by P. N. Elrod
This being escorted to another room was different from his regular pattern, so my curiosity perked up. Things got more interesting when I was led down more stairs to the club’s basement. I could have done without the feeling this turn inspired. Gordy didn’t keep bodies here—that I knew of—but the dim lighting and the scent of dank, uncirculated air annoyed me with its reminder of what I’d just left. I shoved the bout of déjà vu away.
We walked past a trapdoor in the floor. That was a relief. It led to a brick-lined tunnel running under the street all the way to another building. I’d had my fill of sinister underground chambers for the next few decades. We stopped. Amid stacks of boxes containing everything from seltzer water to tinsel party favors I took in an interesting little tableau.
Only one forty-watt bulb lighted things in this wood-and-cardboard grotto. The shadows were harsh and sucked color from everything. Gordy, who was large enough and solid enough to give Mount Rushmore some competition, sat on a crate looking at another man I vaguely knew from my time in the bookie joints. The guy’s name was Royce Muldan, a handsome specimen possessing a fine appreciation for his own looks. It was said he risked his life every time he passed a mirror because of the way he twisted around to take in all the gorgeous details. One of these days he’d do it too fast and break his neck. He was dressed with an East Coast polish more suited to Boston than New York, which in Chicago made him stand out like a traffic light in a wheat field. Some people claimed to be blinded by the shine on his shoes.
He wore a patient, somewhat amused expression as I came into view. I nodded once at Gordy and kept my mouth shut until I figured out what was going on.
Gordy nearly always avoided involving me directly with mob business. He knew I preferred to remain on the outside. He rarely talked about the seamier things he had to do to stay on top, though if I asked a question he’d give a straight answer. If there was anything really dirty going on here, he’d have kept me waiting in the office until he was finished. All I could pick up for the moment was that this was something he wanted me to see.
Muldan took me in with a glance, then went back to Gordy, having apparently dismissed me as a threat. Maybe he’d have been more impressed if I’d shaved.
Gordy didn’t bother with introductions, just made a nod to me in return before putting his attention on Muldan. “It would be better for you to lay off,” he said in a slow, measured tone. He sounded patient but firm. “For you and everyone else.”
Muldan shrugged. “Not my decision. The girl likes me, and I’m not going to argue with her good taste.”
“You should take a vacation. Havana is very nice this time of year.”
“Too hot.”
“Cooler than here. Her father—”
“Doesn’t matter. She wants to see me, so I’ll see her right back.”
“That would be a very bad thing. For you.”
“Or what? Her father has me scragged? That can’t happen, and you and he both know it. I’m too important.”
“Royce, you are making difficulties. Make too many of them and anything can happen. Even to important guys. And you know it.”
“By the time things get to that point she’ll be tired of me and looking at someone else. It’s not my fault her father can’t control her. Look, I’m just going along for the ride. Tell her old man to step back, let her sow her oats, and he won’t have any more trouble with her.”
Gordy heaved a great, gentle sigh. The sigh of a man about to do an unpleasant but necessary task. “I’m sorry you won’t listen.”
Maybe I’d never been onstage like Escott, but I recognized a cue line when I heard one. “Want me to do something with him?”
Muldan gave me a contempt-tinged “what’s it to you” look, on guard, ready to meet my challenge.
Gordy said, “Only if you don’t mind. I’m thinking this guy needs to take a nap.”
I smiled, briefly. “Then have your guys take a break.”
He signed to the other mugs hanging around in the background, and they silently moved off. He knew I never cared to have witnesses for certain kinds of work.
Muldan was aware something was up, but his mind would be running along ordinary lines, anticipating ordinary threats. He stood up a little straighter and loosened the buttons on his coat. It was finely tailored but not to the point where it could completely conceal his shoulder holster. “Just what do you think you’re doing, Gordy? Have you forgotten who I am?”
“Nope, but you are not being smart about this. You are making a problem. Though sometimes when you sleep on a problem it clears itself up.”
“I’m not the one with the prob—” Muldan began.
But I was already moving in on him.
The lighting was bad but adequate. I put all my attention on Royce Muldan, catching him with my gaze before he had a chance to draw his gun. A few seconds later he was standing very still, hands relaxed at his sides, eyes shut fast.
What a fate for Mrs. Fleming’s youngest—becoming part-time mob muscle. If she ever found out, she’d thump my head with her big mixing spoon, and if she still used the one I remembered, which was made of wood, it would cause me damage.
“Sure is a good thing to be able to do stuff like that,” said Gordy as he peered at the quiescent and now quite oblivious Muldan. There was a note in his normally deadpan tone that was very close to admiration.
“Yeah. What’s the beef with this one?”
“Son of a New York big shot. Thinks he’s immune to trouble. Seeing the wrong girl. Thing is, Muldan’s right about her. If her pop left her alone, she’d grow out of it, but he don’t look at it that way. He’s ready to take his shotgun to this chump, which would mean he’d get himself killed, too. This town don’t need another war.”
“Huh.”
“So I told the pop I’d talk to Muldan. It wasn’t going so good until you showed up. This bird don’t intimidate easy.”
