Tuesday's Serial: “Scarface” by Armitage Trail (in English) - III.

 

CHAPTER V

Captain Flanagan showed his teeth immediately. Monday noon a squad of detectives from the bureau burst into Klondike O'Hara's saloon, singled Tony out from the crowd lounging about and ordered him to come along.

"I know what this is all about," said Tony to the bewildered and apprehensive O'Hara. "And I think it'll come out all right. Anyway, wait a coupla hours before sending down a mouthpiece with a writ."

They took Tony straight to the detective bureau and ushered him roughly into Captain Flanagan's office, then slammed the door, leaving the two men alone. Flanagan rose and came around from behind his desk. He was a big man, broad and thick, with a belligerent jaw, a nasty sneering mouth and gimlet-like, bloodshot gray eyes that were set too close together.

"So you're the hoodlum that socked me at Ike Bloom's the other night, eh?" he snarled.

"Yes, sir," said Tony calmly. "And anybody else would have done the same. You would have yourself if somebody kept insulting the girl you were with."

"Is that so? Well, I don't imagine a hood like you would have a dame with him that could be insulted. So there!"

Without warning, he gave Tony a terrific back-hand slap across the mouth, a hard stinging blow that staggered the boy for a moment and made him draw in his breath sharply as he became conscious of the pain in his bruised lips. Then his eyes glinted with fury and his hands went up.

"Don't lift your hands to me, you punk!" snarled Flanagan. "Or I'll call in a dozen men from out there and have 'em beat you half to death with rubber hoses."

"You would," assented Tony bitterly. "You're the type."

"What do you mean—I'm the type?"

"Nothin'."

"What's your game, anyhow?"

"I haven't any."

"No? Well, you hang around with Klondike O'Hara's mob, and they're a bunch of bad eggs. Come on now, quit stallin'—what's your racket?"

"Nothing—in particular."

"Well, what do you do for O'Hara?"

"Obey orders."

"Oh, a smart guy, eh?" sneered Flanagan. He slapped Tony again, then reached for his hip as the boy automatically lifted his hands. "Put down your hands, you thug. I'll teach you to have some respect for your betters. Come on now, what's your game—second-story, stick-up or what?"

"I never was in on a stick-up or any other kind of a rough job in my life," retorted Tony proudly.

"Well, just how do you get all these good clothes and the big car I understand you own?"

"I got ways of my own."

"I don't doubt it," agreed Flanagan with dry sarcasm, '"That's what I want to know about—these ways of yours. Come on now, and talk, or I'll have the boys give you a pounding you'll never forget."

"I wouldn't if I were you," answered Tony, his eyes and tone coldly menacing. "I might be a big shot in this town yet—and payin' you off."

"What do you mean—payin' me off?" snarled Flanagan. "Do you mean to say that I could be bought?"

"I don't see why not—all the other dicks can. You'd be an awful fool not to get yours while you could."

"Of all the impudent punks!" gasped the chief of detectives. His rage was so great that he seemed to be swelling out of his collar. "Listen here, you," he said finally. "I ain't got any more time to waste on you. But I'm givin' you just twenty-four hours to get out of town. And you better go. Get me?"

"Yeah. But that don't mean I'm goin'." And the boy strode out of the office.

Tony went back to O'Hara's saloon with cut lips and murder in his heart, and explained the whole thing to Klondike himself. The gang leader was obviously upset.

"It's bad business, kid," he said slowly. "Flana­gan's hard-boiled and he can make life miserable for anybody if he wants to."

"To hell with him!" scoffed Tony. "He ain't so much."

Tony remained in town beyond his allotted time. And he soon discovered that Klondike O'Hara was right. For he found himself involved in a police persecution more complete than he had thought possible. He was halted half a dozen times a day, in O'Hara's place, on the street, anywhere and everywhere, stopped and searched and questioned. He dare not carry a gun because if they found him with one he knew they'd give him the works; yet he knew that the remains of the Spingola gang were actively and murderously on his trail. It was a nerve-racking week.

