Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  Tony had to vomit. He jumped out of bed and ran for the bathroom. When he came out his mother was lighting the stove. She acted as if she didn’t see him. He went back to his room but stopped in the doorway.

  “Hello, mom,” he said.

  His mother paid no attention.

  “Say,” said Tony, “what’s the matter?”

  His mother turned and with her hands on her hips stared at him.

  “Go back to bed, you loafer,” she said, “I am sick of you. You are no good on earth. Just like your father.”

  “Aw, mom,” said Tony.

  “Don’t try to salve me,” said Tony’s mother. “You go back to bed and get sober. You think I don’t know nothing, don’t you? Just like your father.”

  “I’m not drunk,” said Tony, “I’m sick.”

  His mother turned her back and went on with her cooking. Tony went into his room, slammed the door, and got back into bed. A deadly depression settled on him. The world looked black.

  He heard his mother go out, then he got up, dressed and made himself some toast and coffee. Anyway, he wanted his split.

  On the way to Vettori’s he met Father McConagha. The priest was a big man with a big, pale face. He walked with a rolling gait and there was something arrogant about him. Tony took off his hat.

  “Good morning, Father.”

  “Good morning, Antonio,” said Father McConagha. “Where have you been, my boy? I haven’t seen you for months.”

  “I been working,” said Tony.

  “What sort of work?” asked Father McConagha, putting his hand on Tony’s shoulder.

  “I been driving a taxi.”

  The priest nodded his head slowly.

  “That is good work, Antonio.”

  Tony couldn’t look at Father McConagha and kept twisting his hat in his hands and staring at it. Father McConagha talked to him for a minute or two about the rewards of honesty and the happiness to be derived from doing your work faithfully, then he said:

  “Antonio, one day your father asked me to look out for you. Your father was a good man, but weak. Remember this, Antonio, if you are ever in any trouble I am the one to come to.”

  Tony flushed and said:

  “Thank you, Father.”

  When Father McConagha had gone, Tony began to speculate. Did he know anything? Why, on this very morning, had he said something about being in trouble? Tony respected and admired Father McConagha. He felt that he could always turn to him.

  Talking with the priest had made him feel stronger, but now that the priest had gone all the hopelessness of the night before rushed back on him. He took out a cigarette and lit it with shaking hands.

  “They’ll get us sure for this,” he said.

  Then once more he began to think about Red Gus and what Rico had said about him.

  VI

  Seal Skin couldn’t get Otero sober. She made him eat tomatoes and she gave him a cold bath, but nothing seemed to do him any good. He walked about the flat in his underclothes singing songs in bastard Spanish and bragging about what a great, brave man he was. Only one man in the world braver: Rico.

  Seal Skin was dead for sleep, but she didn’t shut her eyes for fear Otero would do some crazy thing like shooting out the window at the street light (he had done this one night) or going out in his underclothes.

  Otero sat at the table with his automatic beside him, singing at the top of his voice.

  “Look,” he cried, “I am Ramón Otero, a great, brave man. I ain’t afraid of nobody or nothing. I can drink any man in the world under the table and I can outshoot any man that walks on two legs. Only Rico; he is my friend. He is a great man like Pancho Villa and I love him with a great love. I would not shoot Rico if he shot me first. Rico is my friend and I love him with a great love.”

  Then he got up and, snapping his fingers, began to dance, stamping with his heels, wiggling his hips, till Seal Skin nearly fell out of her chair laughing.

  Toward morning he went to sleep with his head on the table. Seal Skin picked him up and carried him to bed (he weighed about a hundred and fifteen pounds), then, too tired to take off her clothes, she climbed in beside him.

  VII

  Rico bought all the papers he could find and went up to his room to read them. He sat at his table, his hat tilted over his eyes, with a pair of scissors in his hand, cutting from the papers all the articles dealing with the hold-up and the killing of Police Captain Courtney. He arranged the clippings in a neat pile, then read them over and over.

  One said:

  “. . . the thug who shot Police Captain Courtney was a small, pale foreigner, probably an Italian. He was dressed in a natty overcoat and a light felt hat.”

