Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 14 (6 page)

“Make it a booth,” I said.

Afternoon was turning to dusk, as I reached my car, parked across from the apartment house. I sat for a while, wondering if Drury had gotten his ass out of there yet. But I was also waiting to see who the next appointment was.

A heavy-set man in an expensive topcoat with a fur collar walked up the sidewalk to where George the doorman held the door open for him, like he was a regular. Maybe he was: the guy was Captain “Tubbo” Gilbert, candidate for Cook County sheriff.

I was chewing that over when the blonde showgirl with the black eye came out, wearing a pink long-sleeve sweater and pink slacks and carrying two big pink suitcases with a gray garment bag over her arm. I had a hunch her railroad cap wasn’t in either suitcase.

She was stumbling; she’d been crying. George looked like he might want to help her, but didn’t.

She must not have had a car of her own, because she hauled the suitcases to the corner and sat on them, like she was waiting for a bus. A cab might come by, eventually—maybe she’d called one. I knew I should mind my own business.

Instead, I called out, “Hey!”

She looked up and squinted across the street at me.

“You need a lift?” I asked.

She swallowed and nodded.

So I got out and went over and helped with her bags, and loaded them—and her—into my Olds.

As I headed back to the Loop—it was on the tail end of rush hour on the Outer Drive—she looked over at me, timidly, using big brown eyes that were beautiful even if they were bloodshot. “You…you’re not one of
them,
are you?”

I figured she meant, was I a mob guy?

“No,” I said, and hoped to hell I was right.

At the time of its construction before the turn of the century, the sixteen-story Monadnock Building in the south Loop had been the world’s biggest office building, as well as the last—and largest—of the old-style masonry structures, with walls fifteen feet thick at the base. The dark brown brick monolith nonetheless had a modern, streamlined look—thanks to its flaring base, dramatic bay windows, and the outward swell at the top, in lieu of a cornice. A classy building, a classic building—and home of the A-1 Detective Agency.

The A-1 had begun back in December ’32 as a single office over a blind pig in an undistinguished building on nearby Van Buren, sharing a street with hockshops, taverns, and flophouses, with fellow tenants numbering abortionists, shylocks, and a palm reader or two. It was always an awful place, but my friend Barney Ross, the boxer, owned it, so that’s where I got my start.

By ’43 I’d expanded to a suite of two offices and had taken on two operatives (including Lou Sapperstein, who was now a partner) and a knockout secretary named Gladys, who was unfortunately all business; we eventually took over most of the fourth floor. After the war we were briefly in the Rookery, but the space was limited and the rent wasn’t.

So we now had the corner office on the seventh floor of the venerable Monadnock, with a view over Jackson Boulevard of the Federal Building. I had four full-time operatives and two part-time, who shared a big open bullpen of desks; Lou had a small office and I had a big one (Gladys had a reception cubbyhole). We were close to the courts and the banks, and yet still within spitting distance of the Sin Strip of State Street. It was everything a private eye in Chicago could want.

I even looked like one, in the military-style London Fog raincoat and my green Stetson fedora, as—on the cool, overcast September morning after my meeting with the Fischetti boys—I strolled in the Monadnock’s main entrance at 53 West Jackson. Plenty of natural light filtered through the store windows on either side of the corridor—the building was narrow and these were the back-end show-window entries of stores facing Dearborn and the glorified alley that was Federal. The Monadnock had open winding stairwells all the way up, beautiful things, but I took the elevator to seven.

I took a left as I got off on my floor and strode down to the frosted-glass-and-wood wall behind which was our reception nook—or was it a cranny? In bold black, the door said:

A-1 DETECTIVE AGENCY

Criminal and Civil Investigations

Nathan S. Heller

President

and in smaller lettering,

Louis K. Sapperstein Senior Operative

I went in and Gladys Fortunato looked up from her work. A busty brown-eyed brunette with a sulky mouth, primly professional in a white blouse and dark-framed glasses, Gladys was sitting behind her starkly modern plywood and aluminum desk with its phone, typewriter, and intercom.

“Good morning, Mr. Heller.”

“Morning.” I had my hat off; Gladys had long since taught me respect.

Behind her was another wood-and-frosted-glass wall. On the walls to either side hung framed vintage Century of Progress posters, under which resided boxy lime-color wall-snugged couches, a low-slung plywood and aluminum coffee table in front of each, well stocked with various
True Detective
magazines that featured stories about me.

Gladys and I had never been an item, but after her husband (an operative of mine) had died at Guadalcanal, she and I had finally become friendly. Her smile was genuine as she handed me a pile of mail and magazines.

“Glad to see you drag in,” she said.

