Dumper, Baby Face, and The Lip knew they were in trouble. Their territories were being invaded.

Dumper, who controlled all the action in mid-town, had the most to lose.

Baby Face, the West Side kingpin, knew he couldn't afford to let an outsider muscle in on his territory.

The Lip, who had his finger in a number of pies, most of them on the East Side, but a couple or three scattered elsewhere, couldn't afford a threat to his newly won power.

For the first time all three faced a common peril.

For the first time they were up against a dame, not any dame, a dame with more pearls than any of the three could afford to buy in three lifetimes. A dame with muscle. A dame with clout. A dame with backing. A dame of many parts.

As if Dumper hadn't enough trouble with dames already. The list of those he had dumped was a long one. And some of those dumpees didn't go quietly.

Right now he was stuck in the middle of a nasty piece of business that, no matter how he tried, he couldn't get away from. The dame in question was showing she was nobody's pushover, nobody's bubblehead, nobody's baby.

She had proved troublesome before. She didn't always know her place. She didn't always toe the line. To Dumper she was fickle. A line from an old Mills Brothers song kept popping into his head.

I'd rather have a Paper Doll to call my own
Than have a fickle-minded real live girl.

Dumper liked paper dolls. They didn't talk back. They lay flat on their backs. You could bend them any way you wanted.

Baby Face had his own trouble with dames. He couldn't control them all the time. Some just drifted away from him, and he didn't know why. It was the same with some of his male buddies. They hooked up with other outfits. Only last week one of his lieutenants went over to the Dumper's mob.

A few months ago Big Momma joined a bunch of his buddies who deserted him. The sound of her Harley Davidson leaving the corral haunted his dreams. "Why me?" "Why now?" And then she came back. Dames! Who could understand them?

Now there was this new dame, backed by the old Dons, with her new fangled ideas preaching a gospel that Baby Face found plain repulsive.

In his domain, if you didn't agree with the gospel according to Baby Face, you risked his eternal displeasure.

Of the three, The Lip seemed the least troubled by womenfolk, but this new threat from the new dame was something he hadn't reckoned on. Man to man he didn't back away from anyone. But how do you fight a dame?

One wrong word, one unhappy phrase, one loose lip and he would sink the ship, lose the respect he was fighting to earn, the toe-holds he was expecting to gain, and miss the ladder rungs he was training to climb. He might be left clicheless, twisting in the wind.

What's a guy to do?

--30--