Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 2, April 1961

Fair Warning by James Holding

The young man smiled. His lips curled back and the two eye teeth, abnormally long, glittered like fangs. Paoli wiped at the slippery sheen of perspiration on his forehead. “Yes,” he said. “1 got the message.”

Vergil Paoli was the owner of The Gala Club. He sent word down that he wanted to see his singer, Olga Castle, as soon as she finished her ten o’clock show.

When she came into his office, a tall, shapely brunette with high cheekbones and a carefully cultivated air of youth, Paoli was sitting behind his desk, fretfully tapping his fingers on an open newspaper before him.

He was not only Olga’s employer. He said to her, “Who’s the tall thin guy with the crewcut you been drinking with between shows the last coupla nights?”

“From Jerksville,” she said. “A nothing guy. But he has a clever way of talking,”

“Know his name?”

“Sandy Thomas,” Olga said.

“Local?”

“I guess.”

Paoli frowned. “Has he tried any passes?”

She laughed. “A few, Vergil. Minor ones. But what do you expect? They always try.”

“What’s he talk to you about?”

“He says he likes to hear me sing.”

“A music critic, yet,” Paoli said heavily. “Has he mentioned Chicago?”

“Chicago? Let’s see. Sure, several times. Why not? It’s a big city and most everybody’s been there.”

“No cracks, baby. Just answer me. Do you think he could come from Chicago?”

She shrugged, a little crestfallen. “I’m no detective. He could, I suppose.”

“These passes. What was the offer?”

“No offer. I simply told him I’m private property. Yours, darling. And no trespassing.”

“What’d he say to that?”

She looked at him curiously. A thin slick of perspiration made his forehead shiny; she thought his eyes looked worried. She said, “He made the usual crack... that you might not be around forever. And maybe I better get out some more lines.”

Paoli said nothing. He took out a handkerchief of fine Irish linen and wiped at his brow.

Olga went over and kissed him on his bald spot. “What is it with you, Vergil? You’re not jealous, are you?” She liked the idea.

“Not jealous, no. But all the same, this Thomas has got me a little bugged, baby. You’re sure his name’s Thomas?” He sounded as though he wanted reassurance.

“That’s what he told me. What is this, darling?”

“Maybe I’m nuts,” Paoli said, “but I got a feeling the guy’s from Chicago and his name ain’t Thomas.”

She began to feel faintly uneasy, too. “Who is he, then?”

Paoli brooded silently for a moment. “He said I might not be around forever, right?”

“Sure. But that’s just a standard approach, Vergil. You know that.”

“Any name like Dubrowski ever come up in his talk?”

She shook her head.

“Or anybody with the nickname of Eyetooth?”

“Of course not. What a silly name!” Olga started to laugh, a pleasing cascade of sound. Then she sobered abruptly. “Eyetooth?”

“Yeah.”

Her dark eyes were solicitous. They asked him a silent question. He answered it obliquely. “Look, Olga,” he said. He tapped a small item in the newspaper under his hand. She read it over his shoulder, standing tall and graceful behind him at the desk.

Under the heading “Syndicate Killer Hunted” it merely reported the murder in a distant city of an Italian suspected of criminal connections. Police were sure, the paper said, that this was another Crime Syndicate murder, committed by a legendary hoodlum known as Eyetooth Dubrowski, although he also utilized a score of other aliases. Dubrowski was thought to have served as Syndicate executioner on several prior occasions. What had led to the Italian’s death, the newspaper speculated? Insubordination to Syndicate orders? Muscling in on a neighboring vice czar’s territory? Nobody, the article ended, could be sure, except, perhaps, the tall, thin, crewcut Dubrowski for whom the police of the distant city were diligently searching. It was suggested that Dubrowski’s unusually long eyeteeth might serve as an aid to identification. His arrest was expected momentarily.

When she finished reading, Olga went around the desk and dropped into a chair. She stared at Paoli wide-eyed. “Is that who Thomas is?”

He nodded somberly. “Looks that way. He’s got long eyeteeth. Ain’t that why you stopped laughing a minute ago when I mentioned the nickname?”

