The Devil's Odds

by Milton T. Burton

  “So what’s up?” Salisbury asked without much interest.

  “For one thing Madeline Kimbell is dead,” I said.

  “Yeah, I heard about that,” came his laconic response. “Tough break.”

  “I thought you guaranteed her safety,” I said.

  “I guaranteed it from me. But I can’t control what other people do. But hell, you take a ditzy broad like that, it’s no telling who got crosswise with her.” He gave me a dismissive jerk of his head and then turned to Grist. “What’s on your mind, old-timer?” he asked.

  “I’m glad you asked,” Charlie replied. “As it happens the governor sent me down here with a message for you.”

  “Who?” Salisbury asked, an expression of mild puzzlement on his face.

  “Governor Stevenson. He wanted me to give you a message.”

  “You don’t say … The governor, huh?”

  “That’s right. You’re getting all sorts of attention these days. Didn’t you know that?”

  Salisbury gave him a disinterested shrug, the bare wriggling of his shoulders as he fitted another cigarette casually between his lips. “So let’s have it,” he said.

  I knew exactly what was about to happen, and it was going to happen because Charlie Grist was Charlie Grist. He smiled calmly at Salisbury for a moment, then his upper body exploded into action, his right arm coming around in a vicious backhand arc, the long, lead-loaded sap that had been hidden under his jacket now in his gnarled old hand. It caught Salisbury on the side of the face with the sickening splat of a fastball hitting a wet catcher’s mitt, and the blow knocked the man’s chair over backwards and spilled him onto the floor. I got a quick glimpse of the young hood on his hands and knees, his eyes wide with fear and surprise, his mouth a bloody hole from which one tooth hung by a thread. Then the old man closed in on him like the Grim Reaper, but by that time Klevenhagen and I had our own hands full with the bodyguards.

  Both men reflexively grabbed for their guns, even though we were cops. But I’d had the advantage of knowing what was about to happen and had my Colt out and in their faces before they could get a grip on their pieces. Klevenhagen wasn’t far behind me with his big revolver. In a matter of seconds we had the pair searched and disarmed and backed up against the wall. While we were frisking them, I could hear Grist behind me, stomping Marty Salisbury to mush. Finally the beating stopped. I looked over at Klevenhagen and raised my eyebrows. “Be my guest,” he said with a shrug.

  I handed him my Colt and reached into my pocket and slipped my fingers into the heavy pair of brass knucks I’d brought from home. I shucked off my coat and tossed my hat onto the desk and turned and faced the two bodyguards with a happy smile on my face. “Your turn, boys,” I said and buried my fist up to the wrist in the bigger thug’s belly.

  * * *

  An hour later the three of us stood watching the taillights of Salisbury’s big blue Cadillac convertible as they gradually dwindled into the cold, misty darkness of the Louisiana night.

  “An old boy just don’t never get over a beating like that,” Grist mused philosophically. “Down the way he starts to think he’s a man again, and maybe he even begins to strut a little. Then the memory of it pops up in the back of his mind, and he sees himself lying on the floor in a puddle of his own puke begging you to stop. From that moment on, he’s yours and he knows it. It’s kinda like the relationship between a woman and her first lover. You’ve taken something from him he won’t never get back.”

  An hour earlier we’d pushed the trio out the rear door of the club and stuffed them into the backseat of Salisbury’s car. Salisbury and the bigger hood could barely walk. I’d gone easier on the smaller man so he would be able to drive. I took the wheel of the Cadillac with Grist beside me while Klevenhagen followed in Grist’s Ford. We crossed the Sabine River bridge into Louisiana and pulled over to the side of the highway a few miles shy of the little town of Vinton. Grist and I got out and extracted the smaller hood and placed him behind the wheel. Then the old man leaned back into the car and shined his flashlight into Salisbury’s face, which was so badly beaten that it was barely recognizable. “Can you hear me, boy?” Grist asked. “You understand what I’m saying?”

  Salisbury nodded weakly.

  “Your days here are over. Don’t come back.”