  Another:

  “. . . Courtney’s murderer was described by one eyewitness as a small, unhealthy-looking foreigner.”

  Rico tore up this clipping.

  “Where do they get that unhealthy stuff!” he said. “I never been sick a day in my life.”

  16 A short-barrelled, rapid-fire shotgun, designed for a wide spread of shot.

  17 A machine pistol capable of firing multiple cartridges with one trigger-pull. As will be seen, in fact, Rico carried a semi-automatic pistol (see note 20, below), but the slang expression was to call such a pistol an “automatic” (as contrasted with a revolver, which utilized a different mechanism).

  18 Automobiles of the period required the driver to step on the starter pedal to trigger the starter motor, which would then fire the engine.

  19 Being from Mexico, Otero was undoubtedly more accustomed to horseback or horse-drawn carriages.

  20 A German-manufactured recoil-operated semi-automatic pistol, first patented in 1898 and used by German forces in World War I. The “semi-automatic” feature meant that the pistol did not require that the hammer be cocked or that bullets be ejected manually; rather, the exploding gases forced the bullet casing out of the chamber and a new bullet into the chamber, so that each trigger-pull fired a shot without delay. This is the “automatic” that is referred to earlier—see note 17, above.

  21 In today’s coarser language, Joe would say, “It’s our asses for this,” with the same implication.

  22 Likely a typographical error for “car,” although it appears consistently in later editions.

  23 A slang expression (also in the form “yeggmen”) for a burglar or safe-cracker. The Oxford English Dictionary credits the first usage in 1902. Although the exact origins of the term are murky, William Pinkerton, of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency believed the term “yegg” originated with the gypsies. In a paper delivered to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1904, Pinkerton explained: “When a particularly clever thief is found among a gypsy tribe, he is selected as the ‘Yegg’ or chief thief. . . . If a tribe or band of tramps found among their number a particularly persistent beggar or daring thief, they, using the expression of the gypsies, called him a ‘Yegg.’ Then came the name of ‘John Yegg’ and finally the word ‘Yeggman.’” (Reproduced under the title “The Yeggman,” American Lawyer, 12 (1904), 384–88.)

  24 It is always difficult to compare dollar amounts from different years, but according to Samuel H. Williamson, “Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to present,” MeasuringWorth, 2017, the “economic status value” in 2016 dollars would be over $630,000, the “economic power value” approximately $1.7 million. The “labor value” of $9,331, using an unskilled worker’s wage level, is over $430,000 in 2016 dollars. In any case, the amount taken in the robbery was a substantial amount for these men, netting each over $80,000 in 2016 dollars—not enough to retire from criminality but an amount that would significantly improve their lives.

  25 Illinois license plates were nondescript series of numbers.

  1925 Illinois license plates

  26 Italy was the birthplace of American crime organizations. The earliest was incorrectly referred to as the “Black Hand.” In fact, the “Black Hand” refers
not to a gang but to the method of extortion used by New York–based Italian criminals in early twentieth-century America, involving demands adorned by images of skulls, daggers, and black warning hands. According to Mike Dash’s The First Family: Terror, Extortion and the Birth of the American Mafia, in 1907, the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso received a “Black Hand” letter demanding “protection” money. Caruso paid, but when threats persisted, he worked with the police to capture the extortionists in Little Italy. The bizarre form of the demands caught the public’s attention, and the extortion racket was dubbed “the Black Hand” by a reporter for the New York Herald. The name quickly became synonymous with the principal perpetrators of the racket—the Camorra and the Mafia.

