Neon Mirage (12 page)

Serritella nodded, his owl eyes blinking, double chin jiggling. “They’re dynamite. Jim should burn those. He really should.”

“I think Jim may be ready to negotiate.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t particularly like dealing with Jake Guzik personally. These meetings with mob chieftains look bad in my FBI file; I’ve been logged in surveillance records God knows how many times. They’ve tried to pull me in before Grand Juries because of it. Anyway, you’re a go-between, Dan. Everybody knows that. Do what you do so well. Take the message.”

“Which is?”

“Like I said. Jim might be ready to talk. But he needs something.”

“What’s that?”

“Assurance that Guzik wasn’t responsible for Monday.”

“Well, it was Siegel. Everybody knows that.”

“Even you, Dan? Who goes to so much trouble not to know too much? Just in case you have to take a lie detector test or something? You deal with these people daily, but you’re like a wife whose husband cheats but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t want to hear about it, what she don’t know won’t hurt her. Just as long as he’s bringing in a fat pay check, he can screw around all he wants.”

Serritella pursed his lips and reassuringly patted the arm of his blonde, who was taking this all in with wide eyes, like Shirley Temple watching Bill Robinson dance.

“You’re a very unpleasant man, Heller,” he said.

“I know what you mean—I can hardly stand my own company. What do you know about David Finkel and Joseph Leonard?”

He shrugged, shifting in his seat. “They’re bookies, aren’t they? West Side?”

“Yeah. Are they tied in with Guzik, do you suppose?”

“Geez, how should I know?”

“They’re the ones who shotgunned your friend Jim Ragen. Doesn’t that make you mad, Dan?”

He nodded, squinted his owlish eyes, tried to summon outrage, came nowhere near, saying, “Furious. The police should arrest them.”

“That’s a terrific idea, Dan. I’ll pass that along to Bill Drury; he’ll wish he’d thought of it. Now, from what I hear, Finkel and Leonard have dropped out of sight. It would be nice if they could turn up. Alive.”

Serritella nodded more slowly. “You mean, if they showed up alive, and held up under questioning…without mentioning Guzik…maybe mentioning somebody else…that might convince Jim of the sincerity of a certain business offer.”

“For a guy who don’t know what’s goin’ on,” I said, patting him on the back, “you got a lot of savvy, Dan.”

Serritella stood, pulled out the chair for his protégée, put her on his arm, and said to me, “I’ll see what I can do.” Then he smiled and nodded at the others at the table, including Peggy, who smiled at him pleasantly, though her violet eyes were icy. They were no longer icy when turned my way, however.

“Nice piece of work, Daddy-o,” Pete said, smiling one-sidedly, leaning back in his chair, arms folded over his massive chest. “You played that little fixer like a penny harmonica.”

“I may have come on a little strong,” I said. “He’s a weasel, but he’s a powerful weasel. On the other hand, he’s used to being looked down upon by his patron saints—a guy like Serritella is tolerated by Outfit guys, never liked, let alone respected. I thought I better treat him like I figure his bosses treat him.”

“Well you sure done a good job of it.”

“Thanks.” I looked about the room. “I don’t think your witness is going to show.”

“He’ll show,” Pete said. “Tad Jones is not gonna pass up a couple free rounds of drinks at the Club DeLisa. It ain’t even midnight yet. He’ll show.”

“Well,” I said, standing, easing Peggy’s chair out, giving her my arm, “I think I’ll leave him to you. Let me know if he i.d.’s Finkel and Leonard. Which he probably will. This is looking pretty cut and dried to me, now.”

“You think Guzik will sell out those two torpedoes?”

“Yeah—although they may just turn up dead in a ditch, especially if Guzik was who hired ’em. Will twelve cover my end?”

Pete said sure and I handed him a ten and two ones. For the food and drinks Peggy and me put away, it was a steal. And the babe who made a pretty pretzel out of herself hadn’t cost us a dime.

“Nate,” Peg said, later, in bed, “I want to thank you.”

“Well, I think I oughta thank
you.”

Her smile was crinkly and wry. “Not about that, you goof. About what you’re trying to do for Uncle Jim.”

“What am I trying to do for your uncle?”

