Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  ‘Charles Coulton?’ he said, even though he knew what he had heard was the truth. He knew the name, but when the girl had mentioned a Chuck Coulton in the cafeteria, a rich-kid wastrel, a prep-school kid who’d stumbled onto a criminal buddy in the war, Dante hadn’t thought to connect it to the Charles Coulton he’d heard about in New York. A racketeer from Newark, born Charles Ferguson, who’d headed off to Washington years back to ride the Capitol Hill gravy train. A man who’d moved to a new city and changed his name, just like Dante had.

  ‘Coulton went to Capone with the dope-distribution deal months back but Capone wasn’t interested,’ the man said. ‘So then he approached Sacco with the idea of doing it on the hush, piggybacking the Outfit’s van. He hooked us all into it – me, Sacco, Sacco’s kid brother, the hillbillies that run the roadhouse. Some boat captain brought the stuff in from Canada, same place New York got their stuff from, all the way from France.’

  ‘Who was the connection in New York?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know. Coulton never said. Coulton was the middle man. He didn’t want Sacco finding out and cutting him out of the deal. I swear that’s it.’

  ‘And what about Moran?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘How was he involved?’

  A bemused look crossed the man’s face.

  ‘Moran wasn’t involved. I swear. Now help me outta here. Please!’

  Dante stared at the man. Moran had to be involved. The dead stooge in the alleyway proved it. The man turned to look at the train, and Dante followed his gaze: it was at the station now, picking up passengers. In the distance he could hear police sirens.

  ‘Come on . . .’ the man pleaded.

  Dante flicked his cigarette away, stood, and held out his hand for the man to take. The man grabbed his wrist. But instead of pulling himself up, he pulled Dante down, lifted a knee into his chest, made a grab for the tommy. They both fell forward toward the gap and Dante saw the dead space looming up at him, the cars, the street. The man kneed him in the gut, winding him. Through the pain Dante caught sight of the man’s foot: he must have gotten it free while they were talking.

  The man got on top of him, tried to grab the gun, one hand on the barrel, the other trying to pull Dante’s fingers off the handle, and Dante realized he wasn’t the only one making stupid moves. Then the train’s horn blasted and they turned to see it getting closer.

  ‘Fucking idiot,’ hissed the man as they tussled. Then a grin formed on his face. ‘We took out insurance on you.’

  ‘I’m not the idiot,’ said Dante. ‘I’m not the one holding a gun by the barrel.’

  Dante put his hand over the man’s and squeezed the trigger, and the tommy sprayed bullets into the air, and the barrel instantly glowed hot, scorching, and the smell of cooked meat sizzled into the air, and the man shrieked and rolled onto his side, clutching his hand, and Dante caught a glimpse of it: the palm burned brown, smoldering, black. The man stumbled backward just as the train rushed past. Dante watched, the driver braking too late.

  The train eventually stopped a few yards further down, a gust of wind swirling after it, a cyclone of warm air, scented with the smell of burned flesh and engine grease. Dante took a few steps forward, and through the track he could see the man from the forest, lifeless on the street below.

  He used his sleeve to wipe down the tommy, left it on the side of the tracks and ran for the station, wondering what the man meant by the last thing he’d said, the insurance they had taken out on him, the smile on his face when he said it. And then Dante prayed it had nothing to do with Loretta not turning up to the funeral.

  54

  As Michael and Ida drove over to the apartment, he filled her in on how he’d managed to track down Arturo Vargas, the boy who had helped ambush them. He had sought out the boy’s known associates from the list Walker had provided, finding them one by one, pressing them for information in a daisy chain of threats and intimidation. He’d visited three different tenements, two bars, and a palm-reader’s shop. Eventually he’d been directed to a flophouse in the Spaghetti Zone where he unearthed Vargas in a basement dormitory.

  After a brief chase, Michael and Walker had cornered the boy and persuaded him to come with them. They told him they had a witness who would testify to seeing him throw the dancer’s body off the bridge, they said they’d pin the ambush on him as an accomplice, and they informed him that both Severyn and Capone had taken a contract out on him. They told him, in short, that he was a dead man. Unless he went with them to a safe house, and told them everything he knew. Then they’d offer him protection and a means to escape the city, and they’d never breathe a word to the police.