The detectives even burst into Vyvyan's flat one night when he was there and turned the place upside down on the pretext of looking for stolen property. And they questioned her with more thoroughness than gallantry.

"So that's the dame you swiped from Al Spin­gola?" said one of them to Tony with a leer in Vyvyan's direction. "Well, I don't blame him for gettin' mad. She sure ain't hard to look at. . . . How about a little date some night, kid?"

"Listen—" began Tony ominously.

"I don't even speak to dicks if I can help it," retorted Vyvyan and turned away with her nose in the air.

"Well, there's probably been a good many times in your life when you couldn't help it," snapped the detective. "And there's goin' to be a lot more if you keep hangin' around with the likes of this go­rilla. So don't high-hat us, baby; we might be able to give you a break sometime."

On Friday Klondike O'Hara called Tony into the office, a cluttered frowsy little room with a battered roll-top desk and two once golden oak chairs. The Irishman was coatless and his spotted, unbuttoned vest flapped unconfined save for such restraint as his heavy gold watch chain strung across its front placed upon it. His derby was pushed forward over his eyes until its front almost rested on the bridge of his nose, and a thoroughly chewed, unlighted cigar occupied one corner of his slit-like, tobacco-stained mouth.

"Sit down, Tony," he invited.

Tony sat, feeling very uncomfortable and won­dering what this portended. Ordinarily O'Hara gave orders, received reports and loot, and conducted all the other business of his gang over one end of the bar. When he held a conference in the office, it was something important.

"I been worried all week," began the leader, "about you. The dicks are after you, kid; there's no doubt about it. And because of that Flanagan business, they're going to keep after you till they get you. Flanagan's hard-boiled and he hangs on like a bulldog—when he wants to. If you was big enough to pass him a heavy piece of change every week he'd prob'ly lay off. But you ain't. So you got to take it. In the meantime this is goin' to get me and the whole mob in dutch at headquarters. Those dicks that come pokin' around here every day are after you, of course, but just the same they've got an eye out for anything else they can see. If they keep that up long enough they're bound to see or hear somep'm that'll ruin us. So I'm goin' to have to ask you not to come around here."

"So you're givin' me the gate, eh?" demanded Tony coldly.

"Not that. Jeez, kid, I like you and I'd like to have you with me always. But don't you see that bein' under the police spotlight this way is sure to ruin us?"

"Yes, I guess maybe you're right. But what about the ideas I give you, the schemes I started?"

"You'll keep gettin' your cut on 'em every week; I'll send it every Saturday night any place you say. And I'll play square with you, kid; I want you to have everything that's comin' to you. But I just don't dare let you stick around here; it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the boys."

They shook hands and Tony walked out, dis­missed because of the unwelcome attention that his persecution by the police was bringing down upon the whole gang.

In the bar, one of the O'Hara henchmen sidled up to him.

"Listen," he said out of one corner of his mouth, "I heard to-day that the Spingola mob's out to get you."

"They've tried it before," retorted Tony coldly.

"I know. But this time it's for blood; they say they're not goin' to miss."

"Thanks," said Tony. "Well, I guess I'll have to go back to packin' a gun, dicks or no dicks, and take a chance on bein' able to throw it away if they pick me up."

Tony moved slowly out to the sidewalk and beckoned his bodyguard, who was lounging in a doorway across the street, smoking a cigarette. The boy came across the street, a slender, white­-faced chap with a weak chin and burning black eyes.

"I just got a tip that the Spingola mob's after me right," said Tony. "And I ain't got a gun. I'm goin' to the flat now to get my artillery. So watch sharp."

He glanced quickly up and down the street then he turned and started down the sidewalk, walking briskly, his keen glance roving suspiciously in all directions, the other boy trailing along some thirty yards behind, his hand plunged deep into his right coat pocket.

