Apparently nobody had seen what happened: there'd been no screams, no shouts, when Cooney took those silenced slugs- no lights going on suddenly in windows. Just me tumbling into the bushes, and when the car had gone by and showed no sign of returning, and it seemed safe to come out, I took my powder, and unless somebody had recognized one of us when I'd gone pushing through the crowd after
Cooney, I didn't see how I could be pulled in on this.
And today had borne this out. I'd had a call from one of the boys from the pickpocket detail, telling me Cooney had been killed, wondering if that news was worth the fin I'd been offering 'round; and I'd said no. Cooney wasn't worth squat to me dead, but if my pal came around to Barney's sometime. I'd buy him a beer for his trouble. And we'd left it at that.
Also. Cooney had got a small mention on the inside pages of the afternoon papers: a longtime pickpocket with a record had been gunned down, and police figured it was a mob-related slaying, but had no leads. It would be added to the list of hundreds of gangland slayings in Chicago these last ten or fifteen years; if a gangland slaying had ever been solved in Chicago, I hadn't heard about it. Except for Jake Lingle's, of course.
But what did Cooney's death mean? I was afraid I knew. I was afraid that Mary Ann's brother, with his connections to Ted Newberry via the Tri-Cities liquor ring, had got in hot water with the Nitti crowd, and now that my snooping was leading me to Nitti's doorstep, the bullets were stalling to fly.
Nitti was supposed to owe me one. but I hadn't thought this was what he had in mind.
So I called him. Or tried to- I couldn't get through to him at his office over the Capri restaurant on North Clark Street (which was across from the City Hall, incidentally), but whoever I talked to relayed the message, and around seven that night, just before I was going to head out to the fair, Nitti returned my call.
"Heller, how are you doin'?"
"Better than Dipper Cooney," I said. "He died last night."
"So I hear."
"I was with him."
"That I didn't hear."
"Are you on the level with me. Frank? I did you a favor once, you know."
"I didn't have anything to do with what happened to Cooney. You want me to find out who did?"
"That. I'd appreciate."
"Let's talk. Meet me at my office tomorrow afternoon. Two o'clock. I want to know about this punk you're trying to find."
"Jimmy Beame?" So he'd heard about that.
"Right. Who knows. I might even be able to help you out on that score."
"I'd appreciate that. Frank."
"See ya tomorrow, Heller."
And the phone had clicked dead.
I sat staring at it. wondering if I was being set up; I had the clammy sort of feeling you get waiting in a doctor's office for the results of your tests.
So I took my gun with me to the fair, and now I was trying to get Mary Ann to leave with me. since being at the fairgrounds with all these people was making me nervous.
"Nervous? What about? Nathan, don't be a grouch. Look. I'll let you take me to see Sally Rand some other night. But it's about time you took me up on the Sky Ride."
"We went on the Sky Ride last week."
"Not the observation deck."
"I'm not crazy about heights, okay?"
"Tough guy! Come on." And she tugged on my arm.
We were almost there, anyway; I glanced behind me, half-expecting to be followed. But I couldn't see anybody suspicious. Nobody that seemed inconsistent with his surroundings. And there were pith-helmeted guards with sidearms all around who knew me, and I could call on, if trouble turned up. So what the hell.
The Sky Ride towers were like twin Eiffels, and why not? That tower had been the hit of the Paris Exposition of '89. and these towers loomed over the Century of Progress in much the same way. The steel-web frameworks rose over six hundred feet, higher than any of Chicago's skyscrapers, the tallest towers this side of the Atlantic coast. A third of the way up, the silver, red-striped "rocket" cars, carrying thirty or fort)' passengers, crossed the lagoon on overhanging cable tracks. Last week, when we'd taken that trip, I felt we were up plenty high enough; now, as we entered the pennant-flapping SKY RIDE entryway, getting into one of the two elevators that went to the top (two others went to the rocket-car platform), we'd be going up another four hundred feet, to the observation deck.
