Tales of the Bagman

by B C Bell

  ***

  When Crankshaft emerged from Mac’s new underground hideout he was wearing a smile as well as his coveralls. The concrete at ground level had already been covered up with gravel, and the Graham Blue Streak Eight was suspiciously absent from the lot. When he saw Mac and Blake, he stopped smiling.

  “Is it OK to talk in front of the junkie?” Crankshaft said.

  Mac took a second look at Blake, wondering how Crankshaft had spotted it so fast. Blake was sniffling, clutching his shoulders. Mac had been preoccupied and completely missed the addict degenerating, slowly, right in front of him.

  “Hold on a second.” Mac grabbed Blake by the elbow and led him off to a junk laden corner of the lot. “Hate to do this, but I need you to hang around awhile. When this is all over with, I want to talk to you about getting cleaned up. You know, the sanitarium.” He cuffed Blake to an engine block in the shade, where he couldn’t be seen from the El tracks, and started to walk away, staring at the ground.

  “Hey, buddy! Can I borrow my little kit there?” Blake had a weak grin on his face. He was begging, without trying to look like it.

  Mac pulled the heroin rig out of his pocket. “Yeah… Stay out of sight.” He barely sounded like he was there. He shuffled back toward Crankshaft’s office with his hands in his pockets, still staring at the ground.

  “Damn, I hate to see that,” Mac said, closing the door inside the shack.

  “Then why’d you toss him his little kit?”

  “Can’t you see he’s in pain?” Mac said, as they sat down.

  “Can’t you see he’s a junkie? And in case you haven’t noticed, you just chained a white man up to an engine block on a very black man’s property. You trying to get me lynched? What the hell are you doing, anyway?”

  “I need your help, Crank.”

  “No.”

  “There might be a profit in it.”

  “No.”

  “That junkie is Coco Blue’s manager.”

  “Does he know where Coco is?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s still no.”

  “Listen, that stuff I found the other night at The Sheffield House belonged to a New York mobster, named—” The sound of gravel crunching under a car’s tires outside the door meant Crankshaft had a customer. And that meant Crankshaft was headed out the door.

  The car was a nondescript Model-A, like about half the cars in Chicago. Crankshaft glued his artificial smile on, and walked over to greet the customer.

  A big man, with a Tommy gun and half an ear, came into view over the top of the car and started shooting.

  Chapter VII

  Massacre

  Crankshaft dove under the nearest cover, the car itself, the second he saw the Tommy gun. In fact he’d reacted so fast that Sammy “The Scar” Lladdono had been surprised. He stopped shooting for a second, then began firing through the floorboard of the car’s interior. Crankshaft twisted underneath as the gravel danced angrily around him. He rolled toward the rear and stopped. The bullets jumped around him and toward the gas tank. He clawed at the ground, dragging himself forward again. It was safer under the engine.

  Mac was out of his seat and pulling his revolver out of its shoulder holster the moment the machine gun chattered. He fired three shots from the office door. Sammy the Scar flinched and dropped his gun. He looked Mac in the eyes and pulled a .45 automatic out of his pocket. Mac aimed at his head, pulled the trigger.

  And hit the gun in Sammy’s hand.

  Crankshaft was staring back at Mac, his eyes wide as the .45 Automatic clattered to the ground. Sammy the Scar bent over to pick the Tommy gun back up. Crankshaft spun beneath the car, reached out from underneath the other side and grabbed the chatter gun by the butt, pulling it out of Sammy’s good hand. He pulled it to his chest like a fumbled football, then grabbed the pistol grip and pulled the butt to his shoulder.

  Sammy the Scar was diving over the pile of junk in the corner of the yard by the time Crankshaft had a chance to get a shot off. Mac had already emptied his revolver, cleared the cylinder and reloaded. They glanced at each other and then over at the junk pile in unison.

  “You OK?” Mac said, as Crankshaft crawled from beneath the car.

  “I think so,” he said, pulling at his coveralls, checking for blood.

