“None taken.”
“But this was stupid. This is bringing heat, these killings. St. Valentine’s Day Massacre type heat. Jake Lingle type heat.”
He was nodding.
I continued: “The Crime Committee hearings are getting moved to next week, you know. Kefauver is tossing fucking subpoenas over this city like advertising leaflets out of a plane.”
“You’re tellin’ me. You know, he’s going after our wives next, the prick.”
I wondered where he heard that.
Shifting in my hard seat, I said, “I figure this is like when Dutch Schultz wanted to hit Dewey, and the rest of the New York boys said no fuckin’ way. You don’t hit a cop; you don’t bump off a public figure.”
Giancana’s expression was blandly friendly; but he was still studying me. “You’re not just sayin’ this, Heller. This is how you see it.”
“Sam, this is how I see it. I’m not just trying to talk my way out of a tight spot.”
“This ain’t a tight spot.” He nodded toward his hands, still spread on the table. “It’s a public place, Heller. That’s why I arranged to meet you somewheres like this. Specifically, this joint ’cause Bas was the lawyer for the management…and, after you sort through all the holding companies, I’m the management.”
All of this was news to me. “Bas was your attorney?”
“Only where certain businesses, like this one, was concerned. And Drury had no knowledge of that. don’t get thinking Bas was dirty, ’cause he wasn’t—he was just a lawyer with various clients…like a private eye can have various clients.”
“Right. Would I be overstepping if I suggested you might have been helping Bas in his efforts to unseat Tubbo?”
He twitched a grimace. “I’d rather not say. Tubbo has been a friend to Outfit interests for a lot of years—one-stop shopping, a fixer who can help with both the cops and the State’s Attorney’s office. But a guy that’s been around as long as Tubbo can get…too powerful. Too full of himself.”
For a guy who’d “rather not say,” Sam had said a hell of a lot.
I sat forward. “Was Tubbo involved in the Drury hit? The Bas hit?”
“Heller, I don’t know the answer to that question. But I know you—and know how you can go off on these…little rampages, now and then. You wouldn’t talk to the Kefauver Committee, but you might decide to settle some scores in your own way. You’ve done it before.”
I just shrugged.
He leaned forward, and lifted his right hand off the table, to gesture. “Now…there’s something you need to know, Heller: neither of these hits was…what’s the word? Approved—authorized. Just the opposite—Charley Fischetti asked to have this done, and was told not to. In no uncertain terms.”
“But he did it anyway.”
Giancana leaned back, raised another eyebrow. “Charley claims not—swears up and down, stack of Bibles, mother’s grave. This was a meeting at the highest level, understand—Ricca, Accardo, Guzik….”
“Do they believe him?”
“Fuck no. But Charley hasn’t been challenged over this. He’s still a powerful guy, Heller—Al’s cousin, remember. And a smart guy—knows the business side. Understands the politics. Which is why you’d think he’d know better….”
“So the boys are letting this slide?”
He shook his head, folded his arms. “Don’t think there isn’t a lot of displeasure. Don’t think guys like Ricca and Big Tuna like having to pack their bags in the middle of the night and beat ass out of town, like common punk crooks.”
The back of my neck was starting to tingle. “You’re not saying…. You’re not giving me permission to….”
Tiny shrug. “I’m not saying anything. I might be implying that if you wanted to do something, personal, about Charley Fischetti…there would be no repercussions from certain circles. You know, when you might expect there to be.”
“…And just how would I find Charley Fischetti?”
“At a hotel in Mexico.”
I blinked. “What hotel in Mexico?”
Giancana reached inside his coat, almost as if he were going for a gun; but I wasn’t nervous, anymore. He just handed me a small piece of paper with quite a bit of writing on it.
“That hotel in Mexico,” he said.
I slipped the piece of paper in my pocket without looking at it. “I saw Bas go down.”
Giancana’s eyes flared; this really was news to him. “No kidding?”
