Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

by Jack Martin

  “Not from the President?” asked Bierce perceptively.

  Hoover looked for a long moment at his subordinate, then said, “No” in a tone of voice that indicated further questions on the subject would be extremely unwelcome. He then made an obvious change of subject.

  “That Chicago bastard you overheard talking to Barrow and Parker. He didn’t say it out loud, but you must have drawn the same conclusion I did about the job they wanted him to do.”

  Bierce smiled thinly. “You mean aside from my murder?”

  Hoover laughed. “I’m not worried about that. Somehow, I’m sure you can take care of a Chicago torpedo who’s fool enough to try to take you on personally. No, I mean the other job.”

  The expression on Bierce’s face became unreadable. “The President must be the target.”

  “Yes, the President. Of course we would have a hell of a time proving it in a court of law, as names were not used, but you and I both know who was meant. I want you to drop everything else. Forget Long. Forget the Midwest bank robbers. I want this bastard in Alcatraz or dead. Don’t care which.”

  “Of course, Director.” Bierce hesitated and then added, “Would not it be better to flood Chicago with a team, twenty or even thirty agents?”

  “Think about it, Agent Bierce. Baton Rouge may be the most corrupt town in America, but Chicago runs a close second. We may have put Capone away, but his subordinate, Frank Nitti is still running a pretty effective vice ring, and has half the local officials on his payroll. We stomp in there with a score of agents flashing badges, and the town will close up tighter than a clam. Find out who this guy is and where he is, and you’ll have all the agents you want for the takedown.”

  Bierce nodded, then stood up. “I will be on the night train to Chicago. By the way, I’d like to review the evidence from the Zangara case. There might be something of use in running down this assassin.”

  The Director shrugged. “Everything’s in the basement. Ask the archivist to help you locate what you need. “Thank you, Director.” Bierce stood, bowed slightly to Hoover, and left the office.

  What a strange man, thought Hoover. That curious old fashioned bow. It’s like he’s from the last century. Could be the devil himself for all I care, so long as he gets the job done.

  “You’re in luck, Agent Bierce,” wheezed the archivist, plopping a box down in front of the agent. “It was covered up by some of those damnable red X files the Director keeps sending down here. Nothing but lies and tall tales of strange happenings and beasties in the night. Been fixated on some town up in Massachusetts, folks doing who knows what. Should burn the lot of them, but he’s obsessed with keeping every quotidian bit of information just in case. In case of what, I couldn’t tell you. But I’d welcome not having to go up and down the stacks all day long.”

  Bierce noted the aging man had a prosthetic left leg, and thought it likely the man had lost the original serving his country in the Great War. Only this kept him from being short with the grudgingly helpful clerk.

  “I can’t let you take anything out of the basement, but you can use the desk over there for as long as we’re open.”

  “Thank you,” replied Bierce, who took the box to the indicated desk, sat himself at the lone chair, and began to go through its contents. They were sparse, and for the most part uninteresting. A cheap edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, who Bierce considered a poorly educated neurotic whose whimsical political theories had already caused the world more grief than Kaiser Wilhelm. Some letters from family members. A few stubs of pencils. Then, the only truly interesting thing in the box: a Colt .32 automatic. He held it in his hands, and actually shivered. This small weapon, firing an underpowered bullet, came close to having changed the course of American history. He closed his eyes for a few moments, remembering a long-ago time when he rushed up a flight of stairs and heard a muffled gunshot. Too late, forever too late.

  He opened his eyes and glanced into the window set in the door to the archives. He saw reflected in that window that the crippled clerk was busy with something on the worktable behind him. With no noise whatsoever, he swiftly pocketed the easily concealed Colt, then added an identical pistol he had purchased the previous day. With an audible sigh, Bierce rose from the chair, took the box over to the clerk’s window, and said, “I’m done.”

  The crippled veteran turned around clumsily and took the box. “Find anything useful?”’

  “Not really,” replied Bierce, who tipped his hat to the man and left the archive.

