by Simon Brett
‘So you think Spagsy’s got Blotto?’
‘I’d say that’s for sure. Spagsy runs this town like his own toy railroad. There’s no pie in Chicago that ain’t got a portion of Spagsy’s finger in it. I’d say most likely by now your brother’s in the lake wearing dandy cement footwear.’
‘That’d never happen to Blotto,’ Twinks protested.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’d never stand still long enough for the cement to set. Whatever kind of gluepot he gets into, Blotto always manages to escape.’
‘Dream on, doll. Chicago ain’t no city for idealists. Though I too have ideals. I dream of a time when I can step out on the sidewalk and not be confronted by a pug with a rod. I dream of a time when the police try to catch the crooks rather than drinking illegal hooch with them. I’m a man of dreams. A man of grey, scorched dreams. And though most of them have been squished like ladybugs on the windshield of a car, I still have a few. What’s your name, lady?’
‘Twinks.’
‘You were christened that?’
‘I was christened Honoria Charlotte Victoria Ermintrude Delauncey Lyminster.’
‘I’ll call you Twinks.’
‘I am the daughter of the late Duke of Tawcester.’
He nodded, unimpressed. Maybe he regarded the aristocracy as just another manifestation of injustice.
‘Well, look, Mr Sidney—’
‘Call me Paul.’
‘Paul, I want to employ you to find my brother.’
‘Don’t waste your sugar. You’d be whistling in the wind.’
‘Are you not looking for work?’ Twinks gestured round the bare dusty office. ‘Doesn’t look like you have too much of it.’
‘I get by.’
‘What are your rates?’
‘Hundred bucks down. Then it’s per day. And mileage for the Packard.’
Before he had finished speaking a crisp green note had been removed from the reticule and was on the table in front of him. ‘You’re employed,’ said Twinks.
The private eye nodded slowly. ‘You’ve persuaded me. Just let’s get one thing clear. You’re a classy broad and I dare say you’ve been told that many times. But I ain’t taking your sugar because you’re a classy broad. I’m taking the job because, even in a hellhole like Chicago, I believe justice must survive. It’s gotta reach the light of day, just like flowers come up in the cracks between the slabs on the sidewalk.’
‘I’m not arguing with any of that,’ said Twinks. ‘One thing . . . do you work on your own?’
‘Sure,’ Paul Sidney replied. ‘I’m alone on the street. I don’t carry a gun. The only weapon I’m tooled up with is my integrity.’
‘Except this time,’ said Twinks, ‘you’re not working alone.’
‘But I need to,’ he objected. ‘I need to be alone. One dark figure on the dark street, fedora crammed down over my eyes, collar of my coat turned up against the rain. That’s me. A loner. Of course I work on my own.’
Twinks shook her head. ‘This time you’re working with me.’
For a moment he looked like he was going to disagree. But feeling the full impact of one of the Dowager Duchess’s basilisk stares from his client’s eyes, he didn’t argue.
19
Blotto and the Mob
The evening before Twinks’s encounter with Paul Sidney, things were not going too well for her brother. Even someone with Blotto’s slow perception didn’t take long to realize that the men who’d hustled him into the Cadillac limousine were unlikely to be taking him straight to a reunion with his beloved Lagonda. He picked up clues from their manner, which did not indicate a spirit of cooperation. Like the gun whose barrel the one on the back seat kept dug into his ribs.
But though he asked in the politest way where they were actually taking him, they proved to be distinctly uninformative on that subject. Indeed he found himself wondering whether they could actually speak at all. All of their instructions to him had taken the form of grunts rather than words. Mind you, supported by gestures from their guns, they were very articulate grunts.
Nor could he get many clues as to their route and destination from the outside world. The Cadillac seemed quickly to have left the city lights behind and they were driving out into unrelenting darkness.
‘It’s as black as a mole’s armpit,’ Blotto observed at one point, but this attempt to engage his captors in conversation proving ineffective, he didn’t bother again.
At last the car seemed to slow down and heavy jolting about suggested that it had left the main thoroughfare to join some rougher, cross-country route. Then the Cadillac stopped.
