But Tony, whose real name is Antonio Parmagini, did a great deal of telephoning, and the telephone company notified the police that in the course of two months, three hundred and sixty seven calls were made to the same address — and the company seemed to know a great deal about that particular address.
And dope had been coming in as easily as it ever did. This is the way it works. Practically all the opium that comes into the country, enters along the Pacific coast. It comes in mainly at the ports of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and it is sent from Macao, a Portuguese possession near Hong Kong.
Through agents, the big dealer (in this case Black Tony) sells the dope to inland towns in California. The consignments are shipped up and down the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys before they reach San Francisco again for distribution.
Black Tony has the control of all the coast, except for the section around Los Angeles and Hollywood. This is held by a man named Murphy.
Well, there were many men who wanted Tony’s job. Naturally it paid good money. But there were few who had the nerve to try for it, much less work it when they got it.
However, there was one man who did try. He thought up scheme after scheme, but Tony was with him every trick, and one ahead at that. And he didn’t even have this man put on the spot, such was his feeling for the feeble gestures the man was making for Tony’s throne. He just laughed.
When the man finally saw that it was hopeless, he gave up. But he hadn’t been planning against Tony without picking up one or two little things — and these items he took to the police.
This information, coupled with Tony’s telephone bill and a slick Eastern dick soon had Tony in the clutches of the law.
Since Tony’s incarceration, there has been what amounts to a dope famine in California, and as one tenth of the dope users in the United States are Californians, this is quite a step in the progress of dope elimination.
City of Bullets
By John Gerard
Gangster Stories, April 1930
The biggest racketeer in the city was Mike Regan — yet he is threatened by a blood-lusting gangster from Chicago without a brain in his fat skull. Mike was stumped... and all his plans to outwit Killer Joe failed, all except one...
The raw chill wind whistled around corners and up the street, chasing little flurries of dirty snow into the night air. From a basement in one of the dark, squalid buildings, two men emerged and paused a moment to turn up their coat collars against the biting cold.
“Good-night, Bill.”
“Good-night.”
At that instant a car skidded around the corner behind them. Before the pair could turn, a stream of fire had belched from the ugly muzzle of a submachine gun that protruded from the car’s curtained window. Bullets riddled the bodies of the two with their merciless impact.
A menacing, hollow peal of laughter resounded from the interior of the car, mingling in ghostly mockery with the howling wind after the roar of the gun. Then the car shot forward in high, leaving two motionless corpses on the sidewalk.
Not a sound came from any of the buildings in the long street. No one left his house to rush to the assistance of the two huddled bodies sprawled on the wet pavement to see if a spark of life yet remained in them. The fear of Killer Joe Catanesi, overlord of the gang that was terrorizing the city, the knowledge that his work of destruction would be all too thorough, hung like a pall over men’s hearts, paralyzed them with fear.
And the raw gusts of wind piled up the snow in drifts against the corpses of the murdered men whose ebbing life blood transformed it from a dirty white into a dark, ominous crimson.
The next morning the newspapers ran the story which had by now become monotonous, of another killing in the gang war which had earned for the city the unenviable nickname, the “City of Bullets.”
In the dining room of a large house overlooking the river a man and a woman were just finishing breakfast. A tense silence had fallen between them. The man’s eyes gazed in furious concentration at the paper before him.
“There’s nothing more to be found out from that rag,” said the girl crisply. “What’s needed here, Mike, is action and plenty of it!”
“I know it, Billie,” replied the man, pushing back his chair and walking over to the window from which he could look down on the endless, moving panorama of the river. “Bill Gehagan and Frank Schwenke, my two right-hand men, bumped off by this lousy wop from Chicago!”
“I know how you feel, Mike.” Billie came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve always been on the level, Mike. You’ve never pulled the rough, crooked stuff this swine Catanesi hands out all the time. Pull yourself together!”
Her eyes looked up into his, almost challenging him to act. “Show this dirty crook you’re not licked yet!”
“That’s very easy to say, Billie,” answered the man. “But he’s managed to slip out of every single trap I’ve laid for him so far.”
It had been by ruthless disregard for the ethics of racketeers that Joe Catanesi, one of the most notorious characters of Chicago’s south side, had succeeded in gaining almost undisputed control over the city’s underworld. One after the other, the gang leaders and racketeers who had peaceably divided the city before the Killer’s advent, had been put out of business. Mike Regan alone still held out.
And Catanesi had thrown a large sized wrench into Regan’s skillfully organized gang. Desertions had taken place almost every day, with the Irishman’s inability to get the better of his enemy.
The man’s eyes glinted angrily. “I was the biggest racketeer in this city until Catanesi came along.”
“Yes, and you thought nothing could touch you. Well, now you’ve lost two of your best men, and Catanesi’s put it over on you every time.” She paused a moment, as if making up her mind to a desperate course. “Look here, Mike, will you let me handle this situation? The Killer has no brain, but he can act!”
Billie Ross was right. Catanesi’s success had been due to one factor alone; the lightning-like rapidity with which he struck. He had very little brain, only a devouring lust for slaughter and a certain cunning which prevented his attacking an adversary until he was sure of victory. Regan had underestimated his enemy; the Killer had carved a blundering way out of the traps Regan had set for him. And now he was actually threatening the power of the Irishman, the biggest and cleverest racketeer in the entire city.
Regan looked at the exquisitely groomed woman before him, at the curve of her white throat, at the rich cloth-of-gold negligee that set off the beauty of her black hair and dark, fiery eyes.
“I don’t see what you can do, Billie,” he said slowly. “It’s a long time since either you or I had to pull any rough stuff.”
“We’ve been the brains of the outfit a long time, Mike,” acknowledged the girl, “but I don’t think either of us has forgotten how to fight.”
“I’ve tried to put Catanesi out of business, and I’ve failed,” replied Regan. “But you’re right, Billie. The situation calls for action, prompt action and plenty of it. So go ahead.”
“The plan I have in mind will put the heart back into our men and dispose of the Killer at the same time. Tonight’s Friday, isn’t it? Remember how the night shift at the steel factory on Cranford Avenue gets paid off every Friday night?”
“That’s out,” replied the man abruptly, “where I’m concerned. The directors of that factory are personal friends of mine. Besides, there are plenty of easier ways of making money if you use your brains. We got through with that sort of stuff a long time ago. And—”