Then the Martian picked up a rock and beaned the lad from the Windy City. After which the Martian"s eyes dilated and he let out a scream.
Then he attacked the first Martian female who pa.s.sed by. Never before had such a thing happened on Mars, and to say she was surprised is putting it lightly. Thereupon, half the female population ran after the berserk Martian.
When the organization heard about this, an investigation was ordered.
That is how the crime trust found out that there is no sugar on Mars; that this was the first time it had ever been tasted by a Martian; that it acts on them like junk does on an Earthman.
They further discovered that the chief source of Martian diet is--believe it or not--poppy seed, hemp and coca leaf, and that the alkaloids thereof: opium, hasheesh and cocaine have not the slightest visible effect on them.
Poppies grow everywhere, huge russet poppies, ten times as large as those on Earth and 100 times as deadly. It is these poppies which have colored the planet red. Martians are strictly vegetarian: they bake, fry and stew these flowers and weeds and eat them raw with a goo made from fungus and called _szchmortz_ which pa.s.ses for a salad dressing.
Though the Martians were absolutely impervious to the narcotic qualities of the aforementioned flora, they got higher than Mars on small doses of sugar.
So the Mafia was in business. The Martians sniffed granulated sugar, which they called snow. They ate cube sugar, which they called "hard stuff", and they injected mola.s.ses syrup into their veins with hypos and called this "mainliners."
There was nothing they would not do for a pinch of sugar. Gold, platinum and diamonds, narcotics by the acre--these were to be had in generous exchange for sugar--which was selling on Earth at a nickel or so a pound wholesale.
The s.p.a.ce ship went into shuttle service. A load of diamonds and dope coming back, a load of sugar and blondes going up. Blondes made Martians higher even than sugar, and brought larger and quicker returns.
This is a confidential tip to the South African diamond trust: ten s.p.a.ce ship loads of precious stones are now being cut in a cellar on Bleecker Street in New York. The mob plans to retail them for $25 a carat!
Though the gangsters are buying sugar at a few cents a pound here and selling it for its weight in rubies on Mars, a hood is always a hood.
They"ve been cutting dope with sugar for years on Earth, so they didn"t know how to do it any different on Mars. What to cut the sugar with on Mars? Simple. With heroin, of course, which is worthless there.
This is a brief rundown on the racket situation as it currently exists on our sister planet.
_FAKED Pa.s.sPORTS_: When the boys first landed they found only vague boundaries between the nations, and Martians could roam as they pleased. Maybe this is why they stayed close to home. Though anyway why should they travel? There was nothing to see.
The boys quickly took care of this. First, in order to make travel alluring, they brought 20 strippers from Calumet City and set them peeling just beyond the border lines.
Then they went to the chieftains and sold them a bill of goods (with a generous bribe of sugar) to close the borders. The next step was to corrupt the border guards, which was easy with Annie Oakleys to do the burlesque shows.
The selling price for faked pa.s.sports fluctuates between a ton and three tons of platinum.
_VICE_: Until the arrival of the Earthmen, there were no illicit s.e.xual relations on the planet. In fact, no Martian in his right mind would have relations with the native crop of females, and they in turn felt the same way about the males. Laws had to be pa.s.sed requiring all able-bodied citizens to marry and propagate.
Thus, the first load of bims from South Akard Street in Dallas found eager customers. But these babes, who romanced anything in pants on earth, went on a stand-up strike when they saw and smelled the Martians. Especially smelled. They smelled worse than Texas yahoos just off a cow farm.
This proved embarra.s.sing, to say the least, to the procurers.
Considerable sums of money were invested in this human cargo, and the boys feared dire consequences from their shylocks, should they return empty-handed.
In our other Confidential essays we told you how the Mafia employs some of the best brains on Earth to direct and manage its far-flung properties, including high-priced attorneys, accountants, real-estate experts, engineers and scientists.
