Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 14 (7 page)

Didn’t Fischetti fill him in? “Bill doesn’t work here anymore, Tub…. Still want to give me the two grand?”

“That’s a token of thanks from certain individuals in return for your cooperation in this laughable ‘crime’ inquiry.”

“Nothing more?”

“It could be considered a down payment. Have you had a falling out with Drury? Was it on bad terms, his parting from your employ?”

“Bill saved my life, once. We’ll always be friends. I just don’t want to have anything to do with his crusade.”

Tubbo twitched a sneer. “Vendetta, you mean.”

“You think he’s singled you out, Tub?”

“Not me, really. Charles Fischetti. Drury’s had a chip on his shoulder, for Charley, ever since Charley beat that gun rap, years ago. Silly damn grudge. Childish. As for me, I’ve always gotten along with Bill. I just ran into him in the Sherman Hotel drugstore, the other day—he plays handball in the gym, there.”

“Really.”

“Yes, and when you see him, tell him I was serious about my offer. It still stands.”

I grinned again—trying to bribe Bill Drury? Who was Tubbo trying to kid—himself? “What offer was that, Tub?”

“After the election, I’ll have an investigator’s slot waiting for him, on the sheriffs department. He’d like to be a cop again, I hear. Well, I’ll make him one.”

“I’ll pass that along. For what good it’ll do.”

He raised a fat finger. “You might advise him to watch the company he’s keeping.”

“What company is that?”

“These reporters. Did you see the
Collier’s
piece, by Lester Velie?”

“I skimmed it.”

His eyes tightened. “Your friend—your former employee—was the prime source. And of course he’s still feeding Lait and Mortimer wild stories and exaggerations.”

Jack Lait, a seasoned reporter and veteran of several Chicago papers, was now the editor of the
New York Mirror;
and Lee Mortimer was a syndicated columnist for that same paper. Starting with New York, they’d collaborated on several bestselling books on major cities—half smutty tour guide, half muckraking journalism. The latest one—
Chicago Confidential,
published early this year—had exposed to a national audience many Outfit secrets, including Tubbo’s role as the “elder statesman of political corruption.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” I said. “Bill was working for the
Herald-American
before he came to work with me. And his brother was a reporter. So he runs in those circles.”

The pouchy eyes narrowed; for the first time, a faint edge of menace crept into Tubbo’s voice. “You didn’t know he was feeding these yellow journalists his tripe at the same time he was on your payroll?”

“I did not.”

Tubbo shifted in the chair; the leather made a farting sound, as he crossed his other leg. “Have you ever seen these fabled notebooks of his?”

“The records, the files he keeps? I know about them. He’s mentioned them. He certainly didn’t keep them here.”

The dimpled chin lifted and he gazed down the pudgy expanse of his excess-ridden face. “If you could find them, they would be…of interest.”

“To you or to Charley Fischetti?”

An elaborate shrug. “Does that matter? Find them, secure them, deliver them—and there’s fifty thousand in it.”

“Jesus! Fifty thousand….”

His smile seemed almost puckish. “I thought that might get your attention.”

I picked up the envelope, riffled through the bills. This was the moment, in the pulps, in the movies, where the private eye threw that damn money in the crooked cop’s face.

“Thanks,” I said, and tossed the envelope in my top desk drawer. “I’ll see what I can do…. But those notebooks are a long shot. I’m not promising anything.”

Tubbo nodded, pleased. He got up—it took a while. He gestured for me not to show him to the door—I wasn’t planning to, anyway. He was halfway there when he paused and asked, “Do you know this attorney—what is it, Bas? Marvin Bas?”

I shrugged. “Not well. He’s a Republican, pretty active in his ward. Represents some nightclubs, strip joints, on the Near Northside.”

Now his tone got casual—a little too casual. “Did you know Bas and Drury are thick, these days?”

“News to me, Tub.”

“It’s really too bad…distressing. You see, Bas is working for Babb.”

That was a lot of
b
’s, but what it meant was, Drury was tight with a high-ranking campaign worker of Tubbo’s opponent in the sheriff’s race. Drury might be digging up dirt on Tubbo—a job that wouldn’t take much of a shovel—for that candidate.

“It’s a pity,” Tubbo said, and shook his head. “Beating Coughlan woulda been a damn cakewalk.”

J. Malachy Coughlan, Tubbo’s original opponent in the sheriff’s race, had died in August; young, handsome, personable John E. Babb—an attorney and a World War Two hero—had been chosen to fill the slate.

“You’re a Democrat, Tub,” I said. “You got to try real hard to lose, in this town.”

Tubbo nodded that I was right, waved a jeweled hand, and slipped out—and he was barely gone before Sapperstein slipped in. He trotted over and took Tubbo’s well-broken-in chair.

“Robinson will see you at eleven-thirty at the Stevens,” Lou said. “Suite 1014. Any objections?”

