You Bet Your Life: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Three)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Shelly, do I have any mail or messages?”

  “I’ll go check. It rained here.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “It’s beautiful here in Chicago.” Through the window I could see that the darkness was complete. It had been almost dark before five o’clock. Shelly grunted and went for my mail.

  “Let’s see. Looks like a bill, some ads, a letter that smells very nice. Want me to open it?”

  “Who’s it from?”

  “Ann Peters with a return address of—”

  “I know the address.”

  “Want me to open it?”

  “No,” I said. Someone knocked at the door. “Leave it on my desk. I’ll be back in a few days, I think.”

  “Right. I’ve got a bridge to build for Mr. Stange. Want me to wait till you get back?” Someone knocked again.

  “No,” I said. “Science will have to move on without my admiration. Goodbye.”

  I hung up and went to the door. I was curious about why my ex-wife would write to me. The last time I had seen her she made it clear that I wasn’t welcome company, and she was seriously thinking about marrying some guy at the airline she worked for. Whatever she wanted, I didn’t want it filtered through Shelly Minck.

  The “kid” at the door was about seventy. He took my suit and said he’d have it back in an hour. I got in a hot bath, letting myself cough and sputter. After my suit came back and I had tipped the old kid fifty cents, I lay down on the bed in the dark in clean underwear and listened to “Information Please,” “Gang Busters” and “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.” Both Warden Lawes and Holmes got the guy they were after. It inspired me to rise out of bed and begin the search for Gino Servi. I flicked off the radio two minutes into Lawrence Welk from the Trianon Ballroom, put on my suit and coat and went down in the lobby. I didn’t take the gun. I’d never used it, and the place I was going there were probably a lot of people who would recognize that bulge and not take kindly to it.

  I waved to Curtis Katz at the desk and asked the doorman to get me a cab. One was waiting about twenty feet away. The life of semiluxury felt good, but I started to worry. I knew what I was going back to when this was over. I didn’t want to get too used to things I couldn’t have.

  While I pondered the meaning of life, gobbled Bromo Quinine cold tablets, and blew my nose into Kleenex, the cab driver pulled quietly into the Chicago night.

  When I told the cabbie I wanted to go to the Fireside Lounge in Cicero, he turned to look at me and shrugged. We arrived in front of the place half an hour later. He took my fare and tip and shook his head sadly.

  When I got out, I was facing a black Cadillac parked across the street. The guy behind the wheel looked like Lon Chaney. His eyes were pointed straight at me.

  5

  There were at least two possibilities. One was that Nitti’s two boys, with some help from Nitti’s friends on the police force, had found out I was staying at the LaSalle and had simply waited and followed the cab when I came out. Another possibility was that Gino Servi was the man I wanted, and they had simply waited for me to show up in Cicero, which would suggest they had more confidence in my detecting that I did. Of course their presence could have been a coincidence. I’d heard that you could safely stand on a streetcorner in Cicero forever and never see anyone you knew. That’s what I’d heard, but it was old information from an ex-con named Red. The thing that mattered was that Nitti’s men knew where I was. I tried not to think about what they wanted from me.

  Cicero was no warmer than Chicago, and in spite of its name, the Fireside did not look particularly warm. It was a big fake-log building with a gravel-covered parking lot you got in by driving under a sign on hinges. It was too dark to tell if the logs were brown. The windows were covered with dark drapes and a small red neon sign over the door announced the location. The large F in the sign flickered and threatened to give up. When it did, the ireside would be in business.

  I went through the heavy wooden door, dragging flu-stricken legs, and found myself facing another door with a menu on it. All items on the bill of fare had been crossed off. That and the lack of prices didn’t encourage the dinner trade.

  Through a second door I found a creature who looked something like a juke box—short, solid, and wearing a maroon jacket and tie. The dim light turned his face orange and purple and danced on glasses so thick they looked bulletproof.

  “Kitty Kelly sent me,” I said.