It took a whole minute to get there, and we looked first from the windows of the enclosed observation room, the fair spread out before us like a colorful electric map. One of the fair's pith-helmeted security' guards was on-duty in the observation room; not too many people up here tonight- maybe a dozen, mostly couples. I said hello to the guard, a florid-faced guy of about forty who used to be a traffic cop; he said hello back, and whispered he'd got a pickpocket earlier that day, seeming proud of himself. I patted him on the arm and told him atta boy.
Mary Ann was still looking out the window, breathless; she loved looking down on the lights of the fair and, beyond that, of the city. But I was ready to go, and said so.
"Oh, Nathan! We haven't even been up on the observation deck."
"This is as far as I go."
She hugged one of my amis with both of hers. "Don't be a wet blanket. It's a beautiful night; there'll be a nice breeze."
"Freeze our butts off. is more like it," I said, but then we were walking the final flight up. and Mary Ann dragged me to the highest exhibit at the fair- the Otis Elevator exhibit, which showed the machinery that operated the Sky Ride's high-speed elevators- also the dullest exhibit. I might add- which was in a building that covered all but the outer walkway area of the unenclosed observation deck.
Outside, on the deck, there weren't many people; the wind was blowing a bit too much for standing on top of a tower six-hundred-some feet off the ground. We found a place around one side of the building, where the deck jutted out like a porch so you could get a better look at the fair, and stood by the rail, having a gander, enjoying some privacy.
And seeing the fair stretched out before you, not through a window, but right before you, leaning against a rail and looking out at it, well, dammit if it didn't take my breath away. Searchlights cut across the sky, from the very tower we stood upon, intersecting with the arc lights of the fair below; the fair's geometric buildings turned into abstract shapes and colors as if on the canvas of some Tower Town modern artist.
I turned to Mary Ann to comment on this, to leave cynicism behind for a moment and be frankly impressed with all this, and Mary Ann's eyes were wide and she was intaking breath, and not because of the view.
Somebody was coming up behind me.
Fast.
The outstretched hands hit me just as I was turning, my right hand reaching toward the automatic under my coat, but not quite getting there, and it was a guy in a straw hat and pale yellow suit and just as I was going over the rail, backward. I saw Mary Ann slapping at him with both hands and his hat flew off. got caught by the breeze and went flapping by me as I fell, and I recognized him. and the sole thought in my panic-stricken brain was. the son of a bitch is blond again.
I hit a steel support beam, hard, on my back, and it knocked the wind out of me, but somehow my mind or instinct or some goddamn thing overrode, and I grabbed at the beam, catching it in the crook of one ami, and I clung to it, hugged it, wrapped both amis, both legs around it. The support connected the platform to the tower structure at a 45-degree angle, and thank God I hadn't got to my gun, because I needed both hands. The support was about as big around as a man's leg, and had rough sharp edges all 'round, digging into my flesh as I hung there in the breeze, my tie, my suit, flapping.
I was on the underside of the beam, like some animal clinging to a tree limb. I didn't look down; I knew what was down there- my fucking stomach, for one thing.
So I looked up, back up, toward where I'd fallen from, and Mary Ann was leaning over the side, reaching her hand out to me, but she was far away, ten feet, ten miles, ten years, and the
guy was behind her. and I had to swallow before I could yell, "Look out!"
And she was struggling with him, he had her halfway over the side, and I let go with one arm, clutching with the other, legs hooked 'round the slanted support, and got my automatic out from under my arm.
Christ knows how. and the guy just about had her over the side when he saw the eye of my automatic looking at him, and. before I could fire it at him, he disappeared from view.
Mary Ann, thankfully, did not; the blond gone, she leaned over and reached out again and I said, "No! Too far!" and she began to cry. I think she was trying to scream, but couldn't find the sound. Or maybe she was screaming and the wind in my ears was keeping me from hearing as I clumsily rucked the automatic back under my arm.
I yelled at her: "Go down to the observation booth!"
She nodded, and disappeared.
