The Big Shot

Front matter

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BOOKS BY FRANK L. PACKARD

THE BIG SHOT TIGER CLAWS SHANGHAI JIM THE DEVIL’S MANTLE TWO STOLEN IDOLS THE RED LEDGER BROKEN WATERS RUNNING SPECIAL THE LOCKED BOOK THE FOUR STRAGGLERS JIMMIE DALE AND THE PHANTOM CLUE) DOORS OF THE NIGHT PAWNED THE WHITE MOLL FROM NOW ON THE NIGHT OPERATOR

Contents

“Wanted!”

After Midnight The Lair

The Blood Call The Girl Bandit The Big Shot When It Got Dark Alias Someone Else A House “To Let’

CHAPTER I “Wanted!”

IT CALLED itself the Gondola Restaurant. Heaven knew why! There were no gondolas within, and certainly there were no gondolas outside on Third Avenue. Joe Caprillo, its proprietor, however, was a Venetian. Its tablecloths were not overclean, but the food was good and moderately priced, and the little semiprivate stalls along the walls were always popular. Also, other than food might be obtained in the guise of innocent beverages—a fact not to be ignored in appraising the restaurant’s popularity! It did a thriving business. It smiled alike on the just and on the unjust; and since its clientele was admittedly composed of more than a mere sprinkling of the latter, the Gondola had an air about it—as though something were always just going to happen. And why shouldn’t something happen? Not so very long ago Soapy Connor had been shot to death there, and Jackie the Wop was even now waiting for the chair in the Big House for the killing.

The Gondola was always interesting—to Enid Howard. She had been here perhaps a dozen times

5 I a THE BIG SHOT for late supper, and generally alone—as to-night. Of late, however, there had been exceptions to that— relatively speaking, quite a few of them. There was Phil Martin, for instance. Joe Caprillo, with whom she had become quite friendly, had told her that Signor Martin had been almost a constant visitor of late at the hour when, if she came at all, she patronized the Gondola. Joe Caprillo, the greasy little proprietor, had been obsequious and obvious, intending to please; she wondered, puckering her brow, just how much she was responsible for Mr. Martin’s actions in this respect.

She had finished her supper—only her coffee remained. She glanced at her wrist watch. Half-past eleven. Quite beyond the usual hour. She was conscious of a little sense of disappointment. He was hardly likely to come this evening, at any rate.

From the stall in which she sat she could see the main entrance. Two men came in; a little hurriedly, a little excitedly, it seemed to her. She caught snatches of their conversation as they passed her, making for a table or stall farther in the rear. It was something about a police raid on a spaghetti joint a few blocks away—on Sixty-ninth Street, she thought they said. She watched them until they took seats. Quite probably a pair who had eluded the net and ducked in here for cover! .

Her eyes roved around the room. The centre tables were fairly well filled; as were the stalls on the opposite side of the room. There was a lot of talking going on, but the voices were low—like the lights. The patrons paid attention to no one except their immediate companions. There were decent people here, of course—if one could pick them out; but that well-dressed, middle-aged man, who was talking so earnestly to the young man in the stall directly across from her, was, so Phil Martin had told her, an exconvict who had already three convictions for felony against him, and would, under the Baumes Law, if convicted of a fourth, get life imprisonment. What was he talking about now? Would one or both of them be in the police line-up at headquarters to-morrow morning? Or would the papers carry the story of some fresh crime whose perpetrators were unknown? Or were they merely arguing about the practicability of the blindfold test to determine one brand of cigarettes from another?

Her mind reverted to Phil Martin. Phil Martin had pointed out more than one unsavoury character of innocent appearance in the Gondola, and not only had their police records at his finger tips but was personally acquainted with many of them as well. She had asked him how he knew all these people, and his reply had been at least plausible. He had said that he was a newspaper man. She did not know whether he was or not; but she was quite prepared to admit to herself that she liked him well enough in a friendly way to hope he was telling the truth.