  He put his newspaper aside, looked me over. He made it clear that it didn’t matter who sent me. I wasn’t carrying hardware. That was all he cared about. His job was to send them in, not keep them out. He took my coat and handed it through a dark square. Something or somebody inside the dark square took it.

  “Go on in,” said the juke box, with a slight Irish accent. I went on in, stifling a sniffle.

  “In” was a large, softly lit, low-ceilinged room with no fireplace. “In” did not look particularly warm. There were about sixty men and women in the room, well to reasonably dressed, at five card tables and a roulette wheel. One-armed bandits lined the walls and jingled constantly. There was a bar in the right corner with a door behind it. The bar was so small that only a half dozen stools were needed to surround it. Patrons apparently were not encouraged just to drink and pass the time of day with Joe the bartender, who looked like he was eight feet tall and not the kind of guy you’d want to pass any time with, or meet by chance in the washroom.

  A single pillar, about as big around as a small redwood, stood in the middle of the room, but it wasn’t supporting the ceiling. I’d seen pillars like this in Vegas and Reno. The pillar had an eye-level series of dark mirrors running around it. Inside the pillar was at least one man with a gun, probably a very big gun. There was no real attempt to hide the purpose of the pillar. The door was clearly outlined and was surely locked on the inside. If the man with the gun had a heart attack, it would probably take dynamite to get to him. I had the feeling that dynamite might not be too far away either. The pillar was a warning to youthful, ambitious punks who might want to take on the power. It was also a reassurance to the honest patrons and an extra eye on the possibly dishonest ones.

  A platinum blonde moved away from a pair of youngish women at the bar and headed for me. She wore a black dress that glittered in the soft brown light. She was about forty, maybe a little too skinny, with a good smile and a voice that suggested a touch of state college.

  “Companionship, or action?” she said.

  Our eyes met. I wondered how long and deep someone would have to scratch, and with what, to get through her first three lines of defense. From the way she looked at me, I could see that I didn’t have the tools for the job. Maybe it was my running nose and rheumy eyes.

  “I’m here from out of town,” I said, trying to look the part. My red nose probably helped the Mortimer Snerd image. “I’d like to try my luck at that roulette table.”

  I rubbed my hands together, not hard enough to start a fire but enough to show I was hot to lose the few bucks I had saved in a sock in the old chicken coop.

  “Oh brother,” she said, grinning and taking my arm. My first level of disguise had certainly been penetrated. I had been taken for a clown instead of an idiot.

  She guided me around black jack and poker tables to the roulette wheel in the far left corner.

  “We work in chips,” she whispered. “Fives, tens, twenties and fifties. You pay me, and I give the chips. You turn in what you have, if anything, when you leave. I usually get a tip.”

  “I’ll start with fifty bucks in fives,” I said. I counted out fifty-five and shook the last five indicating it was a tip. Her mask grin stayed put. Instead of sitting at the table, I watched her walk to the bartender, who took the cash and handed her the chips. The barkeep immediately took my money through the door behind the bar.

  The blonde came back, gave me ten white chips, patted my shoulder and said, “Find me if you need more chips. The guys in red are the waiters. Just call them if
you want to order a drink. You can pay them in cash or chips.”

  There were seven or eight players at the roulette table. The first thing I noticed was the croupier, who never smiled and whose voice never changed. He was a thin guy with a tux and a little mustache. As the night wore on, his French accent disappeared.

  I squeezed in next to a tall, lean guy in his early thirties, wearing a perfectly tailored suit with a neat white monogrammed handkerchief in the pocket. He smoked his cigarette in a pearl holder and seemed slightly amused by the table, which didn’t look in the least funny to me.

  “How you doing?” I said, pushing a white chip on the black.

  The lean guy looked at me with a raised eyebrow and answered with an upper crust English accent that seemed somehow wrong for Cicero.

  “I’m losing,” he said, “but through my losses I’m developing a plan. All it takes is money and a great deal of patience.”

