Can Ladies Kill?, page 20
“O.K. Well I checked up that handwritin’ with the handwritin’ in the original letter that was sent to the Director an’ it was the same. You are the dame who wrote that letter, an’ I reckon that when I get my hooks on the typewritten letter that Berenice got in Shanghai I shall find that the signature was written by you too.”
She grins at me. “Maybe you won’t find that letter,” she says.
“How do you know?” I ask her. I lean across the table “That is,” I go on, “unless you destroyed it when you killed Marella, because she had that letter last. Berenice Lee Sam give it to her an’ didn’t take it back.”
She bites her lips. I reckon she thinks she has said a bit too much. She is beginnin’ to look pretty scared too.
“Look, Toots,” I tell her. “Why don’t you be your age? Why don’t you come across with the truth. You know that you wrote them letters for somebody else. Somebody else was goin’ to have the lion’s share of the dough, wasn’t they? Ain’t you goin’ to be the little mug if you let yourself get pinched an’ face a murder rap for somethin’ that somebody else mighta done?”
“Meanin’ who?” she says.
“Meanin’ Effie,” I tell her, “the dame who wrote a letter to Rudy Spigla that I found in his safe. The dame who said that she was goin’ to lay off houndin’ him an’ thanked him for the dough. . . .”
I am watchin’ her like a cat an’ I reckon I am on the right line. I see her lips tremble an’ her eyes begin to blaze a bit like she was durned angry at somethin’ she is thinkin’. I think I will chance my arm.
“Too bad, Toots, wasn’t it?” I tell her. When after you done all that dirty work for Effie, the lousy moll collects the dough from Rudy an’ gives you the air, an’ not only gives you the air but spills the beans about you to Rudy—tells Rudy how you wrote the letters for her an’ then scrams off leavin’ you to stand up to Rudy Spigla, who proceeds, when he has found all this out, to put Joe Mitzler on your track, which is what made you scram out here to San Diego.
“Be your age, baby,” I tell her. “Save as much of your own skin as you can. Talk, Toots!”
She looks up at me an’ her eyes are blazin’.
“Jeez, I will!” she says. “That dirty heel Effie took a run-out powder on me an’ left me to carry the bag after all I done for her. That was sweet thanks. O.K. Well I’m goin’ to get myself out as best I can an’ if you catch up with her an’ she gets the chair I reckon she’s asked for it. Me, I wouldn’t squeal on anybody, but I reckon I’m entitled to sing about that yellow twicin’ moll.”
She swallows her drink at a gulp. “O.K.,” she says. “Here’s where I blow the works on Effie.”
I light myself a cigarette. “Effie who?” I ask her, sorta casual. “How did she spell her second name?” I put it this way, because I am tryin’ to make out that I already know what this second name is.
She looks at me with a grin.
“The name is Effie Spigla,” she says. “The dame who killed Marella was Rudy Spigla’s wife.”
I peek up. I reckon we are goin’ to get some place now. I call the waiter an’ pay the check.
She gets up. This frail don’t look so good. She looks just about all in. She looks as if she can already see herself inside the pen an’ she don’t sorta like the idea.
“What the hell . . .” she says as we walk out. “An’ where do we go from here?”
“Let’s take a little cab ride,” I tell her. “Let’s get around to the local ‘G’ office an’ see if we can find a stenographer who can write your language.”
Office of the Unit of Investigation,
Bureau of Investigation,
Department of Justice,
San Diego, California.
1.30 a.m. 16th January, 1937.
This is a statement taken from Marian (Toots) Frenzer at the request of Special Agent Lemuel H. Caution of the Bureau of Investigation, Washington, by me, Arthur Clay Meddoes, Stenographer-Agent of the Unit of Investigation, San Diego, and I certify that it is a true transcript of the shorthand notes written by me verbatim from the statement of the said Marian (Toots) Frenzer.
(Signed) Arthur Clay Meddoes, Special Agent.