“Despite what all you’ve said, you really are trying to find out who tried to have him killed.”

I shrugged, as best I could, leaning on my elbow in bed. “I’m curious—it’s my nature. And your uncle is right, to a degree—doing business with Guzik would feel better if we knew that it was somebody else…Siegel, specifically…who paid for that hit.”

“So what’s your next move?”

“Nothing. There is no next move.”

“I find that hard to believe…”

“Well, strain yourself a little, kiddo, ’cause it’s true. Drury’s going to nab those would-be killers and, with a little luck, and more evidence than even the State’s Attorney’s office can ignore, he’ll get an indictment and a conviction.”

“Will whoever hired them be convicted, too?”

“Sure, if it’s a cold day in hell. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Guzik or Siegel responsible, you’re just not going to see that happen.”

“Why not?”

“That’s not the way the game works. The big boys are too well-insulated; the big boys can do too much damage to the families and friends of the small fry taking the rap. No, even if they get the chair, those two won’t implicate anybody, not anybody big.”

She almost looked like she was going to cry. “What happened to justice, anyway?”

“When was it, exactly, that justice was around? I must’ve missed it.”

She sat up in bed, looking very pale, very small, just a child, holding the sheet to her breasts, looking straight ahead. “If I knew who it was, I’d kill him myself.”

“That’s silly.”

She gave me a withering look. “It’s not silly. They tried to kill Uncle Jim!”

“Hey, they tried to kill me, too. You always seem to forget that little detail.”

She said nothing for a while; me, either.

Then, without looking at me, she said, very quietly, “I talked to Ginny again. Just before she left town, this week.”

“Ginny?” I said. Not quietly. “Virginia Hill? What are you talking to
her
for?”

“We’re friends. I’m allowed to have friends of my own choosing.”

“Yeah, yeah. But she’s just a hooker who got out of hand. You stay away from her.”

She paused, considering, then dropped her bombshell: “She does know Bugsy Siegel. She told me.”

“She does?”

“She’s…she’s sort of his girl.”

“Sort of his
girl?
Oh, great. Then she
was
trying to pump you about your uncle, that time…”

“Maybe. But she doesn’t know how I feel about Uncle Jim. About what happened to him. How close we are.”

“So? So what?”

“She offered me a job.”

“A job! What, riding trains with bags of mob money? Sleeping with senators?”

She ignored the nastiness of that. Said simply, “She needs a secretary.”

“What for?”

“She has business interests.”

“Well, where would this be? Hollywood?”

She nodded.

“You’re not seriously considering…”

She touched my arm; cool touch. “Nate, think a minute. If I were working for Ginny, I’d be close to this Bugsy Siegel person. I might be able to find something out.”

“Find something out? Are you kidding, or just crazy? You’re no goddamn detective…”

“If I get close to him, I can find out what he’s doing where Uncle Jim’s concerned.”

“That’s stupid. Siegel’s not going to say anything around the niece of the man he wants dead—assuming he does want Jim dead. This is lunacy. Don’t even think about this.”

“Ginny doesn’t know how I feel about my uncle. I could pretend we had a falling out; pretend to hate him.”

“What is this, a school play you’re trying out for? Forget this. This is stupid. You can’t accomplish anything, except maybe get yourself hurt, or worse.”

“I was hoping you’d think it was a good idea.”

“Yeah, well it’s a good idea for the radio. For real life, it stinks. I won’t hear of this. I won’t stand for it.”

“You really feel that strongly.”

“Of course I do.”

“Then…then I won’t go.”

I didn’t say anything. I came within an inch of saying,
you’re goddamn right you won’t go.
But instead, I just touched her face; smiled at her, gently. She smiled back the same way, though there was disappointment in it.

“Good girl,” I said. I gave her a kiss; just a peck. I turned out the lights and pulled the covers around us, as the Morrison’s air conditioning was downright chilly tonight, and we cuddled like spoons, me behind her, slipping a hand around to cup one sweet breast.

“I love you, baby.”

“I love you, Nate. I really do.”

We were just drifting off to sleep when the phone rang; it was after two—nobody calls me that late. I damn near ran to the phone, out in the other room, and it was Drury on the line.

“Nate,” Drury said. His voice sounded hollow. “It’s started.”

