by Otto Penzler
“You still think she’s on the level, don’t you? You poor sap! You believe her, but you won’t believe me. Do this, then. Settle your score with Blackie Rango. I was smart enough to plant that job for you and to save your neck! Then, when you’ve done your job, drive back to your redhead’s place. I’ll be waiting for you there. I won’t hurt her before you come. I’ll merely set the stage for the show which is going to make you see that one of us is crooked and the other straight. Are you game for that?”
The moll’s eyes were snapping in her challenge.
“I won’t hurt the dear thing before you come,” she mocked as he hesitated. “You’ve my promise. Answer, big boy, are you game?”
“Yes,” he snapped angrily. “Remember, no fireworks till I get back!”
The mobsters rose from the table and prepared to go to the garage for their car.
“Happy trip, boys,” said the moll. “I hope, when you return, there’ll be fewer snakes in the world.”
As the gorillas passed from the room, the moll helped herself to a man-sized drink from the bottle on the table. She had stern work before her and she welcomed the scorching liquor as it warmed her throat. The moll walked swiftly from the rear door of the speakie, just as Mort Mitchell’s big black car slid away from the garage door on its errand of death.
Silently through the twilight the big car swept, through the outskirts of the city and into the fashionable residence area. Hardly a word was spoken, for the route was well-mapped and the trip timed to the minute. Finally it drew up in the shadows of the small cross-road outside the Wilson estate and the gangsters took up their stations.
Ten minutes before the time they looked for the car of Blackie Rango and his apes, its dimmed lights appeared far down the smooth road leading to the Wilson country mansion. Smoothly and menacingly the armored car of Rango approached through the semi-darkness. They recognized its lines, even at a distance.
Mort gave his last order.
“When they get opposite the big pine on the right,” he whispered, “over with the tree—and then grab your Tommy-guns and open up on the car. And, remember, STAY AWAY FROM THAT CAR if you fail to penetrate his armor!”
Closer came the Rango car as Mort and Sam and Barry crouched in the protecting foliage at the roadside. Sweeping up the road, the big car approached almost before they were hidden. It seemed right upon them when the shoulders of Sam and Barry leaned against the big tree which already was cut for falling. With a muffled roar, the tree plunged across the road, hardly a dozen feet in front of the rival gangsters’ auto!
There was a screeching of brakes—but not in time. Blackie Rango’s automobile, carrying the eager Blackie and three of his gorillas, plunged into the tree’s foliage just as the Tommy-guns of Mort Mitchell’s gorillas spat flames!
The lead hail played a tattoo against the sides of the heavy armed car, and in a minute Rango and his rod men had picked themselves from the floor and were replying to the fire through slits in the body of the car.
Despite his trap, Mort Mitchell found Rango, his enemy, apparently safe in his fort-like automobile embedded in the foliage of the felled tree.
“Back!” yelled Mort, and there was a momentary silence as the Tommy-guns of Sam and Barry stopped. “Back into the woods,” yelled Mort—and he dived to a depression beneath a distant tree. As he dived, his hand stretched out and struck a plunger—a plunger such as is used in dynamiting. The pressure on the plunger completed the electric contact he had set.
There was a flash and a roar—and the road beneath Blackie Rango’s enmeshed automobile opened up in a devastating blast.
The mine which Mort Mitchell had set in the road had done the work the Tommy-guns could not do through the thick armor of the Rango car. Struck from below, its vulnerable spot, the big armored car flew apart as though the explosion came from within itself. As the echoes of the blast died away, a heavy pall of smoke hung over the spot. And as it cleared, nothing remained except a huge crater in the once smooth road, a few broken and twisted bits of metal.
The stunned Sam and Barry rushed for their car as Mort joined them.
“Out of here, quick,” Mort commanded. “That blast will bring every dick and every motorcycle cop from miles around. Back to the city, Sam—and by the back road.”
The car leaped ahead under the skilled hands of Sammy, with Mort urging him to more speed. A gripping fear came to Mort as the car swept on. Carlotta! Would she keep her promise not to molest the rival moll, Vi Carroll, until Mort returned? Through gritted teeth, Mort ordered Sammy to drive to Vi’s apartment. As they swept into the city proper, he said:
“Drop me at the corner and you three hit it for Danny’s. I’ll join you there as soon as I can.”