Vyvyan was beginning to grow restive under the strain of this constant surveillance and heckling by the police. She was wrought up and irritable at dinner and Tony went out to a movie alone.

America had entered the World War but a few days before and the screen flashed an appeal for volunteers to join the army for immediate overseas service. Tony wondered what sort of saps would fall for that. Not he. What did he owe the coun­try? What had the country ever done for him? He was chuckling cynically to himself as he walked out at the conclusion of the show.

His glance roved over the crowd, seeking pos­sible enemies, either those of the law or those out­side it. But he saw none and started home, walking briskly, for his car was not yet out of the garage where he had placed it for repairs following the attempt on his life in front of Vyvyan's flat the Saturday night before.

Turning off the business thoroughfare of the district and plunging deeper into the dark, deserted side streets, Tony suddenly became aware of other footfalls besides his own. Turning his head cau­tiously, he saw three men across the street but a little to the rear, and walking in the same direction as himself. Something seemed to grow cold within him and his hand quietly sought the ready gtm in his side coat pocket.

But first he must test his belief that these men were after him—that they were killers from the Spingola mob. At the next corner he turned to the left and increased his pace. Quickly the other men crossed the street and followed, half-running until they were again in their preferred position across the street from him and slightly to the rear.

Tony realized that their task of the night was to assassinate him, that they were only waiting until he reached some pre-arranged or some favorite spot of theirs. And there was no possible way of escaping their murderous attentions. To run would only hasten their fire; to shout would ac­complish the same end and no one would come to his assistance, for minding one's own business had been developed to a fine art in this neighborhood. There was nothing to do but wait and shoot it out with them when they opened the attack.

The horror of his situation, of being trailed to his death with almost the same inevitability as a legal execution, never struck him, for, like all gangsters, Tony was totally without imagination.

The men suddenly swerved and began crossing the street, moving toward a position directly be­hind him. Knowing the tremendous value of a surprise attack, Tony decided to pull one. With the swiftness of a shadow, he faded into a doorway and began firing. The guns of the three men answered viciously and bullets thudded and whined about the boy. From beyond he could see the flashes and hear the reports of his bodyguard's gun. The assassins were between two fires.

Tony himself, partly sheltered and cold as ice, was firing slowly but with deadly effect. He saw one of the men go down and stay down. He saw another go down for a moment, then scramble to his feet and flee, limping, with the third. The enemy had been routed.

In the distance he heard the peculiar "Clang­-clang-clang!" of a detective bureau squad car. Un­doubtedly they had heard the shots and now were racing there. Tony dodged out of the sheltering doorway and hurried past the inert figure without pausing to glance at it. Catching up with his body­guard, he led him into a dark, smelly alley at a run. "Good work, kid!" panted Tony as they ran and slipped the boy a twenty-dollar bill. "We bumped off one and winged another. But we got to cover our tracks fast and complete. Throw your gun over one of these fences." His own went over and the other boy's followed. "Now, if we're pinched, there's nothin' on us. But we don't want to get pinched. At the end of the alley we split. Get as far from here as you can as quick as possible but don't move so fast that you'll attract attention. If you should be picked up, you haven't seen me all evening. You been to a movie. See?"

The boy nodded and as they reached the end of the alley on another street, swerved to the right and disappeared in the darkness. Tony turned to the left. Within five minutes he was seven blocks away from the scene of the shooting. In that hurried walk, he had done a lot of thinking. Un­doubtedly that dead man was a member of the Spingola mob. The police who found him would know that, of course, and they would have a pretty good idea as to how he came to his death. Tony realized that they would begin looking for him immediately. Between the police and the Spin­gola mob—for to-night's occurrence would only increase their thirst for his blood—the town was going to be too hot to hold him for awhile. He would have to leave for a few months. But where could he go? What could he do? Then he re­membered that appeal on the movie screen to-night. And he chuckled. He would join the army. It had a lot of advantages, now that he began to catalogue them—nobody would ever think of looking for him there, he'd do some traveling and see a lot of new things at no expense to himself, and so on. The war wouldn't last long, now that America was in it; he'd have a nice vacation for a few months.

