liquor it's called bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on silver trays
on Lake Shore Drive it's called hospitality."
Al Capone
2 DOC'S PLACE
Capone mashed out the butt of his cigar in a big marble ashtray and took another from a box on the desk. He pushed the box towards me. I shook my head, fished out my cigarettes and set fire to another Camel.
Capone made a big production of lighting another torpedo-sized cigar, biting off the end and using three matches to get fired up. He leaned back in his chair and sent out enough smoke signals to send the Apache nation on the warpath.
"A few weeks ago this guy Doc opens up a night-spot in a house just off Dearborn Street. Small place, high class, good liquor, straight gambling, no hostesses... To get in you say you feel sick and ask for Doc."
"Is the joint in your territory?"
Capone shook his head. "It's kind of in no-man's land. A place where several territories overlap. Me, the Gusenberg mob, the Aiellos, the O'Donnell's..."
"Sounds like this Doc could be in trouble. He have another name?"
"Smith," said Capone ironically. "Doctor John Smith. But everyone calls him Doc."
"So what do you want from me?"
"I need to know about him. Who he is, who his friends are, how much clout does he have. Is he connected, maybe a front man for some New York guys? Do I take him in, take him out, leave him alone? I gotta know. Check him out for me, Dekker."
I reckoned it was an honest job - about as honest as I was likely to get in Chicago. Beside which, if I said no to Capone I'd be swimming across Lake Michigan in a cement bathing suit.
"Okay, I'll check this guy out for you. But if you decide he has to go, don't expect me to set him up."
"Relax," said Capone. "All I need from you is information. If I can settle things peacefully with this guy Doc then I will. You know me, I'm a businessman."
The funny thing was, I believed him. Capone liked to keep things peaceful. Shooting was bad for business. He only killed you if he had to.
"Okay," I said. "Now, my daily rate..."
Capone pulled out a roll of bills that would choke a Chicago City Alderman and tossed it across to me.
"Retainer. Let me know when it's used up."
"Right," I said. "I'll get right on it, report back as soon as I've got news."
"Fine," said Capone. He leaned forwards. "Those boys I sent to fetch you, Dekker..."
"Never send the boys round to do a man's job."
"Okay, so I underestimated you. But you'd better play square with me on this. I've got better people to send if I have to."
"Like Frank Rio?"
"Frank's the best."
I stood up. "No, I'm the best. I'll do an honest job for you, Mr. Capone. But keep your hoods out of my hair or I'll comb "em out like dandruff"
Capone shook his head. "You really are something, Dekker."
"That's why you hired me."
"I could use a guy like you. It's a pity you're straight."
"Well, nobody's perfect," I said. "I'll get back to you, Mr. Brown."
I went out into the vestibule, collected the .45 from the waiting Rio, rode down in the lift, got into the Buick and drove home. I reckoned I was ahead of the game. I had a client, a roll of greenbacks - and I was still alive.
That night I went to take a look at Doc's Place.
It was a modest-looking joint, a compact three-storey mansion in a little side-street just off Dearborn. Lights glowed softly behind curtained windows and there was a faint throb of jazz somewhere. There was nothing else to show it was anything but a private house apart from the number of cars parked outside, and in the vacant lot across the street. I added the Buick to the collection and walked over to the house.
There was a light over the door, a closed shutter at head-height and a big brass bell-pull. I stood under the light and yanked on the bell.
The shutter slid back and a gravelly voice said, "Yeah?"
"I'm feeling sick. I came to see the Doc."
The door opened and I stepped into a luxuriously furnished hallway. There was a short passageway dead ahead. To the right an elegant staircase curved upwards. There were ornamental tables and gold-framed pictures on the walls. A classy joint all right.
A gorilla in a tuxedo was closing the door behind me. I looked at the low brow and battleship jaw above the boiled shirt. Happy Harrigan, the biggest, toughest and dumbest thug in all Chicago.
Happy was delighted to see me. "Hey, Mr. Dekker! Who gives you the password?"
"Oh, I just heard it around."
