CHAPTER XVII
The assistant chief of the powerful Lovo gang came in with an air of genial assurance that somehow seemed forced. His ugly face bore a smile but his eyes were narrowed and searching, as if he were anxious to know what sort of reception he was to receive.
"Sorry to hear about your accident, boss," he said. "The cops phoned that your car had been found out on the North Side somewhere. There's been a lot of reporters out here this morning, too; they say there's bullet-holes in the tires. But I told 'em you wasn't around—"
"Yeah," growled Tony sourly, "you're a big help to me." He stiffened and leaned across the desk, his mouth twisted in an ugly snarl. "What the hell did you miss Bruno for?" he demanded.
Libati shrugged. "Just a rotten break."
"What do you mean—a rotten break?" demanded Tony savagely. "Bullets go where they're aimed. . . . How'd you try to pull the job, anyway?"
Libati explained. One of the two gunmen that he had selected to help him murder Schemer Bruno, wily leader of the strong North Side gang, had discovered that Bruno was to visit a certain place at ten o'clock the night before. In a parked car across the street, they had lain in wait for him. He came out in a few minutes and just as they were ready to fire, another car had run through the street, obscuring their human target for a moment. When their opportunity finally came, he was walking rapidly toward his car. They had all fired a volley at him and then fled in their car, before his friends inside the saloon could pile out and make the gun fight two-sided.
"All three of you put a rod on him?" demanded Tony.
"Yeah."
"And all three of you missed?"
"I—guess so. The papers this morning says he wasn't hit by this ‘mysterious attack!’"
“Well, what a fine lot of gat-packers you are,” snarled Tony in disgust. "Why, I could throw a gat at a guy and hit him with it. . . . Why in hell didn't you finish the job?"
"But them guys inside—"
"If there's anything I hate, it's a quitter. . . . I s'pose you didn't know that if you missed, Bruno was sure to know who was behind the attack and set all his gorillas on my trail. . . . Listen, Steve, there's two kinds of guys that this mob ain't big enough to hold—those that can't obey orders and those that won't obey orders. And I think both counts fit you."
Libati flushed slowly until his swarthy complexion had turned a sort of dull purple. And his shifty black eyes had taken on a glittering menace.
"I—don't think I get you," he said slowly, and his lips compressed into a thin, hard line.
"No? Well, I'll put it plainer, so plain that even you can get it. Either you and the men you picked to help you get Bruno are no good or you sold out to the enemy and missed on purpose."
"Damn you!" gritted Libati, leaping to his feet, his right hand darting for his side coat pocket. But Tony, with the smooth ease and incredible rapidity of the expert, had lifted his automatic from the desk and had it trained on his lieutenant's middle coat button before the man was completely out of the chair.
"Don't pull, you fool!" hissed the leader. "I don't weaken and I don't miss. And you better not let that right mitt of yours get nervous again while you're in my presence. It's only my left arm that's broke, you know," he added with grim humor.
Steve let his gun hand fall to his side, then ostentatiously lifted it to light a cigarette that he had taken from his left hand pocket.
"You've been after my job ever since Johnny left," said Tony. "And you ain't the type to be particular how you got it—or anything else, for that matter. If I was dead, you'd have it, see? That's why it would be so nice for you to have Schemer Bruno still alive so he could get me. Well, I ain't dead yet, Steve, and I don't intend to be for a long time. So I think you're wastin' your valuable time around here waitin' for me to drop off." His voice dropped to the cold, monotonous level of a judge pronouncing sentence. "You and those two mugs who was with you last night are through with this mob."
"Don't talk foolish!" snapped Steve. "You can't fire me out of this mob. Johnny—"
"Johnny's gone. And he left me the boss. There's my authority," lifting the heavy automatic and gazing at it fondly. "From to-day on you don't get a dime out of here and if I hear of you hangin' around here, it's liable to be curtains. You're all through, see? You can either go out like you are or in a hearse, I don't care which."
For a long moment the two men looked into each other's eyes. Tony's were cold, hard, steady; Steve's shifty and blazing with fury. But at last the erstwhile lieutenant turned without a word and strode out of the room. Again Tony had won; permanently this time, it seemed.
Tony's next act was to arrange a bodyguard for himself, an ample one. Then, with a retinue befitting a person of his importance—and danger, he returned to his apartment. From now on he would travel as he was doing now, between two watchful henchmen in the rear seat of a sedan with a steel body and bullet-proof glass while the well-armed chauffeur and the man beside him, as well as the four men following closely in a similar car maintained a constant vigil in every direction for suspicious automobiles or people.
