by Dick Stodghill
I had forty-seven cents in my pocket when the gas gauge hit empty and I coasted to a stop in front of a roadside diner on the outskirts of a gritty place called Dealtown. I wasn’t in the market for a deal, but a cup of coffee sounded good. A decent meal and a place to sleep that night sounded better. So did a tankful of gas.
The diner looked halfway clean—par for the course in 1940—so I took a stool at the counter and blew a nickel for rancid coffee in a cracked mug. That left me with forty-two cents and little prospect of a decent meal, a place to sleep, a tank of gas.
Aside from a waitress with a chip on her shoulder and a clapped-out short-order cook there was only one other person in the place. I had taken a few sips of coffee strong enough to bring an elephant to its knees when the other customer whistled between his teeth. I turned to look and he gave his head a jerk in my direction. “Come on over and sit down a minute, pal.”
He was dressed like a dandy—dark blue suit with gold pinstripes, wide-brimmed black fedora, gold- and black-striped necktie—but he had the face and build of a street soldier in Capone’s old mob or the Purple Gang in its heyday. The bulge under his left arm enhanced the effect. I picked up my mug and walked over to his table.
He sized me up at close range for ten or fifteen seconds. “Stranger in town, huh?”
“Just passing through.”
“Down on your luck, right?”
“It shows, does it?”
“To someone who knows people like I do, yeah it shows.”
“So what do you want to do, rub it in?”
“Do I look like that kind of guy?” He did, but I kept the thought to myself. “No, I was thinking of maybe offering you a job.”
“What kind of job?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not much, but sometimes I’m fussy.”
“Pays to be that way. This is just routine. Collect a little money from a few people that owe me, an odd job here and there, that’s all.”
“So what happened to your last enforcer?”
“He had a little accident.”
“You mean somebody killed him.”
“If you want to put it like that.”
“What’s the pay?”
“Hundred a week. Maybe a little bonus now and then. Interested?”
“Maybe. When’s my first payday?”
“How about right now with a little extra thrown in. What do they call it, a signing bonus?”
He took a fat wallet from his pocket and laid four fifties on the table. I had myself a job.
He had watched me coast into the lot and figured I was out of gas. He called somebody from a pay phone on the wall and ten minutes later a pickup truck pulled in next to my ‘36 Ford. The driver took a red can from the back and started pouring gas into the tank.
In the meantime my new boss and I got around to exchanging names. He told me to drive downtown to the hotel and say Arnie Scarno sent me. “Tell ‘em I said to fix you up with their best room and put it on my tab.”
He said to take a day or so to just wander around, get to know the layout. And get a new suit, something fitting my position. I had to stifle a laugh because half an hour earlier my position had been down and out. He gave me the name of his tailor and said the suit should go on his tab. To some men, running tabs is a way of showing power. Arnie Scarno fit the image.
The room at the Deal House overlooked the main drag and had a private bath. I stretched out on the bed and wondered what in hell I had gotten myself into. All my wishes had been fulfilled, but Scarno wasn’t the kind of man to give someone a helping hand out of the kindness of his heart. If a man was down, kick him, that would have been more like it. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to do a lot of thinking, so I didn’t.
* * * *
When I went downstairs there had been a shift change and a young woman, a knockout, was working the desk. I turned on my warmest smile. “They’ve got you on nights? Seems kind of dangerous for a woman.”
She raised her eyebrows and gave a little shrug. “Day or night, it doesn’t make much difference in Deathtown.”
“What did you say?”
“Day or night it—”
“No, I mean the name of the town.”
“It’s Dealtown, but some people call it Deathtown.”
“Nice. Makes a stranger feel right at home. So why the moniker?”
“People are always dying. Sixty-seven out at the coal mine a few months ago, fifty-three last year. Somebody always getting killed on the highway. You know, all the hills and curves. A dozen murders in the past nine or ten months. Seems like death never takes time off around here.”
“Great little place to settle down. Got a boyfriend?”
