CHAPTER XIX
For awhile, almost four months in fact, things were quiet. Everybody was making money and there were no killings. Then the men began to grow restive, as men of action will after a certain period of inactivity. The resumption of hostilities began with minor affrays between insignificant members of the various gangs which usually resulted in nothing more serious than bloody noses and black eyes. Then an occasional stabbing began to creep in among the hitherto comparatively harmless sport, and finally a shooting or two. The anxiety for action, for war and vengeance, became more marked. A tense air of watchful waiting, of incipient menace, hung over the headquarters of the various gangs. The men mentally were like bloodhounds straining at the leash.
Tony sensed the situation. He was weary of inactivity himself. And he was becoming suspicious of the prolonged quietude of his enemies. He knew that they and their men were no more capable of interminable peace than were he and his mob. It was rapidly narrowing to a question of who would strike first.
Among Tony's various valuable possessions were a number of gambling places. One of these was a second-floor establishment in the heart of the city. Despite its central position, it was located on a street which contained no department stores and in a block which consisted of wholesale barber supply stores and other such enterprises which dealt with few customers. Which made foot traffic on its sidewalks quite light.
Tony visited the place almost every day, a fact which he had never tried to conceal. As he stepped out of his sedan in front of the place one afternoon and paused an instant for his bodyguard to gather around him, he heard the sudden stuttering rat-tat-tat of a machine-gun. He saw two of his bodyguard go down before the deadly hail of lead and the others, darting low to take advantage of all the shelter the two sedans offered, look frantically about in an effort to find the source of the attack. Tony himself leaped inside the doorway that led to his second-floor establishment, but not before he felt a dozen heavy blows against his body. The marksmanship of his assailants had been deadly accurate, all right, but he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
In the comparative shelter of the narrow hall that led to the stairway, he turned. Already his automatic was out, ready for execution. He could see two of his men firing upward at the windows of the small hotel across the street. But with his own disappearance the vicious stuttering of the machine-gun had ceased. He imagined that the attackers already were in flight, trying desperately to make their escape before the arrival of the police. And his own men must do the same, to avoid arrest and serious charges. A daylight gun battle in a downtown street was no simple matter to adjust with the authorities.
He stepped to the doorway and searched the windows of the hotel with a quick but careful glance. He saw nothing suspicious.
"Cut it!" he snapped. "Into the cars, quick! Let's go!"
He made a flying leap for one of the sedans and clambered in. The men piled in around him and into the other machine. The two big cars roared away down the street. With only inches to spare, they swerved around a traffic cop who was frantically blowing his whistle at them, and raced on ward, bound for home and safety. Tony's eyes were glittering with cold, deadly fury but within him he felt a great exultation. The war was on again!
“They was on the third floor of the hotel, boss,” panted one of the men. “We seen 'em plain—two of 'em. One of 'em was usin' a Thompson and the other one had a automatic.”
A “Thompson” is that particular type of machine-gun which is the favorite weapon of the modern gangster, an easily transported but wicked death machine which can be handled with the ease of a rifle and which, while weighing only ten pounds, will hurl one hundred bullets per minute. When they reached headquarters, Tony went immediately to his private office and telephoned the District Attorney.
“They just tried to get me from the third floor of the Victor hotel,” he said almost gleefully.
“I know. I just got a flash on it from the detective bureau.”
“Must have been some of the Bruno mob. What are you going to do about it?”
“Just what I promised at that last conference. As many of the North Side mob as we can get our hands on will be rounded up to-night, questioned and brought into court in the morning,”
Which sounded fine, thought Tony, but didn't mean a thing. The chances were very strong that the actual assailants had made a clean getaway, none of the others would talk—in fact, they would probably know nothing of the attack until they saw it in the papers or were arrested—and the D.A.'s office would be able to prove against them nothing more serious than a charge of carrying concealed weapons. Tony realized that the whole round-up and subsequent activity would really amount to nothing more than a grand gesture for the benefit of the newspapers to pass on to the public.
But Tony felt that a round-up like that was too great an opportunity to be lost. He called in a dozen of his most reliable gunmen and for an hour drilled them in the details of a plan which would be the most daring gangland gesture the city had yet seen.
The evening papers—always more sensational than those published in the morning—made a great fuss over the afternoon attack, giving it huge headlines and a great deal of space. And some of the information was of great interest to Tony. The police, in the search of the hotel following the attack, had found in a third-floor room fronting the street a Thompson machine gun, an empty automatic and a dead man with half a dozen bullets in him. And the dead man later had been identified as Steve Libati.
"The dirty———!" breathed Tony venomously. "Turned traitor, did he? And some of the boys got him. Either that or his own partner shot him in the back, afraid that he might turn him up later. Well, anyway, he sure had it coming to him."