Perhaps he was. Probably he was. But she had learned enough in her three months’ stay in New York to know that appearances in Gangland, even to the extent of expensive and butler-equipped apartments on Park Avenue, might very easily be misleading and deceptive. She could not forget that, before he had first spoken to her, she had seen Phil Martin in here on several occasions in close communion with a miserable, shifty-eyed and repulsivelooking creature who needed no pointing out as a member in exceedingly good standing of the criminal class! They had appeared to be very pally together. Very much so!

She began to toy suddenly with her coffee cup. That was why, wasn’t it, in spite of a feeling of mutual good-fellowship which had sprung up between them, she had kept him at a distance? She wasn’t quite sure of him. He had not been any too communicative—but neither had she, for that matter. Perhaps it was her own fault that she did not know more about him. She had not invited confidences. She had enjoyed, very thoroughly enjoyed, sharing a table with him; but the acquaintanceship was still a very recent one.

She smiled now a little whimsically to herself. Her thoughts were dwelling rather persistently on Phil Martin, weren’t they? Well, why not ? It was a somewhat strange and unusual—what should she call it? —friendship ?—that existed between them. It was only a week ago that they had first spoken to each other. The Gondola had been crowded that night; but, having arrived early, she had secured her usual stall. Later on, when Phil Martin had come in alone, she was the only one in the restaurant who was occupying a table to herself. He had come over to her after a moment’s hesitation, and asked if he might share her table. “If you say no,” he had pleaded smilingly, “I shall have to go away hungry.” He, himself, his appearance and his manner, she rather liked; but, remembering the questionable companion with whom she had seen him so often, she was not sure that she had been whole-heartedly pleased with his request. She had, however, invited him to sit down.

Naturally, they had not sat there for the better part of an hour like a pair of mutes! He had introduced himself. He was a newspaper man, he said. The Herald-Star. And she? She was writing a book. Oh, a writer! A community of interest! What kind of a book? A novel of the East Side. Who was going to publish it ? She had not said. How could she? Well, her name? Oh, yes—that! She had told him her name. After that they had chatted pleasantly. He talked well. He had told her stories of East Side life and had pointed out several notorious characters who had been in the Gondola that night. He had asked, a little diffiidently, to see her home. She had refused.

Since then, in the week that followed, though never by appointment, they had had late supper together here in the Gondola on three occasions. She had liked him better each time. He knew so much about the East Side. He was a fund of information. His manner and his attitude toward her had been impeccable —only that unsavoury boon companion of his, still glimpsed in the offing, disturbed her. He had not even referred to the man. To invite confidence was to give in return. She had asked no questions. She still kept the barriers up between them; she still refused to permit him to accompany her home. He had been, especially last night, almost offended because she would not let him pay her check. But that was not in the bargain, either. Yes, certainly, to say the least of it, their relations toward one another were a trifle bizarre!

She lifted her shoulders in an expressive little shrug. Well, anyway, it was time to go. She called her waiter and paid her bill—and then, almost on the point of rising, she saw the door open, and saw the object of her thoughts making his way directly toward her. It was utterly absurd, but she was nevertheless conscious of a suddenly heightened colour in her cheeks. For an instant she was panicky lest he should notice it, but by the time he had reached the table she had taken refuge behind that impregnable feminine fortress, a compact, and her composure had returned.

““My luck’s holding to-day, all right, Miss Howard,” was his cheery greeting. “I was afraid I was too late and that you would have gone—even if you had been here at all.”

“T was just going,” she smiled.

‘Well, then, please don’t—not for a few minutes, anyhow,” he pleaded. “I'll just”—he beckoned to a waiter—‘‘order a bite, and then Ill tell you something worth while. I’m afraid I can’t let you use it in your book, but I think you’ll find enough colour in it to interest you. You'll stay, won’t you?”

“This is pure bribery!’ asserted Enid Howard sternly—but there was laughter in her brown eyes.

“Sure, it is!’’ he admitted frankly.

“Then I'll stay—for a little while,” she agreed.

