Summary
Pinkie and Spicer are standing by a pier talking. Spicer expresses his doubts about their murder of Hale and confusion over the newspaper announcement that Hale was declared dead by natural causes. Spicer leaves as Rose arrives for a date with Pinkie. He tries threatening her deviously with his bottle of vitriol and then takes her to Sherry's, a restaurant, where they talk about love and their shared Roman Catholic faith. After the date, Pinkie pays a visit to Brewer, a man who has been failing to pay his protection money to Pinkie's gang; he has been paying to Colleoni, a rival gangster, instead. Pinkie slashes Brewer's face.
In the next chapter, Pinkie goes to The Cosmopolitan, a high-end hotel, to meet with Mr. Colleoni, a rival gangster who proposes that Pinkie join his group instead of working against him. Pinkie refuses. As he leaves, he is stopped by a policeman and taken to the station to talk with the investigator about his assault of Brewer. The investigator tells him to not work against Colleoni, who has been making gangster business less messy.
Analysis
This second part introduces the second of Pinkie's antagonists: Mr. Colleoni. Just as Ida serves as a kind of foil to the poor, distrustful, solitary, and vitriolic Pinkie, as an older woman to a young man, the older Colleoni serves as the counterexample of the clean-cut businessman to the gritty thug. Although both he and Pinkie are part of the criminal world, Colleoni, through his association with The Cosmopolitan and even to an extent the police, represents a completely different kind of worldview, one which sees not moral evil but economic efficiency in the work of crime.
Although Pinkie tries to intimidate Colleoni with veiled threats of physical violence, these turn out to be completely ineffectual. In fact, the seemingly successful intimidation-through-assault of Brewer just previously turns out to be neatly taken care of by Colleoni and the police investigator, who warns Pinkie not to get involved again. Thus, Pinkie is not even at home or respected in the criminal world; he finds himself a stranger everywhere.
The scene in which he threatens Colleoni makes it apparent how the very environment of Brighton, with its class divisions, works as an insuperable enemy for Pinkie, to the point that Colleoni does not have to really struggle against the boy to protect himself:
"It'd be you who'd need protection," the Boy said.
"I've got all the protection I need," Mr Colleoni said. He shut his eyes; the huge moneyed hotel lapped him round; he was at home. The Boy sat on the edge of his chair because he didn't believe in relaxing during business hours; it was he who looked like an alien in this room, not Mr Colleoni (66).
Pinkie always holds himself in a state of tension (and torment) in hopes that it will make him a better gangster, but this faux discipline is undermined at his every step.
