“One more of these, pal.”
He just slid the whiskey bottle my way. I poured a shot, then dug out another smoke and burned it. Some saloon singer was moaning low on the radio, spilling his guts in a bar somewhere. I knew his work.
I took a deep drag on the cigarette and held it in, revisiting the events of that week for the nine-hundredth time.
Carmine Ratello’s corpse took the rap for Betty Benker and Murray Fine. Nobody gave me a medal for exterminating that rodent—but they didn’t charge me with anything, either. That was pretty much a wash.
Johnny Spazzo went down as Unsolved. What difference did it really make?
I kept mum about the Ching Hwas. Sam Woo had the big sit-down with them and everything was kind of, sort of all right for a while. The Coldwater Canyon thing didn’t draw too much ink considering, and the Chandlers were just as happy if no one knew that anything like that could happen in Beverly Hills anyway.
Rink Ruggles got a commendation, and a third term as sheriff for his heroic actions. Bendix turned out to be low-rent mob fringe working for Ratello. Rink and I get along better since that night—he even admitted to me that his shot missed Bendix—but I’d already figured that out by then.
Frank offered to buy me a new plane. I told him to stick it. An unnamed party in Nevada traded me a ’39 Electra with low-time engines even up for my Mexican Air Force P-38—minus the guns. My new plane looks a lot like the old one, right down to the item stashed in the wainscoting. Roscoe and I do just fine with it.
Kennedy became president, of course. Partly because that film didn’t surface, and partly because Richard J. Daley is a very committed Democrat. I never found out if those goons were sent by old man Hoover or Giancana—or someone else—but no one ever said anything to anyone about them.
The election win helped Frank get through his grieving, but he still took it hard about Helen. He locked himself in his bedroom, didn’t come out for days. He called one night at four in the morning, asking me if she could have really been that bad. I told him the truth—I didn’t know. He bounced back in time, but like I said, he took it hard.
I took it worse. In the time since it all went down, I’ve gradually put the pieces together. It’s hard to accept the facts—but I do.
I didn’t start out as Helen’s mark, but when things spun out of control, she grabbed for anyone within reach, the way a drowning person does. And she took me almost all the way to the bottom with her. I should have seen it all sooner, but I was in too deep.
Maybe in time she could have turned it around. Or maybe not. It’s a fool’s errand to try and change people—or save them from themselves. Everybody dies anyway.
They held a funeral for her out here. Her folks came out from Wisconsin, and then they went back. They said they didn’t mind burying her on Catalina; they knew how she loved it there.
Of course, there was no body. Officially, there wasn’t even a fire. Privately, the Mexican government said nothing was ever recovered from that place: no money, no film, no Bravo—no Helen. Still, I wonder …
In time, I went back to the island. I drop into Avalon every now and then, usually when I’m on a run. I haunt the places we shared. Sifting through the ashes, searching for the reasons, trying to rewrite the past.
Sometimes I go by the Casino in the evenings. I sit on the quay and watch for her without knowing why. It’s just a sailor’s dream of a mermaid—or maybe a Siren. The dark waves roll endlessly by as the sun fades over the mountains and the moon rises quietly overhead.
But she never comes.
Then I take to the night sky. I’m a freight pilot, and there are boxes to move.
END
Turn the page to continue reading from the Joe Buonomo Mysteries
I
1
CHICAGO, 1943
We were throwing them back at the Vernon Park Tap, just Butch and me. There’d been some press earlier, along with the ubiquitous navy flack and a few overeager victory girls, but we’d managed to ditch them all along the way to my old Taylor Street neighborhood.
Now the two of us were lining up the shots in our sights, dedicating them to lost comrades and knocking them down, one after another. So far, I had three confirmed, Butch, two and a probable, but there was little doubt we were both headed for ace that night.