  The man nodded again, then coughed and leaned forward to vomit on the floor of the car. Both front teeth were missing and his nose had been flattened like a road-killed skunk. Grist slammed the door. “Go,” he told the driver.

  After stalling the engine twice, the man finally managed to get the car back up on the highway and headed eastward.

  “How about Madeline?” I asked.

  Grist pushed his hat back and turned to look at me. “I don’t believe they had anything to do with it,” he said. “After all, what did he have to gain by killing her with Arno and Luchese both dead?”

  “Maybe so,” I said. “But if it wasn’t Salisbury, then who do you think it was? Nolan Dunning?”

  “Could be. We may have been looking at the wrong motive.”

  “You’re thinking of a jilted lover rather than a gangland killing?”

  “Right. But no evidence.”

  “And the Jefferson County cops are never going to make a big deal of investigating the case,” I said.

  His tired old eyes were sad. “You’re right about that, and that’s the worst thing about this kind of corruption.”

  I shook my head bitterly.

  “And as for you,” he said, patting me on the back, “I must admit I admire your energy.” He put his tough old hand on my shoulder and gave me a friendly squeeze. “Maybe I ought to talk to Colonel Garrison about getting you a regular Ranger commission.”

  “No thanks, Charlie. When this mess is over I’m going back home to manage La Rosa.”

  “If that’s the way you want it,” he replied with a sigh. “But it’s a waste.”

  “Where now?” Klevenhagen asked after we were back in the Ford.

  “Let’s go get something to eat,” Grist said. “I’m hungry.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  After that night things moved fast. In midmorning of the next day I was awakened by the phone. It was Grist once again. “Hello, Charlie,” I said sleepily.

  “We got their attention this time,” the old man said.

  “Whose attention?” I asked, a little confused.

  “Scorpino and that bunch. His top hand called me about fifteen minutes ago and asked for a meeting this afternoon at a little beer joint just the other side of the state line. I’ve got to go back to Austin later this evening, but I got time for this.”

  “Why Austin?” I asked, dumfounded. “Did you get called back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But what about the DeMour killing? What about the girl?”

  “Hell, Virgil, the DeMour investigation is dead in the water, and you know it as well as I do. The killers are in the morgue and the man behind it is out of the state. As for the girl, even if Dunning killed her we got no way to link him to the crime.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I know what you’re going to say. Salisbury got away scot-free on DeMour. I don’t like it, and the governor don’t like it either, but there ain’t nothing we can do about it. Anyhow, I thought you might be interested in coming with us this afternoon and talk to this guy.”

  “You bet I am,” I said.

  “Then get yourself something to eat and we’ll come by to pick you up about three.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Virgil?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We scared ’em. This old boy told me that he wanted to assure me that I didn’t need to go to New Orleans to talk it over with the head man. And the way he said it gave me the feeling that Scorpino’s afraid we’ll come down there and do the same thing to him.”

  * * *

  The mist had turned to rain about sunup, a slow, steady downpour that showed no signs of abating, and the w
eather reports said a cold front was supposed to blow in about sunset. I waited under the awning in front of the hotel until Grist’s black Ford sedan rolled up with Klevenhagen at the wheel and Grist beside him. I climbed into the backseat and soon we were on our way. “Who’s this guy we’re going to meet?” I asked.

  “His name’s Albert Gracchi,” Grist said. “He’s Scorpino’s chief advisor. Kind of an odd duck for a hood.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Well, for one thing, he’s a college man.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Honors graduate of Tulane. And he claims his family is descended from some bunch of bigwig Romans back about the time of Jesus. Of course I don’t buy that because I don’t think no family can go for more than three or four generations without somebody’s bull jumping the fence.”

  “Charlie’s a little cynical,” Klevenhagen said. “I mention that just in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Shit,” Grist snorted.

  “Just because the bull jumps the fence doesn’t mean the cows are going to be interested,” I said with a grin. “I should know since I’m in the cattle business.”

