Better Dead

by Max Allan Collins

  “That he was innocent. That the only thing close to spying he’d ever done was industrial. That he barely knew Julius Rosenberg. That Max Elitcher was a rat bastard who got himself in a corner and had to give somebody’s name and just picked his old pal’s out of a hat. That the FBI arranged with the Mexican cops, when Sobell and his family were cooling off down there, to bust him on a bogus bank robbery charge. That the Mexican cops in the middle of the night burst in and beat him senseless with blackjacks, then heavily armed Mexies drove him and his family in two cars across the border to the waiting feds. That he made a mistake not testifying but that his attorney said he should just keep mum because the prosecution’s case was so damn weak, he’d surely walk. Now the guy’s doing thirty years at Alcatraz, Nate. If you were him, would you pay the lawyer bill?”

  “He’s paying now,” I said. “For a trip that was a bust, you sure got a shit-pot out of him.”

  Fred sent me a Bronx cheer all the way from California. “Nothing that helps. He was talking for the hidden tape recorder. Just wanted the government to know how pissed off he was at the way he was railroaded. He says he hardly knows Julius and doesn’t know Ethel at all.”

  “Listen, Fred, thanks. I appreciate this.”

  “I hope we’re getting a good payday.”

  “Fair to middlin’. But I’m sticking Drew Pearson with all the expenses, which will be more than we make and then some.”

  That made Fred laugh, and we signed off.

  It was almost two hours before I was due to meet Natalie, so I drew the drapes, took off my suit coat and tie, kicked off my shoes, and sacked out on the bed. As the president of the A-1, I wasn’t used to the kind of legwork I’d put in this morning, and I was beat.

  * * *

  The suite was so fancy it had a doorbell, and that was what woke me. I’d been out for a while, down deep, judging by my grogginess and the film in my mouth. The bell rang again and I checked my watch on the nightstand: just before six. She was early.

  I padded out into the living room and crossed to the entry area, slipping in my socks a little on the marble floor. I was preparing something witty to say to Natalie when I opened the door and it wasn’t her.

  Instead, I found two characters with the kind of lumpy faces that come from beatings that healed wrong. They came barreling in, wearing scowls and tailored suits and hundred-dollar hats, the one in front shoving me back, the one behind him slamming the door shut. I’d never seen them before but they seemed to dislike me anyway.

  The one in front was tall and bullnecked and the one in back was taller and bullnecked. They shared olive complexions, dark eyes, dark well-oiled hair, cauliflower ears, and a scattering of facial scars. They could be told apart chiefly by the one in front having scar tissue over his right eye that made it droopy, while the other one didn’t. Maybe they were brothers.

  “Get dressed, Heller,” the front man said, his voice conveying all the music of furniture scraping. “You’re coming with us.”

  A statement to that effect usually is followed by the display of a badge, but no badge was in sight, and anyway the ex-boxer or maybe ex-wrestler look of the pair made them as muscle. Cheap hoods in expensive suits, as we Hammett-type detectives say, and I kneed the spokesman in the balls.

  He bowed to me, graciously, hat flying, the bigger guy moving forward, reaching into his coat probably not to scratch himself, eyes big and indignant, and I lurched toward him, throwing my forearm into what little throat he had, slamming with bone and force, and he went down on his back, gurgling, hands at his neck as if trying to strangle himself. The spokesman was still bending forward, his ass in the air. I kicked it and sent him sliding across the marble floor into the living room. The bigger one, hatless now, had his legs up like a bug on its back, gasping for air, clawing for the gun under his arm, but I got to it first, yanking it free from its holster, a .38 Colt Police Positive with a five-inch barrel.

  The spokesman, whose slide had stopped just before the two facing fireplace couches, turned over and was getting a gun out himself from under a shoulder, but I kicked the piece out of his fumbling grasp and he looked up at me with fear in both eyes, droopy one included, a schoolyard bully with the tables turned. His gun hit the marble floor just right to spin like a top. Cute. With my left hand, I grabbed up the weapon—also a .38, a Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special—and went over and sat on the couch facing where my guests lay on the floor. My hands full of their guns, I crossed my legs and waited for them to recover.

