Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 29, No. 4, September 1971

Perkins bought her a cup of coffee and they sat at a corner table and talked in low tones.

“I’ve got an undercover gambling set-up out in El Monte, in a private house. If you’ll work as a come-on girl for the house you’ll get a nice cut of the action. You interested?”

“I sure am. When do I start?”

Once again she made a decision on the spur of the moment without weighing the potential consequences. She already had a criminal record. An arrest for violation of the state’s gambling laws would send her back to a prison cell, and because she had a record it would be for the maximum penalty provided by law. Had she weighed this possibility, weighed the potential punishment, the deprivation of her liberty, life in a prison cell, for what she might earn in hard cash, she would have turned it down, said good-by to Perkins and walked out of his life forever.

She didn’t tell her husband of her new job. The first night she went out, all dolled up in her best finery, she said that she was going to a movie. Instead she went to a bar, sat down and ordered a drink.

A girl alone in a bar means only one thing to a man on the make. The men were not long in approaching. The first one looked like ready money. He was obviously married and so couldn’t put up a beef.

“Can I buy you a drink, honey?”

Barbara gave him a small smile. “Okay, if you like. My name is Babs. What’s yours?”

“Uh, John. That’s it, John.” He was a John all right.

After several drinks he popped the twenty-dollar question. Barbara gave him a big smile which told him she was willing, but—

“I know a nice little place where we can have some excitement first. It’s a private gambling place. Could we go there first?”

They could and did. John lost his roll and Barbara lost her interest. She walked out on him while Emmett Perkins delayed him with a talk on how he just didn’t have the dice breaking right for him. Tomorrow would be another day.

That’s the way it went several nights a week. The money she earned went for rent and food, and some of it to keep Hank going with his habit. Things went along this way until Barbara gave birth to Tommy early in March 1953. About this time she and Hank had a knockdown, drag-out fight over her nights out and his jealousy over “Uncle” Emmett, to whom he was introduced as the benefactor who supplied the money for the upkeep of the household expenses.

“What I earn also pays for your damned habit!” Barbara yelled at Hank. “What the hell have you got to be jealous about? I’m not sleeping with Emmett, never have and never will. He’s a means toward an end, that’s all!”

“Yeah, he sure is! If you’re not careful he’ll take you to your end!”

They were prophetic words but Hank didn’t know it at the time. He spoke from anger rather than from suspicion or knowledge of the kind of man Emmett Perkins truly was.

“Okay. But I’ve had it. I’m leaving!”

“Good! That’s the best thing you’ve said since I first met you. And the sooner the better.”

“Right now soon enough?”

“Perfect. Good-by, Hank!”

For the next few days Barbara tried to get in touch with Emmett Perkins but was unsuccessful. She was broke and needed money for food. In desperation, she issued a bum check at a super market. She tried again to get in touch with Perkins and again was unsuccessful, and again she issued a bad check. Things were getting hot for her. She still had the old probation rap hanging over her head and the bad check charge would throw her into prison for a long sentence.

She bundled up Tommy and took him to Mrs. Anna Webb, Hank’s mother. She then packed her clothes and checked into a motel under an assumed name, after which she went looking for Emmett Perkins again. This time she found him. With him was Jack Santo, a big, hulking guy whose morals came from a jungle and his character from the teeth of a tiger.

“I’m hot,” Barbara told them. “I’ve put out a couple of bum checks and unless I make them good the cops will throw me in jail for a long time.”

“How much?” Santo asked.

“Thirty dollars. I’ve got to make them good today or else.”

Santo handed her the thirty dollars. “Here, go pick up the checks and come back here. We’ve got a proposition that will put you on easy street.”

Barbara snatched the money from Santo’s hand and dashed out the door toward the super market to pick up the checks she had issued.

The body of Mrs. Mabel Monohan was discovered on March 11, two days after her murder, by Mrs. Monohan’s gardener, who had noticed the floodlights burning and the front door to the house ajar. He went into the house and what he saw turned his stomach. Only one other victim of gangland’s force had ever died as brutally. She was Estelle Carey, an attractive young woman, the girl friend of Nick Circella, a Capone hood.