CHAPTER III
The killing of Al Spingola created a sensation. It happened just before America entered the World War, long before gangdom had achieved anything like its present power or affluence or willingness to murder in unique fashion. Fights were plentiful, of course, and an occasional stabbing did not arouse great excitement but actual gunplay was rare. Spingola had been about the first of the city's gang leaders to enforce his power with a gun and his being "dropped off" so sudden was most disconcerting to the other leaders who had been about ready to use the same methods. But now they couldn't decide whether a gun was the best source of power or not.
The morning after the affray, Tony rose early, feeling a little rocky, and immediately induced his mother to sew the small burned hole in his coat, explaining that he had done it with a cigarette. Then he wisely decided not to wear that suit on the street again.
He went first to Klondike O'Hara's saloon. Klondike himself was behind the bar. A burly, red-faced young Irishman, he cut quite a dash in his own neighborhood as a gang leader and had been one of Spingola's most faithful enemies.
"I'm Tony Guarino," announced the boy, "from over on Taylor street."
"Yeah?"
"I s'pose you read about Al Spingola gettin' his last night."
"Yeah," assented O'Hara cautiously, chewing on a black cigar.
"Well, I know you and him were enemies so I thought if they took me up for his death you'd see that I had a good lawyer and so on."
"You? Did you get that rat—a punk like you?"
"I didn't say so," retorted Tony doggedly. "I just wanted to know if they picked me up if you'd get me a lawyer."
"Betcher life. An' from now on you're welcome around here any time. I can always use another kid with guts."
"Thanks."
From O'Hara's saloon, Tony went to see Vyvyan at her cheap little hotel. She was nervous and tearful but back of the nervousness he could detect a new attitude of overbearing hardness, and behind the tears her green eyes held a glitter that did not reassure him. He wondered if she knew how much her silence meant to him—and decided that she probably did.
"You've taken Al away from me," she sobbed. "So now you'll have to take care of me the way he did."
"Shut up!" snapped Tony. "I'm going to. Let's rent a nice little flat to-day."
Thus within the space of twenty-four hours, Tony Guarino killed his first man, joined a regular gang and took unto himself a common law wife. Events move rapidly in underworld neighborhoods.
Tony didn't intend to move away from home himself just yet; it wouldn't look right to his folks.
Again he crossed the deadline between the domains governed by the Irish and those governed by the Wops, and started for O'Hara's saloon. A heavy car drew up to the curb and stopped with a screeching of brakes.
"Hey, Kid!" shouted a raucous voice. "C'mere."
Tony's first impulse was to run, but having recognized the car as one of those from the Detective Bureau, he realized that to do so would mean being shot. So he walked over to them.
"Get in!" commanded a burly brute.
He practically dragged Tony into the tonneau and the car raced away. Arrived at the bureau, the whole party, with Tony in the center, ascended to one of the "conference rooms" on the second floor.
"I s'pose you heard about Al Spingola bein' bumped off last night," said the man who appeared to be the leader of the party.
"Yes," assented Tony, not to be outdone. "I read it in the morning paper."
The half dozen men laughed nastily.
"The hell you did!" said the first one. "You knew all about it a long time before that. Because you killed Al Spingola."
"Has the heat gone to your head?" demanded Tony coolly.
"Don't try to stall or it'll go hard with you. We know all about it. C'mon now and spill it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," retorted Tony as if greatly bored by the proceedings.
"Oh, you're goin' to be tough, eh?"
"No. Just truthful."
"Where were you last night from twelve to three o'clock?"
"Home in bed."
"Can you prove it?"
"My whole family would swear to it."
"Where'd you get that?" demanded another detective suddenly, and thrust before Tony's astonished eyes the revolver with which the Spingola killing had been committed.
The boy gulped but with a terrific effort retained his outward calm.
"I never saw it before," he retorted doggedly. He wondered just how much they did know. It looked bad. For those were the days when the police took the same interest in a gang killing as in any other murder and made just as eager and earnest an effort to solve it. Well, the only thing to do was bluff it out.
"I never saw it before," he repeated, straightening up defiantly.
The leader of the party suddenly struck him a hard back hand slap across the mouth.
