The Million-Dollar Wound

by Collins, Max Allan

  Coston was also inclined toward brevity: “Tell Willie not to worry. I won’t talk.”

  These distinguished representatives of the Chicago motion picture community had, in their few short phrases, spilled as much in their way as Barger had in his.

  They both knew Willie Bioff, and they both shared secrets with him they had no intention of revealing to the press, or anyone else, for that matter.

  Coston had told me volumes by simply repeating a typical Bioff aphorism; as a parting shot, I’d said, “Willie said to tell you if you got cornered, somehow, to lie, lie, lie.”

  “Tell Willie it’s like he told me, once, when he threatened me with a projectionist’s strike: ‘If the only way to get the job done is to kill Grandma, then Grandma’s going to die.’”

  Now, only one name remained on Willie’s list: my old flame Estelle Carey.

  Nicky Dean’s girl.

  ESTELLE

  She was wearing a skin-pink gown with sequins on the bosom, cut just low enough to maintain interest, her curled pageboy barely brushing her creamy shoulders. Tall, almost willowy, her supple curves and picture-book prettiness made her look twenty, when she was thirty. At least she did in the soft, dim lighting of the Colony Club, Nicky Dean’s ritzy Rush Street cabaret, where Estelle Carey was overseeing a battery of “26” tables—numbered boards about three feet square at which mostly male customers shook dice in a leather cup and “threw for drinks.” Each table was in turn overseen by another young woman, a “26 girl,” a breed as much a Chicago fixture as wind or graft, pretty birds sitting on high stools luring homely pigeons. Here at the Colony, with its upstairs casino, the girls were on the lookout for the compulsive customer ready to graduate from the 26 table to “some real action” on the second floor, roulette, craps, blackjack.

  Estelle was the acknowledged queen of the 26 girls; she even rated mention as such in the gossip columns, where the story was often told of her having taken ten grand from one high-roller in two hours.

  She wasn’t playing tonight; these days, that was for special occasions only. She was milling, chatting, glad-handing—she was a Chicago celebrity herself, in a minor way; a bush league Texas Guinan. She’d come far from her waitress days at Rickett’s.

  Not that Rickett’s was a shabby place for a girl just twenty, at the time, to work. It was the Lindy’s of Chicago, your typical white-tiled lunchroom but open twenty-four hours, a Tower Town mainstay famous for attracting bohemian types and show people and your occasional North Side gangster. Rickett’s was also known for its good, reasonably priced steaks, which was what brought me there, in my early plainclothes days. What kept me coming back, though, was the pretty blonde waitress.

  Nick Dean must’ve met her there as well, but that was after I’d stopped seeing her. We only lasted a couple of months, Estelle and me. But they were some months.

  I’d run into her occasionally since, but we’d never more than had coffee, and not that, in five or six years.

  So now I was edging through the packed Colony Club—this was Saturday night after all—with its art-deco decor, all chromium and glass and shiny black and shiny white, its crowd of conventioneers and upper-income types whose recreation in better weather was sailing skiffs and larger craft in Lake Michigan, the muffled sounds of ersatz Benny Goodman from the dine-and-dance area adjacent mingling with the noise of dice-and-drink, wondering if she’d recognize me.

  Then I was facing her.

  She gave me her standard, charming smile, one to a customer, and then it sort of melted into another kind of smile, a smile that settled in a dimple in one cheek.

  “Nate,” she said. “Nate Heller.”

  “I’d forgotten how goddamn green your eyes are.”

  “You know what you always said.” Her eyes tried to twinkle, but the effect was melancholy.

  “Yeah. That all they lacked was the dollar signs.”

  “Maybe you just didn’t look close enough.”

  “You mean if I had I’d’ve seen ’em?”

  She tossed her blond curls. “Or not.”

  Somebody jostled me—we were holding up traffic—and she took me by the arm and led me through the smoky, noisy bar to a wide open stairway, which was fitting for this wide open place. It separated the bar from the restaurant and wound gently up to two shiny ebony doorways overseen by a bouncer in a white coat and black dress pants and a shine he could look down in to check how mean he looked. She and the bouncer nodded at each other, and he pushed the doors open for us and I followed her on through.

  We threaded our way through the crowded casino, a big open room with heavily draped walls and indirect lighting and action at every table, noise and smoke and the promise of easy money and easy women. Some of the men here had brought a date or possibly even a wife; but many of these girls in skintight gowns were from the same table as the 26 girls downstairs.

  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 re
gular 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 if 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 do
n’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.”