I introduced myself, showing her my Justice Department credentials, and, wide-eyed, she pointed past me to Eben Boldt, like somebody about to yell, Fire!
“Is he with you?” she demanded.
“We’re together,” I admitted. “He’s a Secret Service agent.”
She folded her arms like Chief Sitting Bull. “Well, the boy waits outside. No colored allowed.”
Eben’s face turned hard as a carved African mask-a frightening one, at that-also fit for All Hallows’ Eve. He seemed about to verbally explode, so I stepped in.
“Ma’am, he needs to come along. I may require him to take notes for me, or maybe run errands.”
Eben’s eyebrows went up, but so did the heavy black ones on our witchy hostess’s mug.
“Okay, then.” She heaved a wary sigh, then shook a schoolmarmish finger at me. “But you deal with him. I don’t truck with the colored.”
“He’ll be my responsibility,” I assured her, and followed her in. I grinned back at Eben, who sneered at me. He really didn’t have much of a sense of humor.
Again, there was no question of a search warrant. The landlady-whose name was Knockomus, she said, and who was the owner of the building-led us up a flight of stairs.
“They paid for a week in advance,” she said. “Starting Monday.”
At the landing, we followed her to the left, a short trip. You could see a bathroom at the end of the hall, door ajar.
Wondering if I should be getting the nine-millimeter out, I asked, “Is there any chance they’re here now, ma’am?”
“No. I saw them go an hour ago. They never come back till late afternoon.”
We were in front of a door marked 2A.
As she was unlocking it, Mrs. Knockomus said, “I don’t relish this at all. I have to put up with the girls on the first floor-I got two apartments down there, they are whores, those girls-and now it comes to renting to spics.”
Her description of her first-floor tenants as whores was likely less a slur than a job description-we were at Clark and Division, near Rush Street and the older Rialto area, where prostitutes plied their trade.
Mrs. Knockomus opened the door and gestured for me to go in. I did, and she moved in front of Eben, I guess to make sure he was admitted last.
This was a flat that took up the entire second floor. The rooms-there were three-were much nicer and larger than Vallee’s one room. The floors here were hardwood with worn yet still handsome Oriental carpets, and the solid-looking furnishings were probably antiques, the upholstery still decent, the iron bed blessed with a “Home sweet home” comforter that looked hand sewn. Maybe our hostess had hidden depths.
“I should have sold back in the fifties,” she said, scowling at nobody in particular, not even Ebe, “but I missed my chance. This urban renewal thing coming up? I’m gonna snap at that line like a mackerel. Enough of this nonsense with scum-of-the-earth tenants.”
We’d been through all three rooms. No guns, not rifles, not handguns, not in the dresser, not in any of three closets.
“I mean, I don’t mind the girls, really,” she was saying. “The whores keep to themselves and don’t bring nobody home. And I don’t even mind some Outfit guy on the lam, now and then, neither. They dress nice, those type fellas, and they are … what’s the right word? Much more discreet about their weapons. These spics, they just leave their guns lying around! What if one went off and was pointed at the floor and killed somebody, like me for example?”
“I don’t see any weapons,” I said.
She pointed at the windows onto the street. No screens, I noted; no air conditioner. Summer would be rough in this space.
“They was leaned up against there,” she said, indicating the wallpapered area between the windows. “Four rifles. Had those fancy telescopes attached. Like the hunters use.… It’s Kennedy, isn’t it?”
Eben and I exchanged glances. “What makes you think that?”
“Right there,” she said, and pointed to an end table by the couch, “they had a map with street names on it.”
I asked, “The kind of map you get from a service station?”
“No! Hand-drawn. With street names and highways and places.”
“Such as?”
“Such as Northwest Expressway and Jackson and Soldier Field.”
Jesus.
She was smiling at her own cleverness. “The motorcade route, am I right?”
Eben walked over to the table. “No map here now.”
Forgetting herself, she said to him: “And the newspaper is gone, too.”
“What newspaper?” I asked.
