CHAPTER VI

A Name—Complete!

Big Gus sighed. He had the natural reluctance of the born criminal to divulge to even his right hand what his left hand did—or knew! But—it had to be! And Educated after all was a square grifter. And so, digging up from his blue overall pocket a stub of pencil, and a ragged scrap of paper, Big Gus laboriously—on the wall—wrote out on the scrap a single complete name.

Which he turned over—without comment—to Educated. And whose eyes, gazing on it—widened. Exceedingly wide. Indeed, Educated gave vent to a but half-suppressed whistle.

“Jesus—Christ, Gus! I’ll say you had an inside wire—into the heart of the Law. You—” He broke off helplessly and, folding up the slip of paper, tucked it into an inside pocket of his gray chauffeur’s uniform. “Gus, I got to go! I got to. I couldn’t stand to lose my good time off here—in this lousy hell hole. I—but before I go, a question. Easy to see, Gus, that you’re figuring this guy will do something—anything—and quick and fast; that he’ll maybe get hold of one of your old mob, and—well—do something. In a hurry. And—but Gus, am I to tell him what he’s to do? Or anything?”

“No,” said Big Gus, easily.

“I see. Then there must be somebody then, Gus, that he can contact, who—”

“There is. You ever hear, Ej’cated, of Venus Baldy, who–”

“Venus—Baldy?” educated asked. “Listen, Gus, there isn’t anybody ever in the racket that I haven’t heard about. As a kid, I ate up everything ever printed. Venus Baldy took the rap in Australia back in—oh, I guess it must be now about 15 years ago—anyway, he took the rap in Sydney for a bump-off. He was bald as a billiard ball—so I read—and had a nude Venus tattooed on his scalp—the lousy damfool! Anyway, he beat the rap by a crush-out—had help from the outside—disappeared completely—and was known to have hit Chi, because 3 months after the crushout he shot his mouth off, to some hood, over some phone circuit in Chi that the cops happened to be listening in on just then. But they never glaumed him, and—Jesus Christ, Gus, was he in your mob?”

“Right! Though I ain’t got nothing today that could prove it. No! He’s the golden-haired boy—so far’s my bein’ able to involvate him—or call on him. Even if I knowed w’ere he was. But anyway, ’twas him, Ej’cated, who put us together—me an’ th’ guy whose handle’s in your pocket there. For Venus Baldy had met this guy w’en th’ latter had been in Australy, some years before—buyin’ in on a gold mine—and had helped him to forger some name of some dead miner; an’ Venus knew the bastard was crooked as hell, and would sell his behind if he was paid for it. And ’twas to him Venus blew—w’en things got hot as hell for him in Chi—and Venus didn’t have a lead dime. And then—later—I got hold of Venus. Yes. Well, there ain’t no doubt that since I took my rap—an’ my mob got all sent to hell an’ gone—that Venus has prob’ly been eatin’ off my man w’enever he ain’t no coin. Though not eatin’ no lobster ally newberger—no!—since both has a pretty nice set-off a’gin each other w’en it comes to blackmail. I’ll say! Anyway—my man’ll know, all right, all right, where in Chi Venus can be got. W’ile Venus, in turn, is abs’lutely cert to know some soup-slingin’ lad somewhere, who can do anything from blowin’ a high-proof V wit’ dinny, to torchin’ in wit’ a oxy-flame—or even knockin’ a knob, such as this job is. Or, if needs be, Venus hisself could—”

“I get you perfectly, Gus. Your man there can easily contact Venus Baldy, and Venus Baldy can contact somebody else. Or even pull the job himself—for a price!—if needs be. I get it all okay, Gus. I got to go! I hear inspections some­thing—going on out there. Doors opening—and closing. Screw 32—McGinnis—if I don’t miss my bet. Now suppose—well one last question, Gus. Suppose this guy—being on the outside of stir—safe, and all that—don’t want to mess in a dangerous game, and, convinced maybe by those key names I’ll give him that I’m the McCoy, just stalls by saying that he doesn’t know where Venus is today; or what if maybe he doesn’t—so far as that goes? Or suppose—sitting safe and pretty as he does—he refuses absolutely to play ba–”

Big Gus, at the very suggestion of inspection, and a screw outside, was hastily refilling his pail—with a loud roar of falling water—at the nearest faucet.

He turned the water off, however, momentarily, so that he could answer. But in a low, low voice.

“Oh—yeah? Well that, Ej’cated, is the very las’ thing I want you to tell the bastard. Tell him, Ej’cated, that if I catch the hot seat—thanks to th’ corpse o’ Wah Lee bein’ now complete to the ident’fyin’ item—that I’m gonna crack wide open—wide open, see?—with all dates on certain long-distance calls I made him—and he made me—plus 4 letters I snitched 10 years ago out of his diggings. And w’ich I got in a lockbox—under a 12-year lease—under another monicker. Which I really have, Ej’cated, In short, Ej’cated, tell the son-of-a-bitch I’ll be namin’ no less than th’ finger-man in th’ Wah Lee case. Right! For he was finger-man, Ej’cated, in that snatch—as well as inside wire. And I’ve got him by the nerts. Tell him he better think goddamn hard—as to w’ere he can fin’ Venus—or somebody else—in case he says he ain’t nobody who can do nothing. Tell him I got th’ New Orleans letter—an’ th’ Vicksburg letter—an’ th’ Memphis letter. An’ a carbon of his letter—to Cairo, Illinois. Right! Tell him all that, Ej’cated—replete with them details I just gave you—and tell him that if Big Gus catches the hot seat for the snatch O’ Wah Lee—that two is gonna set in it. Two—not one. Him an’ me. Two, Ej’cated—an’ tell him that if he sits in the hot squat, I hopes they fry him to a crisp brown!”

“To a crisp brown,” repeated Educated, nodding. “I’ll tell him that, all right,” he said with the determination of the true crook. And hastened out of the door before “inspection” might catch him.