Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 14

by Chicago Confidential (v5. 0)

  I’m sure Kefauver did this reluctantly; but the politics of it were unavoidable. Whether some deal with Tubbo had been cut in advance—and his “surprise” appearance was expected—or the senator instinctively toed the party line by temporarily covering up Tubbo’s testimony, I couldn’t tell you.

  What neither Tubbo nor Kefauver had contemplated, however, was a certain sleazy private detective among the insiders in the gallery, a surveillance-savvy divorce dick whose briefcase contained a battery-operated miniature wire recorder about the size of a fat paperback book, with a spool handling two and a half hours without a reload. In other words, Drury’s tapes may have been missing, but Heller’s weren’t. I sold them to Ray Brennan of the Chicago Sun-Times for a grand—a fact never revealed until now—and Captain Dan Gilbert’s full committee testimony appeared in that paper on November 2nd…just in time to louse up the election for Tubbo.

  I would rather have put a bullet in the fat fuck’s brain; but had to settle for just ruining him. The man who plotted with Charley Fischetti to have Bill Drury and Marvin Bas murdered lost the sheriff’s race by nearly four hundred thousand votes— and, even in Chicago, the Democratic machine was soundly trounced by protest voting from its own party, from key county offices to Senate majority leader Lucas losing to Everett Dirksen.

  The day following the election, Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert resigned in disgrace as chief investigator of the State’s Attorney’s office and from the police department itself. He had plenty of money for his old age, but the commodity he valued most of all—power—was lost to him forever.

  Tim O’Conner lived on the far Northwest Side, on Forest View Lane off Milwaukee Avenue. I’d called Tim and told him I had something for him—Bill Drury’s widow, Annabel, had asked me to deliver a personal item—and he said tonight would be fine.

  A few weeks had passed since Tubbo appeared before the Crime Committee—the papers were still having a field day with the story, including speculation over who might have leaked the testimony (Kefauver blamed the reporting company who transcribed the court recorder’s work). This was a Tuesday evening in early November and drizzly and cold, enough so that I’d zipped the lining into my London Fog.

  I pulled the Olds into the Forest Preserve and walked across the woods, leaves crunching damply under my Florsheims, and angled through the trees until I came out at the dead-end street that was Forest View Lane. Tim’s house was the last one on the end of the block, with no one directly across the street, and a vacant lot of knee-high weeds next door. A standard Chicago brown-brick bungalow, the squat, pitch-roofed one-story had an attic with an overhang and a big bay window in front of the living room, drapes closed, though lights burned behind them.

  Carrying a paper bag about big enough for a sandwich, I walked up on the cement stoop and knocked and had just knocked a second time when Tim opened the door.

  “Jesus, get out of the rain,” he said.

  I did, removing my fedora, shaking the beads of moisture off. My lanky host closed the door behind me and took my raincoat, tossing it over a straightback chair by the door. I pitched my hat on the same chair.

  In a gym-style T-shirt and rumpled gray moleskin slacks, in his stocking feet, O’Conner looked lousy—his sandy blond hair uncut and unkempt, his blue eyes bloodshot, and his pockmarked complexion had taken on a grayish cast; already thin, he seemed to have lost some weight, which made the sharp features of his face seem less handsome, more exaggerated…and his nose was as red as if he were working on a huge pimple. But it was just the beer, which was on his breath, by the way.

  “I guess you haven’t been here since the divorce,” he said, with an embarrassed chuckle, gesturing to the all but empty living room. To call the room, with its bare wood floor, sparsely furnished was a ridiculous understatement: facing a television console against the far wall was an easy chair with one of those lamp/end table combinations, several empty Pabst bottles on the table part, and that was all. No sofa or other chairs—a few newspapers tossed on the. floor, some magazines, a couple more beer bottles. On the wall opposite his TV area was a formal fireplace, its mantel bare, though a mirror over it served to make the big empty room seem even bigger and emptier.

  “I got the house,” Tim said, “but Janet got the furniture.”

  And the kids. And any life inside these walls that might have been worth living.

  “Hey, don’t worry,” he said, with a grin, putting a hand on my shoulder, “she didn’t get the poker table…. Come on.”

