CHAPTER V
“Honest Lou”
“Well,” Educated commented verbally, “you seem pretty sure you’ll be taken care of—and by experts!—and so all I can say, Gus, is that I hope you will be. And incidentally, Gus, if you are—if that box is knocked in—and that sconce snitched—the S. A. is out of office—loses his home in Oak Park—and goes back to scrubbing at law in that two-by-four office.”
“Whaddye mean, Ej’cated? Loses his job—an’ his home—an’ all that? ’Count o’ me havin’ that ev’dence snitched?”
“Just, Gus,” Educated explained patiently, “this Vann is—from what Jerry the Snake told me—one of those rare birds—an honest politician. ‘Lock-the-Stable-Door’ Vann is his monicker only to the cops. The grifters, however, call him ‘Honest Lou!’ For he can’t be reached with mazuma. Nohow—no time! And he’s badly involved financially—so the girl told Handsome—through paying off a series of notes that he was once ass enough to sign with his old man. For the old man. For the old man kicked off—and left him nothing but these signatures—to square up. Anyway, Gus, it seems Vann badly needs 4 more years in office to get well in the clear—2 years to clear off the remaining notes and his home—and a couple of years to stick something by. For his kids and all that.
“And,” Educated went on painstakingly, “while the re-election, on the State’s Attorneyship, is sewed up—and in the bag!—for his party—providing they don’t just stick up some kind of a downright rumdum as a candidate—the re-election won’t be in Vann’s Christmas stocking! For—so again the girl told Handsome—Vann got the highball from his party chiefs last week that he’s not ‘sensational’ enough for them—and that, re-election in the bag, or not in the bag, they won’t run him again unless, perchance, during the next 7 days, he can cinch matters for them—from his side of the fence—by assembling the elements for a big criminal conviction that the whole city is as one man together on. And—now don’t get sore, Gus—that conviction would be you! On the Wah Lee snatch. A fact, now! For there isn’t another case like it pending—or even that can break. It’s the case of all cases, Gus, and the one case that can iron out any of ‘Honest Lou’s’ personal problems. For if he has in his mitts what it takes to send you to the chair—and the power to time it exactly, as he has, by an indictment of you and a setting of your trial just before next election—then he’s renominated next week with flowers and music; and, renominated—and with that conviction in his portfolio—he’s elected. And thus pays off the rest of his notes—and his mortgage included. And all that. While conversely, Gus,” Educated pointed out painstakingly, “if you knock his one chance for renomination sky high by jerking that evidence out from under him, then—” Educated made an airy-fairy gesture with his two hands, “—Honest Lou—is up the flue! Financially—politically—and every other way!”
It was with ever-growing interest that Big Gus had listened to every word of Educated’s careful exposition of matters political up in Chicago. Several times, indeed, he actually licked his lips with his thick tongue. And, when Educated came to the engaging—though as yet, of course, hypothetical—end of matters, he actually guffawed aloud.
“Well, by Jesus Christ,” he said in a low voice, acceding to Educated’s warning headshake about the tone of that guffaw, “if this, what you’ve jist told me, ain’t the best news I ever hearn in my life—outside, o’ course, of learning that that sconce was laying in that old tin can in the Klondike Building!—then I hope to—to—to lick all the sweat off my body, on the next hot night, wit’ my own tongue. No foolin’, Ej’cated. W’y, to save my skin—an’ at the same time cost that bastard his skin—w’y say, that’s Christmas comin’ in October. No less!”
It would have been plain to anyone, however, that Educated was not able to grasp the tremendous personal animus that was now entering Gus’s probable triumph with respect to prolonging his own criminal career another twenty years or so! Indeed, Educated’s face indicated that he thought Gus should be mighty glad if the latter had a chance to get that evidence—and should forget such trivialities as personal feelings. But he made no comment. And, staring helplessly a few seconds longer at Gus, he spoke.
“Well,” was all he said, “I’ll give this guy that I’m to call up—the entire set-up. And the fact, as well, that you’ve got to have a phoney kite—saying he’ll have the job done. Or—or—that he won’t.” He hurried on as Gus’s face darkened savagely. “But,” Educated now added, businesslike, “you haven’t given me the name of the guy yet. So what—what is his name?”