“What’s started?”

“Tad Jones is dead.”

“What? Christ…”

“He was killed by another Negro. Drunken scuffle over a watch is the story.”

“Pete was going to meet with him tonight…”

“Tad never showed up at the Club DeLisa. Pete’s going to look into the slaying, of course. It’ll be hard to prove anything. Even with Pete on the case.”

“This could spook the other witnesses. Pardon the expression.”

He sighed. “I know. I thought we had these bastards wrapped up in a bow. Shit.”

“What now?”

“I’m not giving up,” he said, as if a little insulted that I might think that a possibility, even though I hadn’t suggested it, except maybe by my tone. “I’ll put the other witnesses under protective custody, till we pick up Finkel and Leonard, and then we’ll have a show-up. If the witnesses can pick ’em out of the line, and we can get their statements, then we might still have something.”

“Damn. Is this Guzik?”

“Or Siegel? You tell me.”

“Finkel and Leonard are Jews,” I said, thinking out loud, “but then so are Guzik and Siegel.”

“And Davey and Blinkey don’t have any great ties to either of them.”

“But they’re bookies,” I pointed out, “meaning they got
some
ties to both of ’em.”

“Right.”

“I’m sorry about this, Bill.”

“Yeah,” he said, wearily. “Well, thanks for all your help, Nate. You’re a good man despite yourself.”

“I’m a goddamn prince,” I said, and hung up.

“What was that about?” she asked.

I turned and looked at her; she was in her little blue see-through nightie, looking about sixteen years old, a pale vision, those huge violet eyes melting me.

I told her what Drury had told me.

Her jaw tightened; her hands turned into fists. “They’re going to get away with it, aren’t they?”

I went to her; put my arm around her, daddy soothing baby. “I don’t think so. I don’t think Bill’s going to let them.”

She stepped away from me, just a bit. Her expression intense. “Can’t
you
identify them? You recognized them, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, at the hospital today—but not when they were shooting at me. I’ve already given a statement to that effect. Gone on record.”

“Can’t you say it just came to you?”

“A week later, I suddenly remember? After I have a run-in with these guys outside Ragen’s hospital room? The prosecutors wouldn’t want anything to do with me—once I was in court, even an inexperienced mouthpiece would chew me up, and with my checkered background, I’d be easily discredited, anyway.”

Her pretty mouth was pinched to near ugly. “I wish you’d just…go
after
them.”

“This isn’t Dodge City 1880, honey. It’s Chicago 1946. Which is a hell of a lot worse, in a way, but times still have changed. I’d do most anything for you, I think you know that—but I’m not going to go shooting it out with Outfit guys.”

“There’s no justice, is there?”

“Sure there is. It just doesn’t have anything to do with the legal system.”

“That’s why we should do something ourselves.”

“No,” I told her. “We got an honest cop, who has three live witnesses. He’s going to get the shooters. We’re going to bed. That’s all we’re doing.”

We did.

In the dark, she said, “Even if he does put them in jail, what about whoever hired them? What about
him
?”

Not that again.

“Baby,” I said, “go to sleep.”

I don’t know whether she did or not. I did—slept soundly and hard and my dreams were pleasant; I was riding the dairy float and Reba was sitting in my lap. Well, part of the time she was Reba, and part of the time she was Peggy, and part of the time she was that gal who made a pretzel of herself, and also that chocolate conga-line cutie was in there, somewhere. I loved Peggy, but I reserved the right to have dirty dreams about any women I chose.

I didn’t wake up till ten o’clock the next morning. Peggy was gone. I didn’t think much about it. She’d done that before. Later that day, I tried to call her, at her aunt’s, where she was still helping out, but she couldn’t come to the phone.

Then on Monday, at the office, my secretary Gladys had a message for me from Peg, who had called.

To say she was sorry, but she’d taken a morning flight.

To Hollywood.

The beautiful nude woman was swimming under the blue water of the Olympic-size pool. Well, she wasn’t entirely nude—she was wearing a white bathing cap. Her flesh took on the blue cast of the water and she looked quite unreal, much too perfect, as her arms and legs pumped ever so gently through the depths of the pool, sunlight shimmering on its surface, providing enough of a glare that you had to work to see the girl. But it was worth the effort.

