That wasn't quite true: in a way, I'd been ducking Eliot; not consciously, exactly, but I hadn't gone out of my way to see or talk with him, because he really was one of the few straight-arrow law enforcement officers in Chicago, and I liked him, and had earned a certain amount of his respect, and I didn't know if I wanted to talk to him about the shooting until I found out exactly how I was going to be able to play it. And now that I knew- knew that I'd be playing Cermak's crooked game, out of necessity I didn't know if I wanted to tell Eliot the truth, even off the record.
Eliot was, after all, one of the primary forces behind Al Capone's fall. The original Prohibition Unit had proved as corrupt as it was underpaid and poorly trained. That had been a Justice Department operation, but was transferred after an inauspicious seven-year run to Treasury in '28. In '29 Eliot, then only twenty-six and only a few years out of the University of Chicago, was chosen to command a select detail. He scoured personnel files for honest men. found almost no prospects among Chicago's three hundred-some prohibition agents, and finally came up with nine (and even of these "untouchables." one did prove crooked, a sore point with Eliot). The members of Eliot's detail were young- thirty or under- and expert marksmen, and included specialists in wiretapping, truck-driving, shadowing suspects on foot or by car. you name it. They shut down breweries and distilleries, made speakeasy raids, hitting Capone hard in his pocket-book; and they put together enough evidence to indict Capone and some of his cronies on "conspiracy to violate the Volstead Act."
But Nitti was right about Eliot's weakness for publicity. The effectiveness of his efforts was somewhat hampered by a tendency to inform the press of his battle plans, so that cameras would be on hand when the ten-ton truck smashed open the doors of a Capone brewery. And Eliot and his squad by no means single-handedly "destroyed" the Capone empire. For one thing, it was Elmer Irey, of the IRS Enforcement Branch, and Treasury Agent Frank Wilson, among others, who nailed Capone on tax evasion. And for another thing, the Capone gang was still around and doing quite nicely, thank you.
About five minutes had gone by since Eliot's call, and I was getting up to try Janey one last time, when I heard his honk. I reminded Barney to keep trying Janey till he got her, and went out and climbed in the front of Eliot's black Ford sedan.
I was barely in when Eliot pulled away.
"Where's the fire, chief?" I asked him.
He gave me a sideways glance and tight smile. "Your old stomping grounds."
Eliot had a certain grace; even sitting behind the wheel of the car. he seemed somehow intense and relaxed at the same time. He was of Norwegian stock, with a ruddy-cheeked, well-scrubbed appearance. a trail of freckles across the bridge of his nose; a six-footer with square, broad shoulders, he looked like somebody who could be Eliot Ness, if you were told that. But left to your own devices, you might take him for a young business exec (he was only twenty-nine, not that much older than me- but then Capone, at the time of his fall, had only been thirty-two, not the fortyish mobster of Scarf ace). He was wearing a tan camel's hair topcoat, a gray suit and maroon tie peeking out. His hat was on the seat between us.
"Ever hear of a guy named Nydick?" Eliot said.
"Nope."
"He's wanted for a couple of robberies: a shoe store, which is pretty much for sure, and a bank robbery, just for questioning."
"So?"
"The mayor's hoodlum squad is going to pick him up; they'll beat us there by ten minutes, probably."
"The mayor's hoodlum squad. As in Harry Miller?"
Eliot looked at me with a nasty little smile. "You got it."
We were on Clark Street now. going past Dearborn Station, then soon up an incline onto Twelfth Street, which rose over the train yards. It was a dark night, with little slashes and splashes of light coming from the yards: trains pulling in; barrels with fire in them; lit-up cabooses.
"Where are we headed, exactly?"
"The Park Row Hotel. It's at forty-one-forty. That's"
"I know where it is."
That was only five or six blocks from my old neighborhood, where my father's bookstore had been; alderman Jake Arvey's territory, adjacent to Cermak's district. A middle-class, working-class Jewish community; not seedy, but not the Gold Coast either.
It was where both Lane and Miller lived.