  In the dining room—always an object of discussion between Tim and Janet—was a large octagonal poker table with a felt top and built-in chip holders. Tim had fashioned a piece of dark wood that could fit over it, so Janet could serve dinner to company (not in use at present); and the wall you saw entering from the living room still had the built-in china hutch—piled with a few paperbacks and pulp magazines now—reflecting the room’s onetime schizophrenic functions.

  “Why don’t we sit in here,” he said. “Beer all right?”

  Indeed, chairs were all around the poker table, just as when Bill Drury, Tim, Lou Sapperstein, and a few other cops and reporters had regularly played poker here—what was it, once a month? Up until maybe three years ago.

  “Beer is fine,” I called to him. He had gone into the kitchen, off the dining room.

  The skinny pockmarked man in the T-shirt came back with two sweating bottles of Pabst, no glasses, and he sat with his back to the kitchen doorway, and I took the chair right next to him, placed the brown paper bag on the table before me, making a little clunk.

  “Lots of memories at this table,” O’Conner said between gulps of beer.

  “Yeah—huge fortunes passed hands. Sometimes as much as twenty-five bucks.”

  His laugh echoed sharply in the plaster-walled, carpetless room. “Yeah, you and your Black Mariah. Fucking wild cards.”

  “Threes and nines,” I said.

  “That’s not real poker.”

  I grinned and swigged. “It wasn’t real money.”

  “Except once a year.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Every December, sometime between Christmas and New Year’s, we’d play one higher stakes game, bumping our quarter/fifty cents/a buck chips to a buck/five bucks/ten. On those occasions, hundreds of dollars had crossed this felt-covered table.

  “Funny,” Tim said, with a faint smile, holding the beer bottle in his palm as if he were going to toss it, “how conservative Bill always played.”

  I nodded, sipped the Pabst. “Even small stakes, he played like it was his life savings.”

  Tim shook his head, laughed a single hollow laugh. “I mean, a guy that took the kind of risks he did, in real life—and on a night out with the boys, he was a little old lady.”

  “You, on the other hand, were always a reckless fucker.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I know. Sometimes I bluffed my way into some pretty good pots.”

  “Yeah, Tim, but you got greedy. Too much bluffing.”

  “Oh yeah? Your problem was, you never did bluff.”

  “I still don’t.”

  He took another swallow, then nodded at the paper bag. “So what’s that, your supper?”

  “That’s what I came to bring you. What Annabel Drury wanted you to have.”

  “Yeah?”

  I pushed the bag toward him, like it was a pot he’d won. “Take it. She said he would have wanted you to have it—Bill’s old partner, after all.”

  Tim put the beer down in a built-in coaster, and emptied the paper bag onto the table; this time it made a bigger clunk, as Bill Drury’s nickel-plated, well-worn ivory-handled .38 police revolver dropped onto the felt tabletop.

  “Oh Christ,” he said softly.

  “He carried that same piece from the day he made detective till the day he died,” I said.

  O’Conner was nodding, eyes glazed. “His late brother gave it to him. The reporter? Lots of…sentimental value.”

  “It was in his gl
ove compartment, with a box of shells, when those sons of bitches shot him…. Like I say, Annabel wanted you to have it.”

  O’Conner hadn’t picked it up; he was just staring at it, leaning an elbow against the table, fingertips pressed to his head.

  Then he finished his Pabst off in a big gulp, and said, “I can use another. How about you?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  While he was in the kitchen, I took the nine millimeter Browning from my shoulder holster and held it beneath the table, where he wouldn’t notice. I’d carried this weapon a long time, too. Different sentimental reasons, though.

  A few moments later, he stumbled back in, sliding on the floor in stocking feet, with a fresh sweaty Pabst in hand, and sat down, rather heavily. He sighed and took several swigs of the beer.

  “I miss him, that bald-headed bastard,” O’Conner said. He had tears in his eyes. “I feel like I let him down.”

  “Well, sure you did—setting him up like that.”

  O’Conner looked up, sharply. “Is that what you think?”

  I bestowed him a bland smile. “I don’t just think it, Tim. I know it.”