Tony studied over the various angles of the occurence for some time. The identification of one of the assailants as his former lieutenant brought in a new element. There was a chance, of course, that Steve had carried out the attack as a matter of personal vengeance. But it wasn't likely. He didn't have that much brains. No, the affair had been planned out by the crafty Schemer Bruno, who had used the ready Libati as a cat's paw. The chances were that Steve, upon being fired by Tony, had joined the North Side outfit, being admitted because of the valuable information he could furnish Bruno and because of his avowed hatred of Tony.
The morning papers, while showing a trifle more reserve about the whole matter, carried the news that the most thorough dragnet of years had been sent through the North Side during the night, with the result that a large portion of the notorious North Side gang—including the wily Schemer himself—had been rounded up and were now reposing in cells, from which they would be removed for court appearances that morning on various charges.
At nine-thirty, Tony loaded his dozen carefully selected gunmen into two big sedans and set forth on the little expedition he had planned the day before. When slightly less than a block away from the police court where Tony knew the North Side mob would be arraigned, he ordered the cars parked—but with their engines kept running for an instant getaway—and instructed his men to spread out along the street. He watched them take their stations then smiled coldly with pleased anticipation. When Schemer Bruno and his men came out—as they were sure to do—they would get a terrific surprise. And of course, just coming from court, they would be unarmed. It looked as though this morning would put a terrible dent in the North Side mob.
Suddenly the double doors of the police station —the court was above a station—swung open and a stream of detectives and uniformed officers streamed out and bore down on Tony's men.
“Hell!” gritted Tony, who had remained sitting beside the chauffeur in one of the cars. “The cops have seen ’em. Step on it!”
The big car roared into life and swerved around the corner, but not before two shots had rung out in the street and two bullets had thudded against the rear of the machine.
“Stop!” commanded Tony, and the car ground to a halt. Close as they were to the station, they were out of sight of it. “Gimme your gat!”
The chauffeur quickly handed over his revolver and Tony calmly dropped it down a convenient open sewer. He tossed his own heavy automatic after it then removed his small vest-pocket auto matic from its customary position and shoved it down inside of one sock. When two detectives came puffing around the corner with ready revolvers—he knew they would—he was standing calmly beside the car.
“Did you want to talk to me?” he demanded with a frown.
“I'll say so,” panted one. “It's lucky Lieutenant Grady looked out the window and recognized some of them gorillas of yours hangin’ around outside, or we'd a had a whole streetful o' murders on our hands.”
"Lieutenant Grady, was it?" queried Tony pleasantly. "I'll have to remember that."
"I don't care what you remember. Just come along quietly, both o' you muggs."
"Got a warrant?"
"Naw, 'course not."
"What's the charge?"
"Carryin' concealed weapons."
"But I'm not carrying concealed weapons."
"Naw?" exclaimed the burly detective incredulously. "Humph! Tryin' to stall, eh? Keep the rod on 'em, Jim, while I frisk 'em."
Quickly and thoroughly he searched Tony, but of course he did not extend it below the knees. Obviously puzzled, he hauled the chauffeur out of the car and searched him—without result. With evident bewilderment he surveyed these two men on whom he knew he should find guns. Then an idea occurred to him, as it sometimes does to an unusually bright police detective.
"I got it! " he exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm. "You dropped 'em on the floor or hid 'em in the car some place. That's an old trick of birds like you."
He went at the car as if he were going to take it apart. And he did as well as he could without the aid of dynamite or tools. But he found nothing incriminating.
"You see?" said Tony. "I told you the truth. I'm just out for a little drive this morning. And I don't like being shot at without reason when motoring." He produced two $50 bills and passed one to each of the puzzled detectives. "Now, boys, buy yourselves some cigars and forget that you ever saw me in this neighborhood this morning. And I won't tell anybody what a silly trick you pulled."
He climbed into his car and drove away, within three blocks removing the small automatic from his sock and placing it in his coat pocket ready for an emergency.
“Jeez! Boss, that was smooth work!” exclaimed the chauffeur admiringly.
"If the cops was as sharp as we are, we wouldn't have a chance!" answered Tony wisely.
From his private office at his headquarters, he telephoned Captain Flanagan. “This is Tony Camonte!” he said brusquely. “I hear they picked up some of my men out at Lawrence Avenue.”
“Yeah. Just heard about it.”
“Well, how about springin’ ’em? I ought to get some service for that monthly bit.”
“Sorry, Tony, but there isn't a hell of a lot I can do. If they was here at the bureau, it would be different, but it would look funny if I interfered too much out there. Some snoopy reporter might find out about it and shoot the works. I'll see, though, that none of ’em are booked for anything more than concealed weapons. But you better send down a mouthpiece to front for ’em.”
So Tony telephoned one of the able attorneys on his staff to go out and represent his men at their hearing, then fell into a mood of vengeful brooding. One plan had failed. The next one must not.