“Are you propositioning me?”
“No. Dinner might be nice, though.”
“I’m working at dinnertime.”
“Lunch, then.”
“You’re a fast mover, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes it pays off. But I was thinking about a little talk. You filling me in on the town, that sort of thing.”
Her soft brown eyes twinkled easily. “Okay, what’s to lose?”
“Tomorrow?”
“You are fast, but why not. I’ll meet you here at noon.”
* * * *
She told me the name of the best restaurant in town and that’s where we had lunch. In a city of any size the joint would have been out of business in a month. It wasn’t food I was interested in, though. Mary Dawkins—I didn’t learn her name until we were seated at a table—filled me in on some of the things I wanted to know about Dealtown and some of its big shots. After hearing a few names and why they were important I said, “How about Arnie Scarno?”
I picked up on her all but imperceptible shudder. “He’s not a nice man.”
“I’m not looking for a character reference. What does he do?”
“Owns a roadhouse, a dime-a-dance place outside the city limits. He’s a thug.”
“Most men who own roadhouses are. So what else does he do?”
“Why do you want to know about him?”
“Just curious.”
“And I suppose you pulled his name out of thin air.”
“Ran into him yesterday, that’s all. So what else can you tell me?”
“He’s half owner of the coal mine. As if that isn’t enough he’s a loan shark, a bookmaker, anything else that offers the chance for a fast buck.”
I couldn’t suppress a grin. “Aside from all that you hate his guts. Why?”
She lowered her eyes. “I just do.”
“Were you one of his ten-cents-a-dance girls?”
“Not for long. Not after he ripped my clothes off after work one night.”
“He forced himself on you?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“Did you report it to the cops?”
“Are you serious? He owns the cops in this town.”
“In Deathtown, as you call it. So how come he lets you work at the hotel?”
“He doesn’t own the hotel, just the rest of the town.”
“He sent me there. To the hotel, I mean.”
“I know. I checked you out last night. You’ve gone to work for him, haven’t you?”
“Needed a job. Needed it bad.”
“You’ll last about a month. Then you’ll die like they all do.”
“Thanks for the word of encouragement, kiddo.”
“If you’re working for Scarno, don’t bother to call me again.”
“I never have called you.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did indeed. And I knew she wasn’t kidding. Those soft brown eyes could shoot daggers and a few of them hit me where it hurt.
* * * *
It was late in the afternoon after I’d been wandering the downtown streets for a couple of hours that I found out the name of the mine was the Dawkins-Scarno. When Mary came on duty at the hotel I risked a rebuff and stopped by the desk. “Is your old man Scarno’s partner at the mine?”
“My father ran off with a B-girl at the roadhouse when I was ten. I haven’t seen him since. My ex owns half the mine.”
“You’re divorced?”
“I’ll say this for you, not only are you a fast mover, you’re a quick thinker.”
“Look, kid, let’s bury the hatchet. Lunch again tomorrow?”
“Scarno might forgive you for having lunch with me once. Twice, uh-uh.”
“Look, I need a little dope on what goes on out at that mine besides methane gas explosions.”
She glanced around to make sure no one was within hearing distance. “They’ve got union trouble. It’s a wildcat mine and the union’s trying to muscle its way in. John—that’s my ex—wants to go along with it, but Scarno says nix. He’s not about to pay union wages, and on top of that there’d be safety inspections.”
“I thought the state handled inspections.”
“It does, but that doesn’t mean a thing if you have the inspector on your payroll.”
“After two explosions and more than a hundred dead you’d think—”
“You don’t get it, do you? Look, the manager just came in so here’s your room key. Now scram before I’m in trouble.”
* * * *
After breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall diner where the smell of stale grease permeated the air, I took another stroll around town. There were a few empty storefronts and boarded up windows but not as many as some places I’d been. The Great Depression was winding down so there were people on the street who looked like they might have a buck or two in their pockets. That meant a little business was being conducted, and not only in Dealtown. I wandered through the courthouse, an ancient structure that could have been a refugee from a gothic novel, and was heading back to the hotel when a mug with cauliflower ears and a nose that had been flattened more than once tapped me on the shoulder. “Arnie wants to see you, sport.” The words came out sounding like he was gargling with gravel.