The driver didn’t move, nor did he switch off the engine. Whatever was about to happen wasn’t expected to last long.
The two heavies in the back manhandled Blotto out of the limousine. But the barrel of the gun one held didn’t for a moment slacken its pressure on his ribs.
It was as dark as pitch. The wind slapped cold rain on to his face. As his eyes accommodated, he could see that they were miles from anywhere. The only sign of human interference with bleak nature was a high barn, suggesting that they were perhaps on farmland.
The two heavies pinioning his arms were speaking now, and in more than grunts.
‘I say we just ice him, Rat Teeth,’ said the one with the gun. Then with an evil laugh, he asked their prisoner, ‘Howdja like the idea of icing?’
It seemed an odd, rather out-of-context question, but Blotto had long ceased expecting logical discourse from Americans. ‘Well, I like it on a Christmas cake,’ he replied.
Ignoring him, the other heavy objected, ‘Icing wasn’t in the orders, Two Legs.’
‘Who needs orders? We was told to “take him for a ride”. Every other time Vic “Rat Teeth” Papardelle and Michael “Two Legs” Conchiglioni have been told to take someone for a ride we’ve iced them.’
‘Maybe. But the Boss is getting antsy these days. You know how he likes to keep all the book-keeping neat. Lemmy “The Hook” Vermicelli – he iced some boofer without checking. The Boss iced him.’
‘So what you saying, Rat Teeth? We lock the bozo in the barn, we go back into the city, we find the Boss, we say to him, “You want that dingle iced?” He says, “Sure I do. I told you to take him for a ride, didn’t I?” Then suddenly it’s us the boss is antsy with.’
‘Two Legs, I still think it’s worth checking,’ maintained Vic ‘Rat Teeth’ Papardelle.
‘But nobody’s going to miss this chimp. He’s English, for God’s sake. I say we ice him,’ insisted Michael ‘Two Legs’ Conchiglioni.
As their discussion continued, for the first time that evening Blotto’s natural optimism was clouded by the thought that he might be in serious danger. Danger itself didn’t worry him, indeed he rather relished it. But if his life was going to end in that harsh wet landscape, perhaps he should give a little thought to his own mortality.
The little thought didn’t take long. Having been brought up Church of England, his attitude to religion was rather vague. The chaplain at Eton had certainly mentioned some kind of afterlife, though he hadn’t given much detail about its specifics.
Anyway, forget the afterlife, there were things about his current life that Blotto reckoned he’d miss. Cricket, obviously . . . Hunting . . . Solving mysteries with Twinks . . . Yes, he’d probably miss that most.
But then again, being ‘iced’ in a blighted field in Illinois would provide a perfect solution to the Mary Chapstick problem. She couldn’t marry someone dead. Blotto had to admit that there were arguments on both sides of the ‘icing’ dilemma.
He was still mightily relieved that Vic ‘Rat Teeth’ Papardelle’s view prevailed over that of Michael ‘Two Legs’ Conchiglioni, and for the time being the two heavies agreed to lock Blotto in the barn while they went to consult the Boss about his fate. It was only a temporary reprieve, but at least it was a reprieve. And the dilapidated state of the barn’s exterior suggested that breaking out of it would no
t present too much of a problem for a young man at the peak of his fitness. Optimism flooded back along Blotto’s arteries.
It swelled even more when he realized that his captors were not going to truss him up but leave him free to wander at will around the barn. They even put a light on for him. How generous. Short of clapping him heartily on the shoulder and saying, ‘Feel free to escape when you want to,’ they couldn’t have done much more.
He waited until the sounds of the departing Cadillac had become lost in the wind that whistled through the barn and then he started looking for the holes through which it whistled, confident of finding one that was Blotto-sized. Failing that, there was bound to be a rotting door or cracked window through which he could make his getaway. Then, as soon as possible, he would be reunited with Twinks and hear the good news of the effect his supposed dalliance with Choxy Mulligan had had on Luther P. Chapstick III. His engagement to Mary was virtually over already!