  The smaller one, or I should say the less large one, got to his feet first, unsteadily, as befitting a guy who just got kneed in the nuts and kicked in the ass. He looked at me like he didn’t know whether to rush me or cry, then did neither, just stood there with his arms at his side, open palms toward me in reluctant surrender.

  I waved to the couch opposite and nodded for him to sit down. We said nothing to each other. What the hell did we have to talk about? We hadn’t even met.

  The bigger guy finally got off his back and to his feet with the fluid awkwardness of a film running backward. He had no expression at all but his face was very red, flushed crimson with either shame or rage or maybe a cocktail of both.

  I waved with his partner’s gun for him to come join us. Then they were both sitting across from me, glass coffee table between us, and I had their two weapons, one pointed at each, which struck me as comical. I was in my mid-forties and had hardly broken a sweat. Wasn’t breathing hard, either. Maybe I was a detective out of Hammett.

  “Where were we going,” I asked cheerfully, “before I decided not to?”

  The droopy-eyed slightly smaller one had composed himself, to some degree anyway. His hands were on his knees. The bigger guy, blood in his face fading, had fists in his lap. Big as this pair were, they might well charge me, confiscated .38s or not. And I hadn’t patted them down, so they might have further weapons.

  But I didn’t think so.

  “Listen, Heller,” the droopy-eyed prick said, but I raised a hand to halt him.

  “Make it ‘Mr. Heller.’ But I don’t want your names. I don’t want to dignify you assholes by using your names. I’ll ask again. Where were we going?”

  “To the barbershop,” he said.

  “You forgot ‘hippity hop.’”

  “No. Really. Mr. Costello is down there, waiting to talk to you. Also, getting his hair cut and a shave. Mr. Costello likes to double up on things.”

  “Frank Costello,” I said.

  The spokesman nodded, then the other guy did, too. Delayed reaction.

  “Mr. Costello just wants,” the spokesman continued, “to talk to you, Mr. Heller. Public place. No muss or fuss.”

  There had already been a fuss, and they both looked mussed. But I didn’t feel the need to rub it in.

  Besides, for the first time, I was a little bit scared. Scratch that. I was very damn scared. Frank Costello was the top mobster in New York. And New York was a fairly big town.

  “Just to talk,” I said.

  “Just to talk,” the spokesman said.

  “Then why did you two come in like Gang Busters?”

  “Because Mr. Costello said we should.”

  “Why did he say that?”

  “He said we should rattle you a little. Put the fear of God in you. Then bring you downstairs for a talk.”

  “I don’t get rattled that easy, and I don’t believe in God. So get the fuck out of here.”

  Now they looked at each other. And then at me.

  The spokesman said, “It’s a friendly invitation, Mr. Heller. A public place.”

  “You said that, and as invitations go, this one hasn’t struck me as all that friendly. Get out.”

  “Mr. Heller…”

  “Maybe I’ll be down in a few minutes. I’ll give you your guns back then.”

  The spokesman looked troubled. He looked like a guy trying hard not to fart.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Could you not tell Mr. Costel
lo about this?”

  “That I took you girls to the woodshed? Why shouldn’t I?”

  The bigger one growled. Actually growled.

  The spokesman said, “Let’s agree to call this a misunderstanding. It won’t do none of us no good with Mr. Costello, he hears about this—makes us look bad, makes you look uncooperative. Then nobody here has to have a grudge against nobody else. What say, Mr. Heller?”

  He squeezed a smile out like the metaphorical fart he’d been suppressing.

  The bigger one didn’t manage a smile, but at least his face was flesh-colored again, except for random white scar tissue. He was nodding a little, agreeing with his partner’s assessment.

  One at a time, I emptied the bullets from the two revolvers onto the coffee table, making brittle rain. Then I motioned to the door and they got up slowly and walked in that direction, with me following. This was dangerous, since they could turn on me, now that the weapons were unloaded. But I believed they really had come to summon me, not thrash me or kill my ass.

  On their way, they picked up their respective hats where they’d been knocked off and put them back on. The bigger guy opened the door for the spokesman, who stepped into the hall; then the bigger one followed, and they both looked back at me like dogs expecting a treat. I handed them their empty guns.