Happy had a caveman build and a cheerful friendly nature, but he was so dumb he found it hard to earn an honest criminal living, even in Chicago. I'd been his friend ever since the day I left the cops. It just happened to be the day the boys at the precinct had scooped Happy up and put him under the lights down in the cellar. Their plan was to improve the monthly crime figures by bouncing blackjacks off Happy till he confessed to every crime on the unsolved list - believe me there were plenty.
Flattered by the attention, Happy was glad to oblige. The boys didn't even get to use their blackjacks. He'd confessed to enough crimes to draw 99 years in Leavenworth when I heard what was going on and stepped in and spoiled the game.
Happy had just served a short stretch for smashing up a saloon, so he'd actually been in jail when half the crimes he'd confessed to were committed. I alibied him for the rest by saying we'd been singing in the church choir together every night since he got out. The Captain knew he'd be laughed out of court so he let Happy loose.
As we'd walked away from the station house together Happy gave me a worried look. "What you said in there wasn't true, Mr. Dekker. We was never in no choir together."
I stopped and glared up at him. "Listen Happy, if the cops ever take you in, like just now you only say one thing. I don't know nothing about nothing. You're a gangster, aren't you?"
Happy scratched his head. "Yeah.
I guess so."
"Well, that's what gangsters say."
I thought it was a stroke of luck, Happy being the doorman at Doc's Place. He owed me one, so he ought to be good for the straight scoop.
"What's the set-up here, Happy?" I asked casually, as he took my coat and hat. "How much do you know about this guy Doc?"
Happy beamed at me. "I don't know nuttin' about nuttin', Mr. Dekker!" he said proudly. "Right?"
I sighed and slapped him on the back. "Right, Happy. Which way's the bar?"
He pointed down the corridor and I went on down.
I pushed open the black velvet-covered double doors and found myself in Doc's Place. It was a high-class version of your basic night-spot. Tables crowded round a postage-stamp dance floor with nobody dancing. On the other side of the floor a jazz combo played quietly as if for their own pleasure. It was early yet and the place was nowhere near full.
A bar ran down the left-hand side of the room with a row of stools, empty except for a dame on the stool at the far end. I went over and perched on the next stool but one. The barman, a silver-haired continental type, stopped polishing an already gleaming glass and glided over.
"What's your pleasure, Sir?"
"Straight bourbon - Jim Beam if you have it."
He reached behind the bar for a bottle, poured a sizeable slug into a glass and put it in front of me.
"We have everything here, sir."
"You certainly do," I said.
I was looking at the girl on the bar stool. She had long, dark hair swept back from her face and she wore a black silk evening gown that was tight in all the right places. She was a good-looking dame, well built and well dressed, but that wasn't why she made such an impression on me. There was something about her. Something about her face maybe, roundish, good cheekbones, fine dark eyes ... Not your chorus-line cutie, but a good, strong humorous face.
I've looked at a lot of dames in my time, and they mostly look back. But the way this one was looking a
t me was different. It was a straightforward, measuring sort of look. She was on the level.
I took out a pack of Camels and held it out. "Cigarette, lady?"
"I don't."
There was a big purse on the bar in front of her, but no glass beside it.
"Buy you a drink?" I said.
"I can buy my own."
"So buy me one, I'm not proud."
"We're running a business here, soldier, not a charity."
Which answered one question - somehow I'd guessed she was part of the firm.
"Then let me buy you a drink," I said. "Looks like you need the trade."
The corner of her mouth twitched - it was a nice, wide mouth.
"We're a late-night joint. Still, if you insist." She nodded to the barman.
"Manhattan, Miss Ace?"
"Please, Luigi."
He got busy fixing the cocktail.
I sipped my bourbon - it made the stuff in my office drawer taste like paint-stripper. I raised my glass to the girl. "Good booze."
"Only the best here, soldier."
"Dekker," I said. "Tom Dekker."
"I'm ..."
"I heard. You're Ace'"
She grinned. "I deal blackjack sometimes, upstairs."
I gave her my smouldering look, "I bet you play a mean game."