My name is Marian Frenzer and I have always been called Toots. I was born at Medola near Kansas City and I am thirty three years of age.
When I got the chance I was an actress, other times I worked the dance halls and got around generally. I have had some pretty tough times too I’m telling you.
About twelve months ago I met up with a dame called Effie Spigla in Chicago. She was a hot momma I’m telling you. I reckon that this dame was as tough as they come and I’ve seen plenty and know.
I was right on the floor at this time not having had a job for four months and I got myself a job as a taxi-dancer at the Lily of Spain Dance Hall, where I met Effie Spigla. I stayed around there working for some time. She was working there too and finally we roomed together at a rooming house near North Clark Street.
We was both not very pleased with life and game for anything that would make us some dough.
One night when Effie had been hittin’ the bottle a bit hard she told me that she had got some news and that if I liked to play along with her she could show me how to make a whole bundle of jack for the pair of us. I said that I would try anything once and maybe twice if I liked it, and she told me that she had got a line on her husband—a guy called Rudy Spigla—who was a big-time mobster but who had chucked the rackets and gone out to San Francisco with another mobster that he used to work for called Jack Rocca.
Effie said that this Jack Rocca was running dance clubs and protection rackets in San Francisco but that she had heard that he was not doing anything very big in that way, but was trying to keep his nose clean with the cops and that he also had a big trucking business and that Rudy Spigla was his manager and working on what was for him pretty small time dough.
She said that she knew Rudy better than her foot and that lie couldn’t play straight with anybody even if somebody paid him to do it, and that she would bet her only brassière that was right then at the laundry because she couldn’t pay for it, that Rudy would get up to some racket in San Francisco and that she reckoned he would do it in a big way.
She told me that one of his games in the old days was to find a classy dame who was at odds with her husband and get this dame sniffing cocaine or taking morphia or heroin, and that when the dame was a sucker for the stuff Rudy would charge her plenty for supplies and would get information from her about her friends or anything else that would put him where he could work the black on anybody. She said that Rudy was the last word in dope peddling but that he never touched the stuff himself. She also said that he was a wow with dames and that he had got something that made them fall for him like a sack of old coke.
She said that if she went to San Francisco and stuck around to see what Rudy was at he would smell a rat and that he would just as soon blow the top of her head off as look at her. She said that he had already taken a shot at her two years before and she showed me where the bullet went in and came out.
She said that the idea was that I ought to go to San Francisco and stick around and get a line on what Rudy was up to. She said that if he was up to his usual games we might be able to stick him for some dough otherwise we would blow the works and get him pinched.
I said all right, I would do it, because life was not very happy at the time for either of us. So the next evening Effie gets a dancing partner—an old guy—down at the Lily of Spain and takes him to Sam Slipner’s old joint and gives him plenty to drink. She rolls him afterwards for everything he has got and next morning she gives me one hundred twenty dollars and tells me to get myself a suit and a water wave and beat it for San Francisco. That she will stick around and wait until she hears something from me.
I went to San Francisco and stuck around for a couple of weeks seeing how things were. After that some guy I met up with took me along to The Two Moons Club which was owned by Jack Rocca and introduced me to Rudy Spigla. I asked Rudy to give me a job and he gave me a job first of all on the floor as a partner and afterwards in the women’s cloakroom.
After a couple of months I got wise to the fact that Rudy was up to something and that the guy who was working in with him was a guy called Joe Mitzler, an ugly gorilla, who used to work around The Two Moons as a bouncer and general strong-arm man. I made a big play for Joe Mitzler and he fell with a bump. I got right next to this guy and learned plenty from him. After a bit he not only trusted me plenty but also told Spigla that I was all right and Rudy was not so careful when I was around.
After a few months I was wise to the whole set-up and I got on to Effie on the long-distance and told her that I reckoned that the time was ripe to pull something. I told her what I knew about what was going on and she said lay off everything she would come out to San Francisco and stay under cover and wise me up to the way we would play it.