“No. Thank you for setting it up.” I returned to my mail and then looked up and Lou, bright-eyed behind the tortoise-shells, was staring at me.

“Are you still here?” I asked.

“So?”

“So what?”

“So what’s up with Tubbo—spill!”

I filled him in, and showed him the envelope of money.

“You’re keeping that?” Lou asked, mildly surprised.

“Hell yes. I wasn’t going to testify, anyway.”

His eyes were wide, his brow tense. “Well, Christ—thanks for making me party to a bribe.”

I shrugged. “In that case, this never happened, and this two grand goes into my pocket, and not the A-1 account, out of which you get a share.”

Sapperstein smirked. “You’re funnier than Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.”

“All of them? Anyway, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and now it has.”

“What other shoe?”

I leaned back, rocking in the chair. “It was too easy, yesterday, with Fischetti.”

“How so?”

“Charley just asked me not to testify, and I said don’t worry about it, and that was it.
Some
money had to change hands, or I’d be worried.”

He frowned—and with that bald head, the frown went way back and never seemed to stop. “You’re not going to sell Drury out, are you?”

I almost threw a paperweight at him. “What the fuck kind of thing is that to say? I got lines I don’t cross, for Chrissake!”

He got up, patting the air with both palms. “I know, Nate, I know, I’m sorry…. It’s just—after all these years, I still have trouble keeping track of what they are, exactly.”

And he went out.

The Stevens Hotel was hardly an out-of-the-way hole-in-the-wall where an investigator might discreetly interview informants. On Michigan Avenue between Balbo and Eighth, overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan, the massive, rococo hotel was the world’s largest, with its three thousand rooms, twenty-five stories and four finger-like skyscraper towers.

Still, it made some sense, Kefauver’s team camping out, here. Uncle Sam had a relationship with the Stevens, which had been used by the military during the war, for offices, training, and even billeting. And with all these rooms, all this activity—who knew how many conventions and conferences were going on in the hotel right now?—anybody could get lost in the crowd, or at least have an excuse for being here.

Though the Stevens was only a four-block walk from the Monadnock, a light rain encouraged me to hop a cab, which dropped me at the Michigan Avenue entry. A corridor of store-front windows opened into a two-story, ornate lobby bordered by yawningly wide staircases, leading to ballrooms and, no kidding, an ice-skating rink. Shaking the drizzle from my fedora, I strolled on into the vast white chamber, a world of marble pilasters, luxurious Louis XVI furnishings, and fluffy clouds drifting on a high, carved-plaster, gold-trimmed ceiling’s painted sky—what better setting for Chicago gangsters?

The elevators were to the left of the check-in counter, near an elegant sitting area of round button-tufted couches and overstuffed chairs. I spotted a small man in a brown suit and green snapbrim, seated in a chair between a couple of potted ferns, legs crossed exposing diamond-pattern socks over brown tasseled loafers. Though his identity was hidden by the
Herald-American
sports section, which he was holding high and close, something about the guy seemed familiar.

When I turned my back to this possible sentry—or spy—I continued to watch him in the polished bronze elevator door, to see if he peeked out over or around that sports section. He did not. Maybe I was just being paranoid—but that was okay, because I was, after all, a professional paranoid.

When I got off on the tenth floor, a short, burly-looking little guy—snappy, in a well-cut blue suit with blue-and-red striped tie and gray feathered hat—was waiting to get on. His hair was black and his eyes were like black buttons in a rumpled oval face made round by five o’clock-shadowed jowls.

I knew him and he knew me—and we both froze there, long enough for him to miss the elevator. We understood at once why we both were on the tenth floor of the Stevens.

“Well, hello, Jake,” I said, and offered my hand.

Jake Rubinstein’s grip was firm, but his smile wasn’t. “Been a long time, Nate. Since before the war, right?”

“Right. I thought you were in Dallas.”

“Yeah, yeah I still am.” He hitched his shoulders, Cagney-style, only without the confidence. “I had, uh…business back here.”

We both knew what kind of business—the Kefauver variety—but that went unstated.

Jake punched the DOWN button, and said, “So is Barney in town?”

“No, he and Cathy are in L.A. They got remarried.”

“Ah, that’s great. I heard he shook that monkey off his back. That’s great, too. Gutsy little bastard.”

This strained exchange referred to our mutual pal, Barney Ross, who had come back from the war with a morphine habit that he managed to kick, going public with his problem.

All three of us had grown up in the Lawndale district, near Maxwell Street, and we’d all been little street hustlers as kids, only Barney went on to be a world’s champ prizefighter, I became a cop, and Jake a strong-arm goon and bagman for local unions. A few years ago Jake had moved to Dallas, where (among other things) he managed the Silver Spur, a nightclub.

The elevator made a return stop, and Jake and I bid our goodbyes, and he went on his way, and I on mine.