“I... I — suppose so,” Olga stammered, torn between telling him the truth and a desire to soften its impact. “I didn’t really notice them too much, darling.”

“I did. When he was talking to you at the bar before the ten o’clock show tonight, I was watching you through there.” He motioned toward a circular glass peephole in the office wall that overlooked the nightclub below. “When he smiled at you, and showed those teeth, that’s when I remembered this thing in yesterday’s paper.” He lapsed into silence, gnawing gloomily at a fingernail.

“He told me he was a kind of a newspaper man,” Olga said eagerly. “And anyway, why do you need to worry? You haven’t stepped out of line, have you?”

Paoli seemed to make up his mind. “Go back downstairs,” he said. “And if he’s still around, ask him to come up here and see me. Ask him real nice, baby.”

Incredulously, she said, “You’re sending for him? If he’s really Dubrowski, you’re asking for trouble, Vergil.” She gave him a long look. “Aren’t you?”

“Send him up,” Paoli said.

When she had gone, he took an unsigned telegram from his desk drawer and read it through again. The message, handed in at Chicago that afternoon, was addressed to him at The Club Gala and read:

Paoli was sweating heavily now. His hand, holding the telegram, trembled a little. When the knock came on his office door a few minutes later, he went over and opened it himself.

Thomas seemed even taller and more gangling close-up than at a distance. He was young. He had light blue, glacially-cold eyes that showed nothing of his thoughts whatever. His right hand was in the side pocket of his jacket.

At Paoli’s invitation, he took a seat. “I’m Thomas,” he said. “You’re Paoli, I guess? Olga said you’d like to talk to me about something.”

Paoli hid his nervousness well. He offered Thomas a cigar which was declined. A Scotch-on-the-rocks, mixed by Paoli at a tiny bar in a corner of the office, met with a kinder reception. Thomas sipped at it impassively and waited.

Paoli could see no virtue in beating about the bush. He said, “You ain’t Thomas. You’re Dubrowski. Am I right?”

Thomas raised his eyebrows but his eyes didn’t change expression. “Wrong,” he said. “I’m Thomas while I’m in Demmlertown. Sandy Thomas.”

“Let’s not kid around,” Paoli said. “You’re from Chicago, Dubrowski. From the Brotherhood.”

“Call me Thomas,” the other said, a hint of iron in his voice. “I want you to know that I’m a reporter on the Demmlertown”... he stretched his neck to read the bannerhead on the newspaper on Paoli’s desk... “the Demmlertown Herald. That’s my paper, right there. I’m a legitimate local citizen, Vergil.”

Paoli winced. Nobody called him by his fancy name but Olga. Its use by this cold-eyed killer set his teeth on edge. He said, “I suppose you got to have a cover name, any town you’re in. A real name to hide behind. But you’re still Dubrowski.”

“No. I keep telling you I’m not.” Thomas seemed amused. “Why don’t you call up the paper and ask them?”

Paoli shrugged at this transparent evasion.

“I mean it,” Thomas said. “Go ahead. Call them, just for kicks. It will show you how I work.”

Paoli picked up the telephone on his desk and asked the Club’s switchboard girl to get him the Demmlertown Herald. Thomas could hear the tinny voice of the newspaper operator when she answered.

Paoli said into the phone, “You got a reporter on the Herald named Sandy Thomas?”

“Certainly we have,” said the operator promptly. “Who is this calling? Do you wish to be connected?”

“No.” Paoli’s eyes switched to Thomas’ face. “This is the Credit Bureau calling. What does Thomas look like?” He thought he might as well press it; maybe he could lean on Dubrowski a little if the description didn’t fit.

“Some Credit Bureau!” the girl said. “Do you know it’s eleven o’clock at night, Mister? Why don’t you quit for the day? If you really want to know, Thomas is a doll! His credit’s good with me, any time!” She snickered.

“Wait,” said Paoli, trying again. “Is Thomas there at the paper right now?”

“Of course. I asked if you wanted to be connected, Mister...”

“Thanks.” Paoli hung up. “Twins you are,” he said to Thomas with a faint feeling of triumph.

