Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 14

by Chicago Confidential (v5. 0)

  He came around, a martini with olive in either hand. “No frog is gonna send one of my people to the canvas.”

  By “my people,” I wasn’t sure whether Charley meant an Italian or a mob-owned boxer—La Motta fit either category, after all.

  We sat on the pink sofa opposite the massive TV console and he gestured toward it, with his martini. “What I’m afraid of is this Kefauver clown will be the next Uncle Miltie.”

  “They’ve been televising some of these hearings.”

  “Yeah, and ’cause of the response, all the New York hearings, after first of the year, are going nationwide!” He shook his head. “That’s why I can’t testify…. Not that I have anything to hide, but the bad publicity…. That I can’t abide.”

  He set his martini on the coffee table and reached in a sportcoat pocket for a small round silver box, the lid of which he popped off; he selected two small pink pills and took them with a drink of martini.

  “This bum ticker of mine,” he said, shaking his head. “Goddamn business pressures.”

  Joey and his brother Rocco came in—Rocco had traded in his maroon robe and railroad cap for a dark brown sportcoat, lighter brown slacks, and a yellow shirt.

  I nodded to Rocco, and he nodded back; he went behind the bar and came back with a bottle of beer. He and Joey sat on the adjacent sofa.

  “What took you?” Charley asked Rocco, a faint edge of crossness in his voice.

  Rocco’s ugly face got uglier. “That cunt—she got mouthy again. She’s fuckin’ worthless. I told her to pack her fuckin’ bags. She’s got half an hour and then I throw her down the fuckin’ stairs.”

  Shaking his head, Joey said, “She used to be such a nice kid.”

  Rocco sneered, shook his head once, and had a gulp of Blatz.

  Charley sipped his martini, shrugged, and said, “Sooner or later they all wear out their welcome…. Rock, we were just getting started, here. I explained to Nate how we don’t like this bad publicity.”

  Rocco nodded, belched. “This traveling dog-and-pony show, it’s really just a sham, y’know. Kefauver don’t know his dick from a doughnut.”

  “A sham?” I said.

  “Don’t misunderstand my brother,” Charley said. “The senator is a sincere, honest man—but he’s a man, with weaknesses, or anyway…traits.”

  “What kind of traits?”

  “Well, he’s impulsive for one. Look at him, bull in the china shop, with this investigation. Not thinking about the political ramifications for his own party.”

  “What I heard,” I said, “was he’s not coming to Chicago till after the election.”

  Which was only a month and a few weeks away. This was an off-year national election, after all, and Kefauver’s fellow Democrat Senator Scott Lucas—a powerful man in Washington, the Senate majority leader—was up for re-election. And the Demos locally were running Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert, chief investigator of the State’s Attorney’s office, for Cook County sheriff.

  Both Lucas and Gilbert were bedfellows of local political boss Jake Arvey—which meant they were also bedfellows of the blond-haired art connoisseur sitting next to me.

  “Also,” Charley was saying, “Kefauver’s ambitious. He wants to be the next president.”

  “So you think this gangbuster stuff is just publicity-seeking.”

  Rocco said, “Goddamn right.”

  “Whatever the case, the more stable minds around Kefauver,” Charley said, “were either able to maneuver him, or talk reason to him. Anyway, even though he’s got staff poking around here, he postponed the Chicago hearings, yes, till after the election; he’s in Kansas City, now.”

  “Truman must love that,” I said, thinking about the President’s own ties to convicted felon, Boss Tom Pendergast.

  Charley was beaming at me; he hadn’t noticed I hadn’t touched my martini—I hate the things. “Now, Nate, I won’t insult you—I guess we know where you stand, if you get called to testify.”

  I shrugged. “Nobody’s talked to me yet.”

  “They’ll get around to you.”

  I didn’t question how he knew this, I just said, “They’ll be wasting their time.”

  Rocco sat forward and said, “You heard about this fifth amendment thing, ain’t you? Charley, tell him about this fifth amendment thing.”