“Where is he?”
“I’ll drive you.”
“I’ll drive myself. Where is he?”
“If that’s the way you want to play it, sport. He’s out at the roadhouse.”
It turned out to be a little nicer than I expected. Red carpet except on a high-gloss dance floor, a well-stocked backbar, everything in decent shape for that kind of dive.
Arnie was at a table in a dark corner. With him were three strong-arm punks who looked me over like I’d crawled out of a sewer. My escort joined them. Arnie, all smiles, held out a cigar for me. “So, what do you think of our little town now that you’ve had a chance to size it up?”
“I’ve seen worse.”
He winked and leered in a way I didn’t like. “Hear you’ve been stepping out with a broad.”
“Word travels fast.”
“Watch your step. She’s dynamite in a pretty package.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you could. Ready to go to work?”
“Just name it.”
He did, and for me it began a couple of weeks of doing jobs any high school kid could have handled after the last bell. Collecting money from shopkeepers who opened the cash register as soon as they saw me coming in the door, picking up the receipts from half a dozen bookies after the last races of the day had been run and the newspaper’s final edition was on the street with the closing numbers on Wall Street. Not the kind of work that paid a hundred bucks a week. I was curious to know when I’d really start earning my keep and what it would involve.
My evenings were spent at the roadhouse. The dime-a-dance girls were easy on the eyes and looked a lot cleaner than most of the guys with them out on the floor. Not too surprising for a coal mining town that also had a steel mill and a few smaller factories. The place was hopping every night with miners and steel puddlers eager to hold a pretty girl in their arms. A place like Arnie’s offered the only opportunity many of them would ever have.
The girls gave me a wide berth and Arnie’s four strong-arm boys kept their distance. There had been no introductions, formal or otherwise, so I tagged them Stan, Ollie, Curly and Moe. One night they decided to see what was going on at another joint so I said, “Maybe I’ll ride along.”
A husky one with a tic in his right eye, the one I called Moe, seemed to be their leader. He shook his head. “No room in the car.”
The car so short on room was a Hudson town sedan that seated three in front, three more in back, but I wasn’t all broken up about not being wanted.
A few nights sitting around a dive like that gets to be old stuff. Arnie wanted me there so I stuck it out by reading a paperback mystery. That alone was enough to set me apart from the crowd. Good sense told me I should take my next paycheck and hit the road. Sometimes curiosity wins out over good sense.
Arnie and his four plug-uglies came to attention the night a dapper stranger came in, picked out a redhead, and hit the dance floor. He was medium size with a pencil-line mustache and a smirk that showed everywhere except on his face. I was seated next to the boss so I said, “Who’s the new shooter, the dude in a hundred-dollar suit?”
“Union man. He’s got guts coming in here.”
“One of John L. Lewis’s organizers?”
“You called it. Look, I got a message for you to deliver when he leaves.”
“What kind of message?”
“Nothing serious. Take the ball bat over against the wall and kneecap him.”
“That’s all, huh? So how’s he going to drive out of the lot after that?”
“That’s his problem.”
I wasn’t keen on the job, but as things turned out it didn’t matter. He left on the stroke of midnight and a car with three goons inside was waiting at the door. So close to it that there wasn’t room for me to step outside until he slipped into the front passenger’s seat.
Arnie didn’t look happy when I was back so fast. Before I could open my mouth, Curly, who had been outside all the time, hurried up beside me. “It was no go, boss. Some of his pals pulled up so close to the door they shoulda had to pay a cover charge.”
Arnie brought a fist down on the table. “So it was a setup. They were playing games with me. Tomorrow we’re gonna teach ‘em one they haven’t played before.”