“She doesn’t always know when we’re out on a story,” Thomas said, unmoved. His lips curved in a humorless smile. “I like to be thorough,” he said. “I don’t take any chances. I’ve got all the bases covered before I go to work on any job like this.”

“Like this?”

“That’s what I said.”

Paoli poured himself a shot of Old Forester at his bar. He tossed it down like water. He returned to his desk and sat down, accompanied by a persistant sense of danger from the tall man in the chair. He thought perhaps a little show of guts might help him with Dubrowski. He said, “You ought to be more careful, then, where you carry your heater. It shows.” The hand he pointed had a slight tremor. “There.”

Thomas dropped his eyes to the side pocket of his jacket. He had taken his hand out of it long since. But even in the chair, it was obvious that something heavy in the pocket was dragging the cloth of his coat into deep wrinkles.

“Nuts,” said Thomas shortly. He seemed nettled. “That’s not my gun.”

“You think I was born yesterday? You don’t need to show me. It’s a gun.”

“Have it your way,” said Thomas. For the first time since the interview began, he smiled widely. The lift of his lip exposed his long eyeteeth, pointed and projecting three eighths of an inch below his other uppers.

The sight of the menacing teeth thus deliberately exposed, made Paoli feel cold. And that was funny, too, he thought, because he was still sweating.

Thomas said slowly, “I don’t smile or laugh very much, Vergil. Generally I keep my mouth closed.” His eyes, as hard as chips of blue-white diamonds, drilled into Paoli’s. After a moment he added, “Matter of fact, the kind of work I do, a fellow doesn’t feel too much like laughing.”

Paoli nodded. He felt sick. He passed the telegraph form across the desk to Thomas. “You know about this, don’t you?”

Thomas read the wire. Slowly he nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I know about that.”

“So. Then why the hell not admit who you are in the first place?” Paoli blew out a breath of mingled relief and impatience. “The boys in Chicago are teed off with me for moving in on Cal Schirmer over in Riverton, ain’t that it?”

Thomas said nothing.

“That dumb Prussian don’t know which end is up, Dubrowski! His territory could produce three times what it does!” Paoli tried to make the note of bluster in his voice sound like toughness and confidence. It was difficult. “Tell them that in Chicago, will you? Do they want to see it all slip through their fingers, for God’s sake, just because Schirmer ain’t got the brains of a twelve-year-old moron?” He appealed to Thomas as one intelligent man to another.

Thomas responded in a neutral voice. “What is it of Cal’s that’s sticking to your fingers, Paoli? Dope? Prostitution? What? Cal didn’t say. He just said you were trying to move in and take over.”

“Only Horse,” Paoli said, “so far. Honest, Dubrowski, it’s nothing to get hot about. Just enough to show that if I had both territories, if the boys would throw Demmlertown and Riverton into one package for me, I’d triple their take in six months! Tell them that, right?”

Thomas was noncommittal. “You made a mistake, Paoli. Usually we allow our guys only one. Why didn’t you mention this to Chicago yourself, before you moved in on Cal? That’s what we want to know. You got your own ideas about the percentage? Maybe you’d like to bust loose from Chicago and try to make it on your own?”

“No, Dubrowski, no!” Paoli’s Latin temperament showed through the cracks in his self-control. “I ain’t stupid. I had no such an idea. I swear it to you! I figured I could show you how well I could handle both territories, before I bothered Chicago about Schirmer. You believe that, don’t you?”

“No, frankly, I don’t.”

“You got to! It’s the truth.” Paoli wiped his forehead with his crumpled handkerchief. “Why should I set up against you? I’m not a goddam fool. I know where the protection is. And the organization. And the...” he hesitated and looked at Thomas’s pocket... “the firepower.”

“Glad you do, Vergil.”

“I do, all right. I ain’t a complete dope, Dubrowski.”

“You keep saying.”

“It’s the God’s truth.” Paoli was running out of conversation. He wanted to get himself another, drink but he was afraid it would indicate his nervousness. He sat still behind his desk.

