by Robert Colby
He could do no wrong. He was the self-appointed policeman, jury and executioner.
The interior of the house tried to appear luxurious and expensively furnished. But to a critical eye it was merely gaudy, the flashy pieces in bad taste and of cheap construction. Warren guessed that the house was rented. Now, in the winter season, it could bring a thousand a month.
There were three bedrooms, each with a bath. Warren stormed through them, opening closets, yanking at bureau drawers in search of the money. There was only men’s clothing in the two smaller rooms. But then he came upon a third which might have been described by a fatuous real estate agent as the master bedroom.
Here there were twin closets. One was locked. The other contained the abundance of Marian’s wardrobe—the expensive suits, dresses, cocktail and evening gowns his money had bought her.
He began to examine the dresses one by one, remembering some occasion on which each was worn, his face terrible with hate and sorrow. After a time he took one of the dresses and tore it savagely, ripped it into useless shreds. He went down the rack, lifting out other dresses and mutilating them with demented energy.
Tiring of this he returned to his search for the money. There must be at least a bank book, a deposit box key, a receipt. But where?
He examined the lock on the other closet. It appeared a simple latch type, not much of a problem for anyone with a little skill and determination.
He returned from the kitchen with a screw driver and a knife. Working them together he was able to move the latch out of the slot, prying it back until the door opened.
The closet was stocked with costly suits and sport jackets, also shirts, ties and a dozen or more pairs of shoes, all top quality. On a shelf above these items there was an assortment of hand guns which included three automatics and four revolvers. In wall brackets were a shotgun and a hunting rifle—his own!
On the floor of the closet he found his portable typewriter and, beside it a tan suitcase of the airplane luggage variety, strong but lightweight. He hoisted this onto the bed and opened it.
The money was there! In fact there was nothing else in the case but green bundles of currency. Perhaps more than forty-seven thousand, a great deal more!
He decided to count it. Because the bills were large and the currency bundled in labeled stacks, the count was swift. It came to an even two hundred forty-five thousand, nearly a quarter of a million dollars!
Smiling grimly he put the money away, closed the case and sat down to think. With so many guns about and what could be the clothing of a small nest of hoods, it seemed obvious that this Tony was not exactly a legitimate businessman. Knowing Marian, Tony was probably on the winning side of the gambling racket and the quarter million was the take from some giant bookie operation.
If Tony came home from his night on the town with Marian and found the loot gone he might run howling in many directions. But it was unlikely that the police department would hear so much as a whisper of complaint from him. And that was good. It was even funny. The dice were fixed in Warren’s favor.
He went back to the closet and removed the pistols from the shelf. Every gun was fully loaded and seemed, if not new, in perfect condition. His own.38 was in his pocket and Warren did not need or want the weapons. But why leave such an arsenal in the hands of an outraged punk?
He opened the case and placed the pistols, along with his own dismantled rifle, beside the money. To this store he added several boxes of ammunition which he also spied in the closet. Tony could have the shotgun. The suitcase was already overloaded.
Now he got the portable typewriter and carried it to a desk in the living room. For a moment he searched the desk, coming up with only one item of interest—a phone bill addressed to one Tony Viani. There was also paper in the desk and, inserting a sheet, he began to peck laboriously.
Dear Lover-boy Tony,
I’m going to tear up your IOU, Tony. If you’re a nice boy I might even let you off with your life.
I acknowledge payment for the following:
1. Cash stolen from my bank account with the aid of dear, dear Marian-$47,000.
2. The theft of one slightly soiled, slightly used wife, including settlement for expenses, time, mental anguish and other intangibles suffered when the treacherous bitch ran off with you to this YMCA of crime, this sweaty sewer of love. Cost to you—$198,000. Is she worth it, Tony?
Strangely, the grand total comes to exactly $245,000.
You got off easy, Tony boy. If you had been here I would have killed you—slowly, very, very slowly, Tony. Remember that, and don’t push your luck.