  “See you downstairs in five minutes,” I said.

  The spokesman nodded, the bigger one frowning but in nothing more than stupidity, and I shut the door on them.

  Okay, now I was breathing hard.

  Fucking Frank Costello.

  I went into the bedroom, got the nine-millimeter Browning from my suitcase, the shoulder holster too, and put them on. Tie snugged back on, in my suit coat and shoes and everything, I returned to the entryway, gun in hand, carefully opened the door, and found the hallway empty.

  Time to go to the barbershop.

  Hippity hop.

  CHAPTER

  10

  The Waldorf barbershop was like something out of a Busby Berkeley musical circa 1934, all chrome and marble and green and black, with endless rows of black-leather-padded porcelain chairs facing each other in generous space made infinite by backing mirrors. You half-expected the white-uniformed barbers to start tap-dancing with the pretty green-uniformed girls manning (so to speak) the manicure booths at the far right. Maybe, if I waited long enough, an overhead view would have the girls forming a big pair of scissors around the boys as a giant head.

  The prettiest manicurist, a redhead, was in the last booth. That’s where Frank Costello, the so-called Prime Minister of the Underworld, was getting his nails done. Funny I hadn’t noticed those nails looking particularly nice when—during Senator Kefauver’s televised Crime Committee hearings—the focus was on the gangster’s nervous hands after Costello objected to being on camera.

  Otherwise Frank Costello had never conveyed public nervousness in his life, sporting the same cool demeanor and slicked-back good grooming of movie star George Raft, whose older, not-quite-as-handsome brother he might be. Costello’s apparel was Hollywood gangster, too—dark blue pin-striped suit more expensive than a week at this hotel, light blue shirt, blue-and-white striped tie, jeweled silver cuff links. I couldn’t see them, but it was a safe bet that his shoes had a mirror shine.

  He kept a suite here, or anyway his mistress did, and whether he slept here or in his apartment on Central Park, he came to the Waldorf barbershop for a daily haircut and sometimes manicure; the place was his second office. The man he replaced in the mob hierarchy, the deported Lucky Luciano, had lived at the Waldorf, too. So had my late friend Benny Siegel of don’t-call-him-Bugsy infamy. Of course, lately Costello had lived in various federal pens, due to contempt of Congress and tax charges.

  But at the moment, he sat in a booth at his beloved Waldorf tonsorial palace.

  “Nathan Heller,” he said, his voice a mellow baritone with some edges that could use sanding. There was a warmth conveying an old friendship about to be renewed. We’d met a few times over the years, but nothing to rate that.

  “Mr. Costello,” I said with a nod and a smile. “I understand you wanted to see me.”

  Costello nodded and said to the manicurist, “Shoo, sweetie, while I soak. My friend and me need to speak.”

  She seemed used to this kind of thing and her smile was sunny as she swayed off to cool her pretty heels.

  I said, “Be right with you, Mr. Costello.”

  His two boys were seated on a bench against the rear wall, as if waiting their turn. With my back to their boss, I handed the spokesman a white Waldorf stationery envelope as lumpy as his face. He gave me a wary look.

  I nodded to his confederate, who was concentrating on whether to shit or go blind. “Split ’em with Chuckles here. And remember that this is the way I sent them back to you.”

  The spokesman felt the .38 slugs through the paper and nodded, then slipped the envelope in his suit coat pocket. He managed a smile for me and even winked with the droopy eye, which was creepy but appreciated.

  Back at the booth, I slid in across from the mob boss as if I was the new manicurist and said amiably, “Mr. Costello, you had your boys throw a little scare my way. Was that really necessary?”

  He shrugged shoulders that had no real need for the suit coat’s padding. “I was trying to make a point, Nate. Hope they didn’t overdo. And it’s ‘Frank,’ please. Come on. How long have we known each other?”

  We didn’t really know each other at all.

  “Way back,” I said with half a smile. “I believe Frank Nitti introduced us.”

  Melancholy made a momentary visit to Costello’s face. “He was a good man, Nitti. Wish he was still around. Chicago could use him. They say you two was tight. Father and son, almost.”