  As Bierce left the Justice Building and entered the brutal sunlight of summertime Washington, he shook his head ruefully. He was not by nature, a thief. Far from it. But some deep-seeded instinct told him that this gun might be crucial at some time in the future. He fully intended to return it to the archive when the case was over. A thoughtful look on his face, he began walking toward his apartment building on DuPont Circle. He needed to pack quickly if he was to make the night train to Chicago.

  Francesco Raffaele Nitti—“Frank” to those outside the Organization, “Mr. Nitti” to those inside it—sprawled on his office sofa, rubbing his stomach through his vest, silently cursing the reappearance of his goddamn ulcer. He looked at the enormous, solid-looking capo who stood before him, and did not answer the question that had just been asked. The man asked the question again.

  “Mr. Nitti, I want permission to take out one or two of those bastard Micks. They know the south side is our territory, but they have been moving in, block by block. Dominic tried to explain the matter to them, and one of the bogtrotters put a bullet in him. We need to send a message.”

  “Like Al sent the north side boys on St. Valentine’s Day?” growled Nitti. “We both know that’s when Al’s slide began, the slide that put him in Alcatraz. Up to then, we were sitting pretty. Local government bought off, beat cops on the payroll, the public that wanted its booze, not caring who provided it, or how. And then Al greased seven of Moran’s boys at the garage. Yeah, that scared the Mick off our territory, but it made Al too hot to handle. City Hall wouldn’t cover us, the Feds stormed in like Pershing in France, judges, too afraid to take our bribes, backed off. And when the dust settles, Al is sitting in the middle of San Francisco Bay, leaving me to pick up the pieces!”

  “Mr. Nitti, we can’t do nothing about Dominic.”

  Nitti absently massaged the spot over his ulcer. “Dominic going to pull through?”

  “The docs say so, but they also say he’ll never be completely well again.”

  Nitti chewed his lip. “All right. You go to the hospital and tell Dominic we’re taking care of all costs and his family. Then you go see his wife, and tell her when she needs money come to me. Then I want you to gather the boys and organize them into teams. We’re going to hit all the Mick whorehouses, number joints, and nightclubs on the south side. Make sure that there’s a guy with a chopper at each place to keep the Mick torpedoes from getting frisky, while the rest of them bust up the place—and a few heads with baseball bats. No shooting unless shot at! We’ll send a message to the Irish bastards all right, but with no killings if it can be helped. No headlines, no pictures of corpses lined up on the sidewalks. Quiet as can be. You understand?”

  The expression on the huge man’s face was unhappy, but he had been trained to absolute obedience by Capone himself. “I understand, Mr. Nitti.”

  “Now get on it! I need to get some fresh air in the park. This goddamn ulcer is killing me.”

  “Want me to get one of the boys to go with you?”

  “I’m not a coward,” snarled Nitti. “I can spend an hour in the park without a gunsel at my side.”

  Frank Nitti ate the last bit of his hot dog, drank the last of his Coke, and threw both wrapper and bottle into the wastebasket at the end of the park bench on which he lounged. He began to rub his stomach again, and knew he would pay for not sticking to a mild diet. To hell with it, he thought, if I can’t enjoy an occasional red hot and soft drink, I might as well be dead.<
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  A small man nattily dressed in a trim suit and neat Panama hat, eased himself down at the other end of Nitti’s bench. “Good afternoon,” the man said. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me at such short notice, and alone.”

  “Yeah, well, didn’t have much choice, did I, Bierce?” replied Nitti, scowling. “I know you can order the Bureau down on my operation, and pretty much shut me down.”

  “I certainly could, Mr. Nitti. But afterwards, people would still be demanding prostitutes, gambling, alcohol. Someone else would inevitably replace you to meet those needs, someone who would not show your … restraint in business practices. Chicago could not stand another Alphonse Capone, the streets literally running with blood.

  Nitti grunted and nodded in agreement.

  “Oh, make no mistake, Mr. Nitti, I regard you as an amoral criminal. Nevertheless, as things stand now, you are the lesser of a number of evils. Besides, I saw for myself fifteen years ago that there is more to you than a two-bit hoodlum.”