As for you, Marian—I’ll think about it. I may just break a few bones or throw acid in your face. Something mild like that, in view of my joy over this wealth you brought me. In any case, I’ll be seeing you, baby.
Good-bye, dear friends. Your generosity overwhelms me. It moves me to tears.
Be brave. Keep chuckling.
W. E.
Warren fastened the note to the closet door with a piece of Scotch Tape from the desk. Carrying the suitcase and his typewriter, he went out the front way, leaving the house in a glorious blaze of lights.
He stowed the case and the typewriter in the trunk and drove off merrily. The grin kept widening across his face. He began to laugh. He couldn’t stop. He would grow silent for a space, but then every few blocks the beautiful irony of it all would strike him and the sound would come bubbling from deep inside him.
It was just an investment, he thought. You put forty-seven thousand in the capable hands of Marian and Tony and practically overnight it became a quarter million.
He braked before one of the swank, towering beach hotels.
Ahh, Marian, ahh, Tony, how I love you both! How clever you are, how brilliant. How wisely you increase my capital. How generously you pay for your little mistakes.
The bellhop had the two suitcases in hand.
“Be careful of that one, my boy,” Warren said grandly, pointing to the tan case. It’s simply stuffed with money. I always bring one case full of clothes and another full of money!”
He had to laugh again, knowing he would not be taken seriously. At first the bellhop’s face was blank. But suddenly he smiled and began to chuckle in a kind of echo of Warren’s deep rumble.
They moved off into the lobby.
CHAPTER SIX
Tony Viani was enjoying the show. His thick, brooding features, rock-ribbed and intense as a cocked gun, were clenched in a lewd grin.
On the raised platform, square and ugly as a boxing ring, the girl rotated her bottom, twirled her naked breasts, pumped her groin and writhed about the stage to the thumping bleating sounds of musical bedlam. The girl was young and, even for a stripper, vastly endowed with a fleshy sensuality that reached across the footlights in nearly visible waves of magnetism.
Marian, who sat ringside with Tony and a slim hollow-cheeked man who had a long narrow face and hair the color of wet sand, did not watch the stripper. Instead, her gaze was fastened upon Tony, her expression at once speculative and adoring. The stripper was a bore, but Tony’s reaction to her lusty contortions was a matter of high interest, especially since this same stripper had been at their table between gyrations—invited by Tony to make it a foursome. And though this babe was supposed to be paired with Tony’s friend, Earl Lubeck, she had tossed words, eyes and curves at Tony in the most obvious play for his attention.
You could not really tell with any certainty what Tony was thinking. His expression boldly described pleasure or displeasure. But in between these extremes his face was a mask, an enigma. Nor did his words very often signal his actions. So without warning he might be taken by some shocking whim and would trample anyone just to follow the sudden impulse to amuse or benefit himself.
For instance, if Tony got even a small itch for this teaser, this Sheila La Belle, he would think nothing at all of going off somewhere with her when she finished her last grind. Marian would be left in the hands of Earl
Lubeck until Tony returned without so much as a grunt of apology.
And no plea of threat could reach him. You could take him or leave him, that’s all. Tony held all the cards because he cared so little about anyone esle but himself. If you didn’t like his ruthless ways you could depart immediately and he would feel no pain, no pang of regret.
Tony was important to women. But women were not important to Tony.
It was this very quality which fascinated Marian. Tony would always be a challenge. And she would always hope to break him down. Though if that doubtful day ever came, she would promptly lose interest.
But for the moment Marian was not really worried about Sheila La Belle. Tony was just treading water for an hour or two. Tony had plans—the most awesome plans—to be carried out before the night would end. And these plans could never include Sheila.
The so-called music died with an agonized squeal. Sheila jiggled, bounced and bowed her way offstage, hugging her giant breasts from view as her native modesty returned in the harsh glare of a naked spotlight.