Effie blew into San Francisco in the middle of December and I slipped off one afternoon and saw her in the dump where she was going to stick under cover. I told her what Rudy was doing which was this:
Rudy was bringing drugs into San Francisco and doing a sweet business. He was cleaning up with both hands. He was able to do this by bringing in the stuff in silk cargoes which were being handled by the Jack Rocca Trucking Corporation for Lee Sam the silk merchant.
Rudy had also made a big play for Marella Thorensen who was the wife of Lee Sam’s attorney. This Marella had fell with a bump for Rudy’s line and he had pulled his old dope stuff on her and introduced her to cocaine and morphia. She was mad stuck on him although whether it was all him or him and the dope I don’t know.
Thorensen was wise to what was going on but Rudy had got something on him and he had to like it. He didn’t care about his wife anyhow and it looked like he was going to move over to Los Angeles. I reckon he was getting scared.
I told Effie that Rudy was going to make a big play. Directly Thorensen was gone he was going to clean up and get out. He had made plenty and Thorensen who was leaving his wife was making a settlement on her. Rudy’s idea was to scram out of San Francisco with Marella Thorensen directly Thorensen went, and directly Rudy got his next drug cargo in and distributed. The distribution of this stuff was done by a guy called Oklahoma Joe who was working for Rudy and Joe Mitzler.
Effie done some heavy thinking and then she got a swell set-up. The idea was to make things so hot for Rudy that he would have to pay plenty and yet fix it so that Effie and me were safe. She told me what her idea was.
I was to type a letter to Lee Sam’s daughter Berenice and send it to her in Shanghai where she was having a vacation. This letter was supposed to come from Marella and said that it was a matter of life and death that Berenice Lee Sam should come back to San Francisco so as to arrive on the afternoon of the 10th January and go up and see Marella who would be waiting for her. Berenice wasn’t to say anything to anybody about this. It had to be kept secret.
I wrote this letter on a typewriter we got and signed it “Marella.” We looked up the right words in a dictionary.
I then wrote another letter to the Director of the Bureau of Investigation saying that there was some funny business going on but not saying what it was. Effie’s idea was this: That if Rudy didn’t agree to pay up we would send the letters and then tell him what had been done.
When I got the letters written Effie called through on the telephone to Rudy at the Club. I was sticking around in his office when she done it. Effie put on a false voice and told Rudy that unless he kicked in with twenty thousand dollars she was going to make plenty trouble for him and she didn’t mean perhaps. Rudy told her that people had tried to bluff him like that before and that so far as he was concerned she could go and jump in the lake.
Next day I eased off in the afternoon and saw Effie. She said O.K. we would send the letters. We got them off that afternoon.
On the 10th January I rung through to Joe Mitzler and told him I had got a rotten sore throat and was goin’ to see the doctor. He said O.K. I went around to Effie and we got busy.
Effie called through to Rudy at his apartment and told him who she was. He nearly had a fit. Effie told him that she had fixed it that Berenice Lee Sam would be going out to see Marella that afternoon in about an hour’s time. She also told him that the Director of the Federal Bureau had had a letter and was sending a “G” man out there to find out what was happening. Effie said that if Rudy didn’t kick in right away with the dough she was going out to the Villa to see Marella, Berenice and the “G” man, and she was going to blow the works. She said she was going to tell Berenice what Rudy had been at with Thorensen’s wife, that Thorensen and him had been running silk and that Thorensen hadn’t got any right to be attorney for her father. She was going to tell the “G” man about Rudy’s drug business an’ how he had been dopin’ Marella so as to make a getaway with her directly she got her hooks on the dough that Thorensen was going to make over to her. In fact Effie told him that she was going to make plenty trouble for him.
Rudy threw his hand in. She said he would kick in with the twenty thousand, but if Effie was speakin’ the truth it didn’t look as if there was time for him to get the dough to her before Berenice and the Federal man got busy at the Villa.