  His forehead clenched, his eyes moving back and forth, as if trying to escape his head. “I loved Bill Drury. We were like brothers.”

  “Ever hear of Cain and Abel, shitheel?”

  He backed away in the chair. “I think maybe you oughta get the hell outa here, Heller.”

  “No. Finish your beer. Let’s talk.”

  He sneered at me—kind of a pathetic sneer, though—and picked up the .38 and pointed it at me. “Is this loaded?”

  “Yeah. Just one bullet, though. Mine has a full clip.”

  Not quite smiling, O’Conner looked at me carefully. “You want me to believe you’re pointing a gun at me right now, I suppose.”

  “That’s right…. Of course, I could be bluffing.”

  He said nothing. Then he put the .38 down in front of him, again, and swigged his beer. “What do you want from me?”

  “A few answers. A few holes I haven’t been able to fill. This starts with Bill assuming you were a straight-arrow copper, like he was—that when you got tossed off Town Hall Station together, for covering up gambling, the both of you were being railroaded. What occurred to me was, you could be the reason Bill didn’t know about the gambling in the district—you’d been there longer, you could’ve been, well, assigned to him, to steer him away from those joints.”

  He gestured with the hand that had the Pabst in it, and a little spilled. “Does this look like the home of a bent cop, enjoying the fruits of graft?”

  “Actually, it does. This was a family home, right? Your parents lived here before you? You grew up in this house, only child, if I recall.”

  The bloodshot blue eyes were fixed unblinkingly on me. “So what?”

  “Speaking of sentimental attachment…don’t shit a shitter, Tim. I’m a divorce dick—the husband doesn’t end up with the house…not unless the wife ended up with more than just the kids and the furniture. Like, for instance, a hefty bank account. You must’ve made a hell of a settlement with Janet…all ’cause you couldn’t keep your prick in your pants. What happened to that little dame you were dating?”

  His mouth twitched; he swigged the beer. He belched and it echoed. “She dumped me. For a guy who had real dough. He owns supermarkets or something.”

  “Pity. And for this you got excommunicated? Couldn’t you sweettalk Janet back? She was a hell of a fine girl.”

  “She was a bitch. You don’t know anything about my life.”

  I shrugged; the nine millimeter felt remarkably light in my hand. “I know you’ve been in bed with Northside Outfit guys for a long, long time, Tim…which would include the late, very unlamented Charley Fischetti. I think you were…like I said, assigned to Bill Drury, to keep an eye on him. My guess is it’s you who fucked around with the witnesses to the Ragen shooting, and muddied those waters, and got Drury suspended.”

  “I was suspended, too.”

  “Hey, that goes with the territory. It’s sort of like…undercover work, but from the other end of the telescope…or gun barrel.” I grinned at him. “You misdirected me, Tim—a very simple piece of misdirection, but a good one—by indicating your lawyer pal, Kurnitz, was working for the Kefauver Committee. Of course, he wasn’t working for ’em, but with them…as he admitted to me, himself, the other day.”

  “So what?”

  “So Kurnitz was Bill Drury’s lawyer. I guess I figured Bas was Bill’s lawyer, but they were just working on a matter of mutual interest—the downfall of Tubbo Gilbert. Of course, Tubbo was an old pal of yours—he instigated the Ragen cover-up, in which you assisted.”

  He grunted a nonlaugh. “You don’t have anything solid. Nothing but air.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s foul-smelling air—like the worst gas Tubbo Gilbert ever passed…and that would have to be rank shit, wouldn’t it? Kurnitz offered himself to the committee, as a conduit of friendly witnesses, when his real employer was the Outfit…or perhaps just Charley Fischetti. I’m a little unsure on that point—care to clear that up?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Well, I’m gonna say Kurnitz was leaking to the Outfit, in general, ’cause Giancana had access to the info. Halley wasn’t the leak, nobody really on Kefauver’s staff was the leak—it was Kurnitz, and his investigator…you…who were keeping the Outfit updated as to the committee’s plans, evidence, and witnesses.”

  “It’s just a theory. Nothing but a theory.”