I wasn’t so sure of that. The three toughs in the car had looked like they knew any game Arnie might have in mind. Tomorrow should be interesting. Not fun, just interesting.
* * * *
It turned out I didn’t get to see the fiasco. Eight strong-arm hoods, Arnie’s regular boys and four more he called in for the job, left for the mine at ten in the morning in two cars, the familiar Hudson and a late model LaSalle sedan. A dumb move in my book, so I wasn’t sorry when Scarno took me by the arm before I could get in the second car. “You stay here with me. We’ve got other fish to fry.”
We went back inside the roadhouse. Deserted at that time of day with chairs stacked on tables and a cleanup crew at work, the place looked tawdry and smelled of stale cigarette and cigar smoke. Scarno ordered a flunky to bring coffee and get the chairs off his usual table. When we were seated he said, “I’m having trouble with my partner at the mine. He’s a pussycat, thinks we should let the union move in. If those organizers don’t get the message this morning and are still hanging around, the guy’s got to go.”
“You’re going to buy him out?”
He spewed coffee all over the table. “Hey, that’s a good one. But it’s not exactly what I have in mind. You’re going to pay him a little visit, know what I mean?”
You didn’t need much up in your head to know exactly what he meant. In Chicago a fellow named Hymie Weiss had coined a phrase that expressed it more clearly: Take him for a ride. A one-way ride.
That might have fit the job description Scarno had for me, but it didn’t fit mine. I didn’t bother to say so at the time.
The wrecking crew got back from the mine an hour later. Five of them got back, the other three had been dropped off at the hospital. Curly was one of the latter group. The two part-timers still able to walk had gone home to nurse their wounds. Stan, Ollie and Moe looked like they should do the same.
Scarno was livid as he listened to the story of how his thugs had walked into an ambush and came out on the short end of what followed. A few shots had been fired but most of the action involved tire chains, ball bats, and clubs. Curly had taken a bullet in his left leg.
When the story ended and the trio had gone somewhere to lick their wounds, Scarno said, “Come on.” I followed him into his private office. He knelt down and worked the combination on a small safe. When he straightened up he had a box in his hand. He opened it and took out a snub-nose revolver, a .38. From a carton in a desk drawer he took six rounds and slipped them into the chambers, then handed the gun to me. “Brand new. Can’t be traced. Get rid of it after the job. I want it done tonight, understand? I’ll fill you in on where and when later. Now scram out of here, I’ve got some thinking to do.”
So did I. I drove into town and checked the hotel. I didn’t expect Mary Dawkins to be there and she wasn’t, but I found her name in the phone book. I was starting to get concerned because she didn’t answer until the seventh ring. “Listen, I know you told me not to call you but this is urgent. I need to talk to you in private without anyone knowing and not on the telephone. Can you slip in the back door of the hotel and take the service stairs up to my room without being seen?”
“Your room? Exactly what do you have in mind?”
“Not what you’re thinking. Look, this is serious. Big time serious.”
“Okay, but it’ll be half an hour. I just got out of the tub so I have to get dressed and fix my hair.”
“Don’t spend time on your hair, just get down here.” I caught myself before making a crack about not bothering to get dressed. That could have scared her off altogether.
I left the door unlocked, so twenty minutes later she knocked a single time and then stepped inside. Every hair was in place. I laid Scarno’s plan out in detail. “Are you on speaking terms with your ex?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then you’d better tell him to get out of town. Now, before dark.”
“It won’t do any good. Even if he listens to me, it will only postpone the inevitable, that’s all.”
“That’s enough for now.”
“And if he doesn’t, are you going to do what Scarno says?”
“I’m no angel, we both know that, but I’m not anybody’s hired killer.”
She turned when she reached the door. “Good luck when Scarno finds that out.”
I followed a few minutes later in need of the strongest cup of coffee I could find. That meant returning to the diner where I’d first met Arnie Scarno. I got what I wanted, and it came in the same cracked mug, or maybe its twin brother.
