“I’m a detective.” I took a sip of beer. “Anyway, I used to be. How much play did Davis give me in the News?”
“‘Barney Ross’s Private Eye Pal.’ Pretty corny. All the Cermak and Dillinger and Nitti stuff, dredged up. The Pegler bit, too. But just one story. Yesterday.”
“Fuck. Did I understand Gladys to say Barney’s coming back to town?”
“I believe so. His malaria flared up, and he was off Guadalcanal before New Year’s; he’s been in the States for-”
“I know,” I said. “They let us read the papers in the bughouse. It’s just sharp objects they kept from us.”
“No offense meant, Nate…”
“Me neither. Anyway, I know about Barney. I talked to him on the phone once, even. Did you know Roosevelt pinned the medals on him, personal?”
“We get the papers here, too,” Lou said, smiling faintly.
“But he didn’t say anything about coming back to Chicago, on this extended furlough they’re promising him. He said he was going out to Hollywood, to be with his girlfriend. Wife, I mean.”
“Well,” Lou said, “he’s changed his mind, apparently. My guess is he’s needed to pump some business into his cocktail lounge. His brother Ben just isn’t the manager that Barney was.”
“Shit-Barney was a terrible manager, Lou. But he was a draw. A celebrity.”
Lou shrugged facially. “Now that he’s a war hero, they’ll flock there to see him.”
For some reason I didn’t like to hear that. I didn’t know why, exactly, but I could feel anger behind my eyes.
Lou said, “Do you want to hear about our business, or not?”
“Sure. How have I been doing?”
“You’re not getting rich, but you’re no pauper. Business is off slightly-divorce work is way down-but there’s still too much for one op to handle. If Frankie were here, one of us might be feather-beddin’, but there’s plenty here for the two of us.”
Why didn’t I care? I tried to look interested and said, “Such as?”
“Half a dozen suburban banks are using us for investigating loan applicants and credit; also some personnel investigation, and inspection of property and businesses. We got plenty of retail credit-risk checks to do, and four lawyers are now using us to serve their papers…”
I couldn’t listen. I tried. I swear I tried. But after while I was just looking at his face and his mouth was moving but I couldn’t make myself listen.
This is your business, a voice in my head was saying, this is what you worked so hard to build, once upon a time, so jump back in, jump back in, but I didn’t give a shit.
“Nate?” he said. His change of expression, to concern, made me tune his words in. “Are you all right? You seemed…distant, all of a sudden.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I sighed. Sipped the beer. “You just drop a stack of work on my desk and I’ll get to it. I promise you.”
“You’re the boss,” he said.
“In name only. You got to run the show till I get back on the ball. I had amnesia, did you know that?”
“No,” he said. Trying not to show his surprise. “We were told…battle fatigue. Shell shock…”
“I blocked it all out,” I said. “Forgot everything I could. My name. Who I am. Who I was. I don’t know if I can remember how to be a detective, to be quite honest with you.”
He smiled a little, swirled his beer in its glass. “Nate Heller with amnesia is still twice the detective of any other man I can think of.”
“That’s horseshit, Lou, but I do appreciate it.”
He looked in the beer, not at me, as he said, “I took the liberty of setting up an appointment for you this afternoon.”
“Really? I don’t think I’m in any mood to see a client just yet, Lou-”
“It’s not a client, and this is something you might just as well deal with right away, ’cause they’re not going to let loose of you till you do. They been calling for weeks, trying to set something up.”
“Oh. The federal prosecutor. That grand jury thing.”
“Yeah. Treasury and Justice Department investigators been swarming around town for weeks. Months. They’re really trying to put the screws to the Outfit. For whatever good it’ll do ’em. The prosecutor’s name is Correa, by the way.”
“Don’t know him.”
“He’s out of New York. That’s where the grand jury will eventually meet. But much of the investigation’s going on here. Most of their witnesses, and those they indict, will be from here, so Correa keeps a local office. And there’s an Illinois-based grand jury in the works, as well. Same subject-the Syndicate infiltrating the unions.”
“Aw shit.”
“They want to talk to you, bad.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“There’ll be somebody to talk to you, informally, at the office at two this afternoon. If you don’t want to face it, duck out. Me, I’d suggest you get it out of the way. You won’t get any rest till you do.”
“Shit.”
“Correa won’t be there; he’s in New York at the moment. But a couple of old friends of yours will be.”
“Such as?”
“Such as your favorite cop, for instance.”
“Stege?”
“Stege?” Lou shook his head, grinned. “You’re behind the times, Nate. Stege retired months ago, while you were overseas.”
I felt a strange pang; a sense of loss. Funny.
“I’m talking about our buddy from pickpocket-detail days,” Lou said. “Bill Drury.”
Drury. That lovable hard-ass.
“I should’ve guessed,” I said. “He always has had a hard-on against the Outfit. He would get involved in something like this. You said two old friends.”
“What?”
“You said two old friends were going to meet with me about this grand jury deal. Drury, and who else?”
He smiled on one side of his face. “If you were Uncle Sam, and you wanted to convince Nathan Heller to testify, who would you send?”