  Vargas agreed, warily, and they took him over to an empty apartment the State’s Attorney’s used for putting up witnesses. Once he was settled in, Michael had gone to the funeral to get Ida, leaving the boy with Walker and some men from the SA’s.

  As Michael filled her in on all of it, he watched her closely, noticing how different she looked since they’d discovered Gwendolyn’s body: more focused, more sharp. When he’d walked into the safe house earlier that day he’d been shocked to see how fragile and meek she looked. She’d always had an air of self-doubt about her, a shaky mistrust of her own resilience, but in the safe house that afternoon, she’d looked broken. Now it seemed like her resolve was creeping back.

  They parked the Chevrolet on a nondescript street in Pilsen and approached a run-down tenement. The sun had set and the street was dark except for the lights shining in from the windows in the buildings above. Michael pressed the buzzer four times – long, short, long, short. The buzzer echoed back and they stepped inside.

  They walked up to the second floor, where a man was standing by an entrance to an apartment, a service revolver in his hand. Michael nodded, and the man knocked three times on the door behind him and the door opened, revealing Walker, who beckoned for them to enter.

  It was a railroad apartment, the rooms arranged in a line without a corridor, just one room leading into the next, into the next, into the next, until the last one, a living room, where there was finally a window, and some light.

  It was cramped and messy. Vargas was sitting on a sofa, in front of a coffee table loaded with food they’d brought back from a Chinese restaurant. A man from the State’s Attorney’s was leaning against the counter of the adjoining kitchenette, keeping an eye on him. Vargas looked up at them as they entered, and in the harsh light of the bare bulb, he looked even younger than he had early that morning, when Michael and Walker were talking to him in the gloom of an alleyway behind the flophouse.

  ‘You wanna drink?’ Walker asked them, and both Ida and Michael shook their heads. Walker got them some chairs from the kitchenette and they all sat around the coffee table.

  ‘We got ourselves some food,’ said Walker, picking up a fork and a carton of noodles. ‘You eaten?’

  Michael’s gaze drifted over the cartons of rice and pork, and even though he hadn’t eaten in what felt like days, and was nauseous from lack of food, he shook his head, and lit a Virginia Slim.

  ‘Arturo, this is my colleague from the Pinkertons, Ida Davis,’ said Michael. ‘I told you about her. We were hired together by Gwendolyn’s mother.’

  Vargas looked at Ida and smiled and nodded, and Ida stared back at him coldly.

  ‘Let’s start with the ambush. What were you doing going to Coulton’s apartment?’

  ‘What’s everyone doing? Looking for money. Business gets kinda slow this time o’ year,’ Vargas said in an adenoidal voice. ‘Chuck had a stash over there and I figured the place was empty.’

  ‘You just happened to turn up at the same time we did?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Vargas, picking up on the sarcasm in Michael’s tone, and responding to it with some of his own. ‘Wrong place, wrong time.’

  He grinned, picked up a fork and a carton of barbecued pork, and without looking back up, he started to eat. The gesture infuriated Mi
chael. His family had been forced to decamp to Detroit, Ida had seen Jacob murdered, Gwendolyn was dead, and Vargas was treating it all as a joke.

  ‘Put the fucking food down,’ said Michael, glaring at him, surprised to hear how much anger there was in his own voice.

  Everything seemed to go quiet. Vargas stopped chewing and stared back at Michael, the fork hovering in the air between the carton and his mouth.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d need to explain exactly how much shit you’re in,’ said Michael. ‘But it seems I do. We can put you at the Ashland Avenue Bridge where you and Severyn dumped Esther Jones’s body. We can pin the ambush on you. You’re looking at the electric chair. And when the Outfit finds out what you did, they’re gonna put a contract on you. And your pal, Severyn, he’s probably already looking to kill you. You don’t start cooperating with us, you’ll be in a jail cell within the hour, and you’ll be a sitting duck for whatever trigger Severyn or Capone have hired to whack you. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be dead. But if you tell us what you know, we’ll drive you to the train station ourselves, and even buy you your goddamn ticket. So put down the food, and start talking. I’m not gonna ask twice.’