I arrived back at the roadhouse a little after four o’clock. Arnie was alone at his table. He got up and motioned with his head for me to follow him to the office. He went behind his desk, then faced me and said, “Ready to do that job?”
“I’m here, aren’t I? That means I’m ready.”
“That’s not the way I heard it.”
“Oh yeah? From who?”
He raised his voice a couple of notches. “Come on out, kid.”
A side door opened and Mary Dawkins walked in. I admit I was stunned. When I found my voice I said, “You told him? When did you switch over to his side?”
“When you said you weren’t going to go through with the job.”
“You go along with killing your husband? Ex-husband?”
“You can drop the ex. We’re separated, not divorced. I go along because he’s got a twenty-five thousand dollar life insurance policy and I’m the beneficiary.”
“For that you’re willing to see him murdered?”
“I won’t see it. I’ll be working at the hotel.”
“You may not be there, but you’ll see it all the same. And you’ll be an accessory.”
I’d been watching Scarno from the corner of my eye. His hand moved toward a desk drawer, but before he reached it the revolver was in my hand. “You slipped up, Arnie. You should have asked for the gun back before we started talking.”
He knew I was right. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to bluff his way through. “Why should I have asked for it back? All you have to do is go ahead with the job, and all is forgiven.”
“Like a rattlesnake forgives the guy who stomps on it. This is all you wanted me for right from the start, isn’t it? You had it all figured out but needed a recruit, a sucker to do the dirty work so your four flunkies would stay clean. Then you’d turn me over to the cops on your payroll, but feet first so I couldn’t tell an honest prosecutor or judge about your role in it. Make it seem like a freelance job, was that how you had it planned?”
“I’ve been square with you from the start. You’re not some jerkwater punk who thought I was hiring somebody to keep the books.”
He had me there. I backed out of the room. Before shutting the door behind me I said, “Don’t try following me, Arnie.” I waved the gun a little. “I’m pretty good with one of these things.”
I drove off in a hurry, pulled into a lot halfway back to town, and parked between a derelict building and an abandoned panel truck. I hadn’t even had time to turn off the engine before Mary Dawkins passed on her way to town. A few quiet minutes went by and then the puke I called Moe drove by headed toward the roadhouse. A short time later he went back the other way. As soon as he was out of sight I followed behind. A filling station on the outskirts of town had a phone booth off to one side, so I found John Dawkins’s number in the book and dialed it.
Just as I figured when I hadn’t tried to call him earlier, he didn’t buy the story coming from a stranger. Telling him his wife knew about the plan made him even more skeptical. I kept trying until he said, “Hold on, there’s somebody at the door.”
“Don’t answer it!” I yelled, but he was already gone. A long minute dragged by, then the sound of a shot came over the wire. A short silence, then several more in rapid succession. It seemed that Moe wasn’t sure of his first shot or just enjoyed pumping slugs into a victim.
I dropped the phone on its hook and walked back to my car. Scarno’s revised plan was clear in my mind. He figured he was killing two birds with a single shot. His partnership was ended, and I was still set up to take the fall just as he had figured from the beginning. Half a dozen people would swear I was a hothead who went wild after taking a beating at the mine that morning and went on my own to settle up with the man on the side of the union. He thought I’d be well on my way out of town, so he’d supply the state police with the information, complete with the license number of my car. I’d be pulled over within an hour, never suspecting I was about to face a murder rap.
There was nothing for it but to go back to the roadhouse. I hadn’t a clue as to what I’d do when I got there.
Scarno was alone at his table. That was the first of several surprises; I had expected the full crew to be there aside from Moe and Curly. Moe’d be arriving close on my heels. Scarno motioned toward a chair. “Sit down. I’ve been expecting you.”
“No you haven’t, Arnie. You thought I’d be long gone by now.”
