At night he would go down to Chiggi’s and play pool or shoot crap. Sometimes there would be a big poker game and he would sit in. He was known as “Youngstown Louis” and nobody in the place had the slightest idea who he really was.
Everything was against Rico. The very virtues that had been responsible for his rise were liabilities in his present situation. He had no outlet for his energy; the self-discipline which had marked him out from his fellows was of no use to him here; and the tenacity of purpose that had kept him at high tension while he was the Vettori gang chief had no object to expend itself on.
“I am nobody, nobody,” Rico would say.
Sometimes at night he would go to one of the call-houses on a nearby street and spend a couple of hours with one of the women. But he got very little pleasure from these infrequent debauches. He used to wonder what had happened to the blonde he had spent old Chiggi’s stake on, and was positive that if he could find her it would do him a lot of good, but she had disappeared and nobody had any idea where she had gone.
Rico tried to buy his way in. Chiggi was agreeable but Chicago Red was not. Chicago Red had taken a dislike to Rico from the first and never missed an opportunity of bullying him. Chicago Red had left Chicago under a cloud. There was a rumour that he had got in bad with a South Side gang over there and had left to keep from getting bumped off. Red was over six feet tall and weighed about two hundred pounds; he had muscles like a wrestler, a bull neck, and enormous hairy hands.
Rico kept away from him as much as possible to avoid trouble. But Red seemed to take a delight in worrying Rico, probably because, despite the fact that Rico never argued with him, and always let him have his way, he felt that Rico was not impressed.
One night there was a big poker game going on in Chiggi’s back room. Rico was winning. About midnight Red came in and wanted to sit in, but there was no place for him.
“Louis,” he said, “get the hell off that chair and let a man get in the game.”
“Not a chance,” said Rico.
“Listen, dago …” said Red.
“Don’t call me dago,” said Rico, looking hard at Red.
“Get off that chair or I’ll throw you off,” said Red starting towards Rico.
But Chiggi grabbed Red from behind and pulled him into the next room.
When the game broke up, Chiggi came in and said to Rico:
“When you get settled up, come in the office.”
After the other players had gone, Rico went into Chiggi’s office. Red was sitting with his feet on the desk and Chiggi was walking up and down.
“Well, dago,” said Red, “did you clean ’em?”
“Yeah,” said Rico.
“Sit down, Louis,” said Chiggi; “we want to talk to you.”
Rico sat down.
“Louis,” said Chiggi, “I don’t know whether you’re wised up or not, but we have been hitting the rocks. The bulls got two of our men and a big load of alcohol, and a couple of days ago another one of our carts got hijacked at Monroe. See, so we’re pretty low.”
“Yeah?” said Rico.
“Well,” said Chiggi, “we want a stake, don’t we, Red?”
“Yeah,” said Red, “and we ain’t any too particular where we get it.”
“Well,” said Rico, getting up, “you got a lot of guys around here. Ask them.”
“Listen, Red,” said Chiggi, “you keep your goddamn lip out of this.”
Red got to his feet suddenly and stood glaring at Chiggi.
“Why, you lousy small-time wop, I guess you don’t know who you’re talking to, do you?” He raised his arm and pointed at Rico.
“You see that guy there, he thinks he’s the best there is, got it? He think’s he’s the biggest dago outside of Italy, and here you go honeying after him like we couldn’t get a stake no place else. But I ain’t begging no goddamn dago to stake me.”
Chiggi looked helplessly at Rico.
“Yeah,” said Rico, “and while we’re talking, I’m getting sick of the way that bird there sits around and don’t say nothing and acts like he was God-only-knows-who. Yeah, I’m getting good and sick of it, Chiggi.”
“Well,” said Chiggi, “when you get real sick of it, why beat it.”
Red laughed.
“Gonna stick to your dago buddy, are you? Well, he’s got the jack. But what’re you gonna do when you need a guy that’s got the guts?”
This was too much for Rico. He said:
“What do you know about guts? I guess you ain’t so tough or they wouldn’t’ve run you out of Chi.”
“Will you listen to that!” said Red. “All right, buddy, you said your piece and you sure spoke out of turn. Why, dago, where I come from you wouldn’t live five minutes. Now I’m gonna show you how they treat smart dagos in Chi.”
Red made a motion towards his coat pocket, but Rico beat him to it. He pulled his gun from the holster under his armpit and covered Red.
“Red,” he said, “in Chicago I wouldn’t let you rob filling-stations for me.”
Red stood with his hands up, looking from Rico to Chiggi. “Don’t bump him off, Louis,” said Chiggi.
“I wouldn’t waste a bullet on him,” said Rico; then glaring at Red he went on: “You been getting away with this rough stuff too long, Red. I’m Cesare Bandello!”
Red’s mouth fell open and he stood staring at Rico. Chiggi took Rico by the arm.
“Are you Rico?” he cried.
Rico nodded and put up his gun. Red dropped his hands, sank into a chair and wiped the sweat from his face.
“You