  Michael kept his gaze fixed on Vargas the whole time he spoke, so he could see how the menace in his words and manner worked on the boy, making the color drain from his face, suffusing it instead with uncertainty and worry, how even, ever so slightly, the carton in his hand started to tremble.

  Vargas put down the carton and the fork. Then he swallowed the food that was in his mouth, and nodded at Michael, gesturing that he’d start to cooperate. Michael glared at him for a few moments longer, pressing home the advantage.

  ‘Why’d you think the place was empty?’ Michael asked eventually. ‘Had you spoken to Chuck since Gwendolyn disappeared?’

  ‘Sure. I spoke to him just after it happened.’

  ‘After what happened?’

  ‘After he killed her.’

  Vargas looked uncertainly at Michael, and Michael turned to look at Ida, and saw how she was staring fixedly at Vargas, frozen almost. Michael turned back and gestured for him to continue.

  ‘Lloyd called me that night,’ he explained, his gaze flicking between Michael and Ida. ‘Said to get round to the apartment. That Chuck was cut up real bad and needed help. I knew about this plan they had, with Capone and Moran and the champagne bottles, and I knew they’d planned it for that night. Chuck used to tell me stuff. We were close. Told me about Lloyd and his father, and how scared he was of them. So when Lloyd called me up I figured it had all gone wrong, but when I got there . . . I could hardly tell it was Chuck, all the blood and cuts on his face.’

  ‘Someone had smashed a bottle into his face?’ asked Michael.

  ‘They must have smashed a case of bottles into his face to make him look like that. And his eyes . . . he couldn’t see. And he’d just let it dry there, you know? Hadn’t washed it off, taken the glass out. I told him it would get infected but it was like he couldn’t hear me. I asked what happened and he just babbled, and that’s when I realized how bad it was. His mind was gone. I mean, he was always a little different, you know? Lloyd could switch on you, but Chuck just had this . . . air to him. Maybe killing the drivers, or killing Gwendolyn, or what happened to his face, or going blind, or maybe all of it together, it sent him over the edge.’

  ‘Did he tell you what happened to him that night?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Kinda. Chuck was babbling. I told you, he’d lost it. But I figured out a few things from what he was saying, you know? And then when Lloyd came back, he told me the rest of it.’

  Michael rubbed his temples, wishing the boy would speak in a more logical order. He noticed how strongly the smell of the Chinese food was filling the room, the jasmine and grease growing stronger in the heat.

  ‘Okay. Start from the beginning,’ said Michael.

  ‘You know about that plan they had?’ said Vargas. ‘With the poison booze in the Ritz?’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘Well, the night it happened, they’d arranged to meet the delivery drivers there – at the apartment. They’d told them they were going to pay them, but the plan was to snuff them out. And they did. But as they were moving the bodies back into the van Gwendolyn showed up, saw what was happening and ran off. They had to chase after her, but they lost her, and then they caught up with her back at her parents’ house. They followed her from there and picked her up somewhere near the station. They brought her back to the apartment. Then Lloyd went out, and while he was gone, Chuck and Gwendolyn argued, and, well, Chuck did it by accident. While they were arguing and he was trying to explain things to her. I mean, I think that’s what happened – it was hard to tell from what he was saying.’

  ‘He strangled her? And where was Severyn?’

  ‘I don’t know. Cleaning up the van with the delivery drivers, maybe. But he wasn’t there, because Chuck was ranting about having hidden something in the coal cellar and I figured he meant Gwendolyn. And he was babbling about Lloyd and his father not finding out, so I guess he hid her body without telling anyone cuz he wasn’t thinking straight.’

  ‘And this was before Roebuck smashed a bottle into Chuck’s face?’