The support I called home angled under the platform, connecting underneath it; I'd fallen past the windows of the observation booth, but apparently nobody had seen me, and I was at a position that prevented them from noticing me, hanging here like Harold Lloyd. The support below me paralleled this one but connected right to the corner under the observation booth and its windows. If I could drop down to the next support, I might crawl up it and get in view of the people in the booth, besides which Mary Ann would by now have alerted them to my situation anyway, and I might with somebody's help make it in through a window.
It was only about five feet down; I wouldn't have to be an acrobat to make it. But it would have helped.
I tried not to look at the fair below me. I tried not to think about the six-hundred-foot drop below me. Just that support beam five feet down. Why was it so cold up here? So windy? Why was my mouth so
dry, and my eyes so damp? I let my legs loose and hung by my amis only; my feet touched the support beam below. I looped one arm around the support, let the other one loose, hanging by the crook of my arm, trying to stand on the beam below, trying to get my balance so I could risk letting go of the upper support altogether. A calm came over me; a passive, quiet feeling I couldn't hope to explain. I let go of the beam above, and then I was standing, I had my balance, but it was like standing on the tilted floor of a fun house, only much narrower, and, Christ! I began to slide, my feet began to slide, and my balance went and the fair whirled below me, and I hit the beam in a belly flop and clung, grabbed, hugged, slid. Then stopped sliding. Home again.
I looked up. Mary Ann's wide-eyed face was in a window, the corner window, and her mouth was open in a silent scream; I grinned up at her, like I was showing off, while resisting the urge to pee my goddamn pants. Then she was pointing, and the florid-faced guard was busting the glass out with his gun butt.
I edged up the beam toward them, on top of the beam this time, like a baby crawling, then I was up to where the beam joined with the underpart of the platform and the windows were right above me and the guard, some college-kid fairgoer bracing him from behind, was reaching out a hand down to me and I took it, hanging over the fair for one long moment before he pulled me up and in.
Mary Ann hugged me; she was crying, but she wasn't hysterical. Happy. Real happy.
Actually, I didn't have time for that. "Go back to your flat," I said curtly, moving past her. "Wait for me!"
What
"Just do it. baby. Just do it."
I thanked the college kid who'd helped the guard reel me in. then turned to the guard. "Keep this one under your hat. pal."
He glanced at the eight or ten people standing around open-mouthed, talking among themselves, as if they wondered if this were part of the show. "I don't know if I can do that"
"There's a half a C-note in it for you if you do. And I'm covering the damages."
He grinned, shrugged. "Do my best, Mr. Heller."
Then I went to the two elevators and grabbed one- I caught a glimpse of Mary Ann, her face tight with irritation, hands on hips, staying behind, but reluctantly. The elevators took only one minute to go down, and I didn't figure I'd been hanging out there more than two or three minutes, so my old friend, my blond friend, the man who killed Jake Lingle, the man who helped kill Cermak, had a lead on me; but not much of one.
The ticket-taker in the lobby of the Sky Ride entryway said yes, he had seen the blond guy in the pale yellow suit, moving quickly, and pointed toward the lagoon. There wasn't a huge crowd at the fair tonight, but enough of one, and the lights were designed to make the world an out-of-focus pastel wonderland, not to heighten visibility or clarity.
So I stood there looking for a figure moving quickly, but didn't see one; then I moved quickly, toward the Sixteenth Street bridge, and stopped the first pith-helmeted security guard I came across, and he recognized me and smiled and I asked him if he'd seen this guy.
He had, and he pointed across the bridge, toward the Hall of Science, its square buildings and towers burning orange and green and blue against the night. In the foreground, gondolas, canoes, sailboats glided; a peaceful scene, and my brain was on fire.
The Eighteenth Street entrance. That was the closest way out; the closest way to the parking lot.
I ran.
Like a bat out of fucking hell, and knocked a few people down and to hell with excuse me, and almost got stopped by more than one security guard, but when they saw who I was, figured I was after some pickpocket, and one guard, in fact, fell in stride with me and yelled, "Need any help, Heller?"
I shook my head no, and the guy fell away.
Then the fair was behind me and all the cars in Chicago were parked in front of me, row after row, car after car.