It felt good to be on the undercard with America’s biggest war hero as his PR tour swung through the heartland. But it was better still to have some time to talk with someone who understood, someone who’d lived it, someone who knew the value of talking about anything other than it. Tonight we weren’t navy poster boys pushing war bonds. We weren’t even fighter pilots. We were just two guys on barstools letting go of a little stress the old-fashioned way. And we were doing it alone.
Or so I thought.
There’d been an older gent down the rail from us for a while, but he’d gone off to the phone booth and then drifted out. Other than the tender, we’d been the only guys in the bar the last half hour. Butch had been telling me about his father, a man well known in Chicago before his murder in 1939, and far better after.
About ten, a side of beef in a herringbone coat came through the door, shook off some weather, and threw his hat on the bar. He grabbed a seat two stools down and ordered a beer. He looked straight ahead. Mostly.
Butch and I kept up our conversation, but quieter. Twenty minutes passed.
Another man came in, sat at the far end of the bar. The big guy finished his beer then got up, put on his coat, and picked up his hat. He paused a moment, faced us.
“Excuse me,” he asked, “but aren’t you Butch O’Hare—da fighter pilot?”
Butch nudged my shoulder, gave me the “here we go again” wink.
“Yes, that’s right. I am,” he replied.
“Gee, imagine that . . . right here,” the big guy said. “The guy who shot down all them Japs. Can I shake your hand, mister?”
Butch smiled, extended his arm. “Sure.”
They shook. The big guy stood motionless, a toothy smile curling his purple lips.
Butch matched his grin awhile, then said, “Nice to meet you.” He turned back toward me and began to speak again.
“I . . . I heard you talking about your father,” our visitor interjected.
Butch glanced back, a wary look on his face. “Yes, but it’s a private discussion with my friend here.”
I took the opportunity to put some space between us. Spinning around on my stool, I held out a hand. “My name’s Joe. I’m home on leave. How’s about you just let us catch up quietly, please?”
He wasn’t buying what I was selling, looking right past me toward Butch. “Yeah, yeah, I understand, Mr. O’Hare. But I knew him, see?”
“I’m sorry,” Butch said. “I don’t care to discuss my father with strangers. That isn’t something we do back in St. Louis.”
The big guy shrugged. “Okay . . . I was just hoping maybe you could tell me about him and Mister Capone—”
“Hey,” I said, getting a little more Chicago about it, “he doesn’t want to talk about it—okay? Let it go, huh?”
A fat guy in a wifebeater and a red-stained apron came out of the kitchen through the swinging doors, half a cigarette hanging out of the suet ball that passed for his face. He laid his big bare arms on the bar top, resting as close to the Formica as his Falstaffian gut allowed. I realized then that the tender had flown.
“Sure ya won’t talk wit’ me?” the big guy chirped.
“Hey—what is this?” Butch demanded.
“Just a friendly conversation, pal—about your old man.”
I got up, stood between the bruiser and Butch. The front door opened again, a jolt of cold air swirling in as another heavy stepped through. He grinned. Then he locked the door.
The big guy leaned in, rested a hand upon the bar. I’d seen catcher’s mitts smaller than that hand.
“Dis doesn’t have to be difficult, fellas,” he said, spreading his arms as if he were giving the benediction.
The guy at the door stepped forward, hand in his pocket. I cut a glance at Butch. He nodded almost imperceptibly.
Suddenly, I was grabbing a bottle from the bar top, slamming it down on the big guy’s forehead. He staggered backward in a shower of glass and Blatz, spewing obscenities. He was still wiping his eyes when I put him down for the long count with my barstool. I flung it at the other guys on my follow-through then and turned to shove Butch toward the kitchen, but he was already halfway there, his right arm buried to the elbow in the cook’s billowing apron.
We flew through the swinging doors, stutter-stepped around a waiter, and shot out the back way, rigatoni dishes crashing down behind us as we bolted into the alley. Butch broke out ahead, spun, looked back at me. “It’s your neighborhood, Buonomo . . . which way?”
