Читать книгу On the Spot - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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IF Perelli punished ruthlessly, his rewards were on the side of munificence. He spent fifty thousand dollars in furnishing Angelo's new apartment—a bungling recruit to gangdom who had saved his life he sent back to Sicily a rich man; he was too awkward a gunman to retain, too brave a man to be dismissed.

Vinsetti? Perelli thought a lot about Vinsetti. He was independent, had lost his old enthusiasms, possessed a grievance. Vinsetti had a very sensitive reception and received in full the tonal disharmonies of Perelli's mind. Through one agent he wrote, cancelling his berth on the Empress of Australia, and through another agent booked the same accommodation in another name. Which was exactly what Tony Perelli thought he would do.

The fascinations of Minn Lee had not dissipated: Victor Vinsetti sent her flowers, wrote little notes to her, very clever little notes, and poetical. Tony read them smilingly.

"Victor is a swell writer—ask him to call again, Minn Lee... Sure I don't mind! I lak it... he's a swell feller and very fonny."

So Minn Lee wrote in her neat schoolboy hand, and Vinsetti came and drank tea with her, and sometimes Tony was there, but more often he was not.

There might be urgent need for Victor Vinsetti very soon. He shone as an arbitrator. The two big gangs were edging across neutral ground into one another's territory.

Feeney's crowd supplied a large number of speakeasies on the north side with hard liquor and beer. Mike ran a couple of breweries and was a millionaire. There was a sort of no-man's-land on this battlefield, where both gangs operated side by side. The proprietors of the speakeasies might buy safety from one side or the other. There was no "you take ours or none" in the tactics of either party. Then suddenly Mike changed front, claimed the territory as being exclusively his own and passed out the customary warnings, which were followed by the customary reprisals. One of Perelli's good customers had his establishment wrecked and was himself beaten up. He hastened to Angelo with the story of rapine, and Angelo reported.

"Let Victor see this mick," said Perelli. "Who did the beating?"

They told him it was one Death House Hennessey, a notorious strong-arm man who had operated with his personal gang. He was a sub-contractor of violence very often employed by Shaun O'Donnell when the Irishman did not wish to be identified with a foray or found it expedient to detach details from his main bodyguard.

"Give Hennessey the works," said Perelli, "but let Victor see Feeney or O'Donnell."

Victor went down to a certain hotel near North State and interviewed the irritable little Irishman. Shaun O'Donnell was not amenable to reason; he was truculent and breathed vague threats. Vinsetti, in his best diplomatic style, sought a modus vivendi, but Shaun, who had never heard the expression, and, if he had, would have disapproved of it, was adamant.

"Listen, Vic—that territory has always been ours and you can tell Mister Perelli that it stays ours. We stood for his muscle, but now the Polaks are crowding us we gotta tighten up. You're a swell feller, Vic, and me and Mike would go the coast to oblige you, but fair's fair."

There were other negotiations, and in the course of these Shaun said:

"I wonder a guy like you stays around with the Perelli outfit. Mike 'n' me would be glad to see you with a place in our organization. I know!" (when Vinsetti protested). "You're all plumb scared of Perelli, but suppose we was tipped off about some place where we could find him, hey? That guy treats men like dogs."

Crude temptation, but Victor pondered it. And in the meantime Death House Hennessey got the works.

A car drove up to the door of his little house and somebody rang the bell. Hennessey opened the door and peered into the night...

A distant motor-cyclist policeman heard the rattle of machine-gun fire and streaked towards the sound. Death House Hennessey was slumped over the balustrade of his porch with twenty machine-gun slugs in his physical system.

Shaun O'Donnell accepted the fact philosophically. It meant nothing in his life that a subcontractor had gone. There were others who charged less. Still, it was a peg on which to hang an attack on Perelli. He personally paid for Hennessey's funeral and attended the lying in state. Perelli sent a wreath, and such was his power that the men who hated him, and who knew that he had encompassed the death of the man to whose pious memory the flowers paid tribute, dared not displace them.