“I didn’t have any appointments. Nobody knows I’m back in town.”

“Somebody does. You have an appointment in half an hour with Captain Gilbert.”

“Hell! Why did you take that?”

“I didn’t—he did. His secretary asked if you had a ten o’clock appointment, and I said no, and she said to put Captain Gilbert down and that was that.”

“Damn.”

“And Mr. Sapperstein wants to talk to you.”

I sighed. “Send him over.”

“I can get you some coffee, if that’ll help.”

“No thanks.”

I went through another frosted-glass door out into the bullpen—Lou’s office was straight ahead, door closed. The area was fairly open—I don’t like butting desks up against each other—and (while I was no modernist in Charley Fischetti’s league) the office furniture I’d chosen was the latest stuff: plywood, Fiberglas, perforated aluminum, and wire, sleek and efficient. We were in an ancient building, with foam green plaster walls and dark molding, and I wanted to send a contemporary message.

About half the desks were filled—my ops spent a good share of their time in the field, and of course Drury’s desk was vacant—and I nodded a couple hellos as I headed around to the right, stopped to get a Dixie cup of water from the cooler, then went through the door marked PRIVATE.

I hung up my hat and coat in the closet. My office was a spacious affair with a comfortable couch, padded leather client chairs, wooden file cabinets, and—positioned against the opposite wall to take advantage of the big double bay windows—the mammoth old scarred desk I’d had since the beginning. I wasn’t going to subject myself to any of that atomic age nonsense.

My office walls were decorated with framed, mostly signed photos of celebrities, sometimes with me, sometimes not. A few magazine covers were framed as well—a
Real Detective
that covered my handling of the Sir Harry Oakes “locked room” murder, a
Daring Detective
showcasing my cracking of the Peacock homicide, a couple others—an egotistical array, but it impressed clients.

I leaned back in my swivel chair and sipped my water, wondering if Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert—who I’d seen yesterday afternoon, going in for the next appointment with Charley Fischetti—had spotted me, as well.

Two raps on the door announced Sapperstein, who did not wait for a response, just ambled in, shutting the door behind him, and pulled up a chair. He had his suitcoat off, exposing dark suspenders and the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt; despite this casualness, his royal blue tie wasn’t loosened.

My bald, bespectacled partner—who at sixty could still kick the hell out of most men half his age, belying his librarian looks—said, “Did Gladys mention you’d had a number of phone calls already this morning?”

“She said Tubbo’s secretary called for an appointment.”

He frowned. “Yeah, so I heard—what’s that about?”

“What do you think? Drury. Tubbo’s on his short list, right next to Fischetti.”

“Where
is
Bill this morning? Not that he’s ever around. Did you ever track him down yesterday? Not to mention our tape recorders.”

“I tracked him down, and he’s not going to be around, other than I hope to bring back those Reveres. I fired him.”

Briefly, I told Lou how I’d caught our operative in the basement of the Barry Apartments.

“Crazy bastard,” Lou said, shaking his head. “He’ll get us all killed before he’s through.”

“No he won’t. He’s not part of the A-1, anymore. We have nothing to do with him and his little war on crime.”

“Let’s see if you can convince Tubbo of that.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I think I convinced Fischetti—or anyway, I thought I had. With Tubbo turning up on my doorstep this morning, who the hell knows?”

That astounded him. “You saw Fischetti yesterday? What, Charley?”

“Charley
and
Rocco. And Joey, for that matter.”

I gave him the lowdown, quickly—I left out the part about me giving Rocco’s discarded, battered showgirl a lift into the Loop…or that she was still in my residential suite at the St. Clair Hotel. (You’ll get the lowdown on that, in due time. Patience.)

As I wound up my story, Lou lifted a pack of Camels from his breast pocket and lighted up. I could tell he was thinking about how to approach me, on something. Finally he waved out his match and said, “Those other calls I mentioned? They’re all from Robinson—Kefauver’s man.”

“I know who he is.”

Lou’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, you’ve met him?”

“No. But I know who he is.”

“Robinson wants to meet with you. No subpoena—just informal. Over at the Stevens Hotel.”

“I heard they were camped out at the Crime Commission, with Virgil Peterson.”

Lou nodded. “Officially, yes. But they’re using the Stevens for talking to potential witnesses and, uh…”

“Informants?”

He shrugged. “Better a live informant than a dead witness. Anyway, you better get it out of the way. Go over there—see if you can convince them you don’t know jack shit. Head this fucking thing off.”

“You’ve talked to Robinson?”

Lou’s eyes rolled. “Oh, only six or twelve times, about this. You want me to call, and set it up?”

I sighed. Nodded.

“For when?”