Tony entered his luxurious apartment briskly, his hard eyes glinting with anger. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask Jane, the notorious "Gun Girl" who, recently, had been living with him.
He found her curled up in a big chair in the living-room, reading a novel and munching a box of chocolates with what he considered unpardonable placidness. She looked up in surprise at his entrance, then her eyes widened in shocked amazement as she noted his appearance.
"Why, Tony!" she exclaimed. "What's happened?"
"A lot you care! " he growled. "I go around the corner to put the car away and don't come back till the next day and you look as if you hadn't even wondered what kept me."
"But I have wondered, Tony. I've been terribly anxious. But I supposed that you knew your own business and I thought you might resent my butting into your affairs."
"Yeah? Well, the Bruno mob tried to take me for a ride last night. And I think you knew they were goin' to."
"Tony!" The girl's face had gone deathly white and her eyes were glittering. "How can you say—"
"Who was that dame at the cabaret last night, the good-lookin' moll in white with that dark mug in a dress suit?"
"I—I don't know."
"Yes, you do. I pointed her out to you and I could see in your eyes that you knew her." He went close to her, caught her arm in a vise-like grip and twisted cruelly. "Who was she?" he rasped.
"She's—a gun girl," panted Jane finally. "Schemer Bruno's moll."
"So that's it, eh?" He released Jane's arm and stepped back, gazing down at her with sneering contempt.
"Was that Bruno with her?"
"Yes."
"God! If I'd only known that," gritted the gang leader, murder in his eyes. "And you knew it all the time and wouldn't tell me."
"No. If I had, you'd have tried to bump him off right there. And you would have either been killed by some of his mob—he always has a bodyguard with him—or been pinched by the cops and tried for the job."
"Humph! Don't make me laugh! They couldn't hang anything on me in this town."
"Don't be too sure! Bootlegging's one thing; murder's another."
"What made you want to leave right away when you saw her and Bruno?"
"I—was afraid they might be going to try to pull something. I wanted to get home—to get out of their reach."
“Humph! Looks to me like you were more afraid of your own hide than mine.”
"What if I didn't want to get bumped off?" demanded the girl, a trace of her usual defiant assurance returning. "Nobody wants to croak at my age. But I was worried about you, too, Tony," she continued hurriedly as she saw the storm clouds gathering in his face. “Haven't I tried for days to make you fix a bodyguard for yourself?”
Tony considered, realizing the truth of that. She had pleaded with him for the past two weeks to arrange a competent bodyguard for himself. But he had hesitated, feeling that to move around constantly surrounded by a squad of gunmen was a reflection upon his own courage and marksmanship. Yet he could not rid himself entirely of the idea that she had been treacherous to him. And his ruthless direct mind could find only penalty for treachery—Death.
“I love you, Tony,” she went on while his piercing glance surveyed her. "And I've been doing everything I could to protect you."
"Yeah? Well, I have my doubts. But I'll give you a chance to prove it. If you love me, get Schemer Bruno for me."
Her eyes widened slowly as she realized the enormity of the assignment and the thoughts within his mind that must have prompted it. Tony laughed.
"Lost your nerve?" he demanded.
Jane gazed at him with sudden contempt, "Of course not!" she snapped. "I've got as much guts as you—any day in the week, big shot."
"Yeah? Then prove it and your love for me by gettin' the Schemer."
"What a nice chivalrous mugg you turned out to be!" she rasped contemptuously. "Handing me the job of bumping off the biggest rod in town—next to you. And alone. You know damn well, Tony, that I never pulled a job by myself. But I'm quite a help, if you'll just remember back to the time that we got Jerry Hoffman together that night in the Embassy Club. But if you'll help, I'll do my part. I'll snoop around until I find when he'll be on a spot. Then we'll pull the job together."
"Well, all right," he growled. He had cooled off considerably from his first anger and as he surveyed the girl's ample charms, but illy concealed by expensive negligee, he decided that it probably would be best not to lose her just yet. But of course he must not let her realize that. He stepped forward and caught her arm again. "But you little devil," he rasped through gritted teeth, "if I ever catch you turnin' me up or doin' be any kind of dirt, it'll be curtains. See?"
So these two, who never had failed to complete a killing assigned them, assigned one to themselves and verbally signed Schemer Bruno's death warrant. Yet Tony's doubts and the ensuing quarrel had opened in their relations a rift which was to have far-reaching consequences.