better than the next, but deep down inside, she resented having to miss that opportunity. But she kept a stiff upper lip. I doubt if any other person, apart from me, ever guessed how much of a sacrifice she’d made.

‘You can’t see straight,’ she said.

‘That’s through being dazzled by you.’ It was a weak rejoinder, but it changed the line of conversation.

‘More likely that blonde over there dazzled you.’

I’m not saying that Lola mightn’t have been right. There certainly was an eyeful of blonde perched on a high stool. She had legs, too. From where I was sitting you couldn’t doubt she had legs. Those high stools may be uncomfortable to sit on but they have their advantages.

‘Hey, remember me?’ said Lola.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, tearing my eyes away from the two points of interest.

‘Not that I want to stand in your way, honey,’ said Lola. ‘But the fella with her looks tough enough to take a swing at competition.’

I guess Lola was right there too. He was a young, fine-built six-footer. You could tell right away that his shoulders weren’t all padding. He was some hero. And judging by the way he was looking into the blonde’s eyes, he was sure swallowed up on her.

It was just at that moment that the drunk sitting next to the Hero clumsily tipped his glass over so that beer flooded along the bar. It swirled around the Hero’s elbow and cascaded into the Blonde’s lap.

It all happened so quickly that the damage had been done before anyone realised it.

The Blonde reacted first. She gave a scream, leaped off the stool as though it was red-hot and began dabbing at her lap. She was just about ten times quicker off the mark than her boyfriend. He kinda stared, stupefied, until his sleeve soaked up sufficient moisture to penetrate to his arm, and then he was off his stool with a ‘Say, what the hell?’

‘Shorry,’ said the drunk, waving his arm and nearly sending another glass flying. ‘Doan marrew. I’ll buy nuther. Nuther drin there.’ He banged on the counter. ‘Hey, bring me nuther drin, willya?’

The Hero was one of those fellas with an ugly temper. He may have been slow off the mark, but once be got around to figuring things out, he liked to do things thoroughly.

‘Say, did you upset that beer?’ he asked.

‘Doan marrew. Buy nuther. No ’arm, no ’arm.’

‘No harm, eh? Just look at this lady’s dress.’

‘Doan wanna look. Doan worry. Doan like the place, go somewhere else.’

The drunk obviously wasn’t himself. Most fellas would have cursed him roundly and left it at that. But the Hero wasn’t made that way. It happened so quickly that I didn’t realise he was moving fast for a change, until I saw his fingers digging into the drunk’s throat.

‘Why, you little rat …’ he began.

The Blonde got hold of his arm and tried to pull him away; the bartender got his arms in between the two men and began to lever; two or three of the bar-leaners got up so quickly that their stools rocked over backwards; and right in the middle of it the double doors burst open and three grim, menacing figures spread themselves across the entrance.

The Hero didn’t see them, but the Blonde did, and the scream she gave was so full of horror that it cut through all the rest of the hubbub. For a moment everything looked like a motion picture still.

The Hero was looking towards the invading gangsters with his mouth slightly open, his fingers still digging into the drunk’s throat. The Blonde was cringing back against the counter staring with panic-stricken eyes. The bartender, who I’ve never before known to be surprised at anything, just gaped.

‘All right, Morton,’ growled the centre man. ‘We want you.’ From the way he held his hand in his pocket, I knew he was ready to throw lead. ‘Make it snappy, Morton.’

And then the Blonde split the air again. Shriek after shriek, loaded with agonised panic, rang out. I could tell by the way her eyes rolled that she was crazy with fear.

One of the gorillas stepped forward and swung his knotted fist up from the waist. The clop it made as it connected with her jaw sounded like a meat cleaver cutting into a side of beef. The scream was clopped off clean and the Blonde went splaying backwards, landing spreadeagled across her stool.

Everything was happening so quickly that nobody else was moving. You know how it is. Something happens quickly among a large crowd and everybody stands stupid and watches without raising a finger.

The man who’d smacked the Blonde grabbed the Hero’s arm and jerked him towards the door, and then the drunk who’d only just got his neck released started hitting out. He swung wildly, but his fist caught the gorilla behind the ear. The gorilla staggered backwards as the drunk, fighting mad, planted a fist in the middle of the Hero’s pan.

Then one of the other gorillas got busy. He fired through his pocket, which isn’t the best way to aim a gun, and the drunk spun around, twisted by the force of the lead that mashed his hand.

For a moment he gazed stupefied at the blood gouting from the place where his fingers used to be, and then with a mad bull roar he rushed at the lead-slinger.

Another slug tore into him, but he was going pretty fast by that time and his impetus carried him smack onto the killer. The Hero, moving quickly, wasn’t far behind him, and the other two toughs got scared and started blazing as well.

It all happened so quickly. Right from the time the beer was spilled until the time the entrance doors swung together behind the killers as they beat it, not more than ten seconds had elapsed. The air was full of smoke, my ears were ringing, the Hero and the drunk were down, two other men were bleeding like pigs all over the bar and Lola was lying splayed across our table and a crimson stain was spreading over the tablecloth in front of me.