CHAPTER XI
Captain Flanagan, chief of detectives, came striding into the new gang leader's office with the confident, arrogant air of one who is on familiar ground and who, though not expecting a warm welcome, realizes that his position demands a certain courtesy and respect.
Scarface Tony, seated behind the desk to which he had just succeeded, with his right hand resting lightly on the automatic lying on its top, watched the official enter. And a blast of rage as fierce as the heat from a suddenly opened furnace door swept through him. But the main thing he wondered was whether or not Flanagan would recognize him.
Flanagan evidently did not see in this smartly dressed man with a livid scar traversing the left side of his hard face from ear to jaw the handsome boy who had knocked him down less than three years before and whom he later had practically run out of the city. For there was no hint of recognition in the officer's granite gray eyes as he pushed his derby to the back of his head and with his big feet planted widely apart and his hands thrust deep into his pockets, stood staring at the new leader of the powerful Lovo gang.
"Where's Johnny?" demanded Flanagan.
"Mr. Lovo is not in." Tony's eyes were as coldly impersonal as his tone.
"I can see that," snapped Flanagan, his cruel mouth twisting angrily. "I ain't blind. Where is he?"
"Out of town. And he won't be back for some time."
Flanagan snorted.
"Quit kiddin'," he snarled. "Johnny's always in on the first of the month—for me."
"Oh! I see. Just a moment."
From one of the desk drawers Tony produced a small notebook which contained the gang's "pay off" list, the names of those officials, high and low, who had to be "padded," and the amount of the monthly "bit" of each. The list was carefully arranged in alphabetical order and Tony soon ascertained that the Lovo mob's monthly contribution to the happiness and prosperity of Captain Flanagan was $500.
Tony dropped the little book back in the desk drawer. Then he pulled out a fat roll of money and peeling off five $100 bills, threw them across the desk in a manner most contemptuous.
"There you are. But remember that we want some service for all this jack we pay out."
"As if you didn't get it," snarled Flanagan, snatching up the money and stuffing it into his pocket.
"What I could do to this outfit if I wanted would be a sight."
"Yes, I suppose so," admitted Tony reflectively. "Yet we boys have our own methods for discouraging our enemies."
"What do you mean?" "Nothing," answered Tony calmly, but he could see that his veiled warning had registered. "And now, Flanagan, I think it might be a good idea for you and I to have a little talk. I'm Tony Camonte. And from now on I'm in command of this mob."
"You!"
"Me," asserted Tony solemnly. "Johnny Lovo left yesterday for a long vacation. He may be back sometime but I don't think so. He's got plenty of dough and he's tired of this racket. Of course he's still interested but he turned the active control of things over to me."
"Won't some of his other lieutenants question your authority?"
"Maybe. But they won't question it more than once." Tony patted the automatic and the glance he gave Flanagan was significant.
"Well!" exclaimed the captain. "This is news. Though I been wonderin' lately if Johnny hadn't lost his nerve or somep'm. This mob's been pretty quiet for a while."
"Too damn quiet!" agreed Tony, his eyes snapping with energetic resolve. "But all that's goin' to be changed now and changed damn quick."
"That'll be interesting to the other mob leaders."
"Let 'em find it out. They don't have to be told anything. I don't want this change spread around or leakin' into the papers. But I wanted you to know about it so that if I give you a ring some day and want a favor done in a hurry you'll know who I am."
Tony sneered at the captain's broad back as Flanagan departed. There, he thought, was a good example of the men who are supposed to stand between the lawless and the law-abiding citizenry. Trafficking for his own profit with those he had sworn to hunt down. That was the nub of the whole matter, Money. The underworld now was too wealthy to allow itself to be hunted down. But even a cop was human, thought Tony; how could people be so foolish as to expect him to do his duty for five thousand a year—and sometimes less—when not doing it would make him twenty-five thousand and oftentimes more. A knock at the door roused him from his reflections on cops in general and Flanagan in particular.
"Come in," he called brusquely and had the automatic trained on the portal before one could turn the knob.
But it was only Al, the little rat-faced outer door-keeper.
"Somebody just phoned on that back room wire at the cigar store downstairs," he announced, "and said that Charlie Martino, one of our truck drivers, was hi-jacked and shot a little bit ago. He's at a garage in Maywood now—here's the address—and whoever phoned said he needs a doctor bad."
"Wonder why he didn't give 'em one of our numbers up here to call," Tony said.
"Prob'ly didn't want to give 'em to strangers. Charlie's a good, reliable boy, boss," said Al pleadingly. "I know him well."
"If it's true, I want to help him all I can," said Tony. "But most likely it's that North Side mob tryin' to put me on the spot. We got to go careful on this."