“It was on that dresser, in the bedroom.” Now she was pointing in that direction. “With the article about Kennedy coming, circled.”
Not a wall collage, but telling enough.
I said to Eben, “Show her the photos.”
He took the four suspect shots from his inside suit-coat pocket and handed them to her. She paused before accepting something from him-he might have been a Zulu handing her a shrunken head-but finally she took them.
Without hesitation, she said, “That’s the two tenants. Their names on here are correct, the spics-Gonzales and Rodriguez. These other boys, the whites? They aren’t staying here, but they come around in the evening.”
“Often?”
“Twice, at least.”
She had placed all four suspects in this flat.
I asked, “Could the two white guys be crashing here at night?”
“Crashing?”
“Staying all night. Maybe slipping out before you’re up, or when you aren’t looking.”
She frowned, offended. “I’m up at six, mister G-man, and I don’t miss nothing.”
Eben asked, “They haven’t checked out, have they, ma’am, your two tenants?”
“No,” she said, but she was looking at me. “They’re still staying here. I don’t know where they go during the day. What do spics do with their time, anyway?”
“It’s a mystery to me,” I said. “Look, Mrs. Knockomus, you mustn’t say anything to them about our being here. About you having a look in their room. Nothing at all.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” she said. “The only thing I ever said to them was, ‘Seventy-five dollars in advance.’”
I asked her several more questions-did her tenants have a car? Yes, green Pontiac, no idea what model or year. Where did they park it? On the street, best they can. Was there a rear exit? Not one available to the upstairs tenants, as it was off one of the downstairs apartments.
Soon we were on the sidewalk, under a sky that remained overcast on a day cooler than the previous several.
I used the phone booth in the Walgreens next door to report in to Martineau.
After filling him in, I said, “I’m going to recommend a twenty-four-hour stakeout.”
“Fine,” Martineau said. “Saves me the trouble. You and Ebe take the first shift.”
Before doing so, we had lunch at the drugstore counter. Cheeseburgers and fries and Cokes. Around us, mothers were scurrying to buy their kids Halloween costumes-Yogi Bear, Popeye, Casper the Ghost. And all sorts of people were scooping up whatever candy was left for the little ghouls and goblins who’d be ringing their doorbells before too long.
“This sounds real, doesn’t it?” Eben said, meaning what we’d learned at Mrs. Knockomus’s place.
“Does to me.” I dragged a fry through ketchup. “Is this common?”
“Is what common?”
“I’ve been with the Secret Service since Tuesday afternoon, and this is the second time rifles with scopes have turned up in rooming-house flats.”
“There weren’t any guns next door.”
“No, but that sweet old gal saw them. She didn’t imagine ’em or make it up-the guns were there. You know it and I know it.”
He bit into his cheeseburger, chewed awhile, swallowed, then said, “No, it isn’t.”
“Isn’t what?”
“Commo
n.”
We didn’t speak any more of it as we finished lunch. We got a few dirty looks, a white guy and colored guy eating together, but we got served, didn’t we? Hell of a lot better than down south. I wondered if Eben appreciated that.
On the way out, I said, “I want to stop in at that record shop.”
“Why?”
“I’m gonna prove to you I’m not prejudiced.”
“How?”
“I’m going to see if they have Ray Charles Greatest Hits.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
They had a nice used copy.
We sat in the car and started our surveillance-perhaps a little too noticeable, a Negro sitting in a car on the street in this part of town; but with the Secret Service’s limited man power, it would have to do.
Before long Eben asked, “Ever hear Muddy Waters?”
“Heard of him. Plays the blues on the South Side?”
“Yeah. After we catch these pricks, I’ll take you there. Joint called Smitty’s. Nothing against Ray Charles, but you haven’t lived till you heard Muddy.”
“Smitty’s, huh? South Side? Is it safe?”
“Well, I won’t get killed.”
That made me smile.
“Looking forward to it,” I said.
And the boring afternoon officially began.