In the meantime, his predicament was serious. The police were sure to be looking for him imme­diately in all his known haunts. He dare not go home, nor to Vyvyan's, nor to O'Hara's place. He went into a drug store and telephoned O'Hara.

"Hello, Klon," he said in a guarded tone. "This is Tony. I just had a battle with some of the Spingola mob. Bumped off one and nicked another. I s'pose the dicks'll be lookin' for me right away. I've decided to get out of town for awhile. And I want to see you and Vyvyan before I go, but I don't dare come either to your place nor to hers. Where can we meet?"

"Better meet at the flat of one of my dames, I guess," answered O'Hara. He gave the name and address. "We ought to be safe there. I'll hurry right over there and be waiting for you."

Tony telephoned Vyvyan, then hailed a cab. The address proved to be a large apartment house in a quiet section. Ascertaining that the flat he wanted was on the third floor, Tony hurried up and knocked quietly. O'Hara admitted him and introduced him to a large "horsey" blonde named Gertie. Gertie had lots of yellow hair, pale, empty-looking blue eyes with dark circles of dissipation under them, and an ample figure wrapped in a lavender negligee with quantities of dyed fur. She wore lavender mules with enormous pom-poms but her legs were bare. She laughed loudly and hol­lowly on the slightest pretext and seemed to have a consuming fear that everybody wouldn't get enough to drink. The apartment was a rococo af­fair done in French style, with the walls hung in blue taffeta, and jammed so full of ornate furni­ture that one could hardly walk.

Tony quickly explained the situation and his plan of getting away for awhile. O'Hara approved it and promised to send Vyvyan and Mrs. Guarino money every week, Tony's share of the profits from the rackets he had conceived and instituted.

Then Vyvyan arrived and O'Hara, with a pene­tration rare in one of his type, led Gertie out into another room so that Tony could be alone with Vyvyan for a few moments. Quickly he explained everything to her, then told her of his resolve to join the army.

"But you might be killed," she objected.

Tony grinned. "Well, if I stay here, I'm either goin' to get bumped off or be sent away for a few years."

"But, Tony, I can't do without you," sniffed Vyvyan.

"I've arranged with O'Hara to send you money every week," answered the boy shrewdly. "So you'll manage to get along for a few months—till I get back. Oh, I'm comin' back—don't worry about that. And when I get back," he said with an ominous edge in his voice, "I'll expect you to be waitin' for me."

"I will, Tony, oh, I will." She was clinging to him now, kissing him with great fervor and sob­bing furiously. "Oh, I love you so, kid. Please come back to me."

He kissed her with all the passion that had made him risk his life to get her, that had made him kill for her, then hurried out with O'Hara, her sobs and pleas for his return ringing in his ears.

O'Hara drove him to South Bend, Tony lying down in the tonneau of the car until they were beyond the city limits. There was a New York train that came through there shortly after one in the morning. Tony caught it. Two days later he was in the army, and lost from all his enemies. They didn't ask many questions of men who wanted to be a soldier then.

 

 

CHAPTER VI

Tony Guarino made a good soldier. They put him into a machine gun company and he loved it. Officers considered his nerveless coolness under fire remarkable. They didn't know that being under fire was an old story to him, and that he was unaccustomed to having countless thousands of men to help him repel the attack. Trenches, too, were a protection unknown in the street battles back home. All in all, he considered war a rather tame proposition and plunged into it with gusto.

