Complete works of peter.., p.392
Complete Works of Peter Cheyney. Illustrated, page 392
She said: "Look, Rene...Clovis Scansci and I are good buddies. She's my pal, see? We women haveta stick together, you know. Well, something's gotten into her; I don't know what it is but she's scared stiff. It's something to do with Scansci or Calsimo, or something. I tried to get it out of her, but she wouldn't tell me. Just before you called through this evening she came around here. She didn't look good to me. I never seen a girl so scared in my life; and, you know, she's nice—Clovis. She ought not to be in this racket. She's a god-dam sight too good for it. I'm older than she is and it sort of gets me, see? Another thing, it's a damned shame her being hitched up to that guy Scansci. Oh, I know he's the head of the mob—he's the big shot—but I reckon it's a shame she couldn't have found somebody better than that."
Berg said: "Why did she marry Scansci?"
Lauren shrugged her shoulders. "I wouldn't know," she said. "But Scansci usta have a way of getting what he wanted. If he didn't get it one way he got it another. He can be tough over things that matter."
Berg said: "You mean...?"
She said: "I told you I didn't know, but what does that matter? The thing is, the kid's scared stiff. When she came around here to-night I tried to get it out of her, but she wouldn't squeal. Then just as she was goin'—she was over there by the door—she turned round and she said something very funny. She said: 'I met that guy Rene Berg twice. He looks to me like a good guy. Do you think he's the sort to give a girl a hand if she was in a spot?' I asked her what she meant again but she wouldn't let on. I told her I reckoned you were a pretty good proposition."
Lauren moved away from the fireplace. She came close to him. She put her hand on his arm. She said: "Look, Rene, I want you to do something for me, see? I want you to do me a favour. See if you can find out what the hell's going on. Go and see Clovis. I got the idea in my head that this thing she's scared of is something that concerns the lot of us. It's something big she's afraid to talk about it, but I reckon she's gonna talk to you about it."
Berg said: "Why should she wanta talk to me?"
Lauren said: "That's easy. Look, you been with us a coupla years. You were a kid when you came down here. You've done more in two years than anybody. You're as tough as hell, but you're a nice guy. You're a' killer all right, but you got nice eyes. Another thing," said Lauren, dropping her voice almost to a whisper, "you always been goddam nice to the women—sorta polite. I reckon Clovis has heard about you. I reckon she thinks you are the sorta guy could give her a hand."
She smiled. "Maybe," she went on, "she's making a little bit of a hero out of you. Well, why shouldn't she? Look. Rene, go and see Clovis. Find out what it is."
Berg said: "I might at that, but if it's me she wants to see I reckon it's got something to do with Calsimo. What else would she want to see me about?"
Lauren shrugged her shoulders. "I wouldn't know," she said. "But why should she wanta see you about Calsimo? What's he gotta do with her? He's just a name to her."
Berg said: "Yeah...that's right."
She said: "Look...go and see her. Scansci's going out of town to-morrow. He'll be away for two three days. Go round and have a drink with her to-morrow evening. I'll call her on the telephone and tell her you're going there about eight o'clock. Will you do that, Rene? Will you do it for me?"
Now she was close to him again. She was looking at him. He could smell the perfume she was wearing. He smiled at her. He said: "Why not? I'll try anything once! And if I can be of any use, O.K. Tell her I'll go around there. I'll go round to-morrow night, at eight."
She said: "You're a good kid...you're a good kid, Rene." She put up her hands and took his face between them. She kissed him on the mouth. She said: "I've always wanted to do that, kid. I think you're terrific."
Berg said: "Yeah...why?"
She laughed. She said: "That's the joke. I don't know why. I reckon a woman never does when she falls for a guy."
Berg said: "So it's like that? What about Travis?" She laughed. She said: "On your way, Rene. One of these evenings when you're not doing anything call through. Come round and have a drink. I'd like to talk to you about my own troubles. But right now you gotta think about this Clovis thing. Another thing," she said, "I don't want Travis to know about this. I don't want him to know about it because she didn't want him to know. She didn't want anybody to know, see? So you'd better scram. Maybe if you like to talk to me about it when you've seen her...all right."