CHAPTER 15
Because the Secret Service office was so undermanned, Eben Boldt and I sat surveillance at the rooming house near Clark and Division till after seven P.M. We witnessed the return of the Cuban tenants at around five-fifteen-they parked a green Pontiac Bonneville on the street, a recent model and a nice ride for guys staying in a rooming house. They snagged a spot maybe half a block from the old Victorian structure, not a bad parking place, considering. It was a Cook County license plate, which Eben wrote down.
They were clearly the Gonzales and Rodriguez of the photos, though the younger man, Gonzales, had been bearded in his surveillance shot and now was clean-shaven, with a wiry look not obvious before. Rodriguez, on the other hand, had a formidable build and a mangy ball of black, slightly graying hair to go with his Zapata mustache-the effect made his head look damn near as big as the carved pumpkins on porches.
The two Cuban pals were smiling, joshing, with an easygoing spring to their step, and both were smoking-cigarettes, not cigars. They wore zippered jackets over sport shirts, and chinos and sneakers.
They went up into the rooming house. There hadn’t been a kitchenette in their flat, not even a hot plate or little refrigerator, so I figured they had to come back out and eat somewhere, sometime. But it didn’t happen on our watch.
And the two white guys, the rest of the supposed hit team, never made an appearance.
Around six o’clock, trick-or-treaters started their assault, kids (with poor or maybe cheap parents) in homemade hobo getups or sheets that made them ghosts, as well as the gaudy but cheap-looking store-bought outfits, among them one Howdy Doody, two witches, and three Lone Rangers, but not a single Tonto.
By the time we got back to the Secret Service office, and reported in to Martineau (who would be working even later than we had), it was well after eight; and by the time I’d collected my Jag from the Federal Building lot, and made my way to my Old Town town house, nine was looming. The trick-or-treating in my neighborhood was winding down, the cowboys and princesses and cartoon characters replaced by older kids just wearing masks, eager as thieves to fill their brown-paper bags with goodies.
I did not park in back, in the former stable, having called Helen from the office with my plans, which were to drive us somewhere nice for a late supper. Maybe Riccardo’s. She had landed a January booking at the Silver Frolics, and we had that to celebrate, plus she was leaving for California tomorrow; so I wanted it to be a special night.
Luck was with me and I found space at the curb right in front. My raincoat loose and open, I climbed out into the cool evening-the squeals of kiddie laughter and padding feet on pavement seemed distant and a little hysterical, as the spoils of Halloween were taken home for sorting, eating, and puking. Down the street, candlelit pumpkins watched me, flickering their eyes and jagged teeth, as the sugarcoated bacchanal wound down.
I headed up the walk. After this long day, I wanted to go in and shower and change clothes before going out for what was left of the evening. Helen must have been watching for me, because she opened the door to the safe-house apartment and was just stepping out-in another of those Peter Pan-collar dresses-when I heard the footsteps behind me.
Heavy ones that didn’t belong to trick-or-treaters.
A low-pitched voice said, “Heller,” and when I turned, the nine-millimeter was in my hand.
Behind me I heard Helen scream, “Nate!”
“Helen, get inside!”
I heard the door close behind me.
Standing before me, maybe five feet away, were the two scariest night creatures Chicago could ever hope to conjure on this All Hallows’ Eve. One could only hope that these were two older high-school kids with a sick sense of humor and a big enough allowance to put on an incredible masquerade.
Either that, or I was facing Chuckie Nicoletti and Mad Sam DeStefano, the two most dangerous killers in Chicago. I could add, Outfit killers, but there were no non-Outfit killers to match them, unless maybe some young mad scientist was cooking up a batch of black plague in a basement lab in DeKalb or something.
Chuckie-at my left-was a big man, maybe six two, broad-shouldered and with hands so big they looked swollen, his features handsome but with an over-ripened look. In his late forties, he was sharply dressed-that was a tailored suit, dark enough to blend with the night, and the tie was silk, black-and-gray striped.
Chuckie Nicoletti, when he was twelve, killed his first man, his father; currently he was Sam Giancana’s killer of choice. The in-between you can fill in yourself.