A hurried meeting of the Grand Council was called and held in a bungalow on the sh.o.r.es of one of Minneapolis" beautiful lakes. The decision reached there was to corner chlorophyll (which accounts in part for the delay in putting it on the market down here) and ship it to Mars to deodorize the populace there. After which the ladies of the evening got off their feet and went back to work.
_GAMBLING_: Until the arrival of the Mafia, gambling on Mars was confined to a simple game played with children"s jacks. The loser had to relieve the winner of his wife.
The Mafia brought up some fine gambling equipment, including the layouts from the Colonial Inn in Florida, and the Beverly in New Orleans, both of which were closed, and taught the residents how to shoot c.r.a.ps and play the wheel, with the house putting up sugar against precious stones and metals. With such odds, it was not necessary to fake the games more than is customary on Earth.
IV
LITTLE NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL
Despite what Earth-bound professors tell you about the Martian atmosphere, we know better. They weren"t there.
It is a dogma that Mars has no oxygen. Baloney. While it is true that there is considerably less than on Earth in the surface atmosphere, the air underground, in caves, valleys and tunnels, has plenty to support life lavishly, though why Martians want to live after they look at each other we cannot tell you, even confidential.
For this reason Martian cities are built underground, and travel between them is carried on through a complicated system of subways predating the New York IRT line by several thousand centuries, though to the naked eye there is little difference between a Brooklyn express and a Mars express, yet the latter were built before the Pyramids.
When the first load of Black Handers arrived, they naturally balked against living underground. It reminded them too much of the days before they went "legitimate" and were constantly on the lam and hiding out.
So the Mafia put the Martians to work building a town. There are no building materials on the planet, but the Martians are adept at making gold dust hold together with diamond rivets. The result of their effort--for which they were paid in peppermint sticks and lump sugar--is named Little New York, with hotels, nightclubs, bars, haberdashers, Turkish baths and horse rooms. Instead of air-conditioning, it had oxygen-conditioning. But the town had no police station.
There were no cops!
Finally, a meeting was held at which one punk asked another, "What the h.e.l.l kind of town is it with no cops? Who we going to bribe?"
After some discussion they cut cards. One of the Bergen County boys drew the black ace. "What do I know about being a cop?" he squawked.
"You can take graft, can"t you? You been shook down, ain"t you?"
The boys also imported a couple of smart mouthpieces and a ship of blank habeas corpus forms, together with a judge who was the brother of one of the lawyers, so there was no need to build a jail in this model city.
The only ones who ever get arrested, anyway, are the Martians, and they soon discovered that the coppers from _Terra_ would look the other way for a bucket full of gold.
Until the arrival of the Earthmen, the Martians were, as stated, peaceful, and even now crime is practically unknown among them. The chief problem, however, is to keep them in line on pay nights, when they go on sugar binges.
Chocolate bars are as common on Mars as saloons are on Broadway, and it is not unusual to see "gone" Martians getting heaved out of these bars right into the gutter. One nostalgic hood from Seattle said it reminded him of Skid Row there.
V
THE RED RED PLANET
The gangsters had not been on Mars long before they heard rumors about other outsiders who were supposed to have landed on the other side of _Mt. Sirehum_.
The boys got together in a c.o.c.ktail lounge to talk this over, and they decided they weren"t going to stand for any other mobs muscling in.
Thereupon, they despatched four torpedoes with Tommy guns in a big black limousine to see what was going.
We tell you this Confidential. What they found was a Communist apparatus sent to Mars from Soviet Russia.
This cell was so active that Commies had taken over almost half the planet before the arrival of the Mafia, with their domain extending from the _Deucalionis Region_ all the way over to _Phaethontis_ and down to _t.i.tania_.
Furthermore, through propaganda and infiltration, there were Communist cells in every quarter of the planet, and many of the top officials of the four Martian governments were either secretly party members or openly in fronts.
The Communist battle cry was: "Men of Mars unite; you have nothing to lose but your wives."