But after half an hour of circling the interior walls, pressing and probing every now and then to find a weakness, he was forced to admit that he had somewhat underestimated the efficiency of Spagsy Chiaparelli’s mobsters. The barn was sealed as tight as a limpet on a rock. Despite its exterior dilapidation, a metal shell had been constructed inside the building. The only entrance was the double doors through which he had been frogmarched in and, though they had wooden cladding, their main structure was of solid steel. What was more, their locks held firm. The barn had been fortified as if anticipating an imminent machine-gun attack (which, when Blotto came to think about the subject, it probably was).
Frustrated in his attempts to find an escape route, he started to explore the contents of the barn, hoping to find something with which to break out or defend himself.
There were certainly plenty of weapons there. Along one whole wall stood racks of machine guns, rifles and pistols, enough to terrorize the whole city of Chicago (which was of course what they were for). But, annoyingly, each firearm was locked into its individual holder and no amount of pulling and manoeuvring could dislodge it. And the boxes of ammunition nearby were locked and chained together.
Against another wall were piled great towers of barrels. The smell that emanated from the occasional spillage made it clear that they contained alcohol. Blotto contemplated fortifying himself with a snifter and cupped a hand under one dripping leak. But as the first drip stripped off a couple of layers of skin he whipped his hand away. He had no idea what the rotgut was made from, but didn’t envy the people who were going to be drinking it.
The wall opposite the doors didn’t have much clutter against it. There was just a low-sitting handcart, whose contents were covered by some old sacks. Blotto moved cautiously across and lifted the sacking to reveal about thirty large ingots of gold bullion. On each was stamped: ‘PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT’. For the first time he began to get some sense of the scale of Spagsy Chiaparelli’s operation.
The space at the centre of the barn was dominated by three large and one slightly smaller boxlike structures covered with tarpaulins. Their outlines were familiar and as Blotto removed the sheeting from the first he was not surprised to uncover another Cadillac limousine. Tools and metal components were scattered around and underneath the car, and for a moment Blotto couldn’t work out what was being done to it. But kneeling down and exploring beneath the chassis provided the answer quickly enough.
A new compartment was being attached to the underbelly of the limo. It was accessed from a hidden trapdoor in front of the back seats. The space inside was big enough to hide from prying eyes at least three barrels of the firewater. Or two men. Or two bodies.
Blotto shuddered slightly as he moved across to check out under the other two large tarpaulins. Though the work hadn’t progressed quite as far as on the first limo, the same kind of conversion job was being done there too.
He crossed to the smallest of the covered shapes and as he slipped back the sheeting a surge of joy ran through his entire body. Though he doubted whether that had been their main intention, Rat Teeth and Two Legs had reunited him with his precious Lagonda!
So excited was he by the sight of those beautiful familiar lines that he didn’t hear the doors to the barn open. He wasn’t aware of anything until he heard a cold voice behind him saying, ‘So we meet again, you English scumdouche!’
He turned to find himself facing Spagsy Chiaparelli, flanked by Vic ‘Rat Teeth’ Papardelle and Michael ‘Two Legs’ Conchiglioni. The harsh light accentuated the scar that cut across the Boss’s face. There was no hint of compassion in his granite features. Or indeed of any other emotion.
All three men nursed Tommy guns in the crooks of their pinstriped arms.
20
Deliverance!
Still ignorant of her brother’s fate, Twinks continued the investigation with her new sidekick. Paul Sidney had a network of contacts throughout Chicago. With Twinks still there in the office, he rang through to a police lieutenant who had been bought by Spagsy Chiaparelli. The cop in question knew (and did nothing about) everything that went on in the mobster’s world. The man confirmed that Blotto had been ‘taken for a ride’. He didn’t hold out any hopes of Twinks ever seeing her brother again alive – or probably, knowing the efficiency of Spagsy’s clean-up operations, dead either.
‘I know he’s all right,’ Twinks persisted. ‘If something murdey’d happened to him, I’d feel it in my marrow.’
The P.I. chuckled mirthlessly. He stood up from the swivel chair, downed the remains of his scotch, took his trench-coat down from a rack and crammed the fedora on his head. ‘Let’s get out on the mean streets,’ he said. ‘See what gives. And hope we find something other than a corpse.’
