The Million-Dollar Wound nh-3

by Max Allan Collins

  At the bar in back, Estelle approached a fleshy-faced man with wire glasses who stood near, but not quite at, the bar; he wore a white jacket and dress pants and was keeping an eye on the casino before him, arms folded, patrons stopping to chat and him smiling and nodding, occasionally dispatching directions to other, lesser white-jacketed employees.

  We waited while he did that very thing, and then Estelle introduced us.

  “Sonny, this is Nate Heller.”

  He smiled automatically, the professional host’s twitch, but the eyes behind the glasses were trying to place me; as we were shaking hands, his grip moist and unconvincing, they did: “The detective.”

  “That’s right. And you’re Sonny Goldstone. I remember you from the 101 Club.” Which had been a Rush Street speakeasy not so long ago, where-like here-he’d been floor manager. Now as then, Goldstone was one of Nicky Dean’s partners-his front man, the ostensible owner of the Colony Club.

  “I understand you’ve done some favors for the boys from time to time,” he said in his hoarse, toneless voice.

  “That’s right.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you went around denying, especially not to anybody connected.

  “Pity about Eddie O’Hare,” he said, impassively.

  “Pity,” I said, not reading him at all.

  Estelle said, “Sonny, Nate’s an old friend. I haven’t seen him in years, seems like. I’m going to go upstairs with him for a while.”

  “The front two suites are in use.”

  “All right.”

  “Will you be long, Estelle? It’s Saturday night, you know.”

  “We’re just going to chat for half an hour or so.”

  “The people come here to see you, you know.”

  She patted his cheek like he was a naughty child for whom she held a certain reluctant affection. “The people come here to throw away money and their cares. I’m just window dressing. I’m sure you can keep the cash register ringing for a while without me.”

  “Have fun,” he said, flatly; it might just as easily been “so long” or “fuck you.”

  We threaded back through the casino into the entry area, where we rounded a corner and found a door that said “No Admittance,” which proved its point by being locked. Estelle unlocked it, and we were in a little hallway, off of which were a few doors and a self-service elevator. We took the elevator.

  The third floor seemed to be offices and conference rooms and, as promised, a few suites.

  Ours wasn’t a lavish suite, just the like of a room in a typical Loop hotel, maybe a touch bigger, in shades of blue, small wet bar, bed and bath. Bed is what she was sitting on, kicking off her shoes, stretching out her million-dollar legs to relax, and show off.

  “You want a drink, Nate?”

  “When I knew you, you didn’t drink.”

  “I still don’t,” she said, tossing her pageboy again. “I don’t smoke either. But when I knew you, you sure did. Drink, I mean. Rum, as I remember. Has that changed?”

  “No. I still don’t smoke, though.”

  “You sound like a regular all-American boy.”

  “You’re an all-American girl, all right. Horatio Alger in a skirt.”

  She frowned, just a little. “Why are you angry?”

  “Am I?”

  She patted the bed next to her. “Sit down.”

  I sighed, and did.

  “You’re angry because I’m so successful.”

  “No! I think your success is swell. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly what I wanted. And you’ve got what you wanted, all those years, don’t you? Your own business. Your own detective agency.”

  I shrugged. “We are expanding,” I said, not being able to help myself from bragging it up a little. I told her how I’d added two operatives and doubled my office space and even had a secretary, no more hunt-and-peck on the typewriter.

  She smiled, both dimples. “I bet she’s cute as a button, with a great big crush on her boss. Taken advantage of her yet, Nate?”

  “Your psychic powers are failing you on that one, Estelle. I’m sorry I was a grouch, before.”

  She touched my shoulder. “I understand. It’s just the same old argument, isn’t it?”

  “I guess.”

  “We don’t need to have that, anymore, do we?”

  “No we don’t.”

  “We can’t ever be an item again, so we should live and let live, right? No reason not to be pals, huh?”

  “None at all.”

