# Scarface/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III
The killing of Al Spingola created a sensation. It happened just before America entered the World War, long before gangdom had achieved anything like its present power or affluence or willingness to murder in unique fashion. Fights were plentiful, of course, and an occasional stabbing did not arouse great excitement but actual gunplay was rare. Spingola had been about the first of the city's gang leaders to enforce his power with a gun and his being "dropped off" so sudden was most disconcerting to the other leaders who had been about ready to use the same methods. But now they couldn't decide whether a gun was the best source of power or not.
The morning after the affray, Tony rose early, feeling a little rocky, and immediately induced his mother to sew the small burned hole in his coat, explaining that he had done it with a cigarette. Then he wisely decided not to wear that suit on the street again.
He went first to Klondike O'Hara's saloon. ​Klondike himself was behind the bar. A burly, red-faced young Irishman, he cut quite a dash in his own neighborhood as a gang leader and had been one of Spingola's most faithful enemies.
"I'm Tony Guarino," announced the boy, "from over on Taylor street."
"Yeah?"
"I s'pose you read about Al Spingola gettin' his last night."
"Yeah," assented O'Hara cautiously, chewing on a black cigar.
"Well, I know you and him were enemies so I thought if they took me up for his death you'd see that I had a good lawyer and so on."
"You? Did you get that rat—a punk like you?"
"I didn't say so," retorted Tony doggedly. "I just wanted to know if they picked me up if you'd get me a lawyer."
"Betcher life. An' from now on you're welcome around here any time. I can always use another kid with guts."
"Thanks."
From O'Hara's saloon, Tony went to see Vyvyan at her cheap little hotel. She was nervous and tearful but back of the nervousness he could detect a new attitude of overbearing hardness, and ​behind the tears her green eyes held a glitter that did not reassure him. He wondered if she knew how much her silence meant to him—and decided that she probably did.
"You've taken Al away from me," she sobbed. "So now you'll have to take care of me the way he did."
"Shut up!" snapped Tony. "I'm going to. Let's rent a nice little flat to-day."
Thus within the space of twenty-four hours, Tony Guarino killed his first man, joined a regular gang and took unto himself a common law wife. Events move rapidly in underworld neighborhoods.
Tony didn't intend to move away from home himself just yet; it wouldn't look right to his folks.
Again he crossed the deadline between the domains governed by the Irish and those governed by the Wops, and started for O'Hara's saloon. A heavy car drew up to the curb and stopped with a screeching of brakes.
"Hey, Kid!" shouted a raucous voice. "C'mere."
Tony's first impulse was to run, but having recognized the car as one of those from the Detective Bureau, he realized that to do so would mean being shot. So he walked over to them.
"Get in!" commanded a burly brute.
​He practically dragged Tony into the tonneau and the car raced away. Arrived at the bureau, the whole party, with Tony in the center, ascended to one of the "conference rooms" on the second floor.
"I s'pose you heard about Al Spingola bein' bumped off last night," said the man who appeared to be the leader of the party.
"Yes," assented Tony, not to be outdone. "I read it in the morning paper."
The half dozen men laughed nastily.
"The hell you did!" said the first one. "You knew all about it a long time before that. Because you killed Al Spingola."
"Has the heat gone to your head?" demanded Tony coolly.
"Don't try to stall or it'll go hard with you. We know all about it. C'mon now and spill it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," retorted Tony as if greatly bored by the proceedings.
"Oh, you're goin' to be tough, eh?"
"No. Just truthful."
"Where were you last night from twelve to three o'clock?"
"Home in bed."
"Can you prove it?"
​"My whole family would swear to it."
"Where'd you get that?" demanded another detective suddenly, and thrust before Tony's astonished eyes the revolver with which the Spingola killing had been committed.
The boy gulped but with a terrific effort retained his outward calm.
"I never saw it before," he retorted doggedly. He wondered just how much they did know. It looked bad. For those were the days when the police took the same interest in a gang killing as in any other murder and made just as eager and earnest an effort to solve it. Well, the only thing to do was bluff it out.
"I never saw it before," he repeated, straightening up defiantly.
The leader of the party suddenly struck him a hard back hand slap across the mouth.
"Quit stallin'," he snarled. "C'mon an' tell us the truth."
"Cut the rough stuff!" snapped Tony coldly but his eyes were blazing. "I've got a brother that's a cop and I know all about the way you do people. Furthermore, I got a lot of powerful friends and I'm goin' to be a 'big shot' in this town myself ​some day. So treat me decent an' it'll be better for all of us."
"Well, would you listen to that?" jeered one of the dicks. "Of all the big-mouthed punks I ever seen—"
"I hear you been goin' around with one of Spingola's girls," said the leader.
Tony smiled. "From all I've heard, he had so many that half the girls in town were his."
"Naw, I mean his particular steady girl—his moll. You know the one I mean—that tall, spindly-legged blonde down at the Gaiety Theatre."
"Don't know her."
"There's been talk about you an' her goin' around among the wise-guys in your neighborhood the last two, three days. Everybody's been lookin' for trouble over it. An' now Al's dead."
"Well, that don't prove nothin' against me," argued Tony. "Even if all you say was true, it would be him that had a motive for bumpin' me off. And anyway, do you think as good a gunman as Spingola would ever let a kid like me get the drop on him?"
"T'ain't likely," admitted the leader of the squad.
There was a sudden commotion outside the door ​and a bright-eyed, bewhiskered little man came bustling into the room.
"I have here a writ of habeas corpus for the release of Mr. Tony Guarino," he announced with dignity and flourished a document.
The detectives gasped. For a writ to be run so soon indicated that the prisoner had "connections." They had never dreamed that this kid was hooked up with the systematized elements of the underworld. But here the writ was. As they hadn't sufficient evidence to place a charge against Tony and book him, they had to honor the writ and release him.
"No hard feelings, boys," he said pleasantly as he followed the lawyer out.