He rose from his chair and walked to the table where his body guards were sitting. He whispered two words in their ears. The men straightened in their chairs and looked quickly in the direction designated by a swift movement of the wop’s eyes.
Czar Rohan had come back!
Ferrini knew that Rohan had seen him, but the Czar’s expression had not changed. The wop gloated. Perhaps the deposed gang leader felt secure in his disguise. His hair was uncut and he had acquired a mustache. He was much thinner and although browned by the sun had an unhealthy white line edging his lips. Yet, despite the change that a few months had wrought in him, there was no mistaking Czar Rohan.
The wop knew he was in no immediate danger. The two men a few feet away had never missed at that distance. Ferrini, however, had other plans. He waited until the Czar had finished his coffee and had called for his bill. Rohan ignored the tray of change that the waiter brought back to him and pushed back his chair. The wop waited until he was on his way to the checkroom before he barked his orders.
Czar Rohan was in no hurry. After retrieving his hat and coat he paused at the entrance to light a cigar. It was one of those little smokes one selects when there is a limited time in which to indulge one’s desire for a puff. The first twin wisps of smoke had just emanated from his nostrils when he became aware of the presence of the two men who had stopped by him, one on either side. Hard, metallic objects pressed against his ribs.
“Let’s go, Rohan. Outside!” The words were rasping. From behind Czar Rohan came a guttural laugh. The Czar knew that laugh He walked steadily out of Bachman’s. Ferrini spoke to the doorman and slipped him something.
Crossing the street, Czar Rohan spoke. “Well, boys, I suppose I’m goin’ to take a little ride. You picked a helluva night!”
“You picked it, Rohan,” snapped Scar Ferrini.
“Yeah! So I did. Well, a Rolls is nothin’ to sneer at.”
Ferrini laughed. “You don’t think I’m goin’ to get my car all messed up, do you, Czar? We’re goin’ to use yours.”
“Still cheap, ain’t you, wop?”
“The boys won’t think so tomorrow when I order that bronze kimona for ya, Rohan,” snapped Ferrini. “I told ya I’d get ya, Czar. You didn’t think for a minute that that disguise of yours fooled me, did you, you dumb Irishman? I ain’t been forgettin’ you!
“I coulda plugged you fulla holes while you was wipin’ up your gravy but I wanted to go for a little spin in the country with you, Czar Rohan.” The last two words were sneered.
“Yeah! I wasn’t tryin’ to fool anybody, wop. Didn’t I clear out an’ let you have all the rackets to yourself? I just come back to town to enjoy one more night among the bright lights. I was told that Bachman’s was a swell joint. It’s new since I went away, wop, an’ I didn’t want t’ croak before I’d seen everything in my old burg.”
Ferrini laughed. “Well, I’m going to enjoy shelling out for that little spread I promised you, Czar, now I’ve got you. I thought your dirty yellow heart would cheat me out of the pleasure of wiping you out.”
“Yeah! You got me, wop.”
Ferrini turned to one of his men. “You’ll drive, Sam. I ain’t takin’ chances on gettin’ drove into the side of a house. We’ll put Rohan in the back seat. It’s goin’ to be a nice, snug little party.”
Czar Rohan climbed into the sedan. Ferrini and one of his gunmen followed and sat on either side of him. The gangster who Ferrini had called Sam settled into the driver’s seat.
“All set?” snapped Ferrini to the driver.
“Naw, git the key to this tin can. How in hell can I—?”
Rohan produced the key with difficulty. “It’s cramped back here, ain’t it, wop?” he grinned.
“You won’t have to worry, Czar. It ain’t gonna be cramped where you’re goin’.”
The men laughed. Sam’s foot pressed on the starter.
The explosion had been terrific. The thick plate glass windows of Bachman’s had cracked like eggshells. A flying headlight from the sedan had struck the doorman and bowled him over like a toy soldier. Bits of metal, wood, and rock had flown through the air like shrapnel from a high explosive shell. Pedestrians in the vicinity had been hurled to the pavements to lie there stunned. Windows of houses on the entire block had been shattered. The bomb that Czar Rohan had planted in the engine had been made by an expert.
When the riot squad arrived, they found a heap of splintered wood and twisted metal in place of Czar Rohan’s car. Gruesome heaps of human wreckage spotted the scene of the holocaust and fouled the rain water in the gutter with a crimson tint. Thin curls of acrid smoke still floated lazily above the morbidly curious crowd which began to choke the street in spite of the long sticks that swung in the hands of a score of policemen.
Detective Sergeant O’Brien, after examining the gruesome objects strewn amid the wreckage, pushed his way through the crowd into Bachman’s place. After a ten minute grilling, he had all the dead men identified but one. O’Brien called the head waiter and asked to be shown the table where the man with the mustache had been sitting. He had a strong hunch.
The table was just as it had been left by its recent diner. O’Brien picked the napkin up, shook it, and tossed it aside. He rummaged among the dishes, lifted up the table cloth, and looked under the table itself.
Then his eyes rested on the menu lying on the floor. He stooped for it quickly and turned it over in his hands. A low whistle of surprise escaped him and his eyebrows arched as he read the writing scrawled on the back of the card. O’Brien’s mouth twisted into a mirthless grin as he turned to the policeman standing beside him.
“Huh! So they said Rohan was yellow, did they?” he rasped. “Listen!”
Remember, boys — plenty of roses and a bronze box for yours truly. Poison ivy for Ferrini!
Rough on “Rats”
By Anatole Feldman
Gangster Stories, December 1929
It wasn’t he boodle that figured, and it wasn’t the lead, and it wasn’t fear — just the heartbreaking business of a filthy double-crossing trap that put too much lead into guts where it didn’t belong. A Chink, a Jew, and an Irishman — plenty brains — but nobody spotted the rat anyway. Read this hair-raising novel of Underworld intrigue and the gun-moll who knew everybody’s onions!
The hands of the open, bold faced clock in the tower of the Jefferson Market Court, pointed to three. Three in the morning of a raw, blustery day in early March. The streets were deserted of all save an occasional drunk sleeping off the effects of a bottle of potent “smoke,” and a few stray felines, commonly referred to in the neighborhood as “Garbage Inspectors.”
Then life and movement began to animate the scene. The heavy-timbered oak door of one of the many private houses silently opened into the night. A thin crack of light pierced the gloom in the street, then was snuffed out as a gusty gale of wind zoomed around the corner.
A squat, dark visaged man, with cap pulled low over his eyes, sidled down the short flight of stairs from the door onto the sidewalk. His movements were furtive, sly; as swift as any predatory creature of the night.
A brass-buttoned, blue-coated flatfoot pounded his heavy feet down the end of the street and the man in the cap flattened himself in the dark shadows against the house. He waited a moment, tense, until the copper had passed, then with an agile leap sped across the sidewalk to a waiting machine.
With one movement he was behind the wheel with his foot on the starter. A low rumble of power suddenly echoed in the quiet street as he jammed his foot on the gas pedal. Then he slipped into gear and took the next corner on high.