  Charley’s small mouth formed a smile large with condescension. “I believe our friend Mr. Heller knows his constitutional rights, Rock.”

  Rocco said to me, “Even if they get us on contempt, for not answerin’? A few months and you’re on the street again.”

  “Rocky,” Charley said, “Nate can decide for himself how to handle this unpleasantness.”

  So that’s what this was about: getting my assurance that the Outfit had nothing to worry from me, if I testified.

  Or so I thought, till Charley went on to say: “What we really want to talk to you about is this guy Drury, who works for you.”

  “He doesn’t work for me anymore.”

  “You let him go? Fired him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When?”

  “Recently.”

  Charley thought about that, then sighed and said, “I understand you’re friends—you were on the department, together. He saved your life. That has to carry weight.”

  “Bill is still my friend. But he’s his own man.”

  “You need to talk to him. He’s making trouble. Settle him down.”

  I gestured with an open hand. “I don’t carry that kind of weight with him. Nobody does.”

  Charley’s eyes narrowed under the dark slashes of brow. “You could offer him his job back—at an increased salary, if he concentrates on his work for you. I could arrange to pay you the difference, every month.”

  “That’s generous, Charley. But I don’t understand—if you’re not really worried about the Kefauver Committee—”

  “I told you: it’s the bad publicity. This lunatic Drury, he’ll testify, he’ll bring up all kinds of ancient history, he’ll spin his yarns, and we’ll look like a bunch of gangsters.”

  Can you imagine that?

  “He’s a hard-headed Irishman,” I said. “Proud as hell and twice as stubborn—you can’t buy him, and you can’t scare him. And if you…do anything else, you’ll really have bad publicity.”

  Rocco glared at me. And this time I didn’t feel like kidding him.

  Charley looked unhappy, too, as he got up and poured himself another martini. Still over at the bar, he said, “What you’re implying is out of line, Nate. That’s the old school. This is not 1929.”

  Joey said to Charley, as he was sitting back down, “Ask him about Frank.”

  Charley sipped his fresh martini and said, “You ask him. Frank’s your friend.”

  Joey swallowed and sat forward. “Nate, you must’ve seen Frank out in Hollywood.”

  “Just the other night, actually. Why?”

  Joey’s handsome face contorted as he said to me, “I can ask him, but what’s he gonna say? I mean, to me? Being who I am. What do you think?”

  I said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Joey held out open palms. “Where does Frank stand?”

  “Oh. Well—he’s scared right now. The feds are squeezing him—you want bad publicity, try being a show business guy labeled a Red.”

  “Never mind that,” Charley said. “What’s your opinion of Sinatra’s integrity?”

  “I can’t see him selling you guys out,” I said.

  Rocco asked, “Too scared?”

  “No. He likes you guys. Respects you. You know how some people feel about movie stars? That’s how he feels about you.”

  Charley thought about that, nodded, set his martini glass on the coffee table. “Appreciate your frankness, Nate. Your insights.” He checked his watch, then patted my shoulder. “Gotta chase you out, now—before my next appointment.”

  When Charley stood, so did I, and his brothers. I shook hands with Charley
and Rocco, and Joey walked me to the elevator.

  “Thanks for standing up for Frank,” Joey said, in the entryway. “I’ll get you a ringside table, opening night.”

  “Make it a booth,” I said.

  Afternoon was turning to dusk, as I reached my car, parked across from the apartment house. I sat for a while, wondering if Drury had gotten his ass out of there yet. But I was also waiting to see who the next appointment was.

  A heavy-set man in an expensive topcoat with a fur collar walked up the sidewalk to where George the doorman held the door open for him, like he was a regular. Maybe he was: the guy was Captain “Tubbo” Gilbert, candidate for Cook County sheriff.

  I was chewing that over when the blonde showgirl with the black eye came out, wearing a pink long-sleeve sweater and pink slacks and carrying two big pink suitcases with a gray garment bag over her arm. I had a hunch her railroad cap wasn’t in either suitcase.

  She was stumbling; she’d been crying. George looked like he might want to help her, but didn’t.