Within six months he was first sergeant of his company. The men, being mostly country boys and therefore having nothing in common with him, didn't like him very well personally but he had that indefinable "it" of the born leader that would have made them unquestionably follow him anywhere. They had to, once. It was a nasty night engagement in the woods. Tony came staggering out of the dark, carrying the unconscious captain on his back, and almost blinded by his own blood, to find all their officers down and the leaderless men on the verge of panic. Tony let the captain care­fully to the ground, instructed two men to do what they could for him from their first-aid kits, then dashed the blood out of his eyes and quietly took command of the situation.

Shortly after dawn the amazed colonel discovered Tony in command of three companies, with his position well consolidated and holding his section of the line comfortably. Tony himself was sitting on a little hillock, in deadly peril from snipers, with his automatic lying on his knee and with his keen glance wandering up and down the line in an effort to find some man who seemed dis­posed to retreat. He was somewhat of a sight with his legs bare and muddy, and his head tied up in bloody handkerchiefs and his puttees; only his eyes and mouth remained uncovered.

"Of all the dashed impudence!" exclaimed the colonel to the officers with him. "Taking com­mand of the whole works and running it better than many a major could have done. If the Heinies had penetrated through here, they'd have wiped us out. "Say," he called to Tony from the shelter of the messy trench through which he was making his way in an effort to gather up his scattered regiment, "come down from there and go back and have your wounds dressed."

"We ain't got any officers," retorted Tony doggedly. "Most of 'em got bumped off during the night but a few only got nicked and I sent them back to get patched up. They wouldn'ta gone, of course, if they'd been conscious but they was all out like a light so I didn't have any trouble with 'em. The men fight grand when there's somebody to see to 'em," he continued, "but they're a little skittish when there ain't. So I'm seein' to 'em till some officers get here."

"Damme!" exclaimed the colonel to his staff. "Can you beat that; argues with me to stay up there and get his head blown off?" Then he raised his voice and called to Tony again: "I'm Colonel Riley. I'll leave Captain Stone here to 'see' to your men. Now you come down from there—at once, do you hear?—and go back and have your wounds dressed. I can't afford to have a man like you getting infection and dying on me."

So Tony scrambled down from his observatory but dangerous hillock, saluted the colonel, who si­lently shook hands with him, and reluctantly started for the rear.

Before the day was over, Colonel Riley was in possession of a complete story of the night's activi­ties and he sent a report into G.H.Q, that would have made Tony's ears ring. They gave Tony the D.S.C and the Croix de Guerre for that night's work and he couldn't see what for; he'd merely done what the situation demanded, the same as he would in a street fight back home.

Eventually came the Armistice and Tony was sent home. He was ready to go home. Being a shrewd gambler he had taken the saps for a ride, running his small capital up to something over six thousand dollars, which he carried in cash in a belt around his waist under his tunic. And there had been many a time in France when he would have given all of it for an hour with Vyvyan.

Having perfected him in every branch of the fine art of murder and having made every effort to readjust his mental processes so that he was willing at any time to translate this knowledge and technique into action, the government, in turning him loose with its blessing in the shape of an hon­orable discharge, seemed to expect him to forget it all immediately and thereafter be a peaceable, law-abiding citizen. Which was a lot to ask of any man, much less Tony.

He had come home with a new face and a lot of new ideas, ideas that were going to be profitable for him but detrimental to the community in which he put them into practice. That awful night battle in the woods which had gained him the medals—he had them buttoned up in an inside pocket, not even showing the ribbons where anybody could see them—had also left him with a long livid scar down the left side of his face, a heavy scar running from the top of his ear to the point of his chin. In some manner the nerves and muscles around his mouth had become involved in the mat­ter and now the left corner of his mouth was drawn upward permanently, not much but it had changed his appearance surprisingly. When he smiled, that corner didn't, and it gave his face an amazingly sinister look.

He hurried eagerly out of the depot, looking boyish and jaunty in his uniform and overseas cap. He had a grip and in the side pocket of his tunic a German officer's automatic that he had brought home as a souvenir.