To Minn Lee he spoke freely; he kept fewer secrets from her than from any woman who had entered and vanished from his life.

"In this racket, sweetheart, there are four points to the compass, and a guy that goes half-way between north 'n' west gets nowhere on his own feet. Victor is a swell talker, but he ain't talked over Shaun O'Donnell, and another of my speakeasies was broken up last night. And yet Victor does not say 'Go to it!' All he says is 'Wait, wait,' and, by gar, I wait and see my business go to hell!"

Victor had reason for saying "wait". He saw Tony and reported negotiations, and the big shot listened patiently.

"Sure that's fine!" he said. "Maybe I will wait till Shaun O'Donnell gets an old man and has sense, huh? For ten years maybe! This mick must settle or he gets the works, Victor—I'm saying it! There is too much talk—let Ricardo speak."

Ricardo was his favourite machine-gun chopper; a man who had fought in the Great War and had three decorations and twenty killings to his name.

"I will wait a little longer—yes," said Perelli, "and then... "

He drove out to Cicero that afternoon, and was sitting in his own restaurant, sipping coffee, when three cars drove slowly past and swept the restaurant with machine-gun fire. Perelli lay flat on the floor in a confusion of smashed glass and falling plaster, and decided that he could not afford to wait: he must move, and move quickly.

The attack had not been improvised: it was the result of careful planning. Vinsetti was one of the very few who knew that he was going to Cicero on that particular day—Victor had actually planned the trip, the object of which was to meet a Canadian shipper.

He made enquiries. Mike Feeney and Shaun had left on the previous night for New York; their alibi was a little too cleverly established.

He saw Victor on his return and was very voluble about the narrowness of his escape. To have made light of the matter would have been a mistake. Vinsetti would have been alarmed, and who knew what a frightened rat might do?

Victor was alarmed, nevertheless. He sent an urgent message to Kelly, and had an interview with the chief, giving him a little information but promising more. Then Vinsetti did a curious thing—it was one of those bizarre acts of his that were peculiar to the man. He called at his lawyer's and made a will, one clause of which ran;

In the event of my dying by violence and on the coroner's verdict that murder has been committed I direct that the sum of one hundred thousand dollars shall be act aside from my estate as a reward to the person who shall secure the conviction of my murderer and his execution.

In the afternoon he called upon Minn Lee. She had 'phoned an invitation to tea at Tony's suggestion.

"You may stay in your suite, little darling," he said, "for I have much business to finish with Victor."

Vinsetti called at 4.30. A quarter of an hour later Kelly came. This was the arrangement which had been agreed. In truth the detective arrived outside the entrance of the building five minutes after Vinsetti went in, and filled the idle time by watching some men load furniture on a truck. Two big chairs, a davenport, a coat-hanger and a table were loaded and pulled away as Kelly entered the building and made for the elevator.

Angelo opened the door to him.

"Victor's gone," he said. "He only stayed a minute—came to see Minn Lee, chief, but she's got a headache."

"Where is Perelli?" He was on the sun balcony, and was sent for.

"Vinsetti came in here fifteen minutes ago and could not have gone," said Kelly unpleasantly.

"If he is not here he could have gone," he said.

"There are two ways out, chief—one at the back of the block —Victor usually goes that way."

"I'd like to search this apartment." Kelly was frankly and rudely sceptical.

"Sure!" Tony Perelli was all smiles. Vinsetti was gone—how, whither, was a mystery.

Kelly knew of the back exit and had had a man stationed there, but Victor Vinsetti had not passed.

Two days later they found his body floating in the lake. He had been shot dead at close quarters, and in his pocket were eighty sodden notes, each for a thousand dollars.

They hauled Perelli down to police headquarters and quizzed him.

"I hope you get the guy that bumped poor Victor," he said. "There's too much of these killings."

He attended the funeral, riding in an armoured car just behind the funeral coach.