She studied him as he studied the menu. He was not handsome—she had decided that long ago; but he was undeniably good-looking in a wholesome, rugged way. Those steady gray eyes might become very steely, and that square chin be very definitely set in moments of stress or anger, but she had never seen him in such a mood. He could not be more than twenty-four, and very little less than six feet in height. She liked the way he dressed. That dark-gray tweed suit set off his broad shoulders and went well with his sunburned complexion and fair hair.

He looked up from the menu.

“I know you have already had supper, but isn’t there something I could order for you?” he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Thank you, no,” she answered. “I couldn’t possibly eat anything more.”

“Sure ?”’—a little entreatingly.

“Quite sure.”

Phil Martin gave his order to the waiter, and dismissed the man.

“Well?” she prompted, as her companion remained for a moment silent. ‘“‘Shall we proceed to the payment of that bribe? I warn you that it must be wholly adequate, for it is already quite a little past my usual hour.”

“After Lugo comes back. I’d rather not take the chance of even a stray word being overheard,” he said seriously.

‘That sounds momentous!”

“Tt is!” he said. “It’s front-page stuff. I told you my luck was in. But meanwhile there’s something else I want to say. I tried to screw up courage to say it last night, but I couldn’t quite make the grade. I don’t want you to think I’m butting in. It’s about you.”

She looked at him questioningly, but without comment. He seemed suddenly ill at ease, fumbling unnecessarily with his cigarette case as he took it from his pocket and selected a cigarette.

“T know you don’t smoke,” he said; “but I know you don’t mind if I do.” He hesitated for an instant. “It’s none of my business, of course, and I haven’t the slightest right to say it, except that—well, I just feel I ought to as a—a friend—if you will let me call myself that. I know a lot more about conditions around here in this locality than you do. I’m just going to push all bunk and flattery to one side and say that you’re too dashed pretty and attractive a young woman to come unaccompanied to joints like this. I know what you’re after—atmosphere, and first-hand information, and all that sort of thing— but it’s risky and dangerous.”

He was too obviously sincere to be misunderstood. Even that determined jaw looked a little more determined now in his earnestness. She answered him in like measure.

“T have never been molested,” she said quietly; “and I think that a girl who minds her own business has very little to fear. Besides, I feel quite sure that I can take care of myself. I’ve been more or less brought up that way, you see. We were very much an out-of-doors family. As I told you the other night, I am a Canadian, and I’ve camped and hunted through our Rockies and up north of the Peace River district for months at a time with my father. My brother was reported ‘missing’ in the war, and as soon as | was old enough I took, or tried to take, his place with Dad. The mountains and plains and forests give one a different outlook on these things, put one more on one’s own, don’t you think? I am perfectly certain, for instance, that I am a very much better shot than any of the undesirables who are sitting around us with guns, or ‘rods’ as I believe they call them, parked in holsters at their waists or under their left armpits, and’’—she burst into a little laugh—‘“‘T’ve even got a rod myself.”

‘““Good heavens!’’ he exclaimed, and leaned forward toward her, his eyes straying from hers to the small black handbag that lay on the table edge beside her. ““You don’t mean to say that you’ve got one here?”

“Perhaps,” she smiled.

“‘Wow! Don’t you know there’s a five years’ sentence for that?”

“Only in connection with the commission of a felony,” she corrected him coolly; ‘‘otherwise it is simply a misdemeanour—if one hasn’t got a permit.”

“But you haven’t got a permit?”

“No; of course not.’’ She leaned back in her chair, watching him in secret amusement. He was frowning in a puzzled and bewildered way. ‘“‘Yes?”’ she invited.

“T am going to add another adjective to what I said a moment ago,” he blurted out. “You are a very extraordinary young woman. But, in spite of that, I am coming back to my original point. I think this sort of thing is dangerous; and, above all, I do not think it is safe for you to walk from here alone and at night to the neighbourhood where you live.”

She stiffened suddenly in her chair.

“WANTED!” II

“How do you know where I live?’ she demanded sharply.

He was crunching the end of his cigarette in the ash tray.

“I followed you,” he confessed calmly.