"About a year ago," Eliot was saying, "when they were investigating the shoe store robbery, Lang and Miller cornered Nydick. And Nydick got the drop on them, somehow, and disarmed them, kept 'em captive for over an hour."
"I'm starting to remember this," I said, nodding.
"Pretty humiliating for a couple of tough guys like those two." Eliot said.
We were riding through the north end of the Maxwell Street district Maxwell Street on our right. Little Italy on our left- not that you could tell the difference: tenements were tenements.
"There's also a rumor." he said, "just a rumor, mind you. that Miller and Nydick's wife are… acquainted. That it was her that led Lang and Miller to Nydick the time he disarmed and humiliated 'em."
"So where does the woman stand? With her husband or Miller?"
Eliot shrugged. "I don't know. My guess would be she doesn't stand at all. More like reclines."
"For both of'em?"
He shrugged again. "This is just rumor. But I've been monitoring the hoodlum squad on the police radio in my office, and after what happened with you the other day. I thought you'd find Miller's further adventures… interesting."
"What's your connection?"
"You. My excuse is the bank robbery, which involves interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle. And Nydick is wanted for questioning in some Volstead-related matters."
"You mean he drinks?"
Eliot grinned this time. "That's what I hear."
I shook my head and smiled. I knew it was more than just our friendship that had sparked Eliot's interest: the mayor's hoodlum squad was indulging itself on his turf. The cops weren't supposed to raid Frank Nitti; Eliot Ness was supposed to raid Frank Nitti. Miller and Lang (and even yours truly) had got the kind of press thunder Eliot loved. Look how he showed up after the Nitti shooting, to ride the story's coattails and make it into the papers.
"So you came out all right on the inquest," Eliot said, as he weaved around streetcars and other vehicles. He wasn't going quite fast enough to need a siren, which was a good thing, because he didn't have one. He did have credentials in his billfold with the name Eliot Ness on them, which was one of the few ways in Chicago to get out of a speeding ticket without handing over a couple of bucks to the traffic cop.
"Yeah," I said. "All clear."
"Listen." he said. Quietly. "You don't have to tell me what went on in there. At the Wacker-LaSalle, I mean. You don't have to explain."
I didn't say anything.
"Your turning your badge in is enough explanation," he added.
But it was clear he wanted one, and since even speeding through traffic we were still a good twenty minutes away from the Park Row Hotel, I told him what had really happened. And I told him about my arrangement with Cermak, and my meeting with Nitti. too. I left out Nitti's condescending remarks about him.
"This is all off the record, Eliot."
He nodded, sighed heavily, passing a truck that might have been hauling beer.
"It took guts to turn down the hoodlum squad post," he said. "It paid good over the table, let alone under. But I'm glad you quit… even though you were one of the few contacts I had on the department I could trust."
"For a Chicago cop," I said, "I was honest. Which means anywhere else, I'd be in for twenty years."
"Thirty. Did you see what the Crime Lab made out of the note Nitti tried to eat?"
It had been in the papers.
"Yeah," I said. "It sounded like a grocery list…'call Billy for dinner'…'potatoes'… I think it was just notes he'd made for himself on any sort of mundane matters, which he scribbled a bet on and had to eat."
"The chief of detectives s
ays it's an underworld code," Eliot said with a straight face.
I looked at him with a straight face, and we both started laughing.
"You know." I said. "Cermak and company can't be sleeping too good, with Nitti alive and well."
"I think you're right. Did you see the News tonight?"
"No."
"Cermak gave a speech about driving the gangsters out of the city"- he paused for the punch line- "then he left for Florida."
We were only a couple blocks away now. driving through a shopping district.
Eliot, suddenly serious, said, "About that guy you shot… I know it's bothering you. I've shot men myself, and I think I know how you feel. I know I hope never to kill anybody or anything again. But you were in a position where it couldn't be helped. Just let go of it, Nate, and be glad you're a private citizen again."
There was silence, as the Park Row loomed up on the right, its blue-and-red neon sign glowing. It was a big brick building squeezed into the middle of a block like a fat lady in a movie-house seat.