It was early afternoon, on a Wednesday, and I was sitting on the patio around the pool at a sprawling white-brick ranch style home on Coldwater Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills. The home belonged to the small dark man sitting nearby in a dark blue silk robe monogrammed gr. His dark, slightly thinning hair was slicked straight back, like Valentino, a trademark that dated back to his taxi dancer days. He was still hooded-eyed and handsome, though age had exaggerated his profile, his ski nose damn near rivaling Bob Hope’s. And he’d put on some weight: an extra chin, some gut pushing at the middle of the silk robe, which was sashed loosely. He sat on a deck chair near the little table, shielded from the sun by an umbrella canopy, an ankle crossing a leg, occasionally sipping a glass of iced tea, slowly shuffling cards but not playing anything, studying with a faint, seemingly dispassionate smile the girl who was now gliding on the surface of the blue water, tan arms flashing. The sound of the water as she cut gently through it mingled with big band music coming from a radio within the house.

“Glad you could stop by,” George Raft said to me, flatly, in his remote way.

I felt overdresed in my brown suit. I felt like I should loosen my tie or take my hat off or something, but I didn’t, and anyway my hand was filled with the glass of iced tea that Raft’s big lumbering bodyguard, “Killer,” who’d met me at the front door, had brought me. Killer, who was sort of a cross between a butler and Leo Gorcey, wore a blue polo shirt and white slacks and still managed to look like a guy called Killer, at least in California.

Me, I didn’t want to give in to California. It was a foreign place to me. There was just no excuse for this many palm trees and this much stucco being gathered anywhere, and certainly not within the borders of these United States. The weather out here was an incentive to doing nothing. It made me want to go door to door telling people about humidity.

“That’s white of you, George,” I said. “It’s been a long time. I hoped my name would ring a bell.”

His thin line of a smile increased its curvature. “How could I forget
that
piece of business—though it woulda been healthy to.”

What he and I were referring to was a job he had hired me to do, years ago, in 1933, to be exact. Only it wasn’t a job I did for him, really: it was a job I did for Al Capone, who was in the Atlanta pen at the time. Raft had only acted as the go-between, a role he was as used to as his tough-guy screen persona.

It was no secret Raft had been a bootlegger, that his gangster friend Owney Madden had sent him west, pulling strings to get him going in the movies. Not that former pickpocket Raft was bereft of show business experience: he worked a Charleston act in vaudeville, and a specialty tap act at Texas Guinan’s El Fay. Of course, he’d still been doing a little bootlegging for Madden on the side, as well.

“You say you’d like to meet Ben,” Raft said. “I think I could arrange that. But it’d be nice to know what it’s about, first.”

“Actually,” I said, sipping my minty ice tea, “it’s personal. I’m out here on business, but that business has nothing to do with Ben Siegel. The personal matter does, though.”

“Yeah?”

“I got a girl name of Peggy Hogan who came out here a little over a week ago. She and Siegel have some mutual friends. Have you heard of her, George? Met her? Has she been around?”

Raft took his eyes off the nude vision in the pool and looked at me, perhaps to let me know he wasn’t lying.

“Never heard of her,” he said with flat believability.

“I have reason to think she’s gotten herself tied up with Virginia Hill.”

Raft smiled a little. “Ginny attracts all sorts of people to her.”

“And she’s Ben Siegel’s girl?”

“She thinks she is.”

“Meaning?”

“Ben always has more than one woman in his life.”

“Well, that stands to reason, doesn’t it? He’s married, isn’t he?”

“Divorced,” Raft shrugged. “From Whitey Krakower’s sister. God rest his soul.”

Whitey Krakower, in addition to being Siegel’s brother-in-law, had been a sometime Siegel accomplice, according to the indictment in the Harry “Big Greenie” Greenburg murder, anyway. Whitey got bumped off in July 1940 in New York, after word got out he was talking. It was a hit Siegel had supposedly approved. Even arranged. Which would, I suppose, have put a certain strain on his marriage.