Berg finished his drink. He gave her the glass. He said: "O.K., Lauren, I'll be seeing you."
He went out of the apartment. After a minute she heard the front door close. She went out into the hallway; waited till she heard the elevator descend. She went back into the sitting-room; moved quickly to the telephone. She called a number.
She said: "Hey, Clovis...is that you? Honey, it's all right. The sucker's hooked. Now do your stuff, sweetie."
VI
BERG looked at himself in the mirror in the bedroom of his hotel apartment. He was thinking in terms of romance—or as near as his peculiar type of mind could get to that commodity. He thought that perhaps life was throwing something of romance in his way.
At the back of his mind was Clovis. Clovis, who was so beautiful, so wonderful, who had everything, whom he hod regarded as being a person set apart from the rest of the world—a person who, in spite of her connection with Scansci, which he imagined was the result of circumstances, possessed every attribute which was good.
Now he was definitely heroic. Clovis was relying on him. She was in some sort of trouble. She needed somebody to help her. Surrounded on all sides by big men like Scansci, Travis and the rest of them, it was on Berg she relied—on him.
Berg thought that he was not flattering himself. He had no delusions about his position in the Scansci organization. He was a killer. Just that. But, because he had known no other business in his mature life, he was inclined to take his profession for granted. To him killing was just one of those things.
Had he thought for a moment he would have realized that the only thing that Clovis would want of him was death for somebody. But because Berg was like most other men, he liked, if possible, to glorify himself, preferred to think that it was not the attribute of being able to deal out death quickly, skilfully, easily, which made him of value to Clovis. He preferred to think it was other things, although had he asked himself the question, what were those other things?
He saw in the glass a fairly tall, slim, well-built young man with a face that was still clean-cut and attractive, a black fedora over one eye, with humorous lines about the eyes and a mobile, attractive, even just, mouth.
He lit a cigarette, went out of the hotel. He decided not to take a cab, but to walk. He wanted to think. It was cold outside—a cold clear night with a little wind. He liked the feel of the wind on his face.
He began to think about himself being heroic. He remembered what Lauren had said. Berg thought it was fairly easy in Chicago to be a hero. All you had to do was to do what he did. You killed people. You went out—in the old days—in a truck with a sawed-off shot-gun and when it was dark enough and the neighbourhood was lonely enough you waited for the opposition trucks to come along; then you blasted them. Or perhaps the technique was different. Maybe you used a pineapple—a pineapple with a long fuse—and left it in a truck. You waited till the truck got well down the road, and then you heard the explosion. Still later, when you were graduated from the amateur class, you had a Car to yourself. You called on people. You saw them in their apartments. You gave it to them there. Then, when you were an expert, as he was now, you made your own plans, your own set-ups. You were told who it was was to "have it;" you saw that they "got it." You used different techniques; thought out different schemes; but the end was always the same—you killed somebody.
And, thought Berg, Lauren had suggested there was something heroic—something romantic—about it, and she was not alone in the thought. All the women—not only the gangsters' women, but some of the nice respectable citizenesses of Chicago—thought that the gunmen were heroic figures. Berg had even heard that that was one of the things that was annoying J. Edgar Hoover—the head of the "G" men. Hoover, Berg had heard, was annoyed because ordinary, respectable, people thought the gangsters were romantic, heroic figures.
He shrugged his shoulders in the darkness. Well, it wasn't hard to be romantic. It wasn't hard to be a hero, especially when you know you were going to get away with it, especially when you knew that the alibi was laid on; that Scansci's mouthpiece Linney would look after you; that if you shot and killed a man in one part of the town and the cops got on to it—because even the cops had to pull somebody in sometimes—Linney would have five, ten, twenty people quite prepared to go into the box, take the oath, and swear that you were somewhere else at the time. Berg grinned. He thought that people like Linney made life very hard for policemen. The cream of the jest was that the majority of the witnesses that Linney produced on such occasions were good ordinary respectable citizens. Berg wondered how he got them. For a moment, he sensed vaguely the tortuous network that Linney must control; had for just a second a glimpse of the terrific organization for blackmail, bribery and corruption, which must exist in the office of Scansci's attorney.