Within five minutes—so thoroughly systematized was the Lovo organization and its operations—Tony was in possession of Charlie Martino's scheduled movements for the evening and also of his part record with the gang. The latter was unblemished, both as to loyalty and ability, over a period of two years. This evening Charlie was supposed to be bringing a load of raw grain alcohol from Melrose Park, a suburb where almost every house had a big still and the Italian inhabitants were making comfortable little fortunes by "cooking" "alky" for the big syndicates, into a warehouse near the gang's headquarters in Cicero. A call to Melrose Park revealed that he had picked up his load and departed according to schedule. But another call revealed that he had not arrived at the warehouse. It looked as though the plea for assistance was genuine.
"Tell six or seven of the boys downstairs to bring around a coupla cars and plenty of gats," snapped Tony, his black eyes glittering with excitement, though his voice was as cool and calm as if he were giving a telephone number. "I'm going out and have a look at this."
Al hurried away, to relay orders to the cigar store downstairs which was a sort of "squad room" for the gang. Tony called a "safe" doctor—one of those rare physicians who, for enormous fees, will attend the underworld's gunshot wounds without going through the prescribed formality of reporting them to the police—and, giving him the address in Maywood, ordered him to proceed there immediately. Then he grabbed his automatic and hurried downstairs.
In the dark alley back of the hotel—which was the gang's headquarters because Lovo owned it—he found a group of shadowy figures moving about two large dark touring cars with drawn side curtains. The clank of metal against metal came to his ears as he advanced. They were loading in the machine guns, of course.
"Ready, boys?" he inquired. "Good! Let's go!"
He leaped into the tonneau of one car. Men piled in around him and in front and he saw the other men climbing into the car ahead. Motors roared into pulsing life and with a whine of racing engines the two carloads of expert gunmen sped away on their errand of either mercy or murder. Tony hoped it would prove to be both.
To his left he could discern in the gloom the ugly snouts of two machine-guns. He reached over and pulled one of them into his lap.
"I'm with these babies like some people with a car," he said with a laugh. "I feel safer when I'm at the wheel."
A block away from the garage which was their objective, they cut out the engines and coasted the rest of the way. But their practiced eyes found nothing suspicious on any side. Abruptly the engines roared again and the two big cars, bristling with the most modern death-dealing machinery, ready for anything, swept into the garage and ground to a halt.
A man in greasy mechanic's coveralls came forward, wiping his hands on a bit of waste. Tony opened the door next to him and looked out.
"We had a call that there was a man here—hurt," he said brusquely.
"Yes. He's back there in my little office. A doctor just came to see him."
The man jerked a dirty thumb toward a small coupe which Tony recognized as belonging to the doctor he had summoned. The gang leader lifted his machine-gun to the floor of the car and stepped out. But as he followed the other man across the grease-spotted concrete floor, his right hand was plunged deep into his side coat pocket and his keen glance was searching the shadows on all sides. Behind him, he knew that other keen glances were doing the same thing and that he was covered by an amazing amount of artillery.
As the two men entered the cluttered little space partitioned off from the rest of the building, the doctor looked up. He was a thin, nervous little man with a pallid complexion and shifty black eyes. But he knew his business, as many a live gangster could testify.
"Pretty serious," he said with a gesture toward his patient, who lay stretched out on a canvas cot, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and hoarse, "Shot twice through the chest. He's lost a lot of blood. We ought to get him somewhere where I can work on him."
"Can he be moved?" asked Tony.
"Yes. I'll give him a stimulant."
The doctor quickly filled a hypodermic needle from some of the bottles in his grip and injected the contents into the patient's wrist. In a few moments the boy—he was little more than that—opened his eyes. Tony walked over to him.
"He's too weak to talk," cautioned the doctor.
Tony grasped his henchman's hand. Their glances met, held, and the boy's vacant stare changed to happy recognition.
Was it the North Side outfit?" demanded Tony harshly. "Schemer Bruno's mob?"
The boy tried to speak but so much effort was beyond him. He nodded.
"All right, we'll see them, kid," promised Tony gruffly and gripped that limp hand hard.
The garage man's eyes widened when he heard that ominous threat of gangland vengeance. When Tony turned on him, he told his story quickly. Returning from towing a car out of a ditch, he had come upon the wounded boy lying at the side of a lonely road, and had brought him on to the garage. The boy had pleaded with him to call only a certain number, a request to which he had acceded.
"You see, I thought it was prob'ly a case that it was best not to make too much fuss about," he concluded.
"You've done well," Tony commended, and slipped him a $100 bill. "How's your memory?"
"Terrible, boss," grinned the man with a knowing wink. "Why, I have to look up the number every time I want to phone my own house."