“Oh, no,” I said.
Lou toasted me with his beer.
“That’s right,” he said. Drank some beer. “Mr. Untouchable himself.”
Eliot Ness.
Eliot was fifteen minutes early.
He walked into the big single-room office-into which he’d walked so often, years before-and the sight of the Murphy bed against the wall, in its long-ago position, and me sitting behind my big old scarred oak desk in my long-ago position, made him smile.
“Isn’t that a Murphy bed?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “There’s a housing shortage. It’s been in all the papers.”
I got up from around the desk and I thought I could make out a slight tightening around his eyes as he got his first good look at me, skinny, gray, sunken-eyed me. I put the sore into sight for sore eyes.
He, on the other hand, looked much the same; a slight salt-and-peppering around the ears was the only noticeable difference. All else was familiar: a comma of dark brown hair falling down on his rather high forehead, a ruddy, handsome six-footer who was pushing forty and didn’t look it, partly due to the trail of freckles across his nose that kept him looking boyish in the face of time.
We shook hands, exchanging grins. His topcoat was over his arm, hat in hand; his gray suit with vest and dark tie was nicely tailored, giving him an executive look. I took the coat and hung it on the tree by the door.
“You look good, Nate.”
“You’re a liar, Eliot.”
“Well, you look good to me. You crazy SOB, what’s a grown man doing fighting a young man’s war?”
SOB was about as blue as Eliot’s language got.
“I’m not fighting it anymore,” I said, and got back behind the desk, gesturing to one of the two waiting chairs I’d placed opposite me in anticipation of my visitors. “What are you doing in Chicago, anyway? Who’s minding the store?”
“If you mean Cleveland,” Eliot said, crossing his legs, resting a
n ankle on a knee, “I resigned.”
That was a shock; the public safety director slot-which was essentially like being commissioner of both the police and fire departments-was perfect for Eliot. He’d had a lot of glory, a good salary, and accomplished plenty. I thought he’d die in that job, an old bearded public servant.
“First I heard of it,” I said.
“It was while you were away.”
“I knew you’d had that trouble…”
In March of ’42 Eliot had been involved in an auto accident that had found him, wrongly, briefly, accused of a hit-and-run; as a public safety man known for taking a tough stand on traffic violators, Eliot caught a lot of public heat.
“The press never left me alone after that,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact but his expression just barely revealing a buried hurt.
“Fuck ’em! You’ve been their fair-haired boy for years. You were cleared, weren’t you? Goddamn newspapers. Why couldn’t the bastards give you a fair shake…?”
He shrugged. “I think it was the fact that Evie and I had both been drinking. We weren’t drunk, Nate, I swear-but we had been drinking, and, well, you know my reputation as the big-shot prohibition agent. It made me look like a hypocrite.”
“How are you and Evie?”
Evie was his wife; his second wife.
“Not so good,” he admitted. “A little rocky. I’m traveling a lot.”
I was sorry to hear that, and said so. He just shrugged again.
Then I said, “What are you doing these days? Since you’re here to quiz me for the grand jury, I assume you’re back in the law enforcement business. So what is it? Treasury or Justice or what?”
“Nothing so glamorous,” he said, with a chagrined grin.
“Come on. Spill.”
“Actually,” he said, sitting up straight, summoning his self-respect, “it’s a pretty important job. I’m working for the Federal Security Agency. Specifically, the Office of Defense Health and Welfare.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well,” he said, shrugging, “I’m the Chief Administrator of their Division of Social Protection.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We’re dealing with social problems of the sort that inevitably develop when there’s a rapid expansion of a work force in a community, or a large concentration of armed forces.”
“What are you talking about?”
He pursed his lips, mildly irritated, or was that embarrassment? “I’m talking about safeguarding the health and morale of the armed forces and of workers in defense industry. What do you think I’m talking about?”
“I think you’re talking about VD.”
He sighed; laughed. “I am talking about VD.”
“I think I saw some of your movies while I was in the Corps.”
That did embarrass him, and he waved it off. “That’s only a small part of it, Nate. I’m supervising the activities of twelve regional offices, and what we’re primarily doing is trying to help the local law enforcement people cut back on prostitution, especially in areas close to military and Naval bases, or industrial areas. And in cities where military and Naval personnel are likely to go on leave. That’s why they brought an old copper like me in to be in charge.”
“I see.”
“You can sit there and grin if you like. But VD’s a big problem; in the first war, soldiers suffered more cases of venereal disease than wounds in battle.”
“I think you’re right. What we need in this world is more killing and less fucking.”
He smiled wearily. “Only you would look at it that way, Nate. I look at it as important work.”
“You don’t have to sell me, Eliot. I know enough to wear my rubbers when it rains.”
“You haven’t changed much.”
“Neither have you. You’re still with the goddamn Untouchables.’’
He laughed and so did I. It was a nice moment. But then the moment was gone, and silence filled the room, somewhat awkwardly. An El rumbled by and eased the tension.
“You know why I’m here,” he said, tentatively.
“Yup. I don’t know why they sent the top VD G-man to do a grand jury prosecutor’s job, though.”