“Oh!” She reached angrily for her gloves and handbag. ‘‘Somehow I did not think that you would do that!”

“T have followed you every night,” he said in a low voice, “either by myself, or together with that unprepossessing chap you must have seen me with.” He was still crunching at his cigarette and he did not look up. “Surely you understand. Surely you know why. It couldn’t possibly have been to pry upon you— could it?”

She felt the colour flood her face. She did not like the idea of being followed by anyone for any reason, but she had been a little too hasty in her judgment. She owed him amends. He had been genuinely concerned about her. She laid her gloves back on the table beside the handbag.

“T am sorry I said that,” she said frankly. “I—lI am quite sure you were prompted only by kindness; but you must never do such a thing again, for I cannot agree with you that there is even the slightest cause for alarm.”

He looked up at her now with a disarming grin.

“Well, there is an alternative,” he suggested.

She shook her head.

““No”—her voice was serious in spite of her responsive smile—‘“I do not wish to be accompanied, either—at present, anyhow. My—I’ll call her my housekeeper—is away. The neighbours know that. I have myself to think of.”

“But,” he protested, “I

“There are no ‘buts,’ ”’ she interrupted with quiet emphasis. ‘Either you must agree on both counts, or else I shall have to find some other place for supper hereafter.”

“That’s worse than bribery!” he eaten reproachfully. ‘“That’s holding a pistol to a fellow’s head!”

‘Well, it’s loaded,” she retorted, ‘‘and business is meant! Here is Lugo with your supper. Shall I stay or. ”

“T agree,” he said hastily. “‘What else can I do? But just the same, I do not like it. I’m not so sure’ — ruefully—‘‘that my luck is holding out!”

The waiter placed Phil Martin’s order on the table and departed.

‘“‘Aren’t you?” she inquired laughingly. ‘Well, anyhow, I’m all curiosity about the luck you have had. That’s what you were going to tell me about, wasn’t ree

“Yes,” he said. ‘And I'll tell you now, between mouthfuls, if you’ll promise not to look at that wrist watch again for the next ten minutes. Listen! Do you know what a Big Shot is?”

She nodded her head.

“T think I do,” she said. “It’s what the gangsters, or any mob for that matter, call their leader, isn’t it 2”

“Right ! You’re making famous progress. You'll be able to talk the whole lingo in its revised edition before long. It was a ‘rod’ a minute ago. Where do you get it?”

“Quite a lot of it from you. You’ve been very helpful!” she answered naively. ‘‘Please go on.”

“Delighted to have been of any assistance!” he laughed; and then, suddenly serious again: “‘All right! There are any number of little fellows who get that name. There may be only three or four of them working together, but one of them is always the Big Shot. There isn’t a crook who doesn’t yearn for the title and distinction. It elevates him to the peerage of the underworld; and the bigger and more important the gang, of course, the more purple and ermine he wears. So the name is common enough; but for quite a long time now it has been pretty well recognized by the police that there’s just one Big Shot in New York. But they’ve never spotted him, never identified him. From here and there hints and rumours have dribbled in, and there has been more or less intangible evidence that the same man is the guiding spirit of a number of different gangs that work their own lines without any apparent connection with one another. You know what I mean. He seems to have a finger in every pie. One pie isn’t big enough for him. He seems to be out after all the plums—making and shoving the ‘queer’ ; bootlegging on a large scale; a crap circuit; and a general following of stick-up men and steerers. Some bird, eh? I told you it was front-page stuff.”

Enid Howard knitted her brow into little furrows as Phil Martin reattacked his plate.

“But I don’t see how such a man could evade identification, let alone capture,’’ she commented. “Surely, if what you say of him is true, he ought to be easy enough to find.”

Phil Martin laughed a little grimly.

“Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the fact remains that that’s the way it’s been, and even to-night, though it looks like the beginning of the end for him, he’s still a good deal of a mystery just the same.”

“T don’t know what you mean by that,” she said in a puzzled way. ‘“‘Have the police finally got him?”