"I'll be glad to help you get set up as a private cop," Eliot said as he pulled over to the curb, half a block from the hotel. "I used to work as an investigator for a retail credit company, you know. I can get you some work."
We got out of the Ford and headed for the front door. I stopped him and looked into gray eyes that were kind, even a little innocent. I said. "They say a guy's rich when he's got one good friend. With you and Barney on my side. I'm rolling in it."
He smiled, looked away self-consciously toward the hotel entrance, and said. "Let's go see what the mayor's top men are up to."
Across the modest lobby of this primarily residential hotel was the check-in desk, behind which was a switchboard, where a sandy-haired woman of about forty-five wore a purple-and-white floral dress and a harried expression.
"Are you more police?" the woman wanted to know.
Eliot nodded, flashed her his credentials, which she looked at but didn't read.
"That fat creep held me down here at gunpoint" she said, voice trembling, holding a fist up, "like I was a criminal"
Her indignation seemed righteous: she looked like somebody's mother. She probably was.
" What do you mean?" Eliot said.
"They asked to see Mr. Long. Five officers. I told them room three-sixty-one. The fat one with the thick glasses sent the others upstairs and said he'd stay down and watch me so that I couldn't warn Mr. Long. And then he held a gun on me!"
Eliot shot me a quick, disgusted look.
"They're still up there?" he asked.
"Yes." the woman said. "One of the other officers came down, and said, 'We got him.' And then he went up, too."
"When was this?"
"A couple minutes before you came in, detective."
We took the elevator up to the third floor. A man in a brown rumpled suit and brown hat stood in the hallway, gun in hand, guarding a dowdily attractive woman in her thirties in a blue-and-white-pattern dress, and a boy in a blue-and-red-striped sweater who was maybe twelve. The boy was quite understandably confused, looking all about him, looking at the cop, looking at his mother, the mother staring off into space, a somber, somehow resigned look on her face.
We had just reached them when we heard the shots.
Three of them, each on the other's heels.
The woman's composure broke; she screamed "No!" and the cop restrained her, and the kid hung onto her, afraid.
"What do you think you're doing?" the cop said as we moved by, pointing the gun toward Eliot, who flashed his credentials at the guy.
"I'm Eliot Ness. And I'm going in that room." He pointed to the room with the number 361 on it. across from where we stood. He didn't have to say. Care to try to stop me? I doubt the cop would have, even if he didn't already have his hands full with the woman and boy.
Eliot put his credentials away and took his gun out and opened the door.
A man was sprawled on his stomach over by a far window; nearby there was a chair, a calendar on the wall, a dresser with an open drawer. On the dresser, a scrawny two-foot-tall Christmas tree roped with tinsel sat in a little green wooden stand that looked to be home-made. The man was bleeding; there were three entry wounds in his back, three bloody scorched bulletholes against the pale yellow of his shirt. If this guy wasn't dead or about to be, I was the Marx Brothers.
Speaking of comedy, Miller was standing over the apparent corpse with a gun in his hand; smoke trailed out the barrel like a ghost.
Two other plainclothes cops, neither of whom I recognized, were closer to us as we came into the hotel room: a stocky guy with a mustache, and a stocky guy without a mustache. The one with a mustache was near the door; the one without was over at the left, by the double bed, which had a cream-color bedspread and a nightstand with phone. Everybody looked at us- except the guy on the floor.
"Ness," Miller said, something like surprise registering on the blank putt)' face, eyes wide behind the
Coke-bottle lenses. "Heller? What the hell…?"
Eliot bent over the body. Eased him over, barely; put him back.
"Nydick," he said to me. I was still over by the door. "I think he may be breathing, but it's a habit he's going to break real soon." He looked at the cop near the phone. "Call an ambulance. Now!"
The cop did as he was told; in sotto voce, he could be heard asking the switchboard for Mount Sinai, the closest hospital.
Eliot rose, staying by the body. "How did it happen. Miller?"
"What jurisdiction you got here, Ness?"