Considering the sinister surroundings, that said a lot for Muldan’s courage—or stupidity. Hell, I wasn’t the one brought down here to be talked to, and I still had to fight off getting the creeps. “What do you want to do with him?”
“Tell him he’s changed his mind about the girl. He don’t want to see her again, and that he should tell her so.”
“How about he says he’s not good enough for her, and she can do better?”
“You’d be doing them both a favor.”
So I got Muldan in the right frame of mind to listen, planted the suggestions, and told him to go. He went, followed at a distance by a few of the bruisers who’d hung around by the stairs. They’d make sure he’d leave all the way. He’d wake out of his trance sometime during the cab ride to his hotel. He wouldn’t remember me at all.
Gordy stood, his looming shadow blotting out a large hunk of the basement. “I owe you again, Fleming.”
“No problem; I prefer reason over gunplay.”
“You should get into the business; you’d make a fortune.”
“I got enough of one to suit me for now.”
“If you’re ever short, then you come hit the tables here. Anytime.” The odds favored the house at the casino games here, but for a select few, the house could be made to lose on demand. I had an edge or two of my own as well, when I was in the mood for it.
“Thanks.”
“’Course, if you put some tables in at your place, you’d be set for life.”
“And have to pay for it.”
“It don’t have to be roulette or the slots. A fancy joint like what you want could get by fine taking a percentage from high-stakes poker.”
There was an interesting thought. But I shook my head. “I’d still have to split too much of the profits with certain kinds of cops to keep them off my back—and it would give them something to hold over me.”
“They don’t have to know. You could make your whole investment back in one month.”
I laughed once. “You tell me a way to keep a secret in this town, and I might con
sider it.”
He took the point. “But you got ways around that. Like what you did just now with Muldan.”
“I’m going into this club for fun as well as money. If I get myself gummed up with making payoffs, it stops being fun and there’s not as much money. As long as I keep my nose clean, the cops got no easy way to hurt me. Anything else makes things too complicated, and I’ve got enough complications to keep me busy.” Like finding a dead woman in the basement wall.
He shrugged, which was a minimal lift of his massive shoulders, then turned, and I followed him up to his lush office. The man who had been there earlier was still there, but he gathered up his cards and left when we came in. Gordy made a drink for himself; as far as I could tell, it was just tonic water and a shot of lime juice. He didn’t ask if I wanted anything, knowing better.
“You getting a cold?” I asked, with a nod at his quinine-laced glass.
“I like the taste.”
It kept him sober, too. Yet another way of staying ahead of rivals.
“So . . . what’s the story with the body?” he asked.
“It’s more of a skeleton by now.” I dropped into an oversize chair, stretched my legs, and gave him the short version of the whole sad business at Lady Crymsyn, putting in the part about Blair. “He guessed that I’d called you on it. Is there any link between the body and you that I should know about?”
He shook his head, taking a seat on his vast couch. I could trust him to be telling the truth. He always did with me. “It’s probably to do with Welsh Lennet before he got bumped. Walling up broads don’t sound like his style, but he had some real bastards working for him that might have done it. Most of them are dead, too, though. The guy who tossed those grenades did the whole town a favor.”
“Are any of Lennet’s people still around?”
“Shivvey Coker. He was just muscle then; now he’s working for Booth Nevis.” Gordy let that news sink in. I didn’t like it. Nevis was the man who owned Crymsyn’s lease.
“What’s Coker do for him?”
“Runs errands.”
“That’s pretty vague.”
“Has to be; he covers a lot of different areas. If Booth wants something done, Shivvey’s the guy he sends out to make sure it gets done.”
“Maybe Shivvey can tell me something about the dead woman.”
“Worth a try.”
“No idea on who she could be?” I gave him the description Blair gave me.
Gordy thought it through for some moments. He had a memory like a file cabinet. “Nothing comes to mind, but I wasn’t in Lennet’s crowd back then, so I couldn’t say who might have been with him or any of his boys. This burg’s full of women. Most guys don’t bother to keep track of’em. There’s always another girl coming in while one’s going out. I can ask around, but you’d have better luck. And you’d be able to get a straight answer. Try asking Shivvey.”
“I plan to. Anyone find out who did the boom on Lennet? The reporters said it was Nevis.”
“Some thought it might be him because he hated Lennet and then ended up owning the place, but he never did anything with it, so that didn’t make sense when it came to a motive. It was a good-paying speak, too. A shame to let it go to waste.”
“Unless he knew about the body in the wall and didn’t want to go stirring things up.”
Gordy shook his head. “Something like that wouldn’t bother him. He’d either leave it as is or get someone to dig it out and sink it in the lake. He knew you’d be redoing the joint and might find it. Makes more sense that he didn’t know anything. This is probably one of Lennet’s leftovers.”
“Why did Nevis hate Lennet?”
“Ever see one junkyard mutt go up against another junkyard mutt? Those two didn’t need a reason; that’s just how things were.”
“Then Shivvey went to work for Lennet’s enemy,” I stated.