  Nitti hesitated, then spoke. “Captain Bierce, I run several flower shops, and no one can prove otherwise. I pay my taxes in full, unlike Al. So, let’s play a pretend game, if you like. Let’s pretend that what you accuse me of is true; that I picked up the pieces of Al’s organization. Does Washington really have a bone to pick with me? No more machine-gunning like the one on St. Valentine’s Day. No more protection schemes on respectable businessmen. Certain services desired by the good old American public are provided to them, and no one gets hurt. The little operators are even allowed their cut, so long as they don’t get greedy. My imaginary organization stays out of the cocaine and heroin shit—what’s sold in Chicago is sold by low-life punks who have nothing to do with my organization. Now, continuing to talk pretend, what do you think would happen to Chicago if me and my organization was busted up by the G-men?”

  “I would hope that honesty and good government would return to this fair city.” Bierce sighed. “But we both know that won’t happen. Anton Cermak was the last chance this city would have for decades.”

  “Didn’t cry no tears when he caught that bullet meant for FDR,” snarled Nitti.

  Bierce’s mild features took on a strange, almost enraged look. Nitti involuntarily leaned backward, immediately afraid. As quick as the threatening expression had come to Bierce’s face, it was gone.

  “Yes, Mr. Nitti, you have no respect for Chicago officials. To be fair, why should you, when you regularly buy and sell them like cabbages in the marketplace? Nonetheless, I think you have some concern for the people of Chicago, despite your illicit activities.”

  “You mean that business in the winter of 1919?”

  “People want to forget about the Spanish influenza. Only fifteen years ago, it killed over half a million Americans. Bodies literally lined the streets—this very town had mass burials because of the lack of coffins. Yet today, no one talks of it. No one wants to think of it. That’s understandable. Who wants to think on the overflowing hospitals, the stink of rotting flesh, the brave doctors and nurses who worked selflessly until they caught the disease themselves and died?”

  “Never had much use for the Government men. But I gotta admit that the Army doctors, nurses, and officers came in and did what they could.” Nitti looked appraisingly at Bierce. “I remember you coming in with that field hospital group, walking up and down among the sick, giving them antitoxins and experimental drugs, even cleaning the soiled bedclothes when there was a shortage of nurses. Rumor was you were a hero in France, but I had never seen anything braver than how you acted in those months.”

  “You give me too much credit, Mr. Nitti. I appear to be immune to the influenza. Although, I do remember seeing you when we worked Little Italy. Of course, you were not the important man you are now. A skinny young punk working numbers for the Capone organization—already a professional criminal—and yet there you were, going into tenements to bring out the sick, stacking the dead for disposal, running the risk of death every day, for no monetary gain I could see.”

  “They were my family, my people,” replied Nitti, almost grudgingly, looking into the distance as he remembered. “I couldn’t leave them alone in dirty tenements to slowly die as their lungs filled with blood and snot. Couldn’t help them all, but I had to help some. Then I caught it; guess I always knew I would. I was burning up, beginning to choke to death. I remember my fingertips were even turning blue.” His eyes snapped back and focused intently on Bierce. “And then some goddamn Army captain began injecting me with the most God-awful burning shit, and from that point I began to get better.”

  “There was never enough. Columbia University couldn’t produce it fast enough, and besides it was still an experimental antitoxin and usually made no difference. You were one of the lucky ones.”

  “Why me?” asked Nitti softly. “There were all kinds of people in that field hospital. Kids, grandmas, priests, doctors themselves. I never got a chance to ask you, why me? Why a nobody street punk?”

  “It’s hard to explain, Mr. Nitti,” replied Bierce reflectively. “Perhaps it was because you were there when you didn’t have to be. Doctors, nurses, Army officers—we were all there because it was our duty. There were very few professional volunteers, and the few that did volunteer were doctors, priests, and teachers—the sort of people everyone expects to have high civic values. But there you were, as you say, a worthless street punk, already a career criminal, risking your life for complete strangers. In any event, I wasn’t sure the antitoxin would work; it didn’t for most.”