But on these terms it was easy to be a hero and if it was his fate; if it was ordained that he should be a gangster—a killer; that he should be a hero, a romantic figure, to the women who crossed his path, who was he to quarrel with that decision?
He began to think about Clovis. Thinking about her, his attitude of mind altered. Here was a woman! Something in Berg reached out towards Clovis—something that was possibly decent in him thought that with such a woman he might have made good in some business where life was a little more difficult, where the ordinary everyday life of being a bookkeeper, a clerk, or something like that, did not present the easy angles of a gangster's life.
Let it be said in Berg's favour that he thought nothing of the dangers which he encountered every day of his life. The fact that any day, any night, one of Calsimo's boys might be out looking for him; the fact that he had escaped death a dozen times by a hair-line...let it be said in his favour that he thought nothing of these things. He took them for granted. They were part of his profession.
When Berg entered the Scansci apartment block he noticed that the two hefty gorillas who were usually hanging about at the elevator entrance were gone. He wondered vaguely why. Usually, he understood, there was a man on the main door, two more at the elevator entrance, two more on the third floor where the Scansci apartment was situated. To-night there was none. He dismissed the thought from his mind when he remembered that Scansci was away. Possibly, he thought, with Scansci being away there was no need for protection downstairs. He rang the apartment bell. The door was opened by the girl Truda—a Norwegian.
She smiled at him. She said: "Come in, Mr. Berg. Mrs. Scansci is waiting for you."
She took his hat, his overcoat; indicated the door on the other side of the hall. Berg crossed the hall, went into the large sitting-room of the apartment.
Clovis was standing at the head of the settee. He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. She was wearing a cornflower blue frock—simple but beautifully cut. Her eves—blue, lovely—looked at him appealingly. She came to meet him.
She said: "Rene, I'm so glad you have come. You mustn't mind if I call you Rene because that's how I think about you." Her voice was very soft, very melodious. She pronounced her words well; her diction was good.
Berg thought: "God, here's a hell of a woman!"
She said: "You mustn't stay very long. I don't want you to be here a long time because my husband's away. I couldn't see you when he was here but I don't want anybody to think..." She shrugged her shoulders. She went on: "Sit down. Let me give you a drink."
She mixed a drink, brought it to Berg with a box of cigarettes. He took a cigarette and she lit it for him. He sat, cigarette in one hand, drink in the other, looking up at her. She said: "You know, Rene, I'm sorry for you. I'm very sorry for you."
Berg looked surprised. He shrugged his shoulders. He said: "Yeah...?" He smiled at her. "I wonder why you should be sorry for me, Mrs. Scansci. What have I done that you've got to be sorry for me?"
She said: "Because. Rene...and I wish you wouldn't call me Mrs. Scansci—my name's Clovis. You and I are friends...we've got to be friends...so we've got to call each other by our first names...I am sorry for you because, like me, you've been framed."
Berg said: "Yeah?" He was vaguely amused. "And who's framed me?" he asked.
She smiled. She went and stood in front of the electric fire, one white bare arm resting on the mantelpiece.
She said: "Oh, I don't mean now, but when you came to Chicago. I think you'd have done very well in anything you'd gone into; you'd have been a success anyway. But they framed you...Travis framed you—you know it...he's told you—into working for him...for my husband."
Berg said: "Yeah...that's as may be. But I haven't done so badly out of it." He felt a vague sense of discomfort. He felt as if his profession was being patronized.
She said: "Oh, yes, you've done well, Rene. So have I. Look—" she indicated the apartment—"I have lovely clothes and fur coats, and two cars, lots of jewellery. I have everything, except my self-respect."
Berg said: "I wouldn't know what self-respect is. Maybe I never had a chance to find out." He drank a little of the whisky.
She said: "Rene, of course you wouldn't know. You were too young...you never had the chance...But I knew. I knew before I was framed into this—" She shrugged her shoulders.