The car merely slowed for him. He leaped to the street and the car swept away, leaving Mort a scant half-block from the imposing apartment building on fashionable Park Avenue where Vi Carroll lived among her friends of society. Mort entered the elevator, scorning the suspicious looks of the attendant at his dusty and disheveled clothing. He left the car and hurried down the quiet corridor on the fifth floor, reaching the door of Vi’s home.
No sound came through the door and Mort tried the door knob. The door opened to his touch and he stepped inside, peering through the dim light of the reception room. He saw no one. Silently he walked to a door on his left. That door, he knew, led to Vi’s sumptuous boudoir. That door, too, was closed. He turned the knob softly and the door half opened. He peered into the room.
There, facing him in negligee, sat Vivian Carroll, a look of horror on her face, facing someone else in the room, directly opposite her. A look showed Mort the reason for the fright of the red-haired beauty. Her “caller” was Carlotta Wynn, the gun moll, who sat quietly toying with a shiny gat pointed toward Vi’s body!
“Drop that gat!” Mort’s voice brought a subdued scream from Vi and Carlotta sprang to her feet. “What’s this stuff?” he demanded.
“Hands off, Mort,” retorted Carlotta quietly, but her eyes were snapping dangerously. “You’ve had your party and this is MINE! Come in and shut the door.” She waved the gat toward the red-haired siren and said elaborately:
“Mr. Mitchell, let me introduce Miss Vivian Carroll, alias ‘Chicago Red’ Hardy, the red-haired Siren of The Loop and a few other names! And, also, Mr. Mitchell, the moll who has been trying to put the finger on you for weeks as a small favor for her good friend, the late Mr. Blackie Rango!”
“You lie!” snapped Vi, looking to Mort for protection. “I’ve never been in Chi—”
“Put that gat down, moll,” snapped Mort. “I know this girl and you’re all wrong about her!”
Carlotta laughed sardonically. She threw the gat from her and it clattered on the polished floor, as she faced Mort.
“Mort, you poor fool,” she said, bitingly, “will you never be convinced? That red-headed moll was head of one of the most cruel, savage mobs that Chi ever knew. She blew here because Chi got too hot for her—and she’s making saps out of people here just as she did before. But, I KNOW HER!”
The moll’s eyes flashed with bitter hatred as she spoke and her voice rose shrilly. “I know her—and I’ll never forget her, the snake that she is.”
She turned again passionately to the confused Mort.
“You won’t believe? Then I’ll show you!”
With a quick gesture she seized the right sleeve of her dress and tore it away, exposing her arm. Again she tore at the dress, ripping it open at the shoulder. As the fabric tore she pointed dramatically to the white skin of her upper arm and body.
“Look there,” she cried vengefully, “there’s the mark put on me by that hell-car, that vampire!”
And as Mort looked and Vi stifled the involuntary sob which came, Carlotta bared to them an angry-looking fiery-red brand on her white shoulder—a vivid brand of the flew de Us, the ancient French brand for a thief!
“Look at that, Mr. Mitchell,” cried the moll. “That’s what your so
ciety girl-friend did for me. She laughed while her gorillas put the hot electric needle to my flesh and drew that design there, drew it because that red-headed bum thought I’d stolen the dirty little hop-head she claimed as her ‘Man’! That’s what I owe her.”
She turned on Mort vengefully.
“And you want to save her, to protect her, the moll who put the finger on you! All right, then, take my gat—and I hope the two of you will be happy. I won’t drill her. She’d poison a decent bullet!”
She stopped and looked from the disconcerted Mort to the now relieved Vi. Her voice was lowered and she apparently had expended her anger.
“I’ll go,” she said sadly. She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and took from her bag a small, silver vanity case. “Might as well go,” she went on monotonously to the two silent ones, and she dabbed at her face with a small powder puff from the compact. She turned to Vi as she used the puff.
“Before I go,” she went on, stepping closer to Vi’s side, “there’s one thing I want to say—” She put the small powder puff back into the vanity case and absently took another small puff from the receptacle, holding it poised in her hand. “Just one thing—!”