Once you got away from the area around the elevators, the halls of the posh hotel got as tight as a train car. I took a right down to the door of the corner suite where I’d been told to come. I knocked on a gold-edged ivory door.

After peephole inspection, the door swung open and revealed Drury’s fellow exile, ex-police captain Tim O’Conner, a lanky, blue-eyed, sandy-blond Irishman whose narrow, handsomely sharp-featured face was mildly ravaged by pock-marks (cheeks) and drink (nose).

“Doorman, now, Tim?” I asked, as he ushered me in. “That the only job available to an ex-copper these days?”

“I’m lucky anybody’ll have me.” Like Drury, O’Conner was well dressed for a cop, his off-the-rack brown suit livened up by a pale yellow shirt and dark yellow tie. “Actually, these gentlemen thought you might warm up to a familiar face.”

I stopped him in the hall-like entryway of the suite, off of which were closets and a bathroom. “Are you working for the committee?”

He took my raincoat and hung it up; I kept my hat, but took it off.

“In a roundabout way,” O’Conner said. “This local lawyer working with the committee, Kurnitz, I hired on as his investigator. He’s here, you’ll meet him, Kurnitz, I mean.”

“I’ve met him before.”

Kurnitz was an eccentric, full-of-himself lawyer in the Loop who did a lot of criminal work, both for white-collar criminals, like embezzlers, and blue-collar crooks, like heist men. He didn’t mouthpiece for the mob, though, which explained the committee using him—a guy with connections in the underworld who wasn’t connected.

O’Conner was saying, “The committee didn’t want to hire either Bill or me, because we’re controversial figures. We were fired off the police force, after all.”

“I’d think getting fired off the crookedest goddamn force in the country would be a glowing recommendation.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re getting the job done.”

O’Conner escorted me into the living room area of the nicely appointed suite, where my hosts were waiting. A sofa along the window overlooked Grant Park and the lake—a breathtaking view made irrelevant by the gray afternoon—with several easy chairs pulled up close, a coffee table between…a nice, cozy setting for an inquisition.

As we approached, the three men who’d been seated together on that couch rose as one. All three had dark-rimmed glasses and dark hair and receding hairlines—they might have been brothers.

Or maybe the Three Stooges—only all of them were Moes, albeit balding ones.

The one nearest me extended a hand—he was tall, lean, but sturdy-looking with an oblong face that had slits for eyes and a slightly wider slit for a mouth, which right now were combining to form a stern expression. Fiftyish, he wore a brown suit and a darker brown tie. “George Robinson, Mr. Heller, associate counsel. Thank you for joining us.”

It was a firm handshake, and his words were cordial enough; but his manner made me think of a high school principal regarding a problem student.

“Rudolph Halley, Mr. Heller,” said the man next to Robinson—a head shorter, a good ten years younger—in a high-pitched voice laced with a lisp. “Chief Counsel.” A compact character in a blue suit with a blue-and-red bow tie, Halley had a moon face, its roundness offset by a cleft chin and hard dark eyes.

“Mr. Halley,” I said, accepting his aggressive handshake. Then I turned to the remaining man, and said, “Mr. Kurnitz,” nodding to the lawyer, who was at right, standing slightly apart from the other two.

“Mr. Heller,” he said, nodding back, in a well-modulated courtroom baritone. He wore a gray suit, nicely cut, and a blue-and-gray tie, and would have been handsome if his intense brown eyes hadn’t been too large for his face even before his eyeglasses magnified them.

They returned to the couch and I took a comfortable armchair opposite them, with the coffee table—piled with various files and notebooks—between us. Water glasses and a coffee cup also rested on the glass top. The grayness of the afternoon filled the windows behind them like a bleak expressionist painting.

O’Conner, standing near the other easy chair but not taking it, asked, “Anybody want anything?” To me he explained, “There’s coffee and ice water and soft drinks.”

“No pretzels?” I asked.

Nobody but me found that funny.

Robinson and Halley asked for refills of their water glasses, and Kurnitz requested another coffee, black. I asked for a Coke. O’Conner hustled over to the wet bar and filled everybody’s orders. Glad to see the ex-cop had a significant job here on the Crime Committee.

“Mr. Heller, you’ve had an interesting and varied career,” Robinson said. He managed to make that sound like an insult.

Sitting forward, Halley said, “You can understand why we would like to have your cooperation.”

“I’m here,” I said with a shrug.

O’Conner was in the process of serving everybody.

“You left the police force, locally,” Robinson said, referring to a spiral notebook, “in December 1932, not long after an incident involving Frank Nitti.”

“Two crooked cops tried to kill him,” I said. “They expected me to lie for them. I didn’t.”

“You testified to that fact in April 1933,” Halley said. Unlike Robinson, he didn’t refer to any notes, and I guess I was supposed to be impressed.