But it was private parking, and there were only a few ways in and out. Maybe, just maybe, I had him.
I showed my fair ID to the two attendants at the entry to the parking area; they were in street clothes but had coin changers on their belt, and they told me, yeah, they saw a blond guy run through here, and pointed down to the left. I saw no one. I jogged down the first row of cars, glancing to either side; when I'd put some distance between me and those attendants back there, I got the automatic out. A car was pulling out, so I ducked to one side, waited and watched as it passed. An elderly couple.
I kept looking: the parking area wasn't lit, but the aurora borealis of the fair, at left, provided light enough. I was Hearing the end of the first row when I saw a car pull out over on the next row, a little black Buick coupe with a white canvas top. It was the car that had glided by and gunned down Cooney last night. I ran between parked cars into the next lane and as the lights bore down on me, I saw him. Behind the wheel.
The blond.
I stepped to one side and pointed the gun at him but he swerved toward me, and as I backed up out of the way, squeezing between two parked cars, he got a shot off at me, a silenced one, and it grazed my arm, and, dammit, goddamnit, reflex sent my automatic flying.
And he saw that, and hit the brakes, and then he was hopping out of his car, moving toward me, gun in hand, the silencer making it look bulkily modern, as if a souvenir of the fair.
At the same time, I fell back, on my back, grabbed my chest as if he'd hit me there and kind of curled up and moaned and as he was standing over me, smiling, pointing the gun down at me, I kicked his balls up inside him.
This time he dropped the gun.
He dropped it, his hands popping open when he doubled over, and a wheeze came out of him. not a scream, just a dry pain-racked wheeze, and as he was still bent over I slammed a fist into his jaw that about took it off its hinges and he fell on his side, but the moment of white pain had passed, apparently, because then he was scrambling for his gun and suddenly he had the damn thing, was bringing it up toward me when I dove at him, and with both hands grabbed the wrist and turned it in on him and together we pulled the trigger. The sound was no more than a snick but the ghostly pale face went slack and I barely had time to say it: "This time I did get you, flicker."
I stood, his gun in my hand, and looked around. The only sound was the muffled roar of
the fair; otherwise, the night was as silent and empty as the dead man's mind. Even the breeze had died. Nobody had seen this. Nobody had heard it- not with the blond's silenced gun as the instrument of death.
His car, the engine running, was only a few steps away; I dragged him to it, and hauled him up over the running board into the seat on the rider's side. I made him sit up straight, though his chin was on his chest; his belly was bright blood-red, and spreading. I shut the door and got in on the driver's side.
I flashed my ID to the attendants as we drove past and they smiled and nodded. I laughed to myself, remembering whose concession parking was.
I stopped at an all-night drugstore on Michigan Avenue and bought a bandage for my ami and used a phone book. Ronga was listed. I didn't have to jot the address down; I could remember it. It was only ten or fifteen minutes away, too. Good.
I went back to the car and the blond was still sitting there. Where was he going to go?
Me. I was going to call on the man who sent him: his boss.
I told him so, not starting the car back up yet. getting out of my coat and bandaging the nick on my arm.
"I'm taking you to Nitti, pal," I said.
But he made no comment; in fact he slumped over to the right and rested his head against the window as if bored- the glaze on his barely open eyes seemed to confirm that. I was sitting up nice and straight, in fact leaning forward; I was a little crazy, as a matter of fact.
"What good's your opinion, anyway?" I said to the blond, pulling out onto Michigan Avenue. "You're dead."
As dead as Lingle.
As dead as Cermak.
"As dead as Nitti," I said to my rider, stopping at a light.
Then it turned green and I went.
Dr. Ronga lived on West Lexington, on the near West Side. I caught Harrison, took it over to Racine, and when I reached the corner of Lexington and Racine, I knew I was a stone's throw from the address I was looking for. On the corner was a sandy-colored brick pharmacy, MacAlister's, with an apartment jutting out above- a perfect spot for a lookout post. But I didn't see anybody in the window.
True Detective Page 34