So facile were her costume changes, she appeared at the table in only a minute, dressed in a purple gown boasting her cleavage. She gave Earl a playful nudge with her elbow, winked moltenly at Tony and offered Marian a shy tentative smile of truce—which was like hoisting a white flag in the face of a snarling leopard.
Tony, his arm around Marian, leered at Sheila and ordered more champagne.
Meanwhile, the M.C. had loped onstage from the wings and had begun a graceless burlesque of Miss La Belle’s strip performance. Soon he had peeled down to his shorts. He was a tall, narrow-chested, paunchy man, his sickly pale skin beading sweat under the lights as he wound his rump grotesquely.
Marian turned away in disgust but Tony, who had a very basic sense of humor, clapped his hands and made growling sounds of approval.
Now, in the semigloom, a shadow appeared at the table. Turning slowly, Tony looked up into the man’s eyes. Glee fled from Tony’s face, replaced by a hard look of cunning perception. Tony barely nodded and the man vanished.
Tony signaled the waitress and, with merely a glance at the check, returned it with a hundred-dollar bill.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” asked Sheila of Tony with a quizzical lift of her winged, pencil-smeared eyebrows. “Why honey you—” She glanced around her. “You guys will miss my last show. It’s the best, the way-out best!” Her false lashes fluttered her false despair.
“Don’t cry,” said Tony. “You’ll wake the customers.” He plucked a fifty from a great fist of bills and tucked it between her breasts. “Right in the bank, baby. Keep it open. I might be back with another deposit.”
“Anytime,” said Sheila, with a wide money-grin. “You know my combination, honey.”
Marian gave Tony a scorching look, but he was oblivious to it. His face had closed. Without waiting for Marian or Lubeck, he stood and moved away toward the door.
Outside, as Tony appeared on the walk, headlights flared and a dark-blue Cadillac sedan whispered to the curb. Tony moved lightly toward it, though he was a big man with massive shoulders and the sinewy hawser-thick biceps of certain day laborers. Indeed, his father had been the foreman of a sandhog crew. And Tony had, for a space in his twenties, worked under the old man as a driller with tireless energy and a kind of surly obedience.
It was a tough, man-crushing job and Tony had seen many a mucker or driller die, sealed in a watery tomb of his own making. During this period Tony had formed the callus of body and soul which provided a nearly unbreakable shell against physical and emotional pain.
But Tony had grown up. He had seen that the take came not to the workers who built the tunnels in the agony of endless toil and danger, but to the city registers in the little booths outside the tunnels where, day and night, the clinking coins sang an endless chorus as they were swallowed in the maw of civil profit.
There was a parallel which Tony observed. People everywhere in their grubby little jobs were the suckers who sold themselves for peanuts while their employers fattened and grew rich—likewise the race tracks and their stockholders, the bookies, the casino operators, the syndicates and their bosses. All the crooks of the world minted a huge and certain profit while trampling under foot that debris of humanity called the “little people.”
And so Tony grew to be strong and cruel. He decided he would be one of the guys who stood laughing at the tunnel gates of the world, collecting his tolls.
Now Tony opened the rear door of the sedan and climbed in. Marian, who had just then stepped from the night club with Lubeck, took her seat beside him. Lubeck closed the door and hopped in front beside the driver, Harry Rosen, the shadow whose silent appearance at their table had sparked their departure.
Rosen steered the big car north along Biscayne Boulevard, pressing the buttons that closed the electric windows as he turned on the air conditioner. The Cadillac was new and purred smoothly, weaving neatly around slower vehicles under Rosen’s skillful guidance.
“Not so fast, Harry.” Tony’s voice, the voice of all true leaders—soft, withstrained, in command, merely hinting at deep reserves of inner strength and complex power. “There’s plenty of time.” He glanced at his watch to confirm. “We don’t want to offend the police, do we, Harry?”
Rosen chuckled, slackened speed. “Well, I’ll tell ya, Tony. I got a clean record. I wouldn’t want the cops to have anything on me like a traffic violation.”