I was damn near a Siegel expert now. I’d been filled in by Fred Rubinski, an ex-cop from Chicago who had a small agency out here; he also owned a major piece of a restaurant on the Sunset Strip. One of my reasons for coming west was to talk to Fred about linking our two agencies; it was something I’d been thinking about for a while. Fred had an office in the Bradbury Building at Third and Broadway in downtown L.A. We were old acquaintances, if not quite friends, and he’d picked me up last night at Union Air Terminal in Burbank shortly after nine o’clock, the end of an all-day long, puddle-jumping flight that had begun at eight that morning at Midway back home.

We’d spent this morning in his office at the Bradbury, a truly weird turn-of-the-century building with wrought-iron stairwells, ornamental balconies, caged elevators and a skylight that bounced an eerie white light off the glazed brick floor of its huge central court. Fred, who was in his late forties and a hard round bald ball of a man, shared an outer office with an answering service overseen by a ditsy blonde, and the inner office was his alone. He had four ops in an adjoining office, and his business was going good. We’d discussed merging our operations once before, last year, when he came home to Chicago to visit family and friends for the High Holidays; and this morning we’d bounced it around more seriously.

But mostly I’d pumped Fred about Siegel, for whom he’d done some collecting.

“Bad checks,” Fred explained. “He’s got a piece of the Clover Club, you know.”

“What’s that, a nightclub?”

“Yeah, with gambling upstairs. It’s the stars’ favorite place to lose their money. He owns part of a Tijuana race track, too, and has interests in half a dozen joints in Las Vegas.”

“What else is Siegel into, besides gambling?”

Fred shrugged. “Narcotics, prostitution, diamond fencing, perfume smuggling, you name it. They say Luciano sent him out here, in the mid-thirties, to make sure the Chicago interests didn’t take over.”

I nodded. “That must’ve been shortly after Nitti sent Bioff and Browne out here, selling strike prevention insurance to the movie moguls.”

“Right,” Fred said, nodding back. “And word is Benny stepped in and took over where Bioff and Browne left off, after the feds busted their racket up.”

“How so?”

“Bioff and Browne had hold of the stagehands’ union, right? Well, Benny has control of the movie extras.”

“I didn’t know Siegel was so powerful. All I knew was he was running the West Coast end of Trans-American, the mob’s race wire.”

“Well, he’s doing that, too.
And
building some goddamn gambling casino in the desert. Near Vegas. Pipedream, if you ask me.”

I shook my head wonderingly. “I guess I just don’t know much about Siegel—mostly just what I’ve read in the papers. If he’s thick with Raft, like they say, I may have an in. I did a job for George, once.”

“Raft’s
real
thick with Ben. They’re close pals.”

Last year, it seemed, Raft had gone to bat for Siegel in court, when Siegel and his crony Allen Smiley were arrested for bookmaking. Raft had been present, but wasn’t arrested, and later insisted on the witness stand that the three men, together in a hotel room, had merely been placing bets on the phone for themselves. Raft had behaved like a movie tough guy on the stand, barely skirting contempt (“Don’t I even have the right of free speech?” he demanded of the judge) and attracting headlines, which came back to me as Fred filled me in.

“Why would Raft put his nuts on the line for a guy like Siegel?” I wondered aloud.

“Hey, I like Benny, too,” Fred said, with a shrug. “He’s never shown his temper around me—and he pays his bills. He’s fun guy to be around, too. Charm the pants offa you.”

“You don’t mind if I keep my belt buckled for the time being, do you, Fred? If Bugsy’s killed half the people he’s said to have killed, not everybody would agree he’s fun to be around.”

“Make up your own mind, Nate. But you’re gonna be surprised.”

Fred had a black book with the unlisted numbers of various stars and other celebrities and Raft was in there. I called the actor’s house from Fred’s office and caught him at home. Raft immediately remembered me, immediately invited me out.

Fred loaned me one of the three cars the agency owned—a two-tone gray ’41 Ford sedan—and I discovered I’d been out here enough times now to find my way around okay. I pulled into Raft’s driveway as a sightseeing bus went by, gawking tourists looking out the windows, squinting in the sunshine to see if I was anybody. They seemed disappointed when I wasn’t, but then neither were they, so it evened out.

Raft, sitting in his poolside deck chair, was somebody. I wasn’t sure for how long, though. His association with Siegel was getting him the wrong kind of press; and he was constantly studio-hopping, balking at roles, taking suspensions, battling his bosses. When he was a hot property, fresh off of flipping his coin in
Scarface
, he could get away with it.