  Then I kissed her, and she put her tongue in my mouth, and the sequined dress was coming loose in my hands and then my mouth was on her breasts, frantically switching from one to the other, not able to get enough of either, her nipples startlingly erect, each a hard sweet inch, and her soft generous ass was in my two hands and my trousers were falling to the floor with the thud of a fainting man, and then I was in her, to the hilt, hating myself, hating her, loving her.

  The old argument-the dispute that had killed us-had of course been back in her waitress days. We quickly fell headlong in love, or anyway I did, and whenever I wasn’t working we were together, and most of the time had been spent in bed. She was only the third woman I’d ever been with, and the first one I’d ever had a real affair with. And I loved her till I thought my fucking heart would break, which, sure enough, it did.

  She always asked for money. Not like a whore. Not right after the act. But before I left her, she’d say she was a few dollars short. Her rent was due. Her mother was sick. Her machinist stepfather was out of work. If I could just help out…

  And I would.

  But I wasn’t alone. One night they changed my shift on me, and I had a night free I hadn’t anticipated. I went to surprise her, to her little apartment on the near North Side and knocked, and she came to the door, cracking it open, and looked out at me with her wide green eyes and her wide white smile and said, “Nate, I’m afraid I have company.”

  I stood outside in the goddamn rain half the night before I gave up the vigil. Whoever he was, he was staying till morning, so fuck it.

  The next day’s confrontation was in Rickett’s, where she was behind the gleaming white counter, and I almost lost her her job.

  “What was his name?”

  Softly, she said, “I see other people, Nate. I never said I didn’t. I got a life besides you.”

  “You see other men, you mean.”

  “I see other men. Maybe I see women, too. How do you like them apples?”

  I grabbed her wrist. “Do they all give you money?”

  She smiled at me through gritted teeth, a hateful, arrogant smile.

  “Only when I ask them to,” she said.

  Now, ten years later, here I was in bed with her again. Or, anyway, on top of a bed with her. A fast frantic fuck, my pants off, my shoes and shirt and tie on; her dress pulled down and up and a jumble around her middle, panties caught on one ankle. We must’ve been a sight.

  I pushed off her, embarrassed, ashamed. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at myself.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  She was touching my shoulder. I wanted to shrug her hand off, violently, but I couldn’t. I wanted to ask her to slip her arm all the way around me, but I couldn’t.

  “It’s all right, Nate. I wanted it.”

  “You’re Nicky Dean’s girl.”

  “I’m my own girl, honey. Nicky’s not one to talk. He’s out in Hollywood cheating on both of us.”

  I looked at her. “What do you mean, ‘both of us’?”

  She shrugged, shot me a crinkly smile. “Me and his wife.”

  “I didn’t know he was married.”

  “Neither does he, most of the time. She’s a little chorus-line cutie he married back in the early twenties. She’s still pretty cute, for an older broad. Real sickly, though.”

  There was no jealousy in her voice. Very matter of fact.

  “You mind i
f we put our clothes on?” I asked.

  “Yes I do,” she said, rolling one of her stockings down; the Southern belle at the Rialto had nothing on her. “I want you to strip down and I’m going to do the same and then we’re going to slide under these cool sheets and turn down the lights and cuddle and chat and see what comes up.”

  I looked into that cute, mischievous face, trying to see the cold cynical heart that had to dwell behind it somewhere; but I couldn’t find it.

  I could only smile back and sit unprotesting as she undid my tie and my shirt, and soon we were two cool bodies between cool sheets in a dark anonymous room.

  I thought of Sally (Helen in bed), and wondered if I was a bastard. Well, perhaps I was a bastard, that was almost certainly the case, but Sally had left town this morning, before I even got back. She was on a sleeper plane to California this very minute, flying the same sky that I crawled down out of this morning. There’d been a note of thanks on the bed, saying she’d made her Brown Derby booking and would be back in town next month; she’d try to see me then. That “try” browned me off. But what the hell-Sally was just a sweet memory I’d had a chance to momentarily relive; there was no future for us.