  “Here’s something that’s not a theory: you and Kurnitz— Bill’s trusted partner, and his trusted attorney—set up the meeting in Little Hell with the nonexistent ‘new’ witness in the Ragen case. Drury and Bas, the afternoon of the night they died, told me the witness was somebody Kurnitz lined up for them, an inmate at Joliet he represented.”

  He was shaking his head. “That’s Kurnitz. Not me. I just worked for him, some. You want to sit and threaten somebody with a gun, go look him up.”

  “I’m not going to have to. You see, earlier today I had a meeting with Sam Giancana. In a sleazy joint called the Silver Palm. Ever been there? Anyway, I gave him the lowdown.”

  His eyes flared. “What?”

  “I told Sam the whole sorry story. You see, by helping Fischetti and Gilbert hit Drury and Bas, you and Kurnitz betrayed the Outfit. Was it you, or Tubbo, who brought in those bent cops from Calumet City? Oh well, what does it matter? You see, the top Outfit boys, all but Charley, decided killing Drury in particular would bring unwanted heat down on them…which it did. So I figure Kurnitz will show up in the trunk of a car, some evening—and he won’t be trying to sneak into a drive-in movie.”

  Shaking his head, his eyes huge, one hand a fist, the other clutching the Pabst bottle as if it were his lifeline, he all but yelled, “You fucking asshole…you crazy fucking bastard…. They’ll come after me!”

  “No. Not right away. I asked Mooney to give you a little time.”

  “Time?”

  “Tomorrow…that’s the earliest.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That the earliest Giancana would send somebody around, to deal with you, would be tomorrow morning. Of course, they may wait a while. Maybe it’ll be a Christmas present.”

  He was breathing hard. “You’re crazy. You’re a fucking lunatic.”

  “That’s a medical fact—it’s on my service record. Some day it may come in handy, for an insanity plea.”

  He seemed on the verge of tears. “How could you go to Giancana with such tissue-thin evidence? This is a bunch of circumstantial bullshit! You suspect these things, Nate, but, Christ, you don’t know them.”

  “I know them.”

  He slammed a fist on the table and the .38 jumped. “How? How can you be so goddamn sure?”

  “It goes back to when you tied up that loose end at Riverview.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know—when you plugged that moon-faced mother-fu
cker in the back and in the head, getting even for Bill Drury. When you went all crazy with revenge. ‘This is for Bill!’”

  “I…I loved Bill Drury. He was—”

  “Like a brother, yeah. But how did you know that guy from Calumet City was one of Bill’s killers? I was the only one who saw them that night in Little Hell—and I didn’t tell you.”

  His face went blank.

  He swallowed. “You…you figured it, then? At that moment?”

  I sighed. “No—too much was going on. I was busy grieving for a poor girl with bad taste in men. You arranged that abduction, didn’t you?…Had those clowns grab Jackie and lure me to Aladdin’s Castle. How you must have laughed when I called you to be my backup!”

  He leaned forward, the pockmarked face long with attempted earnestness. “I didn’t laugh, Nate. And…I could have shot you, that night. You know that’s true.”

  “No, I don’t think so—you weren’t sure I hadn’t told Lou or somebody else about meeting you, there. Better odds to let me live, and keep me thinking you were on my side, Bill’s vengeance-happy partner cutting down the scum who killed him. Scum you hired, right?”

  “…That was Tubbo.”

  “Was it? Piece of work, old Tub. Like coming to me with that outrageous offer of fifty grand should I find the Bill Drury papers—the notebooks and tapes…when Tubbo knew all along you had them. Or was it Kurnitz? Bill would have entrusted them to one of you, his lawyer, or his partner. Either way, they’ve been destroyed.”

  “He gave them to me.” O’Conner sounded almost proud of that.

  My laugh resonated harshly in the hollow room. “Too bad—you could have sold them for big bucks to the Outfit…only that might have tipped ’em to your role in the murders of Drury and Bas. You even misled those Calumet City boys about the files—when their only real job was to dispose of Mrs. Rocco Fischetti…and me. Pity, to have something so valuable…that you had to get rid of. Did you burn them, Tim? Out in your fireplace?”