“Not for a minute, I didn’t. You may not be the man I had you sized up to be, but you’re no common thief. You wouldn’t take off without giving me back the gun. Look, let’s forget the whole thing. Maybe you’re not a shooter, but there’s room here for a man like you. Those other mugs are okay for what they do, nothing more. I need a guy with something more above his neck than just a place to hang his hat.”
I didn’t believe a word he said but decided to play along. “You mean a second in command, a right-hand man. How do you think your boys would feel about that? They haven’t exactly laid out the welcome mat the past few weeks.”
“What they think don’t matter. I run the show. They’re just two for a nickel hoodlums, that’s all.”
“So what’s the pay for this job?”
“You name it. Say two-fifty a week, how does that sound?”
Before I had time to digest that malarkey, a state police captain came in the door. Four troopers followed close behind. The captain walked to the table, stopping so he was facing Scarno. “Hello, Arnie. Before we get down to business, I’d feel more comfortable if you laid your hands on top of the table.”
Scarno complied. “What’s this all about? Why the tough cop act all of a sudden?”
“You’re getting careless, Arnie. You should’ve checked a little closer. You’d have known we had a man covering Dawkins since that business out at the mine this morning.”
“Why would that interest me?”
“Playing coy doesn’t become you, Arnie. Our man was upstairs using the john so he was too late to spoil the play. The boy you sent down was quick on the trigger, did a good job so your partnership was dissolved an hour ago. That’s the good news, Arnie. The bad is the punk took a couple of slugs himself and then turned canary. The worst news of all from your point of view is he’ll live and be the star witness for the state.”
Scarno seemed to blanch a little but was too tough and too fast a thinker to show yellow. It would be his word against that of a small-time hood, and that put the odds in his favor. “You’re wasting your time and mine, Cap. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
“Grab your hat, Arnie, we’re taking a ride downtown.”
So it seemed the state police weren’t on Scarno’s payroll. The second they walked in the door I ditched the gun he had given me. There was one of those shelves for holding purses about eight inches under the tabletop so I slid the .38 over in front of Scarno. It clinked against metal and you didn’t need a college degree to know what it had bumped up against.
They patted me down, naturally, then ignored me, at least for the time being, after finding I was clean. All five were grinning when one of them checked the purse shelf where Scarno had been sitting and came up with two guns.
“Expecting a war, Arnie?” said the captain.
Scarno may not have heard because he was telling the bartender to take charge while he was gone. “Call that shyster lawyer of mine. I’ll be back in an hour, maybe two.”
When they were gone I went over to the bar and ordered a beer. Would Scarno be convicted of anything? Not likely. Moe would have a sudden lapse of memory, and if that didn’t work a juror, maybe two, would find themselves a little richer before a trial even began. Guys like Scarno didn’t get convicted, at least not in a place like Dealtown. To make it look good he’d probably have to let the union into the mine. He’d just jack up the price on everything at the roadhouse to make up the difference.
The phone rang just as I was finishing my beer. After hanging up, the bartender was busy at the cash register for a minute and then came over and handed me five one-hundred dollar bills. “It was Arnie on the line. He said for you to head out of town. Pronto, and don’t leave no forwarding address.”
* * * *
So I would chalk up my stay in Dealtown to experience. Not a bad experience, all things considered. I had a new suit and about nine hundred more dollars in my pocket than had been there when I arrived. Aside from meals, gasoline, and fifteen a week for the hotel room, I hadn’t spent a cent. Even the drinks and the cigars had been on Arnie.
At the hotel I packed up my belongings and took the stairs to the lobby. Mary Dawkins was checking in a new arrival, all smiles and charm. She was coming out of the sordid business fragrant as a spring breeze. Richer, too, by twenty-five grand.
It no longer was my concern. I went on out the door to my car and headed back along the road that had brought me to Dealtown. Deathtown—how right the newly widowed Mary had been about that.
On impulse I stopped at the roadside diner and had a cup of bitter tasting coffee in the familiar cracked mug. It just seemed like the thing to do, the proper way to say so long to a town I didn’t expect to see again.
Copyright © 2009 Dick Stodghill