As casually as though commenting on the weather, Thomas said, “The way I hear it, you aren’t breaking any records with your Demmlertown set-up.”

“I ain’t?” Paoli was suddenly indignant. His fear burned away in the fire of injured pride. He defended himself with spirit. “Tell me any other territory the size of mine that produces as good! You can’t... because there ain’t any! Fourteen pushers I got here, for H alone! And the best, Dubrowski. The best! With solid connections in the high school bunch!”

“Fourteen?” Thomas said, surprised. “That isn’t the way I heard it. Seven was nearer what I heard.”

“You heard wrong, then. Didn’t you look up the records on my operation? Fourteen!” Paoli insisted. “Count them!” He reeled off a list of names that totalled thirteen.

“That’s only thirteen,” Thomas said, counting on his fingers.

Paoli repeated the list and remembered the fourteenth name.

“Yeah. That’s fourteen, all right.” Thomas was approving.

“You see? I ain’t conning you, Dubrowski. I got this town like this, in the palm of my hand!” He held out his hand to demonstrate. “And I could have Riverton the same way, if the boys would give Schirmer a push.”

Thomas said nothing.

“Okay?” Paoli asked, his spirits lifting as he realized that Thomas was listening to him seriously. The interview was going much better now, he thought. “Will you tell the boys in Chicago, Dubrowski? And say I’m sorry I moved in on Cal without leaving them know. It’ll never happen again, that’s for goddam sure. They’ll understand if you tell it to them the way I explained it to you. Okay?”

Thomas got up. He turned toward the door, to Paoli’s tremendous relief. “Okay,” he said.

“Good,” Paoli said. “That’s a boy, Dubrowski. Have another snort before you go, why not? It’s twenty-year-old Scotch.”

“No thanks,” Thomas said. He opened the door. “Give my love to Olga.”

“I’ll do that,” Paoli said genially. “I’ll do that.”

Forty minutes later, Thomas walked into the City Room of the Demmlertown Herald and over to Joe Bailey’s desk. Joe was the City Editor. He wore the expression of exasperated gloom typical of his kind. He looked at Thomas. “Well?” he asked.

“The works,” Thomas said and made a grimace of distaste. “The whole stinking mess, right from the horse’s mouth!”

“No kidding!” Bailey brightened and put down his pencil.

“No kidding. He’s our guy, just as you guessed. Mr. Vergil Paoli. The Syndicate’s top dog in Demmlertown. By his own admission, he’s got us right in the palm of his hand. Give him another couple of months and he’ll have Riverton there, too. Dope, prostitution, everything.” Thomas rubbed a hand over his crewcut. He leaned over Bailey’s desk. “Joe, I’ve got names, even! Heroin pushers here in Demmlertown. It’s enough to make you puke.”

“How did you get it out of him?” Bailey asked interestedly. “Was it my first published fairy story that did the trick? The piece about the gang killing by a certain Eyetooth Dubrowski?”

“That set it up,” Thomas replied. “But beautifully. Your phony item was right there on his desk when I went in. All I had to do was show my teeth.”

Bailey grinned. “Tessie, on the switchboard, said somebody called asking about you. She told them you were here in your office.”

“I heard her. She was great. I made the play for Olga Castle, Joe. And gave out with the sinister remarks about Paoli to her. And they didn’t hurt us any, for I’m sure she told him. But what really started him running off at the mouth was the telegram you had Bud send him from Chicago. He made me read it. I could hardly keep from breaking up!” Thomas looked at his chief with admiration. “How did you know about Schirmer?” he asked. “Enough to needle Paoli with the disgruntled neighbor Sit in the wire?”

“Just an educated guess. You work on a paper for twenty years and you learn a lot of little things that finally point in a certain direction.” Bailey looked at the big clock on the wall. “It’s getting late,” he said. “You say you got the names of some pushers?”

“Sure. I’ve got it all right here, Joe.” Thomas took the newest miracle of miniaturization from his jacket pocket — a tape recorder no more than four inches square and an inch thick. He grinned at his City Editor. “Paoli thought it was a gun.”

Bailey grinned back. “More like dynamite,” he said.