“No!” he said. ““That’s where my luck is in. I think I’ve got a lead that’s sure fire!”’

“You?” She leaned across the table. “But what have you got to do with it?”

“Everything!” he answered, his eyes dancing excitedly over the rim of his coffee cup. “‘It will be the biggest scoop any New York newspaper has ever had. I'll even have his photograph before morning. We'll have the goods on him in the next few days, all right, and have a special ready on the press when we tip off the police.”

‘And then?” she asked.

“Then?” he repeated in amazement. “Why, good heavens, don’t you see? The Herald-Star gets the credit, and the Big Shot gets life—if he’s lucky enough to escape the chair.”’

“Oh!” she said, a little faintly. “And you? What do you get out of it?”

‘I? It’s my job. If I’m fortunate enough to pull it off, I’ve done a big thing for my paper; and a big thing for society in putting the most dangerous criminal in New York out of the way. You get that, don’t you?”

She made no direct answer.

“I don’t see how you could have succeeded where the police seem to have failed so completely,” she observed.

“More good luck than anything else,”’ he said frankly. “I don’t want you to think I’m posing as any super-sleuth-hound. It’s due to the fact that about a year ago I was able to help that chap you’ve seen me with out of a little jam he got into with the police. He’s got a bit of a record, of course, and several aliases, but he’s generally known as Shive Frank. I guess I’ll have to help you there a little. A shive is a knife. His past history shows a predilection for that weapon rather than a rod—hence his moniker.”

Enid Howard cupped her chin in her hand thoughtfully.

“T’yve wondered a good deal about him, and what you two could have in common,” she admitted. “He sounds even worse than he looks!”

Phil Martin shrugged his shoulders.

“He is,” he said; ‘‘but he’s very valuable—to me. About ten days ago I ran into him quite by accident in a spaghetti house. I hadn’t seen him since the time I'd been able to pull that friendly office for him nearly a year back. I asked him where he’d been, and he said that he got into some trouble with his gang and had to duck, but that the mob had since broken up and that most of them were in Sing Sing. So he was back. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that he squealed on them to save his own hide.”

“Do they know whom they have to thank?” she asked pertinently.

Phil Martin smiled faintly.

“They've more than a faint suspicion, I fancy.”

Her lips tightened.

“Well, then,” she said tersely, ‘from even the little I’ve seen and heard of the underworld amenities I should not care to stand in his shoes. What would you prophesy ?”’

‘The inevitable,” he answered promptly. ‘Some day he’ll be bumped off, and that’s what’s worrying me—not altogether from the humanitarian standpoint, Pll admit, for he’s not an asset to any com-

SANE De 17 munity, but because I’ve been afraid ever since he began to open up a little that they’d take him for a ride before he came through with me.”

“You’re honest about it, anyway,’”’ she smiled quizzically. ‘‘And did it ever occur to you that, being so much in his company, you might suffer the penalty that sometimes befalls the innocent bystander ?”

“There’s always a slight chance, of course,” he replied; ‘‘but that’s part of the game. Anyhow, to continue, I knew he could talk a lot if he wanted to, so I chummed up with him. But it was slow going. He was pretty leery, and he was in bad as it was. I talked to him about the Big Shot, but it was only two or three nights ago that he began to come across —and then I think it was out of revenge and not out of any friendliness for me, once he was sure he wasn’t going to get any publicity out of it. He said that three or four years ago he was in another gang— box workers—safes, you know—that was headed by a man named Hal Varney plus a few other convenient names. Shive Frank used to be very thick with Varney—used to go off on Coney Island trips and that sort of thing with him—and once on one of these excursions three or four of them had had their pictures taken together. He said he had one of these pictures but he didn’t know where it was. He promised to try to find it for me. Then he said he and Varney had had a row. He claimed that he’d got done on a split, and that Varney had let him down.

So Shive left the gang. He said that the gang was still hanging out at the same old place at the back of Izzy Myers’s junk shop on First Avenue, and. iB

Phil Martin paused, and was silent for a moment while he made another onslaught on his plate.