  They glared back up at each other simultaneously in sudden recognition—Gary Blake was chained on the other side of the junk pile.

  “Make a move, and I’ll kill the junkie!” Sammy yelled. A gunshot fired.

  Mac spread his arms in a violent shrug and looked up at the sky. How many guns did this guy carry on him?

  The two of them crouched down on one knee. Crankshaft drew a circle and arrows in the dirt like he was coaching from the dugout.

  “The next shot kills him!” Lladdono screamed. “I got yer little blues singer too, Jones! Anything happens to me—she dies!”

  Mac looked up from the drawing on the ground and mouthed the word “Jones?” at Crankshaft. How the hell did Sammy know Crankshaft’s real name? Mac hardly knew it.

  Crankshaft counted off silently with his fingers in the air. One. Two. Three... With guns churning, the two of them hurtled at the junk pile, Crankshaft to the left, Mac over the top.

  Clearing the top of the heap they could see the alley behind Lincoln Avenue through a gap in the fence. Lladdono had kicked few boards out of it and crawled through. Blake lay at the bottom of the scrap pile, blood pulsing out of his mouth and a hole in the side of his head. His heroin rig lay open next to him, the tubing in his hand.

  “Dammit!” Mac kicked an oil filter, cursing as the black fluid spun lazily through the air. “It’s my fault. I got this guy killed.”

  “With any luck, he never knew what hit him,” Crankshaft said.

  “Luck?” Mac said. “Luck?” he screamed in Crankshaft’s face. He picked up a fan blade and threw it at the El tracks that hung over the other side of the lot. With one hand he picked up Blake by the collar. Blood was still dripping out of his head. “This guy used up all his luck, Crank.” He dropped the body back on the pile. “So did Sammy Lladdono. Next time, I’m gonna kill him.”

  “Can I help?”

  Mac looked up from the ground with a sour expression on his face, and then looked at Crankshaft. “Lemme call up Shorty Lederman at the funeral home, have him take care of Blake. Then we’re both going after him.”

  “How’re you going to find him?”

  “Oh, it’s all part of my ‘brilliant’ master plan,” Mac said, sarcastically.

  Crankshaft gave him a sidewise glance; worry mixed with a question.

  “No, really,” Mac said. “There is a plan. He’s coming to meet us in two hours.”

  Another sideways look, this time with his eyebrows lowered.

  “What kind of guy carries three guns on him?” Mac muttered to himself.

  ***

  After he returned from calling Shorty at the funeral home—and asking for the favor of a respectful, but very, very private burial—Mac sat down in front of Crankshaft’s desk. Crankshaft threw Sammy the Scar’s .45 automatic down with a clatter.

  “It’s busted. Bullet hit the chamber. I didn’t know you could shoot like that,” Crankshaft said.

  “Neither did I. Shorty said he’ll be over in about a half-hour.” Mac picked up the automatic, looked at both sides, tried to cock it and threw it back on the table. “Hey, Crank. How did Sammy the Scar know who you were? Or better yet, how did you know who he was?”

  “Truth?”

  “Yeah, the truth would be nice.”

  “You know how you used to always ask me why I left Harlem after the war, and I’d never tell you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sammy’s one of the reasons.”

>   “Fat Lou Cabrisio one of the other ones?”

  “No…” Crankshaft looked down at the desk, but he was looking fifteen years into the past. “No, before Fat Lou took over, his boss was a guy named Vitali. He wasn’t fat at all. Matter of fact, he ran the boxing racket in Madison Square Garden for a while. He put a hit out on me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Something both Vitali, and my mom, will never forgive me for.”

  “What?”

  “You have to swear it’ll never leave this room.”

  “What?” Mac noticed Crankshaft was having trouble looking into his eyes. “I swear, I swear. OK?”

  “OK.” Crankshaft’s eyes circled into his forehead. He inhaled, held his breath, looked right at Mac and said, “I had an affair with his wife.”