  The Camorra was an outgrowth of the Carbonari, an eighteenth-century Italian political organization. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Naples-based Camorra, an association that specialized in blackmail, bribery, and smuggling, was encouraged by the corrupt Bourbon regime to police the city and eliminate the opposition. A crackdown was instituted in the 1880s after the unification of Italy, and the Camorra began to decline in power; its grip on Naples was fatally loosened in 1911, after several of its members were convicted in a high-profile murder trial. Thriving in the poor sections of Naples, the organization followed the waves of Neapolitan immigrants to America; so too did its Sicilian-based cousin, the Mafia, accompany the more-numerous Sicilian immigrants to the U.S. According to Arthur Train’s May 1912 article for McClure’s magazine, “Imported Crime: The Story of the Camorra in America,” the Camorra only preyed on Italians. With the rise of gangsterism after the passage of Prohibition in 1919, however, New York and other major cities became prime territory for the Mafia and Camorra in many fields of criminality, most profitably, the liquor business, prostitution, and eventually drugs.

  PART III

  I

  Sam Vettori’s heavy, dark face looked puffy and his eyes were swollen. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately and he had been drinking whiskey. As wine was his usual drink, the whiskey indicated a state of mind the reverse of calm. He sat chewing a cold stogie and from time to time pouring himself a shot from the bottle at his elbow. Rico was playing solitaire, his hat tilted over his eyes. The Big Boy sat opposite Vettori, his derby on the side of his head, and his huge fists, fists which at one time had swung a pick in a section gang, lying before him on the table.27

  The Big Boy shook his head from side to side slowly.

  “Not a chance, Sam,” he said, “I can’t do nothing for you. Why, you must be out of your mind. Listen, they’re after me hot and heavy. I got all I can do to take care of number one, see? Things was running too good for you, Sam. That’s your trouble. You thought I was God himself. But listen, I ain’t no miracle man. A stick-up more or less, what’s that? But when it comes to plugging a bull like Courtney, that’s out! No, Sam. You’re on your own now. It ain’t gonna be none too healthy for none of us for a while. Just don’t lose your nerve, that’s the main thing. Just hang on and watch the guys that are in the know.”

  “You leave that to me,” said Rico without looking up.

  “O.K.,” said the Big Boy, “I think you’re the goods, Rico. But don’t get nervous with that gat of yours, or they’ll put a necktie on you. Get this. No more stick-ups. No more jobs. Just lay low, all of you. If you run out of jack, I’ll stake you. Now I got to beat it. Don’t call me up no more, Sam. Because I can’t do nothing for you and it might give the bulls an idea.”

  The Big Boy got to his feet and stood leaning his huge hairy paws on the table.

  “Why, you guys are lucky and don’t know it. Wood’s manager got so goddam rattled he identified one of the plain-clothes men as the guy that did the inside stand. Jesus, but it was rich! Spike Rieger was boiling. Pretty soon he pinned the manager down and the damn dummy said that the guys that did the job were Poles. So they went out and grabbed Steve Gollancz. Steve and his bunch had just tapped a bank and Steve thought they had the goods28 on him. It was funny as hell!”

  The Big Boy put his head back and brayed. Sam Vettori drummed on the table irritably.

  “All right, laugh,” said Sam.

  “Sure, I’ll laugh,” said the Big Boy; “if you’d seen Steve’s face when he found out what it was all about you’d split your pants laughing.”

  “Steve’s the goods,” said Rico.

  “You said a mouthful,” said the Big Boy, “he’s got them eating out of his hand. Well, I’m gonna beat it. You guys lay low and it may blow over. If things get hot, I’ll tip off Scabby and then you all better hit the rods.29 So long.”

  The Big Boy went out slamming the door. They heard him go downstairs; he walked as heavily as a squad of police and banged each step with his heels.

  Rico went on with his game of solitaire.

  “Well,” said Vettori, “something just tells me we’re gonna get ours.”

  “Oh, hell!” said Rico, pushing the cards away from him, “I’d like to get the guy that invented that game.”

  Vettori swore softly to himself at Rico’s indifference, then, pouring himself another drink, he said: “You think Joe’s safe, Rico?”

  “Yeah,” said Rico, “as long as they don’t nab him and put it to him. He can’t stand the gaff.”30

  “How about The Greek?”

  Rico laughed.