“Welsh Lennet and Booth Nevis didn’t get along, but Shivvey’s a forsale kind of mug. After Lennet’s funeral he got on Nevis’s payroll. He must have figured it to be safer than trying to take his dead boss’s place.”
“Ever think he had anything to do with arranging the boom?”
A shrug. “He could have. Lots of guys could. The cops never got close to nailing anyone for it and were probably told not to try.”
“Who would have told ’em?”
“Back then, Big Al himself. Lennet’s speak was the last in a lot of straws. The camel’s back broke. After the dust settled, everyone had to get into line and stay that way or else. Al’s a mean one with a baseball bat.”
I’d heard stories to back up that opinion. “Not much good to him now.” Capone was presently doing his time in Atlanta for unpaid taxes.
“Don’t kid yourself. Nitti still listens to him. Wanna meet Frank? He’s here tonight with some of the boys.”
“No thanks. I’ve had enough excitement for one evening.” I leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling, not fighting the frown that took over my face. “I don’t look forward to the papers tomorrow. The morning edition’s already out and won’t have anything on this mess, but the afternoon’s . . .”
“If you play it right, you can turn them in your favor.”
“How so?”
“First, you say you knew nothing about the body, be surprised as the next guy about finding it. That’s all true, anyway. Second, you say something about crime and criminals being bad. Everyone likes to hear stuff like that. And third, you give the dead dame a good funeral.”
I sat up straight, alarmed at this turn. “I couldn’t do that!”
“You can afford it.”
“It’s not the money—I’d be exploiting her death for cheap publicity, and everyone would know it.”
“Then do it on the sly. Don’t tell anyone. Sooner or later some newshawk’ll find out who’s footin’ the bill. By not talking about it you come out a hero instead. Everyone loves a secret Good Samaritan.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Hey, someone’s got to bury her. If nobody comes forward to claim her as their long-lost relative, then how good you gonna look if you let her go to potter’s field? The papers would really love that one.”
I’d been stuck fast in cleft sticks before and hated the squeeze. “All right,” I grumbled. “But nobody’s going to know about it. I mean that.”
“If you want, I can fix things on the quiet, and you can pay in cash. Make it harder to trace.”
“That’d be fine.”
“You work this right you could take the funeral off your taxes as a business expense.”
If I thought I could have gotten away with it, I’d have slugged him, then I saw the crinkle in the corners of his eyes. He’d been joking with that last idea. At least I hoped it was a joke. “Wiseass.”
“You’ll have to play ball with the sob sisters, though. Get them on your side.”
I made grumbling noises.
“You can do it. You won’t have to give ’em the eye for it, either. Just flirt a little and say you like their hats. Works for me.”
Gordy flirting with the sentimental yet iron-hearted sob sisters of the yellow press. I had difficulty trying to picture that.
He went on. “Tell them what a bad thing this is and how you’re helping the cops any way you can. Say you hope it won’t spoil the wholesome image for your club.”
“Wholesome? With all the liquor I’ll be selling?”
“If they like you, they’ll write you up as a hero.”
“If they like me.”
He spread his hands. “Look, you’re gonna have a shitload of headlines off this no matter what. Would you rather let them choose the angle or fix one for yourself? You were in that game, you know the rules. Make’em work for you.”
“I guess I could type up a statement. If I don’t say something, they’ll put words in my mouth.”
Gordy nodded approval. “And the faster you say it for yourself, the faster they’ll go away. When do you pick up Bobbi?�
�
“Around three.”
“Then you got plenty of time to write it. There’s a typewriter and paper in the desk.”
“What are you in such a hurry for?”
“To make sure you do it. And there’s a couple of the crime-beat boys from the Trib downstairs. They’re here watching Nitti having a good time. I can give ’em whatever you want.”
“You do have this town sewn up.”
He finished his tonic and lime, and put the glass on a table. “Just a pocket or two.”
“Do they know about this story yet? If they take it away from the other reporters—”
“Not to worry. They’ll pass it on if I ask ’em nice.”
Pocket or two, my ass. He had the whole damn city in a suit if he had the crime-beat boys doing what he asked. Or maybe he was playing them the way he just told me to do. That would explain why some of the stories about cops raiding the Nightcrawler were short, bland, and never mentioned Gordy by name. He had only to invite a select few—or their editors—into the casino and give them a profitable run around the tables for an hour or three. If they won some money, then it was from their own good luck. They were free of the corruption of a bribe and yet full of kindly feelings toward their host, who would probably welcome them back for more, so they had a solid reason to keep the club up and running.
I went to the desk and found the promised typewriter. “You got carbon paper?”
Gordy needed to look in on his business, said good night, and left. I scribbled out a draft of what I wanted to say, then typed it out twice with carbons to make six copies. My old reporting style came back to me like riding a bicycle, so I made short work of the job. Too bad I couldn’t yet do fiction as easily. I took a copy with me and left the rest for Gordy to deal with, noting on each page the name of the paper it should go to; the Trib was on top. Great, I’d finally get printed in one of the best papers in the country, but as the topic of a story, not as one of its journalists.