“No kidding…. Obviously, not in time to stop it. I got a shot off at the torpedoes—cracked their windshield. Got a good look at the bastards.”
“Anyone you know?”
“No.” I described the mustached pair. “Anybody you know?”
His expression gave away nothing. “Maybe…. Maybe.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Sam?”
With his folded arms, and his tiny smile, Giancana seemed guarded, to say the least. “Heller, like you, I have to be discreet. I’m limited in what I can say. But I will say this— those two gunmen are almost certainly from out of town…just not very far out of town.”
“Jesus, Sam—what does that mean?”
Another tiny shrug. “That’s all I can say. That slip of paper I give you?”
“Yeah?”
“The number at the bottom—that’s a local number. You have any problems—need any…assistance…you call that number. If I don’t answer, somebody will, who can get me in a hurry.”
“You’re not going to Florida?”
“Not right away.”
“You, uh—mentioned Kefauver going after the wives of Outfit guys. Where did you hear that, Sam?”
“I just heard it, is all.”
“You have somebody on Kefauver’s staff, don’t you?”
“Now you’re asking too many questions, Heller.”
“Just tell me—is it Halley?”
“Fuck no! That vicious, slandering son of a bitch. If he was ours, would he make so many lives miserable?”
I kept pressing, though my tone seemed casual. “You know Rocco married that girl—from the Chez, Jackie Payne? Married her the other day so she couldn’t testify against him.”
Giancana smirked. “Yeah—little Miss Chicago. But word now is, Rocky was wrong…that canary can be made to sing, or sent to the slam for contempt. And you know what’s gonna happen then, don’t you?”
“What, Sam?”
“She’ll talk. She’ll sing her lungs out. I mean, shit, she’s a junkie…. The feds will own the keys to her.” He shook his head. “Fucking Rocco—he’s a chowderhead, anyway, a real shit-for-brains. And he put her on the junk!”
“Maybe you wouldn’t mind if something bad happened to him,” I said.
His face was blandly expressionless again. “I’d get over it.”
Feeling like I was trying to put the pin back in a grenade, I ventured, “Sam—the girl. Miss Chicago?”
“Yeah?”
“She’s a friend of mine. I don’t want to see her hurt.”
He frowned—almost scowled. “Listen up, damn it: my friends and I are not trying to attract attention, right now. Drury and Bas getting splattered is the worst fucking thing that could have happened—bumping off a beauty queen, recently married to a Fischetti, is just as bad. Gimme a little credit, Heller, for Christsake!”
“Sorry, Sam.”
Smiling, he sat forward and patted my arm. “Hey—you and me, we have no problems. You need somebody like me, in my circles, to be your guardian angel. Like Nitti used to be. We aren’t in the same exact racket, but we can be helpful to each other. Do each other favors.”
Like have me bump off your fellow gangsters, when they’ve rubbed you the wrong way? is what I thought…but sure as hell didn’t say it.
“For example, a favor you could do me, Heller…”
“Yeah?”
“Introduce me to your pal Sinatra, sometime.” Giancana stood. “Listen…it’s going to start getting busy in here, Friday
night, I need to be scarce.”
“Yeah—sure.”
“But you can stay, Heller—run a tab on the house. Some decent girls are comin’ out. You see anything you like, just tell Fred…the bartender.”
“Well, thanks, Sam…”
“But they’re not hookers, understand. Lay a double saw-buck on ’em in the morning, as a kind of gift, and you’ll have a friend for life.”
Giancana walked toward the exit, and his bodyguard— Sally—scampered after him, like a two-hundred-fifty-pound puppy. It was still daylight out there, and a slice of it knifed into the smoky joint, as the gangster and his thug slipped out.
I finished my drink, but I didn’t stick around, and I sure as hell didn’t take him up on his offer of my pick of the girls. It wasn’t that I was above that sort of thing; but I wasn’t sure I wanted a friend for life.
Particularly one named Sam Giancana.