His smile was faint, but genuinely amused, as he said, “You don’t need that rod, Heller. Put it away.”
What a ridiculous thing to call a gun! Didn’t he know this was 1963? Edward G. Robinson didn’t play gangsters any more, Bogart was dead, and this was real fucking life, where a guy ate and slept and sometimes even peed. Christ, I wished I didn’t have to pee so bad right now.
The man standing next to Chuckie must have thought calling my Browning a rod was funny, too, because he was giggling uncontrollably. Of course, his nickname was Mad Sam, so that might have something to do with it.
Maybe five ten and in his fifties, Mad Sam had an unruly head of dark graying hair, reminiscent of Larry in the Three Stooges; his close-set eyes, lumpy nose, and unhealed wound of a mouth gave him the look of a demented clown. He wore an off-the-rack black sport coat over a white shirt, a skinny loose noose of a red tie, baggy gray trousers, and what looked to be bedroom slippers.
Mad Sam DeStefano had not killed his own father. He had killed his own brother, in part to save his sibling from a life of drug addiction, in part because he’d been hired to kill him. A free agent, Mad Sam made his money off loan-sharking, doing his own enforcing. Still, he remained tight with Giancana and could be hired on for any job, as long as it required a sadistic maniac.
Right now Chuckie’s smile had turned kind of sideways and he held his oversize hands up chest-high, palms out, as if in surrender.
“This is a friendly call, Heller.”
“Is it?”
“Mr. Rosselli would like to see you.”
And he sent these two killers to tell me?
Mad Sam stopped giggling long enough to say, “You’re supposed to come wid us. We’re gonna drive you over so’s you and Johnny can talk.”
I wasn’t pointing the gun at them-I’d allowed it to drift down, but not quite at my side. I was still giving serious thought to just shooting them both.
Chuckie said, “Heller, you stand around on the sidewalk, pointing guns at people, somebody may call the cops.”
I said, “And that’s a bad thing? Anyway, this is my private
walk and it’s only one gun.”
Mad Sam slapped Chuckie on the back and roared with laughter. “Tough talk, but look at his eyes! He’s gonna piss himself! I swear he’s gonna piss himself!”
So he was nuts and psychic.
Chuckie gestured slow and casual as he said, “That Lincoln over there? That sweet ride across the way? We’re just supposed to escort you over to Agostino’s, where Mr. Rosselli is waiting. To talk. Just to talk.”
Mad Sam snorted a laugh. “Wanna take your girlfriend along, Nate? That’s Sally Rand, ain’t it? Don’t look half bad for a broad her age. I bet Johnny would get a kick out of that.”
But Chuckie said, “No, Sam, we’re just collecting Heller, here. Sorry, Nate, this is a private conference. Better you come by yourself.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You boys want to take me for a ride? And I’m just supposed to file my ‘rod’ away under asshole and come along?”
Mad Sam was giggling again. “Not that kinda ride, Heller! Jesus, you always crack me up! This guy has always cracked me up, Chuckie. Heller, if it was that kinda ride, would we still be standing here, shooting the shit?”
I might be shooting something.…
“Fellas,” I said, raising the gun just a little, “generous as the offer is, I’m going to have to pass. I’m fine with seeing Mr. Rosselli tonight. Johnny and me are old pals. But I have my own wheels. You gents just take off, and I’ll be right behind you.”
Chuckie was frowning. “Nate, we’re supposed to bring you.”
“I’m not getting in a car with you two.”
Mad Sam’s grin was jack-o’-lantern worthy. “No? You’re telling us how this is going down?”
“I am,” I said. “I have the gun out. You guys are good, but you’ll both be dead and I won’t go to either funeral.”
Chuckie thought about that. Mad Sam’s smile had curdled somewhat; he thought he was still amused, but just wasn’t quite sure.
“You have my word,” Chuckie said quietly. “This is just a chauffeur job.”
“No,” I said. “Make your play, or get the fuck out.”
Now Mad Sam wasn’t smiling. Not at all.
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