“I’m afraid I’m rambling a bit and am a little disconnected,” he went on finally, ‘‘but that’s the way Shive Frank was. He said that even at the time he was thick with Varney, Varney was swinging other gangs, doing some bootlegging, backing a fence ring, taking the cut on a crap game—and boasting that he hadn’t even begun. I remember the queer way Shive Frank smiled and licked his lips when I said: “That’s the man I’m looking for! There isn’t a doubt of it!’ ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I knew that from the first. Well, what about it?’ ‘Can you find him—point him out?’ I asked. ‘Is he still with that gang at Izzy Myers’s place?’ ‘As far as I know, he’s still running it—from off stage,’ Shive answered. ‘But I don’t think many of them know him by the name of Varney any more, and I guess he ain’t seen around very much except by a few, and then only on the big stuff. If you ask me I'd say he’s wearing dress shirts a lot these days. It ain’t so easy. I ain’t seen him for three years.’ ”’

Enid Howard was leaning forward tensely now as her companion paused again. She could not have explained exactly why. It wasn’t just because it was the story of a man hunt, was it? Perhaps it was the

“colour” in it. Perhaps it was because the character of this Shive Frank was getting hold of her, as a peculiarly abhorrent one. Perhaps it was because with each word spoken she was becoming more and more convinced that Phil Martin really was a newspaper man. Perhaps this confidence that he was reposing in her had something to do with it, too!

“Yes, go on!” she begged. “I know I’m not giving you much chance to eat anything, but I’m going as soon as I’ve heard the rest of your story, and then you'll be able to finish your supper in peace.”

“On that basis I’d like to drag it out,” he told her impulsively. “Honest, I would! And I’m shameless enough to admit that’s why I told you the story at all—just to keep you here for the little while I have. But I’m afraid there isn’t much more to tell. Shive and I, separately and together, tried to locate Varney. He had described the man to me as he remembered him, but a mere description wasn’t much to go on so far as I was concerned unless it embodied some distinctive mark of identification—and there isn’t any in this case. There are thousands of black-haired, black-eyed, clean-shaven, husky-looking men about five feet eight in height, for instance. And Shive couldn’t find the photograph. Neither of us got anywhere. And then, just as I was beginning to think we were up against a wall, the luck broke wide open. Shive telephoned me to-day that he’d not only found the photograph, but had got track of Varney himself. I’m to meet Shive later on to-night. That’s the whole yarn. What do you think of it?”

She was silent for a moment, her eyes on greasy little Joe Caprillo at the desk, as she marshalled her thoughts and reactions.

“T think,” she said at last, “that you will eventually get the Big Shot, and that your paper will score its scoop, thanks to you; but I cannot help feeling that, however much the Big Shot is ‘wanted,’ I wish it were this Shive Frank instead that you were after. He is despicable beyond words. He’s nothing but a contemptible, cold-blooded squealer. And somehow I wish, too”—she hesitated slightly—‘‘that your success might have come through some other medium. Do you mind my saying that ?”

“No,” he said gravely. ‘““As a matter of fact, I agree with you, though I think the end amply justifies the means in this case. It isn’t nice. But there was no other way.”

“T suppose not,” she admitted a little reluctantly. ‘““Anyway, I want to thank you for telling me the story, and for’’—she smiled in a quick, friendly way —“trusting me with it. And now I must go! It’s an unconscionable hour!” She thrust out her wrist watch for him to see. ““Half-past twelve!”

“It’s fast,” he asserted mendaciously. ‘‘Couldn’t you ce

“Not possibly !”

SWAIN 2 ED aT

“And you won’t relent about permitting me bp)

to

“Not to-night, anyhow.”

“Well, that’s a concession, at least. In the meantime I suppose all I can do is bow to the inevitable.”

They were both standing. He reached across the table to pick up her handbag for her. It was rather an exaggerated act of courtesy as it was a long reach. She noticed that his fingers were feeling surreptitiously over the bag.

“That hard object may be nothing more than my compact,” she suggested sweetly.