But at fifty years of age, Raft was not the combination tough-guy and Latin lover he had once been.

The nude young woman climbed from the pool, her bare backside to us; that goddamn ass could have been made of marble, so perfect was it. Only it looked considerably softer than marble, and was tan. All of her was tan. The blue water had hidden that. She turned and faced us and stretched her arms, embracing the rays of the sun. Her pubic patch was blond. She tugged the bathing cap off and shook her long blond hair to her damp shoulders and she smiled, looking a little like Betty Grable, one of Raft’s lost loves, or so the gossip columnists said.

She walked over regally and stood before the small dark man in the blue silk robe; she was taller than he was, and half his age. Hands on her hips, she said, “Thanks for the swim.”

“Thank
you.
”

“Thanks for everything.”

“My pleasure.”

“Would you like me to stick around this afternoon?”

“No, baby. That’s okay.” He dug into his robe pocket and withdrew a C-note, folded in half. He handed it to her and she smiled toothily and trotted off, cheeks of her ass wiggling and finally revealing themselves to have some fat content, after all, and she disappeared inside to wherever her clothes were and where the big band music was coming from.

The girl had never acknowledged my presence. I might as well have not been there.

Raft was conscious of me, though, and as he lit up a cigarette he said, “It’s easier with hookers. I had too many romances fall through. Take my advice, Nate. If you got the dough, stick with call girls.”

I couldn’t understand why a guy like Raft, who even at his age could obviously get just about any woman he wanted, would pay. I didn’t say this. Just thought it.

But he said, “I’ll give you an example. Just this week I find out I got to go to court. This nightclub singer I was taking out last year is getting divorced and I’m named in the suit.” He shook his head. “Stick with call girls.”

“That’s probably good advice, George, but I’m serious about this Peggy Hogan. I want to find her, before Virginia Hill gets her hooks into her.”

“Who is this Peggy Hogan, anyway? How’d she get from Chicago to Hollywood?”

“She’s Jim Ragen’s niece.”

“Jim Ragen…the wire service guy?”

“Yes.”

“Ben’s in competition with that guy. Didn’t he get hit, what was it, couple weeks ago?”

Raft seemed to be sincere in his ingenuousness. He wasn’t a good enough actor, I didn’t think, to fake it so well.

“Yeah. You remember the story from the papers? Remember the part about the bodyguard whose shotgun jammed?”

He looked out at the pool, where no nude girl swam. “Naw. I don’t read so good. I just heard Ragen got hit.”

“Well, I was his bodyguard.”

“Are you working for him, Nate?”

“Yeah. He paid my way out here. He thinks a lot of his niece. He wants me to bring her back home.”

I didn’t see any reason going into why she’d come out here; no need to detail to Raft the desire Peggy (and for that matter her uncle) had to determine whether or not Ben “Bugsy” Siegel had hired that hit.

“Why don’t you go talk to Ginny,” he suggested, smoke curling out his nostrils as he looked out at the pool, not at me. “She’s probably home, or will be soon. She’s renting a place in Beverly Hills.”

“Peggy might be with her,” I said.

“Isn’t that what you want?”

I didn’t know what I wanted, really; I didn’t know how to go about this. On the endless plane trip I’d tried to figure what I’d say to her, how I’d get her home. I was furious with her, of course, but I was also worried. And I felt a little battered, too. She was supposed to love me. She wasn’t supposed to run out on me like this.

I’d waited a little over a week before the worry and no sleep got me on a plane. She didn’t call or even write, I couldn’t get in touch with her, it was maddening and I was scared shitless for her, besides. Jim was concerned for her absence, too, got really worked up, especially after I leveled with him about Peg talking about checking up on Siegel, by becoming part of Virginia Hill’s retinue. I didn’t like seeing the patient I was guarding get upset; it couldn’t be good for his recovery—even though Dr. Snaden said he thought Jim was doing much better than expected and would be going home in a matter of weeks. So I worked with Drury to tighten up security at Meyer House, putting Lou Sapperstein in charge of A-l’s end, and then proceeded to go west, middle-aged man.