  Mac’s mouth turned into a tiny, little “O.” Then expanded into a gigantic smiling “V.” “Oh. My. God.” His head nodded to and fro slightly in disbelief, still smiling. “Oh my God… I didn’t know you had it in you, old man. I never even suspected… Crankshaft Jones,” he said slowly, “slept with a Mafia Don’s gun moll… Oh my God.”

  “You are never to repeat that, ever again,” Crankshaft said, pointing a finger at him.

  Mac stood up and peeled one index finger with the other, making shame signals at the mechanic. “Cra-anky slept with a gun mo-oll, Cra-anky slept with a gun mo-oll,” he sang, like a child making fun.

  “Mac!” Crankshaft stood up and made a fist. “You better shut up!”

  Mac collapsed back in his seat. “You know what this means don’t you?” The silence was palpable. “It means you can never question my judgment ever again.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re the one in this up to your neck, and all because you want to run around with a bag on your head. Me, I got the little hitman who could.”

  “Touché, you got me. ‘Little hitman who could,’ is that some sort of character reference?”

  “Sammy the Scar was infamously known for always finishing the job. Followed a squealer all the way to Rome once and killed the guy in a church! Now he gets out of jail—comes after me fifteen years later.”

  “Yeah, but he thought Sticks Stone was you. That would explain all this. Think about it, Crank. It’s been fifteen years, and there is a resemblance.”

  “He thought Henry—my brother—was me?” Crankshaft was quiet for a moment. “That stinks. I don’t want to think about it.”

  Twenty minutes later, Shorty Lederman showed up at the gate, and Mac and Crankshaft had already loaded their arsenal into the Graham Blue Streak Eight.

  Crankshaft pulled the Blue Streak out of the underground garage, revving the engine. He was wearing his driving cap, goggles hanging above the brim, racing gloves on his hands. “You ready?”

  Mac jumped into the car and handed Shorty the keys to the gate. “Let’s do this.”

  They headed south down Broadway, the midday sun directly above.

  “OK, Crank, here’s the deal. First thing we gotta do is protect Sammy.”

  “Protect him?”

  “Well, if we have to, we can shoot to wound and then tail him back to wherever he’s keeping Coco. Problem is—there may be some other folks trying to kill him.”

  Crankshaft did a double take, shifting gears. “What ‘other folks’?”

  Well, y’see, before I knew he had Coco—before I knew anything—I was just trying to get Fat Lou to call off the contract on Blake.”

  “So?”

  “So I made a couple of phone calls.”

  “And?”

  “I’m afraid there might be one guest too many.”

  “Who?”

  “Cops, robbers...” Mac steadied himself against the dash as Crankshaft slammed on the brakes and pulled over.

  “Who!” he said, yanking the emergency brake up.

  Mac counted off on his fingers. “Chicago cops, the outfit, some hangovers from the old O’Banion mob…”

  “Hangovers from O’Banion! What are you trying to do, start a war?”

  “No, I just kinda’ thought, y’know, the outfit might not do the job. The whole Italian thing, y’know?”

  “The Outfit is not tied to the New York Families, they might agree to a payoff, but—Damn, Mac! You got guys coming out of retirement! And the cops! What the hell kind of plan is that?”

  “Sit back, and kind of… watch the fun, kind of a plan? At least that’s what it was.”

  “Great! Just great!” Crankshaft pounded on the wheel.

  “Well it would’ve been. How was I supposed to know he had Coco?”

  Crankshaft grumbled, “The O’Banion mob…,” rolling his whole head back with his eyes. “You heard him say—he’ll kill her.”

  “Maybe he’ll have her in the car or somethin’.”

  Crankshaft gave him a deadpan look, waited, and then threw his hands in the air before starting the car again.

  “OK, OK. I messed up.” Mac rested his chin in his hand, his eyes following his elbow out the window. “I’ll think of something.”

  Crankshaft shifted into second. “I’ll wait in the car.”

  Washington Square Park sat across the street from the Newberry Library, at the corner of Clark and Walton Streets in Chicago. Nobody knew it as Washington Square Park. The noble city fathers may have called it that, but ask anybody else in town. Ask any passerby. Ask a kid. Ask a cop. It was Bughouse Square.

