Verna’s plan-she thought of it as Phase One-had two parts. The first part involved a phony telegram, which she wrote on one of the blank Western Union forms she got at the Exchange. There were three short sentences: MR C WANTS YOU CALL NOON MONDAY STOP USE PHONE BOOTH STOP NOT HOTEL PHONE STOP. It was not signed. She paid Mr. Musgrove’s boy to deliver this fake telegram to the hotel on Sunday night.
To Verna’s analytic mind, the telegram was a very simple test, with two-and only two-possible outcomes. If Mr. Gold passed the test by making the call, it was because he was a member of the Capone gang and knew who Mr. C was and how to reach him. If he didn’t make the call and therefore failed the test, it was because he had no idea who he was supposed to call, at what number. Of course, failing the test didn’t mean that the man wasn’t up to some nefarious purpose. It just meant that he wasn’t connected to those gangsters in Cicero.
The second part of Verna’s plan required Miss Jamison’s address. That’s why she was thrilled and delighted when Liz called the office on Monday morning and gave her not only an address but a telephone number and a name-two more items than she had expected. Of course, she reminded herself, as she went behind the partition and sat down at Mr. Scruggs’ desk and reached for the black candlestick telephone, this was only a fishing expedition and probably wouldn’t net much of a catch. Realistically speaking (and Verna was almost always realistic), the most she could hope for was a tiny tidbit of information that might tell her whether Miss Jamison was somehow connected to the Capone gang. She could just as easily come up empty-handed.
The circuits were busy and it took a little while for Verna to get through to UNderwood 3-4555. But when she did, she hit the jackpot, for Mrs. O’Malley proved to be an older woman with an Irish accent who had apparently been waiting on pins and needles for any word from Miss LaMotte and Miss Lake.
“Oh, dearie me, I’m so glad to know the ladies arrived safely!” she exclaimed excitedly. “I was beginnin’ to fret that something might’ve gone wrong somehow. O’ course, I know there’s no phone in her auntie’s house, but still-” She paused for breath. “Anyway, dear, it’s verra sweet of you to call for them! Was there somethin’ special they was wantin’?”
Verna, inventing on the spot, said that Miss LaMotte had asked her to telephone Mrs. O’Malley and ask if she had left her ivory-backed hairbrush and mirror set behind. Mrs. O’Malley didn’t hesitate to offer to run and look. She came back in a moment (and a bit short of breath) to say that she didn’t see it anywhere, but she would be sure to keep on looking and hoped that Miss LaMotte was getting settled and Miss Lake was feeling better.
“I’ve been worried to death about Miss Lake,” she added anxiously. “Those dreadful knife cuts on her face-so slow to heal. All the way to the verra bone, y’know.” She pulled in her breath. “Why, one of them awful slashes just missed her right eye!”
Knife cuts? Verna thought swiftly, cataloging the possibilities. “Miss Lake is better,” she said, cautiously feeling her way, “but of course she’s still suffering dreadfully. Takes her meals in her room and doesn’t come downstairs and of course you can’t blame her. Such a pretty woman, and in show business, too. I saw them once in New York, when they had their Naughty and Nice Sisters act.”
“Oh, you did?” Mrs. O’Malley exclaimed. “Miss LaMotte and Miss Lake had the lead act at the Star and Garter for the longest time, y’know. ‘The Naughty, Naughty Sisters,’ they called themselves. Real classy burlesque. That’s where Mr. Capone ran into ’em, o’ course.”
“Is that right?” Verna said in a marveling tone. “Well, gracious sakes.” The Naughty, Naughty Sisters? They had obviously changed the act.
“Yes, and after that, they was all as thick as thieves for a year or more, Mr. Capone and his friends and Miss LaMotte and Miss Lake. Which is what makes it so hard. They was friends! And then he sent one of his thugs over here to cut both of ’em up. And poor Miss Lake-” She gulped back a sniffle, then broke into sobs. “Poor Miss Lake!”
“But she’s lucky it wasn’t worse, don’t you think?” Verna said in a comforting tone. “Why, she might have been killed!”
Noisily, Mrs. O’Malley blew her nose. “Oh, aye! And her such a brave little dear, too. Why, after it happened-and after Miss LaMotte pulled out her gun and shot that brute, y’ know-she wouldn’t for the longest time let me call a doctor. All we could do was try and stop the bleeding until she finally gave in. And when he came and told her she ought to be in the hospital, she refused, o’ course, because the doctors in the hospital, just like everybody else in this town, are all in cahoots wi’ the Capone gang.”
Shot that brute? Verna was taken aback. She tried to get a word in edgewise but without success as Mrs. O’Malley took a deep breath and hurried on.
“I know those stitches all over her pretty cheeks are big and clumsy and I’m sure there’ll be terrible scars, which o’ course means that her dancin’ career is over. But I canna blame the doctor, poor young man. Miss Lake was screamin’ her lungs out and all we had to give her was whiskey, and he was in a hurry to get it over with because we all thought the thug might come back and try to finish the job while he was there, sewin’ her up, and Miss LaMotte, standin’ over ’em both with her gun, just in case.” One more breath. “Still, I think I could’ve done better with that needle m’self. Everybody says they ain’t nivver seen quilting stitches as pretty as mine.”
Finally, Verna got a chance to break in. “That was very brave of Miss LaMotte,” she said. “To shoot the fellow, I mean. It’s a good thing she had the gun handy.” What kind of gun, she wondered. Where was it now? But she couldn’t think of a way to ask those indelicate questions. Instead, she said, “Was he badly wounded, do you know?”
“Badly wounded!” Mrs. O’Malley exclaimed incredulously. “Why, gracious sakes alive, dear, dinna she tell you? That Remington pistol o’ hers ain’t verra big but it packs a wallop, it does. Sal Raggio-they call him ‘the Blade,’ he’s the man she shot-got as far as the Western Hotel. That’s where they found ’im, dead as a doornail, propped up against the brick wall out front. The papers was full of it the next mornin’.”
The Blade, dead in front of the Western Hotel. Verna was beginning to piece the details of the story together, but she needed more. “I don’t suppose the police knew that Miss LaMotte was the one who pulled the trigger,” she hazarded.
“Police?” Mrs. O’Malley cried, with a bitter gale of Irish laughter. “Police! Why, sure and begorrah, o’ course they knew who pulled that trigger! Sal Raggio was a friend of Mr. Capone, and Mr. C himself ordered ’em to come and haul Miss LaMotte off to jail. And that’s exactly what they would’ve done, too, if she’d’ve been here.”
“So Miss LaMotte is a fugitive from justice,” Verna said, half to herself.
Mrs. O’Malley gave an indignant sniff. “Well, I s’pose you could call her that-except that it ain’t ‘justice’ she’d likely get in this town. More like ‘revenge,’ is what I’d call it. But then, I guess you folks down there in Alabama dinna know that the police up here in Cicero are hand-in-glove with Mr. Capone and his mob. Not to mention the prosecutors and the judges and the juries and all the rest. If Mr. Capone’s cops get their hands on her, she’ll nivver see the light o’ day again. Nivver.”