You Bet Your Life

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.

The knock at the door was sharp and hard. It broke through shadows and split the smoke-filled shafts of light in the hidden corners of the room and my mind. The five of us froze, staring at the door. The knock came again, followed by a cheery English voice.

“Hello in there. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten something rather important in there. Mind opening up for a moment?”

A thick palm smelling like garlic, urine, and tobacco covered my mouth.

“Come now,” said English. “I hear you in there and I simply must have what I left. It’s quite valuable. I’d dislike my alternative, but if I do not get in I’ll have to solicit the aid of the police.”

“Let him in,” croaked Costello.

The juke box man turned, slid the bolt and opened the door. English walked in, carrying his coat. He squinted into the darkness. When his eyes adjusted, he saw me.

“Ah, there you are. Heard the noise and thought you might be in some need of aid.”

I managed a grummph through Costello’s fingers.

“Sorry,” English said to Costello. “I really can’t make out what he’s saying. Could you remove your hand from his face?”

“Get out of here,” grunted Costello. “And forget what you see. That’s good advice.”

English scratched his head.

“Sorry, again, but that just wouldn’t be possible.”

The juke box man had moved behind English and had his arms out waiting for the signal from Costello. I couldn’t warn him, but he didn’t need my warning. English’s left elbow shot back blind, catching the juke box just below the rib cage. While he bellowed in pain, English spun around, pulled the man’s glasses off and threw his coat over the guy in the sweaty white shirt. He punched at the covered head and the coat and man went down.

Costello let go of me and made a rush at English, while Chaney reached in his jacket. I caught Chaney around the knees, and he went down with me on top of him, aiming a fist in the general direction of his face. Costello moved low with his arms out like a wrestler. English met him straight up with his right hand out. He moved out of the path of the rush and grabbed for Costello’s hair, but there wasn’t any. Costello caught English in the stomach with his head, but English was backing away from the awkward turn and used the heavier man’s move forward to pull him off balance by grabbing his collar. Costello went sailing in a midair somersault and hit the tile floor with a thud that shook the room. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds. My wind was back and I was still on top of Chaney, who was hitting me in the side and head with wide punches that must have been hell on his knuckles and were doing my head no good at all.

White Shirt had the coat off his head and was going for his holster. I saw him. English saw him too, but we weren’t close enough to do anything about it, and neither of us had a gun. A rush would bring a bullet through the top of one of our skulls. English pulled out his fountain pen. Maybe he knew it was the end and was going to write a quick will or down a small supply of Bourbon and branch water hidden in the pen’s bladder.

I was on my feet ready for a heroic rush at White Shirt, whose gun was just coming out, when-something popped in the Englishman’s fountain pen and a thin blast of what looked like steam and liquid hit White Shirt in the face. By the time I had taken two steps, White Shirt was choking in pain with his hands covering his face. I was near enough so some of the gas made me feel clammy and a little sick. Unable to see, White Shirt let loose with a couple of wild shots in our direction. One of them hit Costello, who was in a sitting position a dozen feet away. His right hand went to his shoulder and he yowled.

With his neat handkerchief over his mouth, the Englishman walked up to White Shirt and hit his gun hand with an open palm. The gun skidded across the floor and let out another protest shot on its own. The shot cracked the metal hide of a slot machine, sending it berserk.

“Think that’s about it, don’t you?” said English, putting his handkershief back in his pocket and picking up his coat. He seemed in no hurry, but I was. Somewhere in the dark, Chaney was probably on his hands and knees reaching for his gun.

We stepped over the juke box man’s groaning body, went through the two doors and into the night. I was sweating. The cold air hit me like dry ice. English pointed to a small foreign car right at the door, and I hurried in. My coat was on the seat.

When he had gotten in his side slowly and straightened his coat, he lit a cigarette, placed it in his pearl holder, and explained, “Only coat left. I assumed it must be yours.”

“It is,” I said, throwing a look at the door of the Fireside. Chaney staggered out into the cold, looked our way and lifted his gun. English glanced at him casually and pulled away, kicking up gravel as a bullet spat through the side window a foot from his head. He didn’t seem to notice. We were out of range when the second shot came.

“Now,” he said with a smile. “Where am I to take you?”

“LaSalle Hotel on LaSalle as fast as you can get there. I’d better check out and find someplace safer. Thanks for what you did back there.”

“My pleasure,” he grinned, raising an eyebrow.

“You were pretty cool.”

“Was I?” he said happily. “I was petrified. Never did anything like that before, but it doesn’t do to let the enemy know, and it was damned exhilarating, wasn’t it?”

The way back was through Cicero and the South Side of Chicago, with the sun just thinking about coming up. We sped past low wooden homes with early morning smoke coming from their brick chimneys and heavy-faced men with lunch pails waiting for streetcars. I watched and told English my tale of Hollywood, Capone, the Marx Brothers, and the Nitti acting society.

I said it had all been great fun and told him some of my other fun in the private detective business. We exchanged further tales. My tale was something out of Dime Detective. The story he told sounded like Beau Geste.

He was the second of three brothers from a rich banking family. His father had been a member of Parliament and had been killed in the last war. His mother had sent him to Eton, where he had been a pretty fair athlete and had broken his nose in a soccer game. Then things had gone downhill. He was booted out of a place called Sandhurst for chasing girls and sent someplace in the Austrian mountains where he found more girls, learned German, French, and Russian, and took up skiing.

Then he moved on to a short shot at banking, gave up, became a reporter, and found his calling just when England went to war with Germany. He had been recruited by British Naval Intelligence and was now a Lieutenant in the Special Branch of the Royal Naval Volunteers. At present he was stationed someplace in Canada he couldn’t tell me about.

He pulled up next to the LaSalle. Before getting out, I struggled into my coat and looked around for a waiting car or suspicious face. I saw none. I opened the door and reached over to shake English’s hand.

“My name’s Peters,” I said, “Toby Peters.”

“Good to meet you, Toby Peters,” he said. “I’m staying at the Ambassador if you need someone to share any further adventures. My name’s Ian Fleming.”