  She must not have had a car of her own, because she hauled the suitcases to the corner and sat on them, like she was waiting for a bus. A cab might come by, eventually—maybe she’d called one. I knew I should mind my own business.

  Instead, I called out, “Hey!”

  She looked up and squinted across the street at me.

  “You need a lift?” I asked.

  She swallowed and nodded.

  So I got out and went over and helped with her bags, and loaded them—and her—into my Olds.

  As I headed back to the Loop—it was on the tail end of rush hour on the Outer Drive—she looked over at me, timidly, using big brown eyes that were beautiful even if they were bloodshot. “You…you’re not one of them, are you?”

  I figured she meant, was I a mob guy?

  “No,” I said, and hoped to hell I was right.

  At the time of its construction before the turn of the century, the sixteen-story Monadnock Building in the south Loop had been the world’s biggest office building, as well as the last—and largest—of the old-style masonry structures, with walls fifteen feet thick at the base. The dark brown brick monolith nonetheless had a modern, streamlined look—thanks to its flaring base, dramatic bay windows, and the outward swell at the top, in lieu of a cornice. A classy building, a classic building—and home of the A-1 Detective Agency.

  The A-1 had begun back in December ’32 as a single office over a blind pig in an undistinguished building on nearby Van Buren, sharing a street with hockshops, taverns, and flophouses, with fellow tenants numbering abortionists, shylocks, and a palm reader or two. It was always an awful place, but my friend Barney Ross, the boxer, owned it, so that’s where I got my start.

  By ’43 I’d expanded to a suite of two offices and had taken on two operatives (including Lou Sapperstein, who was now a partner) and a knockout secretary named Gladys, who was unfortunately all business; we eventually took over most of the fourth floor. After the war we were briefly in the Rookery, but the space was limited and the rent wasn’t.

  So we now had the corner office on the seventh floor of the venerable Monadnock, with a view over Jackson Boulevard of the Federal Building. I had four full-time operatives and two part-time, who shared a big open bullpen of desks; Lou had a small office and I had a big one (Gladys had a reception cubbyhole). We were close to the courts and the banks, and yet still within spitting distance of the Sin Strip of State Street. It was everything a private eye in Chicago could want.

  I even looked like one, in the military-style London Fog raincoat and my green Stetson fedora, as—on the cool, overcast September morning after my meeting with the Fischetti boys—I strolled in the Monadnock’s main entrance at 53 West Jackson. Plenty of natural light filtered through the store windows on either side of the corridor—the building was narrow and these were the back-end show-window entries of stores facing Dearborn and the glorified alley that was Federal. The Monadnock had open winding stairwells all the way up, beautiful things, but I took the elevator to seven.

  I took a left as I got off on my floor and strode down to the frosted-glass-and-wood wall behind which was our reception nook—or was it a cranny? In bold black, the door said:

  A-1 DETECTIVE AGENCY

  Criminal and Civil Investigations

  Nathan S. Heller

  President

  and in smaller lettering,

  Louis K. Sapperstein Senior Operative

  I went in and Gladys Fortunato looked up from her work. A busty brown-eyed brunette with a sulky mouth, primly professional in a white blouse and dark-framed glasses, Gladys was sitting behind her starkly modern plywood and aluminum desk with its phone, typewriter, and intercom.

  “Good morning, Mr. Heller.”

  “Morning.” I had my hat off; Gladys had long since taught me respect.

  Behind her was another wood-and-frosted-glass wall. On the walls to either side hung framed vintage Century of Progress posters, under which resided boxy lime-color wall-snugged couches, a low-slung plywood and aluminum coffee table in front of each, well stocked with various True Detective magazines that featured stories about me.

  Gladys and I had never been an item, but after her husband (an operative of mine) had died at Guadalcanal, she and I had finally become friendly. Her smile was genuine as she handed me a pile of mail and magazines.

  “Glad to see you drag in,” she said.

  “I didn’t have any appointments. Nobody knows I’m back in town.”

  “Somebody does. You have an appointment in half an hour with Captain Gilbert.”