"Out of your league, Dekker. You couldn't afford the stakes."
"Try me."
"Maybe I will."
Luigi delivered her Manhattan and she sipped at it, looking at me over the rim of the glass.
With an effort I wrenched my attention back to business.
"Doc around?"
She pointed to an alcove just to the right of the bar. It held a table, a chair and a smallish guy in a white tuxedo. He was working through some papers, signing cheques, scribbling the odd note. There was a half-full glass of liquor on the table and a cigarette burning in an ashtray.
"Can I buy him a drink?"
The barman was shocked. "Doc never drinks with the customers."
I turned my attention back to the girl. "Now, about that game."
"You're still talking about cards?"
"What else?"
The doors crashed open and three guys swaggered through. They were brawny, swarthy, flashily dressed. Cheap hoods, Pete Gusenberg's boys.
They were followed by Happy, swaying slightly with blood trickling from his forehead where he'd been pistol-whipped.
"These guys," he said hoarsely. "I tole them they was the wrong type for a class joint like this but ..."
"It's all right, Happy," said the girl called Ace. She put her hand on the big purse.
Happy turned and weaved his way back out of the door. Lucky they'd hit him on the head, I thought. Anywhere else they might have hurt him.
The hard guys bellied up to the bar. The boss seemed to be the biggest and fattest. I'd seen him around, a small-time leg-breaker called Morelli. They called him Swifty, on account of he was fast with a gun.
"Beer," he grunted. Luigi started filling three tankards from a barrel behind the bar.
I sat hunched over my glass of bourbon. I knew what was coming, I'd seen it a hundred times. They'd drink the beer. They'd spit it out, say it was pigswill, then rough up the barman and the owner if he tried to object. They'd tell them in future they were buying their booze from Pete Gusenberg. Nobody else in the room would make a move and they'd all suffer sudden memory loss if asked about it later.
It was an old, tired act. But today it played a little different. All three thugs swigged their beer - and stood lost in astonishment at how good it was.
Before they could remember they were supposed to complain, Doc left his alcove and strolled over to the bar, hands thrust casually into the pockets of his white jacket.
"Good stuff, eh, gentlemen?"
His voice was quiet. Like the girl's it wasn't quite American. There was a sort of burr in it, Scots or Irish maybe.
"It ain't bad," said Morelli grudgingly. "Where'd you get it?"
"I make it in the bath-tub - well, swimming bath actually. I use the bath-tub for whisky."
"This booze ain't made in no bath-tub."
"I assure you it's quite a simple process. Once you've synthesized the alcoholic congeners..."
"Professor!" said the girl. There was a warning in her voice.
Doc smiled. "Forgive my stupid sense of humour. It's imported, of course, from Germany - the beer that is, not my sense of humour."
"Well, from now on you buy your booze from Pete Gusenberg."
"No thank you," said Doc politely. "I'm happy with my present supplier. I hear that stuff Gusenberg peddles is pigswill."
Morelli blinked, then swung a roundhouse right at Doc's head. He was quick moving for a fat guy.
But not quick enough. Hands still in his pockets, Doc stepped aside and the punch missed by the width of a ballpark.
Morelli rushed him.
Doc stepped aside again, sticking out a foot, and Morelli crashed to the ground.
He came up with a gun in his hand - like I said, he was quick. The girl called Ace blew the top of his head off.
The second hood had his rod out by now, but so did I. Before he could shoot, I flattened him with a slug in the shoulder from my.45.
Some people say the old 1911 Model Army Colt Automatic is big and clumsy and noisy, and I guess it is. But hit a man anywhere with the slug from a .45 and he'll go down and stay down.
Luigi stepped from behind his bar and sapped the third thug with a bung starter.
For a moment there was silence, the smell of cordite hanging in the air. I saw Ace slip a black gun back inside her purse.
Doc looked sadly down at the dead hood.
"Did you have to, Ace?"
"He had a gun in his hand, Doc. It was him or me - or you."
I holstered the .45. "He was no loss, Doc."
"Everyone's a loss."