  “Enough of ’em are,” Grist said. “Anyhow, Gracchi came over on the boat from Sicily with Scorpino when they were just kids, and they’ve been friends ever since.”

  “How did an educated man like him manage to get into the rackets?” Klevenhagen asked.

  “Nobody really knows. I suspect that he was a hoodlum at heart before he ever went to college, so it was just a case of a dog returning to its vomit. When you boys meet him you’ll notice that he looks like somebody stabbed him in the face about forty times with an ice pick. That’s because somebody stabbed him about forty times with an ice pick.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  “It was back right after the first war when him and Scorpino were just getting started. A rival gang was trying to make him give up some information. They left him for dead without making sure. Bad mistake. What he and Scorpino did to the other gang is what began their rise to power. Their response was so damn savage that it scared about half their competition slap out of the business.”

  The joint where the meeting was to take place was a little roadside tavern with a hilly, sloping floor, a half dozen booths, and a poorly adjusted gas heater that barely dispelled the damp chill of the day. We arrived first but didn’t have long to wait before the front door creaked open and three men entered. Two of them were younger, obvious bodyguards. But it was the third man who got my attention.

  With an air of almost palpable corruption that hung about him like a cloud of gnats, Albert Gracchi looked like about a hundred and sixty pounds of spoiled meat in a fine suit and a five-hundred-dollar overcoat. His skin, which was deeply pitted and gouged from the long-ago ice pick attack, had an unhealthy, reddish purple tint to it. His eyes were two lifeless brown orbs set in irises the color of dirty dishwater, and his nose was thin and beaklike over a mouth that was a wide, lipless slash.

  The two bodyguards took bar stools close to the door, while Gracchi walked slowly back to the rickety table near the rear where we sat. He didn’t offer to shake hands and neither did we. Instead, Grist said, “Sit down and say your piece.”

  Gracchi stiffly eased himself into a chair across from the old man and turned to snap his fingers for the place’s single waitress. When she arrived he asked for a cup of coffee only to be told, “This is a beer joint. If you want coffee, go to a drugstore.”

  Much to my surprise, he didn’t take offense. Instead he laughed and ordered a bottle of Falstaff. When he spoke his voice was rich and cultured, with an almost lighthearted ring to it, like the voice of a well-traveled and sophisticated man with an easy appreciation for the little ironies of life. That voice was the most disconcerting and spooky thing about the man. It was like hearing a cadaver singing a Verdi aria, and it made me shudder inwardly.

  He turned back to Grist and said, “I appreciate your coming.”

  Grist nodded in acknowledgment. “Let’s hear it,” he said.

  “Mr. Scorpino wanted you to know that he got some very bad advice, and that this whole affair has been an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

  “Go on.”

  “And he wants to assure you that as things stand now he has no further interest in expanding his business into Texas.”

  I decided to get into the conversation. “That’s fine,” I said. “But me and him still have some problems.”

  He turned his dead, dishwater eyes toward me and asked, “And who are you?”

  “Virgil Tucker.”

  He gazed at me for a moment with an expression on his ravaged face that seemed like honest puzzlement. Finally he said, “I’m sorry, but that name means nothing to me.”

  “I’m the fellow whose ranch was invaded by your hoods a few days ago.”

  His eyes grew wide. “You’ve lost me.”

  “Then try this. Have you ever heard of a guy named Lew Ralls?”

  He gave me a slow, thoughtful nod. “I believe I’ve met the gentleman a time or two.”

  “Well, you won’t be meeting him again for a while because he’s on his way to the Texas penitentiary.”

  Another thoughtful nod and a little glimmer of understanding began to creep into his eyes. “Why don’t you just tell me the whole story.”

  “Ralls and two other thugs broke into my house down in Matador County after a girl named Madeline Kimbell. My aunt killed one of them and one of my vaqueros killed another. We captured Ralls alive and—”

  “But why were they after this Kimbell girl?”