  “Safe as hell. Only thing with Otero, he gets lit31 and wants to raise hell. I had to knock him down a couple of times last night. He gets a little money and he goes nuts. That goddam greaser never saw over five dollars all at once till I picked him up in Toledo. But he’s safe.”

  “How about Tony?”

  Rico didn’t say anything for a minute but picked up his cards and began to shuffle them.

  “I don’t know about Tony.”

  Sam Vettori got up and walked back and forth, mopping his forehead at intervals with his big white silk handkerchief.

  “Love of God, Rico, we can’t take no chances with him.”

  Rico dealt out a couple of poker hands and began to play an imaginary game.

  “You leave that to me, Sam,” he said.

  Vettori put his hand on Rico’s shoulder.

  “That’s the talk, Rico. We get a break we may come clean.”

  Vettori dropped back into his chair and poured himself another drink, but Rico reached across the table and pushed the glass off on the floor.

  “Slow down on that stuff, Sam. You got to keep your head clear.”

  Vettori looked at Rico in a fury, then he lowered his eyes.

  “You got the right dope, Rico. That stuff don’t do nobody no good.”

  Vettori took the whiskey bottle and locked it up in a cupboard.

  II

  About nine o’clock Carillo put his head in the door. Downstairs the jazzband had just started to play.

  “Well?” demanded Vettori, getting to his feet.

  “Blackie wants to see you,” said Carillo.

  “All right.”

  Carillo went out.

  “What you suppose he wants?” said Vettori.

  Rico, who was sitting with his chair tipped back against the wall reading a magazine, shook his head without looking up or answering. He was deep in the reading of a story about a rich society girl who fell in love with a bootlegger. Rico read everything he could find that had anything to do with society. He was fascinated by a stratum of existence which seemed so remote and unreal to him. The men of this level were “saps” and “softies” to him, but he envied them their women. He had seen them getting out of limousines at the doors of Gold Coast32 hotels. He had seen them, magnificently dressed, insolent, inaccessible, walking up the carpets under the canvas marquees. The doormen would bow. The women would disappear. Rico hated them. They were so arrogant and selfsufficient, and they did not know that there was such a person in the world as Rico.

  Blackie Avezzano, who managed Sam’s garage, came in and shut the door behind him. He was small and bowlegged, and he was so d
ark that he had been taken for a mulatto many times.

  Vettori impatiently exclaimed: “Well, what’s on your mind, Blackie?’”

  Rico went on reading his magazine. Blackie sat down at the table and seemed to be making an effort to collect his thoughts.

  “All right, spit it out,” said Vettori.

  Blackie couldn’t speak very good English, but as Rico didn’t know a word of Italian and Vettori preferred to speak English, he did the best he could.

  “Tony he took sick. Listen, I tell you, Tony he no know what. He took sick. I see him, listen, I tell you, what-you-say, he no got his guts. The Madre she send me call the doctore. Listen, he say, Tony, whatyousay, you been a drink. Now listen, you cut out a drink. That’s all. Tony he no drink. What a hell! One bottle of beer he can no drink. He no got his guts, that’s all.”

  Vettori looked at Rico, who went on reading.

  “Rico,” he said.

  “I heard him,” said Rico, “I ain’t deaf.”

  Blackie got up and stood twisting his cap in his hand. Vettori took out his billfold and handed Blackie a ten.

  “Blackie,” he said, “keep your eyes open, understand?”

  “All right,” said Blackie, “I watch, see, I know. Tony no good. All right, I watch.”

  When he had gone Rico said:

  “Well, that’s that.”

  “We can’t take no chances, “ said Vettori.

  “I’ll give him till tomorrow,” said Rico; “he can’t go far wrong with Blackie watching him. After that if he don’t settle down, there won’t be no more Tony.”

  III

  Tony had always been of a rather easy-going nature and took things as they came. His emotions, it is true, were very unstable; with him anger was almost immediately followed by a grin, and depression lasted only long enough for him to recognize that he had felt such an emotion. No, he had never before experienced the loneliness which is the result of continued despair. Now he felt it and it was too much for him. He looked back on the past as a sort of fabulous period when he had had peace of mind.