  “An exaggeration. What point, Frank?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You said you were making a point.”

  It was frankly absurd seeing New York’s most powerful gangster with his fingers dipped in two little clear-glass finger bowls. But somehow I managed not to laugh.

  “Yeah, right, I was,” he said, nodding. “And the point I was making is that you could get yourself in hot water, Nate, if you don’t watch yourself.”

  This is where Sam Spade on the radio would say, Seems to me you’re already in hot water, Frank—your fingers, anyway.

  I said, “Why’s that?”

  He drew a breath. He had the kind of big chest that drawing a breath made huge. Then he exhaled and it was merely big again. “Somebody asked me to really make a point, Nate. Beat you within an inch, dump you on a side road, to think things over.”

  “What kind of things?”

  Naturally arching eyebrows arched farther. “You’re looking into this Rosenberg deal. Trying to find new evidence, new witnesses.”

  “I suppose I could ask you how you know that, Frank. But what I really want to know is … why do you care?”

  “I don’t give two runny shits whether those Commies live or die. Fine with me if they go to the chair, though I admit I’m not much for frying females. Call me a sentimental slob.”

  “Well, you did say ‘somebody’ asked you to hand me my ass. So it’s obviously not your idea. Why didn’t you?”

  “You said it yourself, Nate. We go way back.”

  I had to say it. “We don’t know each other all that well, Frank. I respect you. You run things like Nitti did, like a business executive—and you don’t sell poison.” Narcotics trafficking was out under Costello. “And maybe you respect me, too. But is that enough to give me a pass?”

  He drew another chest-expanding breath, a natty gorilla with his pinkies soaking. “The somebody who made this request of me is a good friend of somebody else, who I do respect.”

  I actually could follow that. “But you don’t respect the party who asked you to get my attention.”

  Costello frowned in thought. “Well, I do and I don’t. He’s young. He’s smart as a goddamn whip. And mean as a da
mn snake. Has the makings of a top mouthpiece, kind we can always use in my business. But he’s reckless, this slimy little cocksucker. And the idea that somehow I owe him enough that this little shit can come to me with a demand like this?” He sighed deep enough to make the water in the tiny dishes ripple. “Truth is, Nate, this person who imposed on me? Is the one I’d like to dump on a side road with a swolled-up head and something to think about.”

  “Whereas you’re giving me a free ride?”

  He raised a hand from a bowl and pointed a dripping finger. “What I’m giving you, Nate, is free advice. There is nothing, no fucking thing, this sleazy little smart-ass kike won’t do.… Excuse me, that was out of line. You’re of the Hebrew persuasion yourself, right?”

  “Nobody persuaded me,” I said with a smile. “I just got my old man’s name hung on me. Thank God for my mother’s Irish mug, huh?”

  He found that amusing and laughed. Unless that was a cough.

  “The thing is,” Costello said, “this certain smart-ass kike is well connected. In my world, sure, but also Uncle Sam’s, plus in this city generally. He was the right hand of a guy I helped rise to a high position which is useful to me. Do you know what two guys I’m talking about?”

  Roy Cohn had been U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol’s second-in-command, and not just at the Rosenberg trial. Saypol, of course, now sat on the New York State Supreme Court. You couldn’t get that kind of appointment in this state without Costello’s nod.

  “I know who you’re talking about,” I said.

  He pointed a dripping forefinger again. “This smart-ass kid is concerned that you might actually clear that Commie couple.”

  “Still a long shot.”

  “I’m a good American and I hate Commies like the clap, but this is your business, so I won’t interfere.”

  “Other than to get my attention short of a ride in the country.”

  He beamed at me, at the moment reminding me more of Bela Lugosi than George Raft. “That’s right, Nate. I can see why that other Frank liked you. You have brains. Try to hold on to them.… Okay, honey!”

  That last wasn’t for me—he was summoning the manicurist, who was seated off in a corner, using an emery board on her own nails. The redhead looked up brightly and padded over, all lipstick and curves. A month’s worth of her tips from just Costello would likely finance a few nights at the Waldorf, too.