Effie said she could tell him how to do that. She said that the thing for him to do was to get the money and hand it over to her directly he had got it and that in the meantime Marella could stall the “G” man by going out and leaving a note that she would be back at nine o’clock.
Effie said that Marella could stall off Berenice Lee Sam some way or other, she didn’t give a continental how, and that unless Rudy kicked in with the dough she would go out to the Villa Rosalito and blow the works.
Rudy said that he would have the dough by eight o’clock that night, but that it would take him until then to get it. Effie said all right, and that if he handed the dough over to her then she would tell him just how he could still straighten out everything and be O.K.
I will tell you what she meant by this. Her idea was that when she had got the money from Rudy she would tell him that it would be easy for him to show Marella how she could make things O.K. with the “G” man. Effie was going to tell him that if the “G” man would take a look at the handwriting in the letter to the Director he would see that it wasn’t in Marella’s handwriting at all, and that the letter to Berenice was typed and the signature was in the same phoney handwriting. So Marella could say that somebody had been playing a joke on her and nobody would be any the wiser.
But she wasn’t going to tell Rudy this part of the game until she had got the dough.
I stuck around. I wasn’t going back to The Two Moons Club for anybody. I reckoned that if Rudy found out that I was the one who had given the low-down about him to Effie he would have bumped me off there and then. Effie said I was right, that I was to stick around, and that when she had collected the dough and wised Rudy up as to how he could keep his nose clean she would come back and give me my cut and I could scram off where I liked. This made me feel plenty happy. The idea of having ten thousand bucks was a very sweet one, but I wanted to put plenty space between me and Rudy, just in case he got any ideas about me.
About seven o’clock Effie gets ready to go. She takes with her a little .22 gun that Spigla give her years ago, just in case of accidents, and she goes off to see Rudy and collect the dough. She tells me to wait and that she will come back to give me my cut, but at the time I had a sort of idea in my head that she would take a run out on me which is what she did do.
I stick around and I wait and I wait. But she don’t come back. At ten o’clock Joe Mitzler comes around and proceeds to bust me about so that I thought I would never sit down again. That guy nearly killed me with a belt that he used on me.
I found out what had happened. Effie turned up and met Rudy and Joe, and Rudy paid over the dough to her. Rudy is a bit steamed up with the way she has done him in the eye, but he is more worried about this “G” man business and about Berenice Lee Sam getting wise. He says that the “G” man will be going back to the Villa at nine o’clock, Marella having been told on the telephone to stall this guy until then, and that there has got to be some story for him that will put things right.
Effie says he shouldn’t worry and that she will go out and tell Marella what to say to this guy when he comes back, about the letter to the Director not having been written by Marella at all and proving this by the handwriting.
Rudy is interested and asks who did write the letter, and Effie, who is feeling good at having got the dough, proceeds to tell Rudy how clever she is and that it was me who wrote the letters and who got the low-down on him for her.
Joe Mitzler tells me that then Effie goes off and goes out to the Villa to wise Marella up on the way to handle the situation, and apparently Marella is having one of her dope jags and gets very rude to Effie. Effie who has had a couple of drinks on the way out comes back with some nasty cracks at Marella, and these dames have a right royal set-to, as a result of which Effie pulls the little gun that she has got with her and shoots Marella.
This sobers her up plenty. She then rings through to Rudy and tells him what the set-up is and that he had better find a way out of it for her or else, and Rudy then sends Joe Mitzler out pronto, and Joe brings Marella’s body back to San Francisco and throws it in the Harbour like Rudy told him.
Rudy is pretty burned up at having his little ideas messed up like this but there it is.
Joe then tells me to get my things on and takes me round to Rudy’s dump, where Rudy is plenty rude to me. He tells me that I have cost him twenty grand and that he is going to make me pay one way or another. He says that I am to stick around with Joe Mitzler all the time, and that Joe has instructions from him to give me a bullet in the dome any time it looks like I am being funny.