  Just as there was no future with the memory I was holding in my arms now. Like Sally, Estelle was the past. But since there were no women in my present to speak of, the past was better than nothing. Let the future take care of itself.

  “Aren’t you even interested why I came around?” I asked her. “To see me, of course.”

  “That’s true. But I came looking for you for a reason. I’m working.”

  She snuggled against me. “You mean, you’re getting paid for this? Why, Nate Heller, you little whore.”

  “You’re more right than you think,” I said. “I’m here on an errand. Willie Bioff sent me.”

  She pulled away to have a look at me and her smile was open-mouthed and her green eyes amused but mostly she was just surprised.

  “But you hate that little pimp! I remember when you busted him…”

  “You remember that?”

  “Sure! You were ranting about how he slapped some woman around. You were quite the knight in shiny armor in those days.”

  “Hardly. It was pretty tarnished even then. You forget how I moved from uniform to plainclothes.”

  She waved that off with a friendly smirk. “So you lied on the witness stand. You know anybody who hasn’t?”

  She had me there.

  She pulled away from me, just a little, to lean on a pillow and half sit up and appraise me. “Willie Bioff, huh? If he’s in town, why didn’t he stop up and see me personal?”

  “He isn’t in town. I just got back from a couple days in California.”

  Her laugh was a grunt. “He’s making hay while the sun shines out there, that’s for sure. What put the two of you in bed together? Pardon the expression.”

  Briefly, I told her about Pegler investigating Bioff’s past and present; that she should be on the lookout for Pegler himself or somebody Pegler might send around.

  “Nobody’s been around yet,” she said. “And I don’t think anybody’d get a single word out of me. But I appreciate the tip. Willie must be afraid his phones are tapped.”

  “Or that yours are.”

  “Possible,” she said, nodding. “These FBI and internal revenue boys are hard to bribe. They seem intent on doing their goddamn jobs.”

  “You never met Eliot Ness, did you?”

  “Actually, I did a couple times. He raided the 101 more than once. He was cute. You two boys were thick, later on, I hear. The tarnished knight and the boy scout. Quite a combo.”

  “Let’s just say he did his goddamn job. I can respect that; can’t you?”

  “Why not? What became of him?”

  “He’s public safety director in Cleveland.”

  She mock-yawned.

  “It’s not really all that dull,” I said. “He’s done his share of gang-busting in those parts. He’s the guy that ran the Mayfield Road Mob out of Cleveland.”

  “I just love civic progress.” She shook her head, smiled wryly. “You and Willie Bioff. That’s a match made in hell.”

  “He’s not such a bad guy,” I lied. Again, I played a surmise of mine like it was a fact, saying, “So what if he’s hitting up the movie moguls for some strike-prevention insurance? He’s done okay by the rank and file…going back as far as that soup kitchen he and Browne started.”

  She started laughing and I didn’t think she was going to stop.

  “Estelle, cut it out, you’re gonna bust a gut…”

  “The soup kitchen!” Tears were rolling down her face. “Yeah, yeah, the soup kitchen…couple of philanthropists, that’s Bioff and Browne.” Laughing throughout.

  “Okay, okay, so I’m a naive jerk. Let me in on the joke, why don’t you?”

  She leaned on her elbow, shaking her head, smiling ear to ear. “That soup kitchen was the biggest scam Willie Bioff ever ran on this burg. That’s what got him and Browne started.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “They used the joint to launder money, you cute impressionable little hick. They went to Barney Balaban of the B and K chain…”

  “I talked to him today, for Bioff. Giving him the same warning about Pegler as I gave you.”

  “How is he in bed?”

  “Cute, Estelle. Very cute.”