"Quit stallin'," he snarled. "C'mon an' tell us the truth."
"Cut the rough stuff!" snapped Tony coldly but his eyes were blazing. "I've got a brother that's a cop and I know all about the way you do people. Furthermore, I got a lot of powerful friends and I'm goin' to be a 'big shot' in this town myself some day. So treat me decent an' it'll be better for all of us."
"Well, would you listen to that?" jeered one of the dicks. "Of all the big-mouthed punks I ever seen—"
"I hear you been goin' around with one of Spingola's girls," said the leader.
Tony smiled. "From all I've heard, he had so many that half the girls in town were his."
"Naw, I mean his particular steady girl—his moll. You know the one I mean—that tall, spindly-legged blonde down at the Gaiety Theatre."
"Don't know her."
"There's been talk about you an' her goin' around among the wise-guys in your neighborhood the last two, three days. Everybody's been lookin' for trouble over it. An' now Al's dead."
"Well, that don't prove nothin' against me," argued Tony. "Even if all you say was true, it would be him that had a motive for bumpin' me off. And anyway, do you think as good a gunman as Spingola would ever let a kid like me get the drop on him?"
"T'ain't likely," admitted the leader of the squad.
There was a sudden commotion outside the door and a bright-eyed, bewhiskered little man came bustling into the room.
"I have here a writ of habeas corpus for the release of Mr. Tony Guarino," he announced with dignity and flourished a document.
The detectives gasped. For a writ to be run so soon indicated that the prisoner had "connections." They had never dreamed that this kid was hooked up with the systematized elements of the underworld. But here the writ was. As they hadn't sufficient evidence to place a charge against Tony and book him, they had to honor the writ and release him.
"No hard feelings, boys," he said pleasantly as he followed the lawyer out.
CHAPTER IV
Tony found his connection with the O'Hara gang active and pleasant. At first the Irish boys were somewhat suspicious of a Wop in their midst but when it was whispered around that it was he who had shot the redoubtable Al Spingola, their hostility vanished like fog in sunshine and they welcomed him with open enthusiasm. Tony himself never mentioned the occurrence, neither denying it nor bragging about it. But day and night he was watching for a reprisal from some of Spingola's henchmen. He still had his armed bodyguard following behind every time he went outside and not even the members of his own gang knew that.
Tony's executive ability soon revealed itself and before long he was acting as O'Hara's lieutenant. He made it plain to Klondike from the first, however, that he would not take a hand in "second-story jobs," robberies, hold-ups or burglaries of any sort. And he explained his stand with his little phrase which later was to become so famous:
"I ain't riskin' a pinch for a coupla bucks."
It wasn't a matter of ethics with him; it was a matter of economics, the balancing of probable gain against probable risk and finding out whether it was worth it. Anyway, there was no fun to "rough stuff," no adventure or sportsmanship about it. Tony liked the smoother and wittier forms of larceny, those that bordered on extortion and blackmail. For instance, he could convince a small storekeeper in a few minutes that five or ten dollars a month was very cheap protection against having his store robbed or himself knocked on the head when he went home at night. And there were any amount of ignorant, fearful mothers who could be convinced readily that a quarter or half dollar per month per child was cheap insurance against having their children kidnaped and held for ransom. And once convinced, they paid their tribute regularly and unwhimperingly whenever he sent his collector around, just as they would insurance. He could think up two or three new schemes like that a day, and they always worked. As he said to O'Hara:
"What's the use of stickin' people up or bangin' 'em on the head when you can talk 'em out of it. My way's not only a lot safer but more fun."
On all sides now he was accorded the greatest respect. And he knew why; it was because the word had gone around that he was a "killer." He had killed only once, really in self-defense, and actuated largely by fear, yet he was marked as a killer and through life he would be subject to the advantages and disadvantages that went with the appellation.
His income now was running about three hundred a week—which was enormous for a gangster before Prohibition came along and made them millionaires—and with Vyvyan's help he was managing to have a nice time. He had taken a nicer flat for her by now and she had quit the show.