She stood facing the now reassured Vivian, the little puff half way to her face.
“You branded me, Vi Carroll,” she cried, quietly, “and I’ve spent time and money to track you down to punish you.” She paused again. Then her voice came like a whip lash.
“AND I’M GOING TO DO IT!”
There was a flash of a bared white arm, and the small powder puff from Carlotta’s compact smacked firmly against the left cheek of the red-haired woman. Vi screamed and Mort Mitchell grabbed the now violent Carlotta.
“We’re even!” Carlotta Wynn’s voice was triumphant now. She looked without pity at the suffering and horrified Vi, who was clawing at the left side of her face, which was turning a blotchy red and then purple.
“I’ve branded you, you hell-cat,” she went on. “Branded you with acid—you rat!”
She turned to the astonished Mort and asked:
“Do you want her or do you want me? She branded me and she double-crossed you. Look at her and see whether I speak the truth!”
They looked, and the sobbing, hysterical Vi answered for Mort.
“Yes,” she said, “I branded you because I hated you—and I hate you, too,” she blazed at the confused mobster. “I’ll get the pair of you. I’ll get you—”
Mort Mitchell interrupted her. He seemed to come to himself, as though recovering from the influence of some insidious drug. He reached out to the little black-eyed moll, Carlotta, and pulled her close to him. He held her coat as she slipped it over her scarred, exposed arm and the two of them, the rod and his moll, moved toward the door. At the threshold Mort turned to the acid-marked Vivian. There was nothing lover-like in the tone of his voice now. It was cold as steel.
As Carlotta hung on his arm, he said:
“Get out of town in two hours, red-head! If you don’t—I’ll be back here to put MY mark on the OTHER cheek—and I don’t want to have to bother to do that, for I’m going to be busy, squaring myself with my own moll. Eh, baby?”
He smiled at Carlotta as he asked the question—and the smile he got in return indicated the answer.
Dance Macabre
Robert Reeves
ONE OF THE forgotten authors of the pulp era is Robert Reeves (1911 or 1912-1945), largely because he came to the game late and because his career was cut short by World War II. His first short story was not published in Black Mask until 1942, his last in 1945. Altogether, there were nine stories in Black Mask, two others in Dime Detective, and three novels. His major creation was Cellini Smith, a private eye who appeared in all three of his novels: Dead and Done For (1939), No Love Lost (1941), and Cellini Smith: Detective (1943), as well as in seven of his eleven short stories. Three additional stories featured Bookie Barnes, who got his nickname, not for making books, but because he attended college and actually read books—rare for pulp characters. “Dance Macabre,” Reeves’s second story, is the only one he wrote that did not feature one of his series heroes. It is darker than his other tales since none of his principal characters fall into the standard pulp mode of being tougher or smarter or funnier than everyone with whom they come into contact. The mousy Firpo Cole, a former petty thief and pickpocket, hangs around a nightclub because of a crush he has on one of the dime-a-dance girls, the all-American-seeming Ruth Bailey.
The author served in World War II in the 500th Bombardment Squadron in the Army Air Corps, and it is believed he died in action only a month before the war ended. He was buried in a common grave with four other GIs, probably having been in the same plane.
“Dance Macabre” was first published in the April 1941 issue of Black Mask.
Dance Macabre
Robert Reeves
There was nothing too tough for that little lunger to take—even acting as a walking checkroom for a gunseVs gat—so long as he could be near his three-for-a-dime dance-hall mouse. And the night she was shived there was nothing left for him to do but cash in the life he’d been hoarding—to settle the score with her killer.
CHAPTER ONE
SWOLLEN FEET
UTSIDE, the neon sign styled Jugger Callahan as the King of Swing but since Jugger owned the Tango Palace and had conferred the title on himself, not many people believed it. The sign also described the forty-eight hostesses as glorious, glittering, glamorous, and that, absolutely nobody believed—not even the girls.
Inside, Jugger Callahan kicked off the beat to the Smiling Troubadours. They played mechanically, with that automatic, pounding, unvarying rhythm that experienced jazz bands acquire, and, belying their name, they were unsmiling. It was nearing the closing hour of one a.m. and they were tired.