‘You been sugar-talking my dame!’ Spagsy Chiaparelli spat the words out at Blotto. ‘No boofer who does that wakes up the next morning!’ The Boss jerked his head back to the open doors behind him. ‘Get out there!’
‘Why?’ asked Blotto, reasonably enough.
‘’Cause I ain’t gonna mess my floor with your blood.’
Blotto thought he saw a rather clever escape route. ‘And what if I don’t move out there?’
‘Then I do mess my floor with your blood.’
Oh well, it had been worth trying, thought Blotto as he moved past the three hoods into the darkness. His gait was deliberately slow, but the minute he got past the doors he was determined to break into the kind of sprinting for which his Eton records for the One-Hundred- and Two-Hundred-Yard Dashes still stood. Though the odds were still against him, he reckoned he was in with a chance.
But before he could take the first step, the headlights from two limousines outside snapped on, dazzling him. When, after a couple of seconds, he could see again, he was aware of a semicircle of Chiaparelli gangsters standing in the field around the doorway. Each had a Tommy gun.
Oh, broken biscuits, thought Blotto. The odds against him had suddenly shortened by quite a lot.
‘You want us to do a colander job on him, Boss?’ asked Vic ‘Rat Teeth’ Papardelle. ‘All shoot at once, perforate him proper so he tears neatly along the dotted lines?’
‘No,’ snarled Spagsy Chiaparelli. ‘Anyone who tries to slip Choxy the sweets I ice myself.’
Blotto was aware of the sound of an approaching car and saw headlights flickering about as it tackled the rough road to the barn. ‘Be careful, Mr Chiaparelli!’ he cried out, ’It’s the police!’
‘So? What are they going to do? You forget I own the police.’
‘Oh, so you do,’ said Blotto, remembering the authorities’ corpse-clearing cooperation the previous night.
But Spagsy did at least defer icing him until he’d seen who was in the arriving limo. Blotto was, however, under no illusion that it would be a long reprieve.
The long vehicle came to a halt, its headlights also trained on him. The driver kept the engine running. Out of the back stepped Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini, followed by Luther P. Chapstick II
I.
‘What gives here, Spagsy?’ asked the cattle baron.
‘This scumdouche is about to get iced.’
Chapstick raised a hand. ‘No.’
‘Whaddya mean, “no”?’
‘This scumdouche is about to marry my daughter.’
‘Listen, the chimp tried to cornswiggle my broad.’
‘Forget it. Mary needs him alive.’
‘And woddif I say I don’t care what Mary wants.’
‘I say the understanding you and I have stops being an understanding.’
Chapstick’s words did seem to give Spagsy Chiaparelli pause. ‘Luther, our understanding’s good. Together we cover the waterfront, all fine and dandy. All of Chicago and maybe soon we add New York to the mix. It’s a good understanding. We don’t want to put that at risk over me icing some voidbrain.’
‘This particular voidbrain is the one I want to marry my daughter.’
‘You want your daughter to marry a dingle who tries to cornswiggle another man’s dame?’
‘Deveroox doesn’t even know what cornswiggling is.’ That at least, thought Blotto, is entirely true. ‘He’s as innocent as a baby,’ the cattle baron went on. ‘Slipping the sweets to Choxy was his sister’s idea. She thought it might make me not want him as a son-in-law.’
Now how did Luther P. Chapstick III know that? Blotto wondered.
Anyway, his arguments seemed to be having their effect on Spagsy Chiaparelli. Reluctantly the mobster lowered his Tommy gun. ‘I don’t like doing this, Luther,’ he complained, ‘but if it’s going to affect our understanding . . .’
‘Sure it is. And don’t forget I put you on to the government bullion trucks. I didn’t do that, we wouldn’t have our little stash in the barn here, would we? And we wouldn’t have the happy future we’ve worked out for ourselves, would we?’
Spagsy Chiaparelli nodded slowly. ‘You right.’ He looked wistfully at Blotto. ‘Just feels bad to me when I say I’m going to ice someone and I don’t ice ’em.’
Blotto thought perhaps it was the moment for him to say something. ‘I really don’t mind,’ he ventured.