Half a block away, the clang of a streetcar bell rang like a clarion through the gauzy air.
“That way,” I shouted, pointing through the sleet. “Head toward Racine. We’ll jump that car!”
“Check!”
We tore down-alley, splashing through puddles, freezing water spraying up around our feet like shell bursts on the sea. Behind us, I could hear two of the hoods coming out of the restaurant, breaking into pursuit. The streetcar was just a few hundred feet away now, stopped dead on our side of the cross street.
“Come on, Joe,” Butch shouted over his shoulder, his long, loping strides covering the last yards as the car began nudging forward.
“Right behind you, Butch. Get on!”
He leaped onto the running board, turned, extended a hand toward me.
I stole one last look over my shoulder. We had a good lead but not good enough. It was a split-second decision.
I took Butch’s hand then used his momentum against him as he pulled me, shoving him through the folding doors onto the floor of the car. I hit the street a second later.
He staggered up, swinging on a strap and staring dumbstruck through the doors of the green-and-white trolley. He fought his way through them, started to jump off the rapidly accelerating car. I stabbed a finger toward him, bellowing, “You stay on that car, O’Hare! I can handle this!”
He looked on, hurt, confused, into the growing distance between us.
“Chicago’s not losing any Medal of Honor winners on my watch,” I yelled as the car rolled off across the intersection into the wintry night. “See you back at the Palmer House,” I promised, not knowing that I would never see him again.
I turned toward the sound of charging feet, watched them close in, wondering if they might’ve been a little more careful about rushing headlong toward the men who just dropped two of their own. But those guys were never known for their grasp of the obvious.
The toughs came on fast, legs pumping hard across the wet pavement. I dug in, squaring myself up in the boxer’s stance I’d learned in these streets, raising my fists before my face as the dark men converged on me, my lips parting in the faintest of grins as I leaned my first punch.
II
2
THE GREAT PLAINS, 1963
Tiny little squares of Nebraska crawled beneath me, the angled glass of the unheated cockpit window cool against my face, the O2 mask dangling from my hand delivering jolts of clearheadedness on demand. I was seriously hating life that morning, two hours into a cross-country flight and three hours into an epic case of the Old Crow shakes. The 100 percent pure oxygen was helping, but I’d been having more than a little trouble following the specification recitation from the test pilot. Somewhere in there, I’d drifted off, to a place I knew but long long ago, an old friend by my side.
I felt a tap on my shoulder then, looked back with a start, caught a flash of the world’s most famous blue eyes.
“Hey, paesan,” he said.
I winched up half a smile through desiccated lips. “Hey.”
He gestured with a hand. “What do you think of this little number, Joseph? Learjet makes ’em right down there in Bumfuck, Kansas, somewhere. They let me have this prototype all week for free just so I can see if I want one or not. Whatsay, Lindbergh?”
I rubbed my eyes. “Frank, you know I don’t know shit about jets. Better call Lindy.”
“Lindbergh shmindbergh,” he replied. “A guy’s a great pilot, he’s a great pilot, and you’re the greatest goddamn pilot in the whole world.”
I grinned at him. “You know how you can tell when a Sicilian is lying to you, Frank?”
He smiled back, shook his head lightly. “C’mon. Stop it already.”
Frank and I didn’t hang around much anymore, not after the way it all went down in Baja back in ’60. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, but things could never be the same after that.
So it came as no small surprise when that old bird Jilly Rizzo, Sinatra’s new number one guy, rousted me that morning on The Ragged Edge and declared without fanfare, “Mr. Sinatra would like that you should accompany him to Chicago today.”
Now, Frank Sinatra was not a man many people refused, not without gulaglike consequences at least. The boy singer and the bow ties were long gone. Loved by millions and feared by thousands, Frank was a full-blown titan of the entertainment world: rich, famous, charming, magnanimous, and volatile. Very volatile. Infamously imperious, and inflexible to a fault as well, he was also genetically incapable of accepting no for an answer from almost any other man on Earth.