  “Because she’d seen a couple of guys named Johnny Arno and Paul Luchese murder a man named Henry DeMour who happened to be a highly respected attorney and a member of the Beaumont City Council. In case you didn’t know, Arno and Luchese worked for your boss’s nephew, Marty Salisbury. And now they’re both dead.”

  “They are?” he asked in surprise.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They were found floating in Lake Sabine shot to pieces.”

  “This is all news to me. I haven’t heard a damn thing about any of it.”

  “That’s strange,” Grist said. “Virgil here was able to persuade Ralls to talk, and he said they were hired by Carlo Tresca. And you know who he is just as well as I do.”

  “Yes, I do,” Gracchi said, his eyes narrowing. He pulled a long, thin cheroot from an inner coat pocket, bit off the end without ceremony, and then lighted it with a Zippo. “And Ralls actually told you that Tresca had hired them?” he asked me.

  “Yes, and I believed him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’d already been at him with a hot branding iron, and he didn’t want any more of it. But there’s more than that. Two nights ago Madeline Kimbell was found dead out on the Galveston highway.”

  He stared down at the table for a few moments in thought. Then he lifted his eyes and said, “I assure you this is not the sort of thing we had in mind with our move into Texas. We expected it to be more in the nature of a merger, a trading of value for value. We were led to believe that the political climate had changed in such a way that our presence here would not be resented. Mr. Scorpino and I had long felt that there could be considerable expansion of the Maceo operation. With their expertise and our capital…”

  He stopped speaking and looked at the three of us and shook his head. “Killing prominent citizens and invading homes?” He shrugged apologetically. “No. We had nothing to do with either.”

  “I find it hard to take your word on that,” I said, “considering that I got personal assurances from Marty Salisbury that the girl would be safe just one day before she was killed.”

  He puffed on his cheroot for a moment and then drained his beer. Finally he held up his hands in supplication. “All I can say is that we’re quits as far as Mr. Scorpino and I are concerned. And I’m sorry about the girl. I take it she was a friend of yours, and the loss of a friend is…” He stopped speaking and shrugged. “Rega
rdless of what you might think of me, I promise you I’m no stranger to grief. So let’s end the matter here.”

  “I’m willing,” I said. “I really don’t have any other choice. But if my family is bothered again there’ll be hell to pay. I promise you that.”

  “You have nothing we want, Mr. Tucker,” he said. “You are safe from us. I give you my word on that, however meaningless it might be in your estimation.” He turned his head to look at Grist. “How about you?”

  “I don’t intend to push it no further,” the old man said. “But you have to stay out of this state. There are some powerful interests here that just won’t tolerate your kind of operation.”

  “Done,” Gracchi said and got to his feet. “As I said, it was an ill-advised venture, and we want nothing more to do with it.”

  We rose and followed him across the room. Halfway to the door he stopped and turned to Grist. “Certain people are going to have some explaining to do once I get back to New Orleans,” he said. “I want you to understand that.”

  His vehicle was a big custom-built Lincoln sedan. A few moments later we stood outside the little joint and watched as it glided off into the drizzle. As we were getting back into our own car, Klevenhagen asked, “What do you think he meant about people having things to explain?”

  Grist stared thoughtfully at the Lincoln’s dwindling silhouette. “Sounds to me like they may have a palace rebellion going on down there,” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Grist and Klevenhagen dropped me off back at the Creole. I checked the desk for messages and found one from Jim Rutherford telling me that Madeline’s funeral was scheduled for 10:00 A.M. the next morning at Forest Lawn Cemetery.

  At breakfast I’d had nothing but toast, and then I’d skipped lunch. Now my innards were making urgent “feed me” sounds, so I decided to take the path of least resistance and get something to eat at the hotel coffee shop rather than going out and hunting down a restaurant. Noticing that the menu said that breakfast was served twenty-four hours a day, I asked for a double order of bacon and eggs. I was just finishing my last biscuit and jelly when the door from the lobby opened, and Jack Amber and Little Tommy Trehan entered the room. I rose to greet the pair and motioned for them to sit. “What’s up?” I asked.