Tony grinned himself and slapped the man on the back. Money and power on one hand and lack of them on the other has a way of making people understand each other quickly and thoroughly.
They took the wounded boy back to a room in the hotel which was the gang's headquarters and the doctor went to work on him in an effort to save his life. Tony retired to his private office and sent for Steve Libati, the man whom Lovo had appointed as second in command of the gang during his absence and who, Tony realized, was very jealous of his position as chief. He felt that now was as good a time as any to give the man an important assignment, to test his ability and his loyalty.
CHAPTER XII
Steve Libati came in looking somewhat sullen and defiant. A gangster of a somewhat older school than Tony, of the sweater-and-checked-cap era, he had never quite accustomed himself to the smooth, suave, business-like methods of the modern, post-Prohibition gangsters. Though he now wore the best clothes and drove an expensive car, he still talked from one corner of his cruel mouth and, at times, revealed other distressing symptoms of having been a common street-corner thug.
"That North Side mob's at it again," said Tony, plunging immediately to the heart of the matter. "They hi-jacked one of our trucks of alky to-night and knocked off the driver. Kid named Charlie Martino. I took some of the boys and went out and got him a little bit ago. He's down the hall here now and Doc's workin' on him to try to keep him from croakin'. Happened between Maywood and Melrose Park. That's the first time that outfit has come that far into our territory and it's goin' to be the last."
"Think you can stop 'em?" asked Libati calmly, his head cocked on one side and his left eye closed against the smoke curling upward from his cigarette.
"I'm going to stop 'em." Tony punctuated the statement with a sharp blow on the desk with his clenched fist. "If I have to have every man in the mob bumped off. Things have been too quiet lately; from now on, they're goin' to see action that'll curl their hair. Johnny thought that Jerry Hoffman bein' bumped off would ruin that mob but they found this Schemer Bruno guy and he's turned out to be the best leader since Dean Martin, better than Jerry ever thought of bein'. From now on, the war's between that mob and this one; the others don't cut much ice.
"Now, Steve, bumpin' off small fry like Charlie is a nuisance but it don't really hurt a mob. You can always find plenty of kids who'll take a chance for the price. To ruin a mob, you gotta get the leaders, the brains of the outfit. And you can bet this Schemer guy knows that as well as we do. So it's just a matter of time till he takes a crack at me—or you. Well, I'm goin' to beat him to the draw and get him before he gets me. And I've picked you to do the job."
Steve tensed. His ugly features settled into an angry scowl.
"Why me?" he demanded.
"I gotta have somebody reliable that I can trust to handle it right."
"Why don't you do it yourself?" For a long moment Tony stared at his subordinate while fury gathered in his eyes. He strangled it with an obvious effort.
"Because I don't choose to. As head of the mob, I think my duty is to stay in the background and run things."
Libati laughed sarcastically. Tony's eyes blazed.
"I could get Bruno," he snapped furiously, "and do it within forty-eight hours. Don't think I wouldn't like to. And I will if necessary. But with my position now, I feel I shouldn't take chances like that if I don't have to. Just the same. I'll never ask a man in this mob to do anything that I can't or won't do myself. I got Jerry Hoffman and I got others. A good many times I proved I got guts enough for anything. But I never heard yet of you provin' that you had any. Now's your chance."
Libati paled at the insinuation and his cruel mouth set in a nasty snarl. For a moment it looked as though he was going to pull a gun, Tony hoped he would, for he himself was ready and that would settle his problem of what to do with Steve Libati. But the fellow had sense enough to regain his self control.
"You talk like you was the only big shot in this mob," he snarled, "What about me? Ain't I one of the leaders?"
"Yes," answered Tony quietly, "And I didn't ask you to do the job yourself. But I want you to handle it, to get the dope about where and when he can be put on a spot and then get him. You can work it your own way, have any of the boys you want to help you, but I want it done."
"And if I don't care to do it?" queried Steve impudently.
"You're through with this mob," retorted Tony coldly.
"After the orders Johnny left?"
"That don't cut any ice. There's nobody stays in this mob a minute that don't obey my orders. That goes for you as well as the truck drivers. And there's my authority!"
He whipped out his heavy, ugly automatic and slammed it down on the desk, Libati's glance riveted to the gun for a moment, then he looked up at Tony and his eyes shifted again. He rose.
"All right, I'll do it," he said, and walked out.
Tony smiled a little when the man had gone. Again he had won over the sullenly defiant Libati. He felt that he might yet master the fellow and make him a highly useful subordinate. Well, one thing certain; he'd either master him or make use of the "authority" he had exhibited to clinch his argument.