  ***

  Bughouse Square was a carnival on the corner, where minds of all levels met on top of soapboxes to lecture and discuss subject matter ranging from birth control to labor unions, politics to prohibition. Winos and pitchmen, agitators, comics and anarchists all gathered there to hawk their way of life. Bughouse: slang for an insane asylum.

  Mac couldn’t think of a better place in the city for a payoff in broad daylight. Set a bag down, somebody else comes out of the crowd and picks it up. He couldn’t think of a worse place for a shoot out. People, kids, old men, even tourists. It’d make the Haymarket Riot look like a planned event.

  Crankshaft circled around the block, parked at the corner of Dearborn and Delaware, across the street from the square. There was only one man in the park speaking currently, the temperance lecturer. A small collection of drunks sipped and slept on wooden benches at the far side of the park, not listening. They were permanent residents. The usual collection of salesmen and reporters sat taking the afternoon off as they tried not to worry about sales quotas or deadlines. All together they added up to at least fifteen people, not to mention the usual tourists, businessmen and passersby of a modern metropolis.

  All of them waiting for a stray bullet.

  Mac double checked his revolver and checked his vest pocket for the extra cylinder and bullets. He had a blackjack and a paper bag in his pants pocket.

  “You know we have to do this, don’t you, Crank?”

  “Yeah.” Crankshaft pulled a .45 automatic out. “You know, if you’re going to keep it up with this ‘Bagman’ stupidity, you really should get an automatic. It’s lighter. Holds more bullets. The parts are all interchangeable. Easier to work on.”

  “Yeah, but guys with automatics always forget how much ammo they have.”

  “What, you can’t count higher than six?” Crankshaft racked the slide on his Army Colt.

  “Just keep an eye out for me, will ya? Maybe try to stop Sammy before he can get in the park.” Mac got out of the car and pulled the violin case out of the trunk. As he walked by the driver’s side, Crankshaft stuck his left arm out the window and stopped him.

  “Don’t you think carrying around a violin case might be just a little too conspicuous?”

  Mac looked down at the case as if for the first time. “Nah, it’s too corny, remember? Besides” he thumbed over
his shoulder “it’s Bughouse Square, there’s gotta be a music school around here somewhere.”

  Crankshaft looked over his shoulder at the Dr. Scholl School of Podiatry, and supposed he was lucky Mac wasn’t carrying around a big shoe.

  Perhaps the fact that it was Bughouse Square is what kept Mac anonymous as he placed the violin case upright on the east side of a thick oak tree at the border of the park. Just to the north, in the shade of the large tree, stood Dry Clyde, as the locals called him, on a soapbox, in the middle of his usual spiel on the evils of alcohol. It was the part of his presentation where he listed strong drink by its many names—John Barleycorn, corn liquor, white lightning, rotgut, the ruddy cup, demon alcohol. By this time he had it so well rehearsed, and the crowd in the square had heard it so many times, that nobody even noticed when Mac stopped behind him, looked both ways, and then shimmied up into the branches of the tree. No easy feat since the tree was bigger around than Mac was.

  After a short interval of brushing himself off and conducting an argument with a shrieking squirrel, Mac sat a good fifteen feet up in the air camouflaged by the foliage.

  Crankshaft was momentarily distracted by the spontaneous enter-tainment of Mac and the squirrel throwing acorns at each other—when Sammy “The Scar” Lladdono came down East Delaware. He popped up from behind a hot dog stand with his hands in his pockets, his stride unhurried but quick. His eyes stared directly ahead, emotionless. He’d passed the Blue Streak before anyone had a chance to see him. He was already on the other side of the street by the time Crankshaft got the door open.

  Mac wedged his mask on with his hat; no matter what happened he was going to need an alias. As he prepared to launch himself on top of the hitman, two uniformed police approached caddy-corner to Crankshaft. Mac stayed hidden in the foliage, waiting to see what would happen. Sammy picked up the violin case and turned to face the cops. One of them held up his hand.