  “Hell! Why did you take that?”

  “I didn’t—he did. His secretary asked if you had a ten o’clock appointment, and I said no, and she said to put Captain Gilbert down and that was that.”

  “Damn.”

  “And Mr. Sapperstein wants to talk to you.”

  I sighed. “Send him over.”

  “I can get you some coffee, if that’ll help.”

  “No thanks.”

  I went through another frosted-glass door out into the bullpen—Lou’s office was straight ahead, door closed. The area was fairly open—I don’t like butting desks up against each other—and (while I was no modernist in Charley Fischetti’s league) the office furniture I’d chosen was the latest stuff: plywood, Fiberglas, perforated aluminum, and wire, sleek and efficient. We were in an ancient building, with foam green plaster walls and dark molding, and I wanted to send a contemporary message.

  About half the desks were filled—my ops spent a good share of their time in the field, and of course Drury’s desk was vacant—and I nodded a couple hellos as I headed around to the right, stopped to get a Dixie cup of water from the cooler, then went through the door marked PRIVATE.

  I hung up my hat and coat in the closet. My office was a spacious affair with a comfortable couch, padded leather client chairs, wooden file cabinets, and—positioned against the opposite wall to take advantage of the big double bay windows—the mammoth old scarred desk I’d had since the beginning. I wasn’t going to subject myself to any of that atomic age nonsense.

  My office walls were decorated with framed, mostly signed photos of celebrities, sometimes with me, sometimes not. A few magazine covers were framed as well—a Real Detective that covered my handling of the Sir Harry Oakes “locked room” murder, a Daring Detective showcasing my cracking of the Peacock homicide, a couple others—an egotistical array, but it impressed clients.

  I leaned back in my swivel chair and sipped my water, wondering if Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert—who I’d seen yesterday afternoon, going in for the next appointment with Charley Fischetti—had spotted me, as well.

  Two raps on the door announced Sapperstein, who did not wait for a response, just ambled in, shutting the door behind him, and pulled up a chair. He had his suitcoat off, exposing dark suspenders and the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt; despite this casualness, his royal blue tie wasn’t loosened.

/>   My bald, bespectacled partner—who at sixty could still kick the hell out of most men half his age, belying his librarian looks—said, “Did Gladys mention you’d had a number of phone calls already this morning?”

  “She said Tubbo’s secretary called for an appointment.”

  He frowned. “Yeah, so I heard—what’s that about?”

  “What do you think? Drury. Tubbo’s on his short list, right next to Fischetti.”

  “Where is Bill this morning? Not that he’s ever around. Did you ever track him down yesterday? Not to mention our tape recorders.”

  “I tracked him down, and he’s not going to be around, other than I hope to bring back those Reveres. I fired him.”

  Briefly, I told Lou how I’d caught our operative in the basement of the Barry Apartments.

  “Crazy bastard,” Lou said, shaking his head. “He’ll get us all killed before he’s through.”

  “No he won’t. He’s not part of the A-1, anymore. We have nothing to do with him and his little war on crime.”

  “Let’s see if you can convince Tubbo of that.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I think I convinced Fischetti—or anyway, I thought I had. With Tubbo turning up on my doorstep this morning, who the hell knows?”

  That astounded him. “You saw Fischetti yesterday? What, Charley?”

  “Charley and Rocco. And Joey, for that matter.”

  I gave him the lowdown, quickly—I left out the part about me giving Rocco’s discarded, battered showgirl a lift into the Loop…or that she was still in my residential suite at the St. Clair Hotel. (You’ll get the lowdown on that, in due time. Patience.)

  As I wound up my story, Lou lifted a pack of Camels from his breast pocket and lighted up. I could tell he was thinking about how to approach me, on something. Finally he waved out his match and said, “Those other calls I mentioned? They’re all from Robinson—Kefauver’s man.”

  “I know who he is.”

  Lou’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, you’ve met him?”

  “No. But I know who he is.”

  “Robinson wants to meet with you. No subpoena—just informal. Over at the Stevens Hotel.”