My neighbor the Federal Building (which was also the United States Courthouse) was a cross-shaped eight-story structure perched on Dearborn, between Adams and Jackson, extending to Clark, with an octagonal domed central tower adding another seven imposing stories. The grim splendor of the building’s ornate Roman Corinthian design seemed an apropos setting for dramatic trials of national note, like the $29 million judgment against Standard Oil and the Al Capone tax case…both matters of big business, after all.
In addition to the impressive courtrooms—with their William B. Van Ingren murals depicting the development of law over the ages—the Federal Building was also a rabbit’s warren of hearing rooms, offices, and conference chambers, as well as cubbyholes where distinguished lawyers and jurists could cut their sleazy deals.
Kefauver had been given one of the cubbyholes: a modest, windowless room to set up his temporary office, with space for a desk, a few hard chairs, and a bookend-style pair of file cabinets, with cardboard boxes of file folders stacked precariously along the plaster walls. It was as if the senator had been assigned a storage room that happened to include a desk.
I was sitting across from the Democratic congressman from Tennessee, who—when I’d stuck my head in the open door of his cubicle—had stood behind the file-cluttered desk, rising to an impressive six foot three or maybe four, extending me not only his hand but a wide, ingratiating grin.
In his rolled-up shirt sleeves and suspenders, his blue-and-red patterned tie loose under a prominent adam’s apple, Kefauver gave an immediate impression of unpretentiousness, a tall, angular, lanky individual with searching eyes behind round-framed tortoise-shell glasses and a beaky nose that swooped to a peak; facially, he struck me as a cross between Abe Lincoln and Pa Kettle.
“Mr. Heller,” he said, in an easy, drawling, soft-spoken manner (he didn’t have to be wearing his coonskin cap for you to guess he came from the South), “I am very grateful to you for agreeing to see me at such short notice…and on a Saturday.”
I’d received the message toward the end of business, yesterday—Kefauver was arriving from Kansas City that night, and requested a one-on-one meeting with me, Saturday morning.
I was sitting with my raincoat and fedora in my lap. “That’s all right, Senator—my office is just across the street, and I was planning to come in, anyway. I often save paperwork and letters for Saturday mornings, when the phone doesn’t ring.”
“And I wanted to speak to you without my staff present,” he said with a gesture of a frying-pan hand. “They’re great people, but you know, lawyers—particularly prosecutors—are sometimes, well, deficient in social skills.”
“I don’t think we could pack your staff in here, if we tried.”
Kefauver chuckled once, but his grin was endless. He gestured with both big hands. “I know—beggars can’t be choosers, I guess. I never did figure to be popular in Chicago…. But we do have the use of a conference room, and we’ll have hearing room space, as well.”
“I understand you’re getting started soon.”
“Next week…. And I understand you’re reluctant to testify.”
I shrugged, grinned back at him. “Let’s just say I’m not anxious—on the other hand, I haven’t come down with a case of Kefauveritis.”
A nod and another wide smile. “Ah yes—that mysterious new ailment…the most pronounced symptom of which is an irresistible urge to travel.”
“But I do know my constitutional rights, Senator—I can decline to answer on the fifth amendment; and I can protect my clients on grounds of confidentiality.”
He nodded some more; his goofy-looking combination of hayseedish and professorial qualities was oddly appealing. “That’s true—as I understand it from my associates, your standard operating procedure with criminal cases is to work for the attorneys of the client, not the clients themselves.”
“That’s right.”
“Well that’s a very clever approach. You’re serving your clients effectively, and that’s exactly what you’re supposed to be doing…. You can’t be faulted for that. And I wouldn’t dream of asking you to betray your profession’s code of ethics.”
I tried to find sarcasm in that, without success.
“Senator, if I might explain myself further…?”
“Certainly.”
“I don’t mean to be a hostile witness. It’s just that I don’t approve of your committee’s methods. Your traveling circus rolls into town, you make a lot of noise, cause a lot of trouble, and move on, leaving the rest of us to clean up after the elephants.”