O’Conner—after serving me last, handing me a water glass with ice cubes and Coke—settled into the easy chair at my right. He flashed me a nervous smile; he hadn’t gotten himself anything to drink.

“I don’t have anything to add, where that incident is concerned,” I said. “It’s all part of the public record—my testimony speaks for itself. Besides, that’s ancient history, isn’t it? Frank Nitti is dead.”

“Killed himself,” Robinson said, in a “crime does not pay” fashion.

I shifted in my seat. “Why do you need to ask me things you already know the answers to? If you have the FBI file on me—”

“We don’t have your file, Mr. Heller,” Halley said. That nasal voice of his was weirdly hypnotic. “J. Edgar Hoover has gone on record with his opinion that the Mafia is a myth—we are receiving no cooperation whatsoever from the FBI, which is why we have to work so hard investigating, on our own steam.”

I kept a poker face, but relief was flooding through me. I knew for a fact—because just last year, I’d been confronted with it in an interrogation in Washington, D.C.—that the FBI had a file on me as thick as the Chicago phone book. Once, a long time ago, I had told J. Edgar to go fuck himself (that’s not a paraphrase, by the way) and he had ever since taken a personal interest in my welfare. I had been expecting Kefauver’s advance team, here, to have that handy little reference tool to guide them.

“We do have the cooperation of the IRS,” Robinson said. “And Frank J. Wilson gives you high marks.”

Wilson had been one of the IRS agents who had nailed Capone; until recently, he’d been head of the Secret Service, another Treasury Department operation.

“That’s nice to hear,” I said.

“Eliot Ness also regards you highly,” Robinson said, referring to the former T-man who had been key in the Capone case. “He indicates you helped him, and effectively, on several matters in Cleveland, during his years as Public Safety Director.”

I said nothing.

He went on: “You are aware, certainly, that we’re concentrating on illegal gambling, in general, and the racing wire racket, in particular.”

“I am.” I grinned at him, which seemed to unsettle him. “And just why is that, Mr. Robinson?”

Robinson frowned in genuine confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Why gambling? Why aren’t you dealing with narcotics, or loan sharking, or prostitution? Or perhaps the relationship between machine politics and the mob? Or maybe the criminal infiltration of labor unions?”

Robinson looked at a page of his spiral notebook. “We have to begin somewhere, Mr. Heller. Gambling is our focus.”

“Gambling is a safe target, you mean—you don’t step on as many toes, in an election year. You can play Joe Friday, and look good, and still not get yourselves or your political parties in any trouble.”

Halley had been sipping his coffee; he set the cup down in its saucer, clatteringly. His nasal lisp notched up, in volume and indignation. “Mr. Heller, if that’s going to be your attitude, we won’t do you the courtesy of meeting with you in private. We’ll send you a subpoena and put you on public display with the rest of the hooligans.”

I saluted him with my Coke glass. “Oh, this is a courtesy? Five’ll get you ten—hypothetically speaking—there’s a mob watchdog in the lobby keeping track of every informant coming up the elevator to see you. Charley Fischetti and Jake Guzik and Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo and assorted ‘hooligans’ will all know Nate Heller was meeting with the Kefauver quiz kids, this afternoon. And I’ll have some explaining to do.”

“You have some explaining to do, right now,” Robinson said. The slit of his mouth curled in contempt. “You were James Ragen’s bodyguard the day he was shotgunned in the Chicago streets, were you not? In June 1946?”

“Yeah. I was Mayor Cermak’s bodyguard, too, and Huey Long’s.” I took a swig of Coke, and swallowed obnoxiously. “How’s that for a track record?”

“I’m afraid your point eludes me,” Robinson said.

“My point is, I do that sort of thing for a living…not always very well, obviously. It doesn’t mean I’m a mobster or that I have any particular insights into the breed. Look, I testified at the Ragen inquest; it’s all in the public record.”

“Ragen was your wife’s uncle, I understand.”

“She was my girl friend, at the time. She’s my ex-wife, now.”

O’Conner said to me, “Bill Drury thinks the way to bring the racing wire mobsters down is to crack Ragen’s murder. After all, Ragen was murdered so the Capone crowd could take over his racing wire business.”

I didn’t respond; I mean, it wasn’t a question.

Frustrated, O’Conner pressed on: “Back in ’46, you and Bill Drury searched out the eyewitnesses, Nate. You helped Bill!”

“We did find the eyeball witnesses,” I admitted, “and they ID’d the shooters—a trio of West Side bookies.”

Robinson read from his notebook: “David Finkel, Joseph Leonard, and William Yaras. Yaras is still a Chicago resident, and Mr. Drury would very much like to see him brought to justice. The whereabouts of Finkel and Leonard are unknown, though I’m sure Mr. Drury would like to see them brought to justice, as well.”