"I just can't bear to think of other men starin' at them pretty legs of yours, kid," he explained when insisting that she quit. "I'm makin' plenty o' dough for both of us, so throw up the job."
Being fond, like most blondes, of an easy life secured with the smallest possible expenditure of energy, she obeyed orders. Tony himself was still living at home but intended to move as soon as he could get up the necessary courage. His brother Ben, the policeman, hearing of his headquarters grilling over the Spingola killing, had given him another one at home while the rest of the family wailed in the background. But the wily Tony had been grimly silent at the right moments and suavely voluble at others, with the result that he convinced his family, just as he had the detectives, that he had nothing to do with Spingola's demise.
Tony went to Vyvyan's flat shortly before seven one Saturday night, feeling in rather high spirits.
"Well, kid, what do you want to do to-night?" he asked.
"Let's go to Colosimo's."
"Naw, I don't like that joint. Let's go out to one of those nice North Side places."
"No, I want to go to Colosimo's." Her lower lip puckered threateningly.
"Naw, I don't like that joint, I said."
"Why not?"
"A lot of the old Spingola mob do their stepping out there on Saturday night."
"Afraid?" she sneered. She seemed to be in a nasty humor to-night.
"No!" he snapped. "But I never liked the idea of bein' shot in the back."
"Oh, all right, if that's the way you feel about it. How about Ike Bloom's?"
"Well, it ain't very far from Colosimo's, but it has a lot nicer people. All right, we'll go there if you wanta."
Tony kept most of his wardrobe at the flat. He bathed and shaved now, and dressed carefully in a well-tailored, nicely-pressed tuxedo. But when he stepped out into the living-room, there was a revolver in a shoulder holster hanging in his left arm pit, and a tiny blue steel automatic fitted snugly into his right vest pocket.
Vyvyan was quite stunning in a flashing green evening gown and a soft white cloak. They made a handsome couple as they descended to the street and entered the waiting limousine. It belonged to Tony; he had made good his promise of having a car better than his brother's and of getting it as easily.
At Ike Bloom's enormous and beautiful cabaret on Twenty-second street, they took a table at the edge of the balcony, a point of vantage from which they could see everything without being at all conspicuous themselves. And they were around at one end of the horseshoe-shaped café, so that Tony might have his back to the wall and therefore enjoy the evening more.
They had a splendid dinner, with excellent champagne, saw the sparkling if somewhat naked revue, then relaxed—smoking, drinking, chatting—until the evening's gayety began shortly after eleven. Tony scrutinized carefully the other guests as they entered. But by twelve-thirty, when the place was practically filled, he hadn't seen an enemy, nor even any one of whom he was suspicious. So he consented to dance with Vyvyan.
They took advantage of almost every dance after that, drinking and nibbling at various inconsequential but expensive items of food between times. And every hour a new revue was presented.
During the presentation of one of these shows, while a huge woman with a nice voice and too many diamonds, crooned something about lovin' in the moonlight, Tony suddenly sat straight up, his gaze riveted to a woman straight across from him at the other end of the balcony. She was a brunette, a stunning brunette, obviously young, and dressed in a gorgeous white evening gown. The bulky young man with her looked like a prizefighter.
"What a dame!" breathed Tony in admiration.
"Where?" snapped Vyvyan.
"That brunette over there in white."
Vyvyan looked, anxiously and with narrowed gaze. Then she glanced back at Tony.
"I can't imagine what you see in her," she snapped scornfully.
"Jealous?"
"Of that? I should say not. And that bum with her looks like a burglar."
"Maybe he is," assented Tony imperturbably. "There's worse professions. But she's a stunner. I wonder who she is."
"Some common hussy, I'll bet."
"Well, I'll bet she ain't," snapped Tony, and beckoned the waiter over. "Say, do you know who that dame is—the good-lookin' brunette in white over there?"
The waiter looked, then smiled.
"That's Miss Jane Conley," he answered.
"Never heard that name before," muttered Tony.
"Perhaps you've heard of her under her other name," suggested the waiter. "She's known mostly as 'The Gun Girl,' "
"My God!" gasped Tony. "Is she the gun girl?"
"Yes, sir. Though we like to keep it quiet because we don't want any trouble here."