  Vargas nodded. ‘They were supposed to go over to Bronzeville where Roebuck was, over in this buffet flat near Federal Street. That was the other part of the plan. But this thing with Gwen slowed them down, so by the time they got there Roebuck had smelled a rat and barreled out of there and on the way out he smashed up Chuck’s face real good, and Lloyd had to chase him halfway through Bronzeville before he killed him. And then they went back to the apartment and Lloyd went off to try and straighten things out now that everything had gone to shit and he called me to look after Chuck, get a doctor there, see him fixed up.’

  Michael tried to process what he was hearing, and Vargas’ words were raising more questions than answers, making Michael think what he knew was all wrong. He could understand why they had killed the drivers – cleaning up loose ends – but he still didn’t know where the stooge in the alley fitted into it all.

  ‘Why did they kill Roebuck?’ he asked.

  ‘Because Roebuck worked for Moran,’ said Vargas. ‘That was their plan. I thought you knew.’

  ‘Tell me what the plan was.’

  ‘To start a war. Between Capone and Moran. They staged the poisoning and then the plan was to dump the bodies of the drivers together with the stooge’s. When they all showed up dead together the next day, Capone would think it was Moran making a move on him and he’d start a war. Except Gwen turned up in the middle of it and it all went to shit.’

  Michael turned to look at Ida, and she stared back at him in dismay. Moran wasn’t involved in it, and neither was Capone: they were both dupes. And as Michael thought on it, the thousand possibilities coalesced into one, all the evidence locking into a single, logical chain of events. It explained why the Moran stooge died the same night, why Gwendolyn’s body was still in the coal cellar, why Capone had employed someone to look into the poisoning, and it explained the poisoning itself. And it fitted with what Jacob’s brother had said; if a cartel of heroin dealers wanted free reign in the city, to get rid of the obstacle that was Capone, all they had to do was get Capone and Moran involved in a war, which would weaken them both, and then step in when they’d finished pummeling each other to deliver the killer blow.

  He’d come across the tactic before. It was a Sicilian strategy, setting two factions off against each other, letting them kill one another, then walking into the power vacuum left behind. Michael had heard rumors from Pinkerton operatives in New York that two upstarts over there were planning on using the ploy against the Masseria and Maranzano families. And here in Chicago, someone was employing the same simple, lethal strategy.

  Michael stubbed his cigarette out in one of the empty cartons, releasing a smell of burned grease and paper into the air.

  ‘So what happened with Chuck?’ he asked, looking up at Va
rgas.

  ‘I needed to get him to a hospital. Not just for his face, but for his head too, you know. All I could do was call his father. He arranged for someone to come pick him up, the guy with the glass eye, take him to a hospital he was connected with where they wouldn’t ask any questions. I don’t know where. The guy turned up in a car and took him away and I ain’t seen him since.’

  ‘And Severyn? You know where Severyn is now?’

  ‘No.’

  Vargas said it so quickly, so forcefully, that Michael knew instantly he was lying.

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘I swear, I don’t,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘I’m not gonna ask you again,’ said Michael, glowering at him.

  And again Vargas shook his head and the frustration set something off in Michael. In a red haze he jumped out of his seat, grabbed the boy by the collar and hauled him up against the wall, thumping him into it. And somehow Michael’s gun was in his hand, pressed against Vargas’ neck, and Vargas was sobbing, and behind him, Michael could sense the others had got to their feet too.

  ‘Easy, Michael,’ he heard Walker say from behind him.

  ‘Severyn tried to kill us,’ said Michael to Vargas. ‘He’s going to try and kill you too. I had to move my family out of the city. You tell me where he is.’

  Vargas stared at him, terrified, and in the stillness, Michael felt the sweat pouring off his forehead, the heat in the room, the slippery metal of the Colt in his hand.

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ said Vargas, panic in his voice. ‘But I know where he’s going. I know where he’ll be tonight.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Soldier Field. The boxing match. They had a backup plan if it all went wrong. Capone’s booked a hundred prime seats for the fight. Most of the Outfit’s going to be there. They’re going to bomb it. Take them all out in one go.’

  55

  Dante clambered down to street level, looked for a cafeteria and went to the restrooms to wash the blood from his face and the smell of cordite from his hands. Back out front he asked one of the girls behind the counter if there was a clothes shop thereabouts and was directed to a thrift store a couple of blocks away.