The doors crashed open again and Happy appeared.
"Doc, the cops!"
Suddenly Happy's bulky figure was grabbed by the collar and hurled aside by an even bigger one. He fell over a table, sweeping it and its two occupants to the ground in a welter of arms and legs and tableware.
It just wasn't Happy's day.
3 CONNECTIONS
The bigger shape - and bigger than Happy means really big - was that of my old Precinct Captain, Dennis Reilly, resplendent in brass buttons and blue uniform, swinging a nightstick that looked like a toothpick in his massive hand. More uniformed harness-bulls crowded the doorway behind him.
Reilly's huge red face was glowing like a setting sun as he looked at the bodies, one dead, one wounded, one unconscious, on the floor.
"And phwat's all this then, begorrah?" he said in the Mother Machree accent he turned on when it suited him. "Shootin' and shoutin' marring the peace of our fair city of Chicago! Lucky it is I was passing by at the time."
"On the job as usual, Captain?" I said.
He swung round towards me, and I wondered how I'd ever gotten up the nerve to slug him. I remembered that my best punch had only rocked him back a little on his heels. I also remembered that it had taken four tough detectives, two on each arm, to stop him tearing my head off.
"So 'tis yourself, Dekker," he said happily. "Mixing with bad company are ye? Ah well, 'tis only to be expected of a renegade cop. The boys down at the station house will be glad to see you again - especially as a customer this time." He raised his voice. "This joint is closed, illegal gambling and liquor sales."
Customers started stampeding for the door and at a nod from Reilly the cops let them through. He turned to the rest of us.
"And for you and your friends, Mr. Dekker, the paddy wagon awaits!"
He was as happy as a mugger with a new blackjack.
The girl called Ace was leaning on the end of the bar. "You're arresting us? What charges?"
He glanced down at the three bodies. "Oh, we'll think of something. Murder and aggravated assault for a start. And
illegal discharge of firearms within city limits."
Ace's hand slid closer to the purse on the bar and I got ready to jump her. There were five cops on the scene now plus Reilly, and even in Chicago, shooting six cops is a bad move.
Then Doc said quietly, "You're making a mistake, Captain."
Reilly looked down at him. "Am I so? Well, we'll sort it all out down at the precinct house." He looked hopeful. "Unless of course you might be thinking of resisting arrest?"
Doc took a silver pencil and a notebook from his pocket and went over to the bar. He scribbled a number, tore out the page and gave it to Reilly, looking up at him with eyes as cold and grey as Lake Michigan on a winter night.
"You might like to call this number first. It's-,
"I know who it is," said Reilly. "Tis a number I'm very familiar with."
Luigi produced a telephone and put it down on the end of the bar. Reilly glared at the uniformed cops. "And why are ye standing there like statues, ye useless spalpeens?" He kicked the nearest body. Luckily it was the dead one. "Get this scum out of here and into the wagon."
"What then, Captain?" asked the nearest bull.
"Then wait till I tell ye!" roared Reilly.
The hood Luigi had sapped was awake and on his feet by now. He looked round dazedly. "Hey Captain, what gives? Pete said - "
A backhand smash from Reilly shut his mouth and knocked him into the arms of the nearest cops.
"Get him outta here, will ye?"
The cops dragged the two bleeding live bodies and the one dead one out of the room, and Reilly stomped over to the phone.
Luigi put a double slug of Jim Beam on the bar in front of me and fixed another Manhattan for Ace.
Doc leaned on the far end of the bar, a burning cigarette in the ashtray beside him, next to a half-empty glass. I never saw Doc take a drag on the butt or a swig of booze - but the half-full glass and the burning cigarette were always there.
I took a solid swig of the bourbon: bath-tub or not, it was still pretty good. I fished out my pack of Camels, offered them to Ace, pulled it back remembering and lit one for myself.
We all stood there quietly, listening to the low rumble of Reilly's voice on the phone. It was an oddly peaceful moment.
Doctor Who - [New Adventure 29] - [Vampire Trilogy 2] - Blood Harvest Page 2