  He lost his red chip and I lost my white one.

  “You have enough money and patience?” I sniffled.

  “A reasonable supply of the former and an almost infinite supply of the latter. Fortunately, I’m obsessed with the Romantic fantasy that I will someday break the bank and save the British Empire.”

  We both lost again. He didn’t appear to mind. I decided he was imitating George Sanders playing a cad, or maybe George Sanders imitated this guy when he played a cad. English’s superior sneer seemed permanently fixed under a once broken nose, which added a soldier-of-fortune air to his good looking long face.

  My next monumental sneeze raised a grumble from a be-ringed matron on my right. I blew my nose and lost five bucks more in atonement. English raised his right hand elegantly, and a waiter who had been stuffed into a maroon jacket two sizes too small galloped over on the dark tile floor. The slot machines provided his musical accompaniment.

  “Have you a halfway decent wine?” English asked him, making clear what he expected the answer to be by the doubting arch of his brow.

  “Yeah,” said the waiter, confirming his assumption.

  English handed the waiter a white chip and told him to bring a glass of wine, preferably something French from the Loire, with a glass of orange juice and a raw egg.

  The waiter said, “Right,” and walked away. English leaned over to me.

  “He’ll come back with Chianti,” he said, losing ten bucks more on number seven.

  I skipped a couple of spins and looked around the room for someone who might be Gino or for Nitti’s men. If Gino was there, I decided, he was behind that door on the other side of the bar. Even if I could make it past the enormous barkeep, I had a feeling things were behind that door that could cause me grief.

  The wine, juice, and egg arrived. English held the dark glass to his nose and frowned.

  “California, no more than a year old,” he sighed. “But it will have to do. Actually it has to be swallowed quickly, so it doesn’t matter if there’s nothing to savor.”

  With all eyes on him including that of the croupier, he cracked the egg into the juice. Instead of drinking the contents of the two glasses, he handed them to me.

  “Gulp it down like a good lad,” he said around his cigarette holder. “Then bolt down the wine.”

  I raised a hand to protest, and hit the matron, who countered with a sharp push on my back. English guided the drinks into my hand. I drank them. What the hell. I couldn’t feel much worse than I did.

  “Five minutes, you’ll be able to take on an orangutan,” he said, returning to his bet.

  “I may have to,” I replied, wiping orange juice from my mouth with a table napkin.

  He looked at me archly, and after ordering a Bourbon and branch water went on with his determined march to bankruptcy.

  In five minutes I felt much better and had lost my fifty bucks in chips. I waved to the blonde, who walked over to me, lighting the way with her capped teeth. When she leaned, I gave her another fifty, wondering how I’d get the money back from Louis B. Mayer.

  “I’d like to talk to Gino,” I whispered.

  “Gino who?”

  “Gino Servi.”

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “Tell him a friend of Chico’s.”

  “I’ll see if this Gino is around.” She never lost her smile.

  English regarded me with exaggerated new respect. I was about ten years older than he was, but he made me feel like a kid.

  “That was very nice,” he said, pulling in his first win since I had sat down. “Sounded a little like something out of Little Caesar.”

  “More like Dead End,” I answered, pushing a chip forward on the red. For the next twenty minutes, I began to lose more slowly, which I considered a major moral triumph. The platinum lady came back and whispered to me.

  “Gino will see you at closing time. Three o’clock, if you want to stick around.”

  I said I would. My watch told me I had a couple hours to kill, and my wallet told me I’d never make it at the present rate. I started to spend my money on wine, eggs, and juice, drank the wine more slowly, and managed to lose a hundred and fifty bucks while I learned some things about English. We were quite a pair. He was upper class with a few generations of a lot of money. My old man had been a small Glendale grocer who left my brother and me a pile of debts when he died. English had been educated in Europe. I had missed finishing my second year in junior college when I joined the Glendale cops. He knew his way around the world. I knew Los Angeles County and about a hundred miles around it.