“I am still a G-man, and that’s why I’m in town, doing a joint workshop with the FBI over at the Banker’s Building. We got cops from all over the city and the suburbs coming in.”
I bet I knew the conference room they were using-the one next to the old FBI HQ, that big room whose windows faced the Rookery across the way, windows from which agents like Melvin Purvis and Sam Cowley hung suspects out by their ankles till they talked. At least one suspect had been dropped. It made a splash in the papers. And on the cement.
Now Eliot Ness was using it to teach cops about whores. Wasn’t law enforcement a wonderful thing?
“Let me guess,” I said. “The steel mill district on the east side must be hooker heaven about now.”
He nodded. “The Pullman plant, just west of there, is another key area.”
They were Pullman Aircraft, for the duration. Electromotive was near there, too; even before I joined up, it was rumored they were making tanks.
He got up and got himself a Dixie cup of water from the cooler over by the bathroom. “The cops in these industrial districts never had a prostitution problem the like of this before; it’s an epidemic. We’re helping ’em out.”
“You and the FBI.”
“Yeah.” Sitting back down, sipping his water.
“So if they ask you to help them out, by talking to a contrary cuss name of Heller, you say, why sure.”
“Do you resent that, Nate?”
I shook my head. “I could never resent you, Eliot. Not much, anyway. But it’s been ten years now that you’ve been trying to turn me into a good citizen. Won’t you ever give up?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve heard you tell the truth on the witness stand before. With my own ears. Saw it with my own eyes.”
“Who else’s were you planning on using?”
“Well, you did do it. You told the truth.”
“Once. That doesn’t make me a saint.”
“Nate, you’re not on Nitti’s side. You never were.”
“That’s right. I’m on my own side.”
“Which is whichever side is safest, you mean.”
“Or the most profitable.”
He crumpled the paper cup in a fist and gestured with it. “The Outfit is strangling every union in this town. Can you honestly think about your father, and what he gave to unionism, and sit back and let that happen?”
I pointed at him, gently. “Eliot, you’re my friend, but when you bring up my old man, you’re pushing it. And when you suggest that I could in any way single-handedly clean up union corruption that goes back years, decades, you’re screwier than the guys I was bunking with back at the bughouse.”
He tossed the crumpled cup at the wastebasket by my desk; it went in. “The investigation is centering on the IA movie extortion racket, you know.”
“So?”
“So you were involved in Pegler’s initial investigation of the racket.”
“Something you dragged me into, by the way, giving my name to your federal pals. I never thanked you for that, did I?”
“I guess you didn’t.”
“That’s because at the time I felt like kicking you in the slats.”
He ignored that, pressed on: “You know plenty about that racket, Nate. You had contact with most of the principals.”
“I don’t know anything firsthand. All I did was talk to some people.”
“One of whom was Frank Nitti.”
Shit.
I said, “Nobody knows that for sure.”
“Federal agents have a record of you going to see him several times, over a seven-year period, including in November 1939. At the Bismarck Hotel?”
“Christ.”
“The Grand Jury is going to want to know what was said in those meetings. Going
way back, Nate. Back to Cermak.”
I sat up and gave my friend as nasty a grin as I’d ever given him. “What about back to Dillinger? How would the FBI like to have what I know about the Dillinger hit go public? How at best the feds aided and abetted crooked Indiana cops in a police execution, and at worst shot the wrong man? If what I knew came out, Hoover would shit his fucking pants.”
He shrugged elaborately. “That would be fine with me. Hoover’s overrated anyway. All I care about is the truth.”
“Oh, Eliot, please. You’re not naive. Don’t pretend to be.”
“Your testimony could be very valuable. You are the only non-mob-tainted party known to have had frequent private meetings with Nitti. Your testimony would have credence well beyond that of Bioff and Browne and Dean.”
“So the Three Stooges are talking, huh?”
He nodded. “They didn’t talk at their first trial, but when those stiff sentences came down, and they found out how much different prison life was than the El Mocambo, they started fishing for a deal.”
“It was the Trocadero where they hung out in Hollywood, Eliot, but never mind. I still don’t want to play.”
There was a knock at the door and I said, “It’s open.”
Bill Drury came in.
He wasn’t a big man, really-perhaps five-nine, a hundred and sixty pounds-but he was broad-shouldered and he had great energy, and a physical presence that could overwhelm you. He hung his camel-hair topcoat next to Eliot’s, and his fedora, too, revealing his typically dapper attire, a black-vested suit with gray pinstripes and a colorful blue-and-red-patterned tie and a fifty-cent shine. Bill was the best-dressed honest cop I ever met.
And one of the friendliest, unless you were part of the Outfit. He strode over to us with his ready smile, shaking my hand first, then Eliot’s. His dark thinning hair was combed across his scalp to give an impression of more but the effect was less. His dark, alert eyes crowded a jutting nose under which a firm jaw rested on the beginnings of a double chin.
“Heller,” he said, cheerfully, sitting down next to Eliot, “you truly look like death warmed over.”
“An honest man at last,” I said. “You look fat and sassy.”
“When your wife works,” he said with an expansive gesture of one hand, “why not?”
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