  She snorted. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time he got screwed. See, after the crash, Balaban got the Stagehands Union to let him get away with a twenty-five percent pay cut. You know, hard times and deflation and all. Then all of a sudden the World’s Fair came in and every kootch show on the midway was needing stagehands and show business in general around here was booming. This next part I love. Balaban is in the hospital for his ulcers, and Willie and George go visit him. They take him flowers and smile at him and ask him how he’s feeling and he says better and smiles back and they inform him that if he doesn’t restore the twenty-five percent pay cut immediately they will call their men out on strike. This would close every one of his four hundred movie theaters. Some treatment for stomach ulcers, huh? Anyway, Balaban said his company couldn’t afford it, and Willie reminded him about the soup kitchen. How there were good Samaritans who donated to it. And Balaban offered ’em a hundred and fifty a week for the soup kitchen, if they’d forget this strike business.”

  “And Willie and George grabbed it.”

  She gestured with an upraised, lecturing finger. “No. They asked for fifty thousand a year for the soup kitchen.”

  “Jesus Christ. Did they get it?”

  Knowing chuckle. “They settled for twenty grand. Of course, Browne did use some of the dough for supplies for the kitchen. He bought four cases of canned soup for two dollars and fifty cents each.”

  “I always suspected that soup kitchen was some kind of racket.”

  “Sure! What else? They sold votes to politicians out of there, too-all those stagehands and their families would vote any way Willie told ’em. That brought in a pretty penny in soup kitchen donations.”

  I was impressed. “Estelle, you are one knowledgeable girl. Dean must really trust you to let you in on all this stuff.”

  “Ha! What little spider do you think led Bioff and Browne into Nicky’s web in the first place?”

  “You?”

  Another wry smile. “In case you hadn’t picked up on it, Detective Heller, Browne drinks.”

  “Really? My, you are knowledgeable.”

  “Shut up, Nate. But Bioff doesn’t drink, not as much anyway. He’s not used to holding his liquor.”

  “So?”

  “So the night after they took Barney Balaban for twenty grand, they went out on the town. That afternoon they’d bought themselves fancy foreign sportcars, and spiffy new clothes. Bioff likes to look good, good as he can, the fat little greasy bastard. Anyway, guess where they go to celebrate? The 101 Club. Nicks club. Guess how they choose to unwind? With a little game of twenty-six.
Guess who the twenty-six girl was? Little ole me.”

  I laughed softly. “And guess who started bragging about being in the dough?”

  “Exactly right,” she said, green eyes smiling. “I motioned to Nicky and he came over and joined us. Before the night was out we had the whole story.”

  “I think I can guess the rest. Nicky told Nitti.”

  “Ricca, actually. Little New York and Frankie Rio picked Willie and George up the next day, hauled ’em to the Bismarck. Nitti was in on it, by that time, I’m sure. I don’t know what was said, but the upshot was the Outfit cut themselves in for half.”

  “How’d Willie and George take that?”

  “The same way they took it when Nitti upped the Outfit’s share to two-thirds, a few years later. Without any fuss, how else do you take something like that? But it paid off for ’em in the long run.”

  “It was bound to,” I said. “Nitti’s a financial mastermind, and about as shrewd a planner, as skillful a chessplayer as you could find in the boardroom of the biggest corporation in town.”

  “Nate, he is in the boardroom of the biggest corporation in town.”

  “My mistake.”

  She elaborated: “First thing they did for those union Katzenjammer Kids was get Browne elected national president of the IA. He ran once before and lost. Before he had the Outfit’s support, I mean. This time when they held the election, in Columbus back in ’34, there were more gunmen in the room than voting delegates. Lepke Buchalter was the guy in charge.”

  “That could sway a fella’s vote.”

  “Like Capone said, you can get more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word. Anyway, those two horses’ asses have been on the gravy train ever since. They were in New York awhile, where the studios have corporate headquarters-and then they were going to move their office to Washington, at the president’s request, but Nitti vetoed it.”

  “What president’s request?”

  “You know. The president. The guy with the glasses and funny cigarette holder and dumpy wife? He wanted George and some other union leaders to be close at hand, to be advisors on domestic affairs.”