There were three exceptions: Jack Kennedy, Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, and me. That was the list—in its entirety. And considering that Jilly had broken in on what would have been round two of my B-girl bacchanal, I had every reason in the world to tell the “Chairman of the Board” to go pound sand down a rat hole, but I figured I should at least say it to his face given all that we’d been through together.
We barely had a chance to speak before departure. Frank had arrived, per usual, at the last minute by limo while I was going through preflight checks with the factory pilot. All I knew up till then was that Jilly had said Mister Sinatra needed me, which could’ve meant anything—including a pizza run—given Frank’s neediness. But when I buttonholed Frank at the boarding steps to interrogate him about the details, I found the look in his eyes deeply troubling. And when he said that he needed me needed me, I was in. A bond’s a bond.
Then we were off for “the town Billy Sunday couldn’t shut down.” And as far as Sundays went, this weekend’s Bears–Packers showdown at Wrigley Field was shaping up as a battle for the ages—tickets to which, I decided on the spot, would be the compensation I’d be wringing from Sinatra for this impressment aboard ship.
I had the virgin mother of a headache, and some very serious reservations about some things that lay ahead, but I also had seventeen thousand four hundred reasons of my own for being out of California for a few days anyway. And Chicago really was one helluva town.
Besides, I hadn’t been home in a very long time.
3
The Chicago sky was steel gray with streaks of rain. Not bad for mid-November, really, but a little sketch for Meigs Field, Chicago’s pocket-size lakefront airport. The Lear pilot said he thought we had the numbers for a wet landing, but I knew his real precipitation concern was Lake Michigan, which bordered the field on three sides. I’d sat at bar tops longer than that runway—and seen too many friends go skidding into the Pacific off a carrier’s slick deck to tempt fate when we had better alternatives nearby. Sinatra pitched a royal bitch about it, but he capitulated when I went back into the cabin and pointedly reminded him that I, not he, was the “greatest goddamned pilot in the whole world.”
Truth was, we pr
obably would’ve been okay at Meigs, but taking foolish chances wasn’t something I got paid to do anymore. And since I’d already been shanghaied away from a beautiful brunette sunrise by Frank, I’d be damned if I was going to risk getting my feet wet just to save him thirty minutes on his drive time across town. There was something I needed to do at the other field anyway, someone I wanted to pay my respects to.
“Okay, kid,” I said to the company pilot as we began our descent, “it’s settled. Let’s go take a crack at the world’s busiest airport: Chicago O’Hare.”
We touched down just after two. Five minutes later, the kid taxied into Reiger Aviation and shut her down. We’d radioed ahead to Meigs to alert Frank’s limo service about the change, but they were still in transit. Frank and I killed time burning a smoke in the charter building while Jilly schlepped the bags down. Frank was edgy; he didn’t like waiting.
“Lousy day,” he opined.
“I dunno,” I said, “rain’s already stopped, and there’s better weather coming in—what we had most of the way. It’ll clear up by this evening.”
“Good. ’Cuz I got a big night planned for us, and rain ain’t a part of it.”
I couldn’t suppress a smirk. “I’m sure that you made that request with God himself, huh?”
“Frank Sinatra is big, pal, but he ain’t that big. It still goes God, Kennedy, Sinatra, in that order,” he said, stepping down the rankings with his hand. “But I gotta tell ya, the last two are neck and neck anymore.”
We walked toward the front doors, Frank acknowledging various employees with a nod or a wink as they stared from a cautious distance, then handing a twenty to the starstruck kid who held the door open for us.
On the wall outside, I found the shining plaque dedicated to the airport’s namesake, whom I’d come to call on. I turned and walked toward it, a lump forming in my throat as I neared. It was heartening to see his image again, frozen in bronze though it was.
One for Our Baby Page 30