The tinted baby spots that were set in the ceiling revolved and played amber, red and blue over the dance floor. The place was large and ramshackle—the kind of second-story loft where you get natty, credit clothing—and it was just as much a fire trap as the taxi joint that had burned down on Jugger two months before. Nevertheless, the Tango Palace was a thriving enterprise aiming at that thin item of change known as the “dime.” The dances were three for a dime and most of the customers stayed on a dime through all three of them.
The hostesses who waited for trade, chatted behind the frayed velvet rope that encircled the dance floor. Their low-cut evening gowns were creased and soiled, their eyes heavy-lidded with mascara and no sleep. Yet when a customer seemed inclined to switch partners, smiles appeared on vermilion lips, hips undulated sensuously and swollen, tired feet suggestively beat time to the music. Out of every dime ticket theirs was two and a half cents.
Ephraim Tuttle, who served as business manager, accountant and general factotum for Jugger Callahan, wandered back and forth, keeping a nervous eye on the girls and the ticket chopper. He was a tall, gaunt man with a bony skeleton-face. His treatment of the girls was always scrupulously fair and they respected him. They could not even accuse him of showing favoritism to Evelyn Dorn, his flame of the moment.
He made a mental calculation of the swaying couples on the dance floor and found that business was only fair for a Friday night. He decided that they’d better pass out some more handbills on Spring and Main streets and approached a man quietly sitting on one of the settees that lined a wall.
“Firpo, have you been messing around in my office?”
Firpo Cole looked up at Ephraim Tuttle. “No. Why should I?”
“Someone stole my letter opener,” responded Tuttle.
“That’s bad,” said Firpo. “If you get a letter now you’ll have to open it with your fingers.”
Ephraim Tuttle pulled a five-cent stogie out of his vest, carefully split the end and lit it before replying. “It’s funny,” he mused, “how the squirts always act the toughest. If I’d spit at you you’d drown, yet you like to throw your weight around.”
“Just leave me alone,” said Firpo
. “When somebody loses a night’s sleep around here they right away think I took it.”
“Firpo, you don’t appreciate the break we’re giving you. We let you mooch a few bucks around here instead of letting you go back to picking pockets on the street. But remember, it’s only because Ruth Bailey’s a nice girl and she wants us to give you a break.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t know what you want from the Bailey kid anyway, Firpo. You’ll never get to first base and—”
Ephraim Tuttle broke off as he noticed Firpo Cole’s face. He didn’t like what he saw there. “God, but you’re touchy about that skirt,” he muttered and walked away.
With expressionless eyes, Firpo Cole watched the business manager retreat. He didn’t know that his face, which always showed an unhealthy pallor, was now even whiter and more strained than usual. He was a youngish, frail man with spindle-legs, chicken-breast and sunken cheeks, and he had once been facetiously dubbed “Firpo” by someone who was supposed to be as funny as a card.
He found a loose cigarette in his pocket and lit it. As he did so, he forgot to make his customary salute to the medical profession by thumbing his nose. The medicos had told him that each cigarette took one month of his life. Like oil and water, cigarettes and lungers don’t mix.
Jugger Callahan and his boys wound up the quickie trio of dances and immediately started on another set of three. The hostesses collected tickets from the men and slipped into their arms for another few minutes of those curious, swaying gyrations that passed for dancing.
Firpo Cole took a pad out of his pocket and marked down the figure 8. Then he leaned back to watch a man and a girl sitting and talking on a sofa in a far corner. He didn’t like to have Ruth Bailey sitting out dances. It was a funny thing, he reflected, but he didn’t at all mind when Ruth Bailey was being pawed by some ten-dollar millionaire out on the floor. It was her job. At first, his stomach used to tighten up from jealousy but even that had stopped. You get used to those things. What he did mind, though, was to have her talking with some man through eight dances and not get the tickets for them. She was an easy mark for chiselers. But he’d see to it that this baby got away with nothing. He could do nothing if Ruth preferred some other guy to him, but at least he’d see to it she wasn’t rooked out of her rights.