For half an hour Tony sat quietly smoking while he thought over the situation. It began to look as if this Schemer Bruno had come by his name rightfully, as if he were a worthy foe. And as an instrument with which to carry out his schemes he had as powerful a gang as was to be found in the United States. Its personnel was at least as strong as that of the Lovo mob and had proved itself to be equally resourceful and ruthless. And under the able leadership of this Schemer Bruno it seemed to have set out on the same sort of ambitious program of expansion that Tony himself now intended embarking upon with the aid of the Lovo gang.
Tony had heard, too, that the three most important gangs on the South Side were about to consolidate and, under a unified direction, attempt to extend their operations to the rest of the city. That meant three major organizations, each holding sovereignty over a certain section but struggling to gain the territory controlled by the others. It was going to be a grand fight, and a bloody one, with the big profits going to the gang that could shoot the straightest and whose leader could think the fastest. And Tony welcomed the coming battle, every wily, murderous phase of it.
He reached under the desk suddenly and, pressing a button there, summoned Al, the little, rat-faced gangster who acted as office boy and outer door-keeper.
"I want somebody to do something for me," he said. "See who's downstairs and let me know right away."
In five minutes Al was back, and recited a list of the gangsters who were loafing in the cigar store below. Tony considered a moment.
"Tell Mike Rinaldo to come up here," he ordered finally.
Mike proved to be a slender, dark young man, foppishly dressed in the latest fashion, and with a somewhat elegant manner. In evening clothes, he could have passed as a foreign nobleman at a Ritz reception. Yet he was chief of the Lovo gang's gunmen and personally was the most daring and resourceful gunman Tony had ever encountered.
"Sit down, Mike," said Tony. "I've got a little job for you."
Mike obeyed, carefully easing his pants over his knees so as not to spoil their razor-like creases. Then he lighted an imported, cork-tipped cigarette with an ornate silver and mother-of-pearl lighter, and looked up expectantly.
"Do you know any of the men in the North Side mob?" demanded Tony.
"A few—by sight," answered Rinaldo, cautiously; his eyes narrowed with suspicion at the unusual question.
"I want one of 'em. And you're to get him for me."
"I don't think I quite get you, chief."
"I want one of Schemer Bruno's men—the higher up in the gang he is, the better I'll like it—brought here to me. I don't care how you do it just so he's alive when you get him here. I want to find out some details about how that mob operates."
"But, good God, chief, none of them would talk."
"The hell they wouldn't!" snapped Tony. "Did you ever see that little room we've got down in the cellar here?"
"No," answered Rinaldo, suddenly pale. "But I've heard about it."
"Oh, he'll talk all right," said Tony with a grim smile. "All you have to do is get him here. And if you get me somebody that knows something, there'll be five ‘C’s’ in it for you."
The gunman departed, his close-set eyes sparkling at the thought of making five hundred dollars in one chunk.
It was now after one in the morning. Tony could think of no other important tasks which could be done that night and decided to go home.
Jane Conley, famous in the underworld of half a dozen cities as "The Gun Girl," was still waiting up for him in the luxurious living-room of the expensive apartment he had rented for the thirtyday period of unconventional trial marriage to which they had agreed. And he felt a quick surge of passion rush through him as his keen glance caught a suggestion of the alluring curves of her fine figure through the filmy folds of the flaming orange-and-black negligee which set off so brilliantly her vivid dark beauty.
A magazine lay open in her lap but her eyes looked red and strained, as if she might have been weeping.
"What's the matter, dear?" he asked after he had kissed her. "Unhappy already?"
She shook her head.
"I've been thinking. And I guess it kinda got me upset. You know, Tony, you ought to watch yourself more. Now that you're in Johnny Lovo's shoes, all these other mobs are going to try to bump you off. You ought to have bodyguards with you all the time."
"Yeah, I guess you're right, kid. I'll see about that to-morrow."
"And I think we ought to be better armed here."
"All right. I'll bring up a machine gun to-morrow night if you say so. Nobody knows we're here and if they did, they've got sense enough not to try to pull off anything in a place like this."
“You can't tell, Tony. All the mobs are getting too ambitious and from now it's going to be for blood.”
"What's the matter; losin' your nerve?"
Not by a damned sight!" flared Jane, her eyes snapping. "You know damn well I'm not yellow; I've proved it more than once. But I think it's foolish to take any more chances than you have to." She came to him impulsively and laid a hand on his arm. "I—I've got some things on my mind, Tony, and if anything ever happened to you, I could never forgive myself."
With the taciturnity and inarticulateness of his kind, Tony did not question her about that cryptic remark. But to himself he puzzled over it. And before long he was destined to puzzle over it a lot more.