  Bierce sighed and looked at Nitti. “Anyway, that small particle of humanity in you, so rare in a someone in your line of business, is why I have come to you for help today. I need the name of a Chicago criminal, and I need it soon. You know as well as I do, that the Chicago police will be useless.”

  Nitti scowled. “I don’t snitch on my boys. They’re loyal to me, and me to them.”

  “The morality of the Dago gangster,” murmured Bierce. Nitti glared at Bierce for the slur, but Bierce ignored him and continued speaking. “In any event, I seriously doubt that one of your people is the man I want. The crime he intends to commit is not exactly in your organization’s line.”

  “I told you, and it’s true, I don’t deal drugs.”

  “No, nothing as mundane as that. He intends to murder the President.”

  Nitti stopped massaging his ulcer. “Jesus Christ! You’re shitting me!”

  “I truly wish I were. Fortunately, I was able to overhear the plot being hatched. Unfortunately, I was unable to see the assassin, or even learn his name. All I know is that he is a desperate criminal who operates out of Chicago.”

  “That’s it? Mary Mother of God! Do you know how many torpedoes that could cover in this burg?”

  “And I know that you are probably the only man in Illinois who has even a remote chance of giving me a lead. He’s well-funded, and you know what that means.”

  Nitti nodded his head. “He can buy off the local bulls. Now, you G-men aren’t for sale, I’ll give you that. But there’s not that many of you, and you don’t really know this city.”

  “And that is why I have come to you.”

  Nitti scowled. “Just what is in this for me? Why should I care if Roosevelt is ventilated?”

  “Just ask yourself, Mr. Nitti, what would happen if the President of the United States is assassinated, and it’s traced back to a Chicago gangster? Rightly or wrongly, Americans look upon Roosevelt as their last hope. They would scream for the blood of Chicago criminals, any criminals. The Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Treasury, and for all I know, the United States Coast Guard would descend on this city like the wrath of Jehovah. All known criminals, especially those working for you, would be thrown into Alcatraz on any charges—or no charges—Bill of Rights be damned. Your whorehouses, gambling dens, Speakeasies would be rolled up like a cheap carpet. Your tame Chicago police would not be able to help you, and probably would not want to help you. And the icing
on the cake would be you. Everyone knows you’re the top gangster in this city, and the public will never believe you were not somehow involved—damn the lack of evidence. You will spend the rest of your life as a cellmate to your old boss Capone. What you would gain for helping me is that none of these unfortunate things would happen to you should I locate the assassin before he could strike.”

  Nitti began rubbing the spot over his ulcer again. “You make a strong case, Captain Bierce. You should’ve been a lawyer.”

  “I was, but that was a very long time ago. So, what is your response to my offer?”

  “Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll have my boys hit the streets, asking whether anyone has heard of a freelance hit man taking big jobs.”

  “Why just freelance?”

  “Because my boys all know how I feel about killing that isn’t strictly in defense of our interests. Hell, even those crazy Mick gangs wouldn’t take on a job like that. Oh, they’ve got some skilled button men they use in their turf wars, but they are only used against competitors for territory. Even the dumb bogtrotters aren’t stupid enough to try and bump off the President. No, if this guy is a Chicago thug, he’s one of the independent operators—like those ham-handed crackers Bonnie and Clyde and the Barker gang. I can’t promise nothing, but I’ll have my boys shake the trees to see what falls. I suppose I owe you for saving my life in ’19, and for not digging too deep into my business interests.” Nitti paused for a moment, his face reddening slightly, almost as if he were embarrassed. “Besides, it ain’t right to mow down the President. That’s the way the Fascists do in Italy. It ain’t right that their way of business becomes ours.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Nitti,” responded Bierce politely. “I will meet you in three days at this bench, same time, to hear what you’ve been able to learn.” Bierce rose from the bench smoothly and walked off without a backward glance. Frank Nitti continued to rub the spot over his ulcer, his thoughts turning to Milk of Magnesia.