"No, of course not," agreed Tony dryly.
"Who's the gun girl?" demanded Vyvyan snappishly when the waiter had gone.
"Well, kid, I'll wise you up a little on underworld stuff, though God knows that ain't the only thing you're dumb in. A really good gunman is usually pretty well known, not only to other crooks but to the cops. Whenever they see him on the street, they stop him and frisk him, to see if he's up to something. He can't go two blocks in any direction without bein' stopped and frisked by somebody—either dicks or harness bulls. So he has to have somebody else—usually a good-lookin' well-dressed girl that nobody would suspect—carry his gat for him and trail him till he's ready to use it. Then she hurries up, slips it to him and strolls slowly down the block. He pulls off his job and runs down the street, slippin' her the gat as he goes past. Immediately she disappears—street car, taxi, or afoot, any way—but without lookin' like she's in a hurry. So if he should git pinched, they can't find anything on him. See?"
"I don't see anything so grand in that."
"You don't, eh? Well, let me tell you, there's nothin' scarcer than a good gun girl. It takes brains and a lot of guts. That girl across there—if that waiter didn't lie to me—is the most famous of all of 'em. She's known as The Gun Girl. I've heard about her for a couple years but I didn't even know what her name was. She started out in New York, workin' with Leech Benson. When he finally got sent up she switched over to Lefty Kelly and when he got killed she come out here to work for Ace Darby. I guess she's still workin' for him. I wonder if that's him with her now."
"No, it isn't."
"How do you know?"
"Because I met him one time—at a party."
They went down to dance again. The Gun Girl and her escort also were dancing. And the fascinated Tony, finding the girl even more beautiful and charming at close range, kept his glance on her so much that it was some time before he realized that a man was trying to flirt with Vyvyan. A large, bulky man dressed in a gray business suit that fitted him none too well, a man who looked old enough to know better. He was dancing with a tiny blonde that he folded up in his arms like a child would a doll. Evidently he had a weakness for blondes. But he was no gentleman. He was obviously drunk and making a show of himself.
He waved at Vyvyan and winked portentously as the two couples came near each other for an instant. Tony's swarthy complexion began turning a sort of deep purple. The next time the two couples converged, the man spoke:
"Hello, cutie!" he exclaimed with a grin. "How about the next dance?"
Tony released his partner, snatched the little blonde out of the big man's arms and clouted the man solidly on the jaw, a blow so hard that it not only knocked the man down but slid him ten feet along the dance floor.
"Come on, kid, let's get out of this," snapped Tony and grabbed Vyvyan's wrist.
There was a small, seldom-used stairway that led up almost directly to their table. They hurried up and Tony beckoned frantically to the waiter.
"That was a grand sock you gave him, sir," smiled the waiter as he quickely added up the check. "And he sure had it comin' to him. But there's sure to be an awful row when he comes to. You know who he is, don't you?"
"No."
"Captain Flanagan."
"Oh, my God!"
Tony glanced at the check, then threw down a fifty dollar bill and rushed Vyvyan out of the place.
"Who's Captain Flanagan?" asked the girl as they raced away.
"Chief of Detectives, and supposed to be the hardest-boiled man on the force."
"Do you suppose you'll have any trouble over this?"
"Well, it won't do me any good," retorted Tony grimly.
Four blocks away he slowed down to allow his rear guard to catch up to within half a block. Then when he saw the other car's headlights reflected in his side mirror he increased his speed again.
They drew up in front of Vyvyan's flat and she climbed out quickly. Then a car rushed past, spouting fire and bullets, and whizzed away into the night. Vyvyan screamed and turned back.
"Tony!" she called. "Are you hurt?"
He crawled up from the floor where he cautiously had thrown himself the moment he heard the highpitched song of the other machine's racing motor.
"No they didn't touch me!" he growled. "But it wasn't their fault. Lucky you were out of the car because there wouldn'ta been room for two on the floor. . . . Say, you got out in an awful hurry. Did you know anything about the arrangements for this little party?"
"Why, Tony, how can you say such a thing?"
"A man can say a lot of things when somebody's just tried to kill him."