They all laughed, all except Marian who pulled nervously on a cigarette, her face drawn with anxiety
Silence again closed around them, as if that small bantering exchange of words had been only a flimsy screen to hide the truth of the inevitable which lay ahead.
Rosen braked for a signal, found a cigarette and punched the dash lighter. He drew smoke in deeply and exhaled with a long sigh as he flipped the indicator for the turn and wheeled west on the green light.
He was a chunky man with a round, deceptively mild face. His rusty-brown hair was abundant, though receding in a widow’s peak. He had a sharp nose and heavy lips. He smiled frequently and in a way which gave him a look of boyish innocence.
He may once have been a boy, but innocent—never. He had been a scrappy troublemaker from the day he put away his roller skates in favor of a zip gun. He was a reform-school graduate who had once worked side by side with Tony, tunneling beneath a hundred feet of water, squeezed by thirty pounds of air pressure to the square inch. But like Tony, Rosen had “wised up.” He had never done another honest day’s work.
Tony gave no special loyalty to his friends. But Rosen would do absolutely anything for a buck and he had a most unique skill which Tony needed for his plan.
“It’s midwinter, for God’s sake,” Marian grumbled. “Do we need air-conditioning?”
“This is Florida,” said Tony.
“I don’t care. I’m still cold.”
“Shut up,” said Tony.
Silence returned, settled over them, broken only by the muted whirl of the conditioner fan.
Up front, Earl Lubeck lighted a cigar and the acrid smoke drifted lazily toward the back seat, causing Marian to wrinkle her nose in distaste. As if in rebuttal, Lubeck sent a great plume of smoke over his shoulder as he turned to peer out the back window. He knew they were not being followed, it was a habit, an automatic gesture to caution.
Lubeck had worked for Tony a long time, as a runner, a bodyguard, strong-arm collector and lieutenant, next in command. But before Tony took him in he had been a longshoreman, a small-town cop and an armored-truck guard.
On a dim, fog-drenched day in San Francisco while his buddies were inside the bank, leaving him to guard the armored truck, he picked up two bulging sacks of cash and calmly carried them around the corner to a waiting car. He had not been seen since.
Lubeck was a thinker, his mind quick and clever. He had a shrewd, larcenous gift of analysis. Give him something as round as a basketball, let him study it long enough and he’d show you that it h
ad an angle.
He was cool, deadly and dependable in a tight situation. But sometimes he relaxed over too many drinks, and then he was not so dependable. The quiet, pensive manner left him. First he became voluble, then argumentative. At such times he had no judgment. He was always right. If you didn’t agree with him readily, he became violent. And a violent Earl Lubeck was something to avoid. Everyone became his enemy and nothing would stop him but unconsciousness or death.
Tony was aware of this weakness and would have tossed Earl overboard long ago, but he was too valuable. So there was nothing to do but watch him narrowly, keep him sober—especially when there was a job to be done.
For miles the car glided west, came upon the Hialeah Park race track, slid north again until a small, dark shopping center appeared.
Tony puffed his cigarette into a bright glow and consulted his watch. “Twenty-one minutes before three,” he said. “Right on time. Turn left and go down to that gas station, Harry. We’ll call from the booth and then come back.”
The gas station had long been closed. The booth stood on the apron at the edge of the walk.
Tony felt in his pockets as the Cadillac braked before the booth and Rosen cut the lights. Tony grunted in disgust.
“I got no change,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be a hot one? We come all the way out here and nobody’s got a dime for the call.”
“Here,” said Lubeck, reaching back to place a coin in Tony’s palm.
Tony shook his head. “A little thing like that. It makes you wonder. Maybe your neck depends on a lousy dime and if you don’t have it—”
“I had it, didn’t I?” said Lubeck. “It was on my mind and on the way outta the dive I got change.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re okay, Earl. Plenty sharp. But I don’t like to depend on anyone, even for a dime.” He produced a small pocket notebook and held it ready in his hand. “You’re sure now, Harry? Everything is set?”