Berg wondered what the hell it was all about. He said: "Listen, Clovis, I was talkin' to Lauren, see? She gave me some line about you being scared about something. She told me you wanted to see me. Well, I reckon Scansci's been pretty good to me one way and another, you know. I know he works through Travis, but I still know who my boss is. The boss is Scansci. That means to me lots of dough, all the things I want, and a cover-up when I want it. So when I hear that you're scared I sort of gotta do something about it. What's the trouble?"
She looked at him for a long time; then she said: "You're a very direct person, aren't you? Very direct and rather nice. Of course what you say about my husband is true. Paul is your boss. He pays you and he pays you well. Why shouldn't he? I wonder what he'd do without people like you."
Berg said: "I wouldn't know." Again he had the vague feeling of discomfort—the feeling that Clovis disliked Scansci; that in some way she was trying to tell him. He wished she'd talk about something else.
He said: "Look, why don't you sit down an' tell me what the trouble is? What's wrong? What's goin' on around here that scares you?"
She said: "Yes, I will. I'll sit down and I'll tell you. But I don't want you to look at me, Rene. Will you come and sit by my side on this settee and I'll try and tell you about it."
Berg thought that women were strange things, but he got up, sat down by her side on the settee. She looked into the fire.
She said: "Listen, I'm about your age. I met Paul Scansci some years ago. I married him because... well..." She shrugged her shoulders—"I had to marry him. I hadn't any choice. You know, Paul has—or had—a way of getting what he wanted. If he didn't get it one way he got it another. But in the long run he always got it. He used to be a very hard, tough, cruel type."
Berg said: "Yeah? Used to be?"
She threw him a sideways look. She said: "Yes...used to be." She looked into the fire again. She went on: "Oh, everybody's noticed the difference in him. For the last four or five months he's done nothing but drink. He's not thinking about his business. It's lucky for the organization—for people like you..." she turned and put her soft white hands suddenly on his... "that there are some clever, resourceful people like Linney. He's the person who looks after you—he and Travis. If you were to rely on Paul..." She shrugged her shoulders. She said: "Oh...but why am I talking like this? It doesn't matter. I didn't ask you here to-tell you these things."
Berg said: "No? But is that a fact about Scansci? Is it right what you're tellin' me? You mean he's slip-pin'?"
She nodded her head. "He's slipping badly." she said. "So very badly...just how badly. Rene. I'll tell you in a minute."
Berg thought: Maybe she'll get around to it in a minute. He was intrigued. He was wondering what it was all about.
He said: "Look. Clovis, why don't you just sort of tell me what's wrong? What's eatin' you? What are you scared about? I got the rest of the picture. Maybe what you say about Scansci is right. There's been a lot of talk around the town for the last six months about him an' Calsimo. The boys are sayin' that Calsimo is goin' up an' Scansci's goin' down. Well, that may be right even if I haven't noticed it personally, but then I don't see everything." He smiled at her.
She said: "Rene, I won't waste your time. I'll tell you exactly what the trouble is. I've been worried for a long time because I've felt that every time I went out I was being watched. I felt that, even in this place with the boys around, someone was keeping an eye on me—someone who wasn't very nice. During the last three or four weeks I have received four letters. I'm not going into what they say or what they threaten, but I know what they mean."
Berg said: "Yeah...well, what do they mean?" She said: "Calsimo's planning to snatch me. That's how he's going to get back on Scansci."
Berg whistled through his teeth. He said: "For Crissake! That's a good one." He immediately saw the strength of Calsimo's argument. If Calsimo could succeed in snatching Clovis it would be the end of Scansci. First of all Calsimo would hold her up to ransom, or even if he didn't—even if he returned her unhurt to Scansci—he would make the latter the laughing stock of Chicago.
Berg said: "It's a goddam good idea, I'm tellin' you! Maybe this Calsimo's got brains. From his angle it's a hell of a good idea. From your angle not so good."
She looked at him again. She said: "No, I shouldn't think so. Is that all it means to you?"