“Soon as the hell possible,” I said. “This morning, even—just allow me time to deal with Tubbo.”

Lou nodded, breathed dragon smoke, and rose. Heading for the door, he said, “I’ll take care of it,” and went out.

I was halfway through my mail when Gladys buzzed, and informed me my “ten o’clock” was here. I told her to usher him in, which she did.

“Quite a step up from Van Buren Street,” Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert said jovially, after we’d shook hands and he’d settled into a leather chair across from me.

If Bill Drury was the best-dressed honest cop in town, Dan Gilbert was the best-dressed bent one…which was a bigger distinction, after all.

Pushing sixty, a fleshy six-footer in a three-piece three-hundred-buck double-breasted gray pinstripe suit with a blood-drop ruby stickpin in his gray-and-blue tie and several diamond-and-gold rings on various pudgy fingers, Tubbo sat with an ankle on a knee and his pearl gray homburg in his lap. His keg of a head sat on an ample double chin, and his dark eyes in their pouches were sharp with cunning if not quite intelligence. His nose was flat and pointed, like Jack Frost’s icicle snout starting to melt; his chin cleft, a Kirk Douglas dimple; his hair neatly combed salt-and-pepper, nicely barbered; his eyebrows thick dark slashes that might have been borrowed from Rocco or Charley Fischetti.

“I guess you haven’t been over to our new offices before, Tub,” I said, leaning back in the swivel chair, arms folded, giving him a faint meaningless smile.

“You should come over to my suite at the Sherman,” he said. “Very nice. Nothing like an office with room service.”

Tubbo was on leave of absence from the State’s Attorney’s office, for the duration of his campaign for sheriff—not that he’d ever spent much time at the office out of which he supposedly supervised one hundred detectives.

“How’s the campaign going?” I asked.

“Swell. Public’s really responding to our message.”

“What message is that? I’ve been out of town.”

“Oh. Well. I’m going to drive all the gambling out of Cook County—just give me your vote, and six months.”

I had to grin. “Does that include that handbook of yours, over on West Washington?”

Tubbo didn’t take offense; he just flashed me a yellow grin, and reached inside his suitcoat pocket. I knew he wasn’t going for a weapon—well, not a weapon that used bullets.

The envelope he flopped onto my desk would have green ammunition in it, no doubt.

“Take a look,” he said. “Two grand in fifties.”

During his thirty-three years as a police officer, Tubbo Gilbert had been a busy boy. He’d been a labor organizer prior to his first assignment on the P.D.—patrolman—and in less than nine years, he made captain. And it didn’t interfere with his continued union organizing, at all. After he became chief investigator for the State’s Attorney’s office, few Chicago-area labor crimes were solved; and in his eighteen years with the State’s Attorney, gambling flourished in suburban Cook County, while not one major Capone hoodlum went to jail—although Tubbo did find time to frame a few of the Outfit’s competitors, notably bootlegger Roger Touhy.

These minor lapses didn’t keep Tubbo from achieving distinction as a law enforcement officer in Chicago. He was considered the city’s top cop—above the commissioner and the chief of police—and was undoubtedly the most important law enforcement officer in the county. His real claim to fame, however—cemented by various newspaper articles—was as “the world’s richest cop.”

An underpaid public servant could get wealthy, he explained to reporters, by investing wisely on the Chicago Commodity Market.

“It’s two grand, all right,” I said, thumbing through the greenbacks; then I tossed the envelope back on the desk—nearer to myself than Tubbo.

“Would you like to know what that’s for, Nate?”

“I figure you’ll get around to it.”

“We’ve not had many dealings, you and I.”

I’d seen to that: steered Tubbo a wide path.

He went on: “But we’ve had mutual friends, over the years. Frank Nitti said I was his favorite golfing partner.”

“No kidding.”

“None. We used to go down to the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, together—great golf course. Owney Madden used to join us. You know, I still use the clubs Frank gave me. Gold-plated. Frank was a generous man.”

“The clubs he gave me were solid gold.”

Tubbo frowned—the pouchy eyes seemed hurt, for an instant; then he grinned. “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”

“A little. But I agree with you. Frank Nitti was a hell of a guy.”

“He put the word out, you know—no one was to screw with Nate Heller. He liked you. You had his protection.”

“But he’s dead, now. Dead for what—seven years?”

Tubbo raised a plump, jeweled hand as if in benediction. “It still goes—you still benefit from his goodwill. His respect for you.”

“Good to know.” I didn’t mention that Tubbo was referring to the same Outfit guys who had cornered Nitti into suicide.

Captain Gilbert folded his hands on his ample belly. “I don’t see your associate, Mr. Drury, in the office today—or does he have a private office?”