«How old ya, kid?» he said.
«Twenty.»
«Been in stir, huh?» Nick didn’t wait for an answer to that one. «Okay by me if y’ain’t hot.»
Stinky shook his head.
«What’s ya name?» Nick asked.
Stinky’d decided that. «Duke,» he said. «Duke Evans.»
«Okay, Duke. You rack balls for a while,» Nick said. «When I get to know you better, maybe I can give you something else. We’ll get along.»
Duke went back by the pool tables. He watched Nick Chester, and he knew now what he was going to be. That was for him; a two-C suit with a white carnation in the lapel, expensive cigars, a blank but knowing pair of eyes and a pocketful of hay.
Power. That was for him. He’d work for it; he’d steal for it; he’d even commit…
Maybe there was rejoicing in hell. I mean, of course, if there is any such place. Things were going swimmingly. It was all too obvious that the Little Red Devil was on the job.
«He’s coming along fine, Boss,» said the L.R.D. «Just had the sixth lesson, you might say. Another year—»
«Not so soon. Let him ripen. Be sure of him.»
«He’ll graduate, Boss, cum laude. But you mean I got to wait two or three years yet?»
«Let him ripen. Five or six years.»
The L.R.D. gulped and looked aghast. «That long? Oh, Heaven!»
So they had to wash his mouth out with brimstone.
Call it the seventh lesson, at eighteen. Duke Evans was beginning to look like Duke Evans. He wore only a thirty-dollar suit but the trousers had a razor edge to them.
He wasn’t racking balls now; he was making collections. Small ones, but lots of them. That was Nick’s system and his strength—a finger in a thousand small pies. One at a time, Duke was learning about those pies.
He went into the florist’s shop on Grove Street, walked briskly on through and found the little florist alone in the back room making up a wreath. Duke grinned at him. «Hi, Larkin. Your dues; forty bucks.»
The little man didn’t smile back. «I—I can’t afford it; I told Mr. Wescott of your association. Talked to him on the phone this morning. I’ve been losing money since I started paying—»
Duke quit grinning and his eyes got hard. «I got orders to get it. See?»
«But look, I haven’t even got forty dollars. I haven’t paid all the rent yet. I can’t—»
He’d stepped backward and there was fear in his face. That was a mistake. Nobody had ever before shown fear of Duke Evans. And the florist was a little guy, too. The little mark was scared stiff.
It wasn’t Duke’s job; he could have gone back and reported. One of the muscle boys would have been sent around. But it was so easy.
He gave Larkin the back of his hand across the left side of his face and knocked his glasses off, then smashed the palm of his hand across the other side of the face, stepping in as the florist stepped back.
Then again, rocking the little man’s head back and forth before he stepped in with a hard jab to the pit of the stomach. Larkin doubled over and retched.
Duke stepped back. «That was a sample. Still think you can’t rake up forty bucks?»
Duke got the forty bucks. On the way back to headquarters, he bought himself a cigar. He didn’t like the taste of it as well as cigarettes, but from now on he was going to smoke them. On his lapel was a white rosebud he’d taken from a vase on his way out of Larkin’s.
He got his shoes shined, too, although they didn’t really need it. He felt pretty good.
Nick Chester looked at the white rosebud. His left eyebrow went up half a millimeter, which wasn’t enough for Duke to notice.
Duke got friendly with Tony Barria—as nearly as anyone could ever get to being friendly with Tony.
Tony was a little guy, too, like Larkin had been, but Tony wasn’t the kind of little guy that you shoved around. Tony was a torpedo.
He was cold and tense and he moved with a smooth grace that seemed jerky because it was so fast. Nobody ever felt at ease with Tony, really; you sort of got the idea that if you clapped him on the back, he’d explode. Maybe they tailored that word torpedo just to fit Tony Barria. But shoot a couple of snooker games with him and then you could loosen his tongue with Chianti, which is an expensive word for Italian red wine. And because Duke wanted to learn something that Tony could teach him, he kept Chianti in his room. He took a lesson from Tony in things an ambitious young man should know.
Like: «Look, if you’re going to use it on somebody, a forty-five automatic’s the thing. Don’t monkey with a little gun. A forty-five, because if you hit the shoulder or the leg or somewhere with a little gun, it don’t mean nothing. Got to hit the head or the heart. In the guts’ll kill him, but he’ll live a while first. Maybe long enough to talk, see? But a big slug wherever it hits knocks ’em down like a baseball bat.
«But if you’re carrying a rod just in case, a thirty-two automatic’ll do. Light and don’t bulge your coat…»
Oh, sure, those were elementary things, but Duke dug in and got some fine points, too. Like how to beat a paraffin test; and if you don’t know that, you’re better off not to. I’m not giving lessons; just telling about them.
Tony was a gunman all the way. He thought shivs were effeminate, fists were for gorillas, tommies were for morons who couldn’t learn to shoot straight with a heater. «Why, any day I’d go up against a typewriter, with a forty-five. One shot I’d need and there’d be time for three while he was getting that damn’ thing swung around and pointed—»
Duke Evans picked up quite a bit from Tony. One thing he didn’t learn: how not to be afraid of Tony. But when he moved in, he thought Tony would be on his side. Tony didn’t like Nick, and Duke worked on that…
Duke let a couple of years go by. He grew in evil, in stature, and in favor with himself and the gang. He bought himself two pistols, obtaining them in such a manner that they could not be traced back to him. He bought himself a rifle, too, but he purchased that openly and talked about it. His occasional hunting trips were for the purpose of finding secluded spots in the woods where he could practice shooting an automatic. Nobody knew about the pistols or his practice with them.
For a while, he took over running the strong-arm squad. Just telling them whom to see and how much of a job to do on him. He got a kick out of that.
Once he planted a pineapple himself that blew the guts out of a cigar store run by a man named Perelman who’d decided, against advice, not to job a book on the ponies. That was why the pineapple was put in his store. But the reason Duke Evans did the job in person was that Perelman had said, «Get out of here, punk,» to Duke Evans.
Duke Evans wasn’t a punk any more.
He heard the explosion from several blocks away and thought, «Punk huh?» He wished Perelman had been in the store when the bomb went off. He pictured it vividly. Because he was standing in a dark alley and didn’t have to stay dead-pan, the look on his face wasn’t nice.
Not nice at all. But then Duke Evans wasn’t a nice guy. I warned you about that.
Then after a while, he was ready. Ready for the takeover and the gravy train.
He’d worked it out, and he wasn’t going to be crude and use a gun after all. That was for cheap torpedoes like Tony.
There were reasons why it would be better if Nick’s death looked like a hit-run.
He stole a car one day and kept it under wraps until late at night, after Nick had gone home. Then he made his phone call. He’d worked out the angles on that. It was important he saw Nick right away; something had come up. And since Nick wouldn’t ever allow any of his men to come to his home, would Nick please—
Well, the details don’t matter; it worked out that Nick would get dressed and go out to walk about two blocks, too short a distance to bother getting his car out of the garage. And Nick would have to cross at a certain corner.