He was sitting back in his swivel chair, arms folded; friendly though his expression was, he was clearly appraising me. “I can understand your point of view, Mr. Heller—but you need to understand mine: my aim is to expose the influence of the underworld on American life.”
“That simple, is it?”
“And that complex. This is the fullest, most public investigation of organized crime ever attempted in America—and we have captured the attention, and more importantly the imagination, of the press and the public. By the time we hit New York—the climax of our ‘circus’—we will be fully televised. The average American, for the first time, will be aware of the national crime syndicate—thanks to our efforts, the word ‘Mafia’ is already entering the national vocabulary.”
I sighed. “I don’t mean to knock you off your high horse, Senator—but if you really meant that, you’d be going after more than just gambling.”
Sitting forward, he fixed a penetrating gaze on me. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Heller—it’s the tie-up between crime and politics that most makes me sick…the rottenness in public life. But from what I hear and read about you, you’re a pragmatic man…and you’ll understand that I have to start somewhere.”
“Plus you don’t want to alienate these political machines that you’re gonna depend on when you run for the presidency.”
He grunted a humorless laugh. “Oh, I already have alienated them—and will further, here in Chicago, by moving the hearings up before the election.”
“Well…I have to admire your balls for that. Senator. If you’ll excuse the crudity.”
“I appreciate the compliment. Also, that you seem to understand what’s at risk for me, personally.”
I shrugged. “You may do fine without the political machines—after all, the public dearly loves a gangbuster.”
That seemed to amuse him, and he leaned his elbow against the desk and his chin against his hand. “Would it surprise you, Mr. Heller, to find out I’m a gambler myself? I do relish a good horse race.”
“I’ve heard that, Senator.” I didn’t mention I’d also heard this father of four had an eye for the skirts.
“So you might think I’m a hypocrite.” He leaned back in the chair again, rocking a little. “But it’s a bit like the situation your friend Eliot Ness was in, back in Prohibition days. Mr. Ness, I understand, likes to take a drink now and then.”
These days, Eliot was damn near a lush.
But I just said, “You could say that.”
“Still
, Ness knew the Mafia underworld was tied up in bootlegging…and that every other sin that can be marketed to man, from prostitution to dope peddling, was part of the same vile syndicate. So he went after the bootleggers. Here in Chicago—do I have to tell you?—you have the national race wire, the manufacture and distribution of coin-operated machines, including slots, and the numbers racket and every other manner of illegal gambling you can think of, flourishing openly.”
“That’s Chicago, Senator. Do you really think you’re going to change it?”
He shook his head. “I can’t change human nature…” But then he began to nod. “We can, however, expose these vicious, homicidal thugs…who think murders like those of Bill Drury and Marvin Bas are just the price of doing business.”
Now I leaned back, folding my arms. “What if I were to tell you that those murders were hired by Syndicate renegades? That Accardo and Ricca and the rest had expressly forbidden those murders—but Charley Fischetti hired them done, just the same.”
The eyes behind the round lenses widened. “Are you providing me with information, Mr. Heller?”
“If you want to call it that. And this…right here…is what you should be doing, if you really want to investigate the Outfit. You want help fighting this war, Senator? Then don’t put guys like me on the stand, where we embarrass ourselves and get added to the same hit list as Drury and Bas. Talk to us behind the scenes, on the q.t. But no—you want to play Ed Sullivan, and put on a show.”
“I think you misconstrue our motives—”
“Maybe I do. But can you seriously think putting some mobster on the stand will result in a meaningful dialogue? The revealing of new, key evidence? I know you’re just campaigning for president, Senator—I mean, don’t kid a kidder.”
His smile settled in one cheek. “I’m surprised at you, Mr. Heller. I understood you had a highly successful office in Hollywood—I assumed that you understood show business.”
“I don’t follow you.”
He leaned forward again. “Most of what we’re gathering is from confidential sources. Frankly, if Bill Drury hadn’t been so intent on clearing himself, and pursuing his crusade in so public a fashion, he would have been more useful to us—and might still be alive.”
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