  When the dials under the scratched lens of my trusty watch told me it was almost time, my cold was under temporary and artificial control. By a quarter to three, there was no one in the place except Joe the bartender and me, the platinum lady, the English guy, and the cleanup crew.

  The blonde told English it was closing time. He threw the croupier a red chip, handed the blonde his remaining chips to cash in, downed his Bourbon and branch water, and spoke softly to me.

  “Give you a lift?”

  “I’m going back to downtown Chicago, but I may be tied up here for a few minutes.”

  “No trouble,” he said. “I’m going that way. I’ll just wait right outside for you.”

  The blonde brought him his cash, his coat, and a goodby smile. Two minutes later I was alone with the cleaning staff of the Fireside. Ten minutes after that I was just alone. Someone turned off the lights except for a few over the bar and night lights in each corner. The long white shadows out of darkness were great for my nerves.

  There was a noise at the pillar. It opened and a man in a white shirt and no jacket came out. His shirt was wrinkled with sweat, and his hair was plastered down from oil or the steam bath of the inside of that pillar. He walked over to the exit door and casually leaned against it. The door opened and the man who looked like a juke box came in, peered around the room with his head forward, found me, cleaned his glasses on his sleeve, and stood on the other side of the exit door. Outside a car went by with a loose gasket and a drunken kid yelled, “Yahh!”

  A few seconds later the door behind the bar opened and three figures came out, outlined in strong light behind them. They closed the door and disappeared in the darkness near the bar. My irises kicked back, and I saw two of the men were the familiar winners of the Lon Chaney and Lou Costello look-alike contest. The third guy was the mustached villain from Nitti’s room in the New Michigan Hotel.

  “You Gino Servi?” I asked. My voice took a half bounce back off the walls. No answer. The five men looked at me as if I were a dog act about to begin.

  “You should have left town this morning,” said Servi. “You don’t get two chances.” Servi went back through the door behind the bar.

  “Hey, wait—” I yelled. “Let’s talk. I’ve—”

  He was gone.

  My best hope was that the quartet had not been told to kill me, just have a little fun and send me on my way in my underwear with an hour to get out of town. I could either take what they were planning for
me or try to get out. With both doors covered, my chances for escape were less than that of Mamkos against Zale.

  “O.K.,” I said, putting up my palms and chuckling. “You win. I’m going. Give me time to get my suitcase and I’ll be gone. A man should know when he’s beaten.”

  At one level of consciousness, I told whatever gods may be that I would get out of town if I had the chance. At another level, I knew that if I got out of here I wasn’t leaving town. But there really wasn’t any issue or debate. The four horsemen weren’t having any.

  “I travel light,” I said.

  “You don’t travel anymore,” said Costello, stepping forward. “You get a long rest.”

  Chaney started to move toward me from the left, a phantom in the shadows. The juke box man and the guy from the pillar just watched. They were back-up men and probably wouldn’t be needed against the likes of me.

  “I’ve had too much rest recently,” I said, backing away. Costello was coming at me slowly. I said a few more things, but I don’t remember what they were. What I wanted was for Costello to keep coming forward while I backed away, to get him off balance and somehow get past him and make a run for the door behind the bar. There wasn’t much chance I’d make it, but no one had a better idea. I backed into a card table, babbled something, and put everything I had into a right to Costello’s face. He staggered with the punch, but didn’t give me room to get by on his right. Chaney was blocking the left. Costello’s face came into a patch of light. He was smiling in a way I did not like, and a thin line of blood trickled from his left nostril to his mouth. I pulled back for another swing, but Chaney caught me with an underhand right to my gut. I flew back, gasping for air, and bounced over the black-jack table behind me. The table went over, sending cards, ash trays, and an unfinished drink flying into the dark.

  I was on my back when they reached me. Somebody pulled me to my knees. Somebody else got a good grip on my hair and held my head up. The next move would be a fist in my face. Nausea hit me first, and I tried to see if the leveling fist held a glint of metal.