Now that he was home, the first thing was to see Vyvyan. God! wouldn't it be grand to have her in his arms again, to feel her lithe, supple body pliant and vibrant against his? He hailed a taxi and gave the address, ordering the driver "to step on it." His hungry eyes recognized the building, even in the dark, two blocks away and his glance sought their old apartment. Yes, there was a light. She was home! That is, if she still lived there. He added that as an afterthought, as a dreadful possibility. Then he grunted and grinned. Vyv would be waiting; he remembered how she had sobbed and promised that night he left.

He gave the driver a handsome tip for his speed and, hurrying inside, eagerly scanned the names beside the letter boxes. Yes, there it was in the same place—Vyvyan Lovejoy. What a surprise his coming would be to her; he hadn't written for two months—there'd been so much else to do. He tried the hall door on the chance that it might be open. It was. He hurried softly upstairs and with his breath catching in his throat knocked at the familiar third floor door. He heard a sort of scuffling sound inside but no one came. He knocked again, loud and a little impatiently.

Then the door opened slightly. Tony's ready arms dropped to his sides and his eyes suddenly flashed fire. For holding the door was a man, a ratty-looking young fellow with a crook's face but sensual lips and a passionate nose. He was in his shirtsleeves.

With a lunge, Tony flung the door wide open, almost overturning the other man as he did so, and plunged into the room.

"Where's Vyvyan?" he demanded.

She came hurrying out of the bedroom, wrapped in a beautiful negligee that he had bought her. He could see that she had on only pajamas beneath it and that her legs were bare.

"Who are you?" she demanded furiously. "And what do you mean by breaking in here this way?"

Tony caught his breath; she didn't recognize him.

"Why, I'm Tony. I know I've changed a little," his fingers unconsciously felt that awful scar on his left cheek, "but surely you—"

"Tony!" she exclaimed in amazement and came closer to stare wonderingly up into his face. "Why they reported you killed about six weeks ago; it was in the papers."

"Well, I wasn't. I'm right here, and as good as ever." Then he suddenly remembered that strange man, who had closed the door by now and was waiting behind him. He whirled, facing, them both accusingly. "Who's that?" he demanded, and in his voice was a tone that made Vyvyan cringe.

"A—a friend of mine," she answered.

"A friend of yours, eh?" he repeated bitterly and stared contemptuously at the other.

He whirled and rushed back to the bedroom. There in the closet, all mixed up with Vyvyan's things, he found a man's shoes, half a dozen masculine suits, even a man's pajamas. His things had been there when he went to war; but they were all gone now—these things were strange, evidently the property of that rat-faced crook in the parlor. Tony rushed back there, trembling with fury.

"So you two-timed me, you little bitch!" he snarled through gritted teeth. "I s'pose you been feedin' him out o' the money I had Klondike O'Hara send you every week."

"No, Tony," gasped Vyvyan breathlessly. Her hands fluttered to her throat and she seemed to find it almost impossible to speak. "Tony, you mustn't think what you're thinkin'. I never looked at another man all the time you was gone, not until that report about you bein' killed; I swear to God I didn't."

"Well, you didn't wait long after; a woman don't go to livin' with a man the first night she meets him. You didn't take the trouble to find out if that report was true; you didn't wait for a little while to see if I might come back, like I did. No, you grabbed somep'm else right away. And I don't see any mourning among your clothes; they're all just as wild and gay as ever. A lot you cared about me, outside of a meal ticket." Suddenly he "saw red"; his mind seemed frozen with rage. Automatically his hand darted to that pistol in his pocket. "You didn't give a damn about me, you lousy little———"

The dreadful word he flung at her was drowned in the roar of the gun. She clutched at her throat and fell, a fluffy, blood-stained heap. The man had dodged and was trying to hide behind a chair. But Tony mowed him down with deadly precision. Then he secreted the empty pistol under the cush­ion of an overstuffed chair and hurried out of the apartment, still carrying his bag.