"I have jurisdiction anywhere I damn well want it. This man was wanted for questioning in several federal matters, if it matters. How'd it happen. Miller?"
Miller put his gun on the dresser, under the Christmas tree, like a gift; it was the only one. He pointed at the open drawer, where a little.32 lay; the drawer was otherwise empty.
"He went for the gun." he said, like the bad actor he was. "I had to shoot."
"Three bullets in the back." Eliot said. "That'll slow a man down."
Miller continued. "The boys came up and broke in and secured the suspect. I came up and sent the wife and kid out. and I read him the warrant. He grabbed it and tore it up." He pointed. The warrant lay on the floor, not far from Nydick, torn in two.
I said. "Are you sure he didn't try to eat it?"
Miller got a little red. "You got no jurisdiction anywhere, Heller, so shut the hell up."
Eliot said. "Then what happened?"
"He was sitting a few feet from that dresser. Then he turned and tried to reach in a dresser drawer for that pistol. I couldn't take any chances. I fired and he fell."
Eliot turned to the cop near me. "Why didn't you just grab Nydick?"
The cop made a helpless, shrugging gesture. "I wasn't close enough." The other cop, having finished with his phone call, was staying in the background.
"How about you?" Eliot asked him. "Why didn't you grab Nydick when he went for the gun?"
"I started to jump over the bed, but- Miller, he- already fired."
Eliot glared at Miller. "Let's step out in the hall." He pointed a finger at first one, then the other cop. "You two stay put. Make sure your suspect doesn't make a break for it."
When we got out in the hall, the wife, being held by one arm by the cop in the brown suit, said, "What in God's name happened in there?"
Eliot said, "Are you Mrs. Nydick?"
The woman lowered her head. "I'm Mrs. Long."
Miller said, "That's the name Nydick was registered under."
Eliot said it again: "Are you Mrs. Nydick?"
She nodded, looking at the floor. "He's… dead, isn't he?"
"He's been shot," Eliot said. "It doesn't look good for him."
She kept nodding, kept looking at the floor. She didn't ask to go in and be with her husband; she just nodded and looked at the floor. The boy started to cry. Nobody comforted him.
A few other guests were cracking their doors and peeking out. In a loud,
firm voice, Eliot said, "This is a police matter- go about your business." The doors closed.
Then he took Miller by the arm and led him down the hall and around a comer, glancing back at me to follow, which I did.
With a smile that was in no way friendly, he backed Miller up against the wall, gently.
"Didn't you kill somebody else this year?" he asked.
Miller nodded. "A thief. I don't like thieves. Nydick was a thief."
"Ever meet Nydick before?"
"No."
"He didn't hold a gun on you and your partner Lang once?"
"No. That… story got around, but it was just a story. Nobody can…"
"What?"
Miller swallowed. "Nobody can prove it happened."
"I see. Boy. the hoodlum squad's going all out. First you and Lang nail Nitti. Now the notorious Nydick. What next?"
"We're just doing our job. Ness."
Eliot took him by one arm and squeezed and said, "Listen to me. you trigger-happy son of a bitch. I got my eye on you. You keep turning your job into a shooting gallery and I'm going to fall on you like a wall Got me?"
Miller didn't say anything, but he was shaking- it was barely perceptible, but he was shaking.
Eliot turned his back on him and started to walk away. Then he glanced back and said, "How long do you think your buddy Cermak is going to back you up on these pleasure cruises? The word's out about Newberry offering fifteen grand for Nitti dead, you know. And if that wife of Nydick's isn't your girl friend. I'll invite you over for Christmas dinner."
Miller started to blink behind the glasses.
"Oh. by the way," Eliot added. "Heller wasn't here tonight. Neither one of you needs the stink that might raise, and Heller's along innocently, just 'cause he happened to be with me. I'll tell your boys, and you tell 'em. too. The civilians won't remember how many cops they saw. Got it?" He turned to me. "Anything you care to add?"
I said, "Give me a minute with him alone, Eliot."
He nodded and walked back around the corner and down the corridor.
True Detective Page 9
