Neon Mirage
( Nathan Heller - 4 )
Max Allan Collins
Max Allan Collins
Neon Mirage
“Life is a game of chance.”
— Arthur “Mickey” McBride
I was riding shotgun, and that wasn’t just an expression: there was a goddamned sawed-off twelve-gauge in my lap, and I didn’t like it. At all.
When you’re the boss of a business, the owner of a company, the fucking president of A-1 Detective Agency, you’re not supposed to draw duty like this. I had six operatives for that; I was thirty-eight years old and had been at this racket long enough, and was successful enough, to pick and choose which jobs I wanted to go out on. If I wanted to spend all day behind my desk, I could do that (and these days I frequently did). I was good on the phone, and that’s eighty percent of being a good private detective. If I ever had any thirst for adventure, Guadalcanal had taken it out of me. I rarely carried a gun, in this glorious post-war world.
But nonetheless, here I was: riding literal shotgun in the bodyguard car following James Ragen and his fancy Lincoln Continental down State Street, filling in last minute for an op of mine who took sick, wondering if today would be the day the Outfit decided to blow my tough little Irishman of a client to kingdom come.
Dealing with the mob was something that couldn’t be avoided in Chicago, if you were in my line, but the last couple years I’d done my best to do less and less of it. I used to know Frank Nitti fairly well-better than I wanted to, really-and had more than once found an unlikely ally in the diminutive, dapper, one-time barber who had been Al Capone’s successor.
Since Nitti’s death, however, I’d with a couple of exceptions kept arm’s length from Outfit guys. Nitti was, compared to those who came before him and those who came after, a relatively benevolent figure. He killed less often, and often schemed, like a master chess player, to have those he did want dead killed by somebody else-the cops or the FBI, for example. He tried to stay out of the headlines-it brought too much “heat,” it was bad for business.
And to him the Outfit was a business; and he was a businessman, and you could trust him. As much as you can trust any Chicago businessman, anyway.
Former pimp Jake Guzik, he of the greasy thumb, was in charge of the Outfit these days, while Paul “The Waiter” Ricca and Louie “Little New York” Campagna sat in stir trying to buy their way out of the sentences they got for their part in the Hollywood extortion racket, the exposure of which had led to Nitti’s demise-a suicide if you believe what you read in the papers. Fat Guzik, mob treasurer for several decades now, who would do anything for money, was somebody I’d never feel close to, though he did owe me a debt of sorts. I hoped that debt would be enough to let me survive acting as protector to Jim Ragen.
I’d tried to keep my distance from the job, assigning various ops to the bodyguard duty-even though Ragen had, from the beginning, wanted me aboard personally.
“Jim,” I’d told him, as we sat in my nicely furnished office in an admittedly less than nice building at Van Buren and Plymouth, speaking over the rumble of the El rushing by, “it’s against my better judgment getting involved in this at all. If we weren’t friends…”
“It’s because we’re friends I come to you,” Ragen had said. He wasn’t a big man; my six feet and one-hundred-eighty pounds was enough to make him look small, despite the bull neck and broad shoulders. You might even mistake him for mild, this balding, bespectacled, ruddy-complected Irishman whose tiny eyes were as blue and benign as a summer sky. Only the dimpled jutting chin hinted at the toughness and determination that had made him one of the most feared and effective circulation sluggers during the great newspaper wars early in the century.
Today this Back-o’-the-Yards, South Side boy was arguably the most powerful, important man in gambling in America. Yet he never gambled, not in the wagering sense; nor did he drink or smoke.
His Continental Press Service was the country’s dominant racing wire service, transmitting all pertinent racing information to bookmakers nationwide. That included track conditions, changes in jockeys, scratches and, as post time approached, up-to-the-minute racing odds. And, of course, results of the races themselves, transmitted immediately as the horses crossed the finish line. A bookmaker without this service, operating under the delay of officially transmitted results, would be easily prey to past-posting-that is, bets placed after post time by a sharpie who has been phoned the results by an on-track accomplice, thus allowing said sharpie to bet on a horse that has already won a race.
Ragen’s Continental service relayed its information from telegraph and telephone wires hooked into 29 race tracks and from those tracks into 223 cities in 39 states (tracks that didn’t cooperate were spied upon by high-powered telescope from trees and buildings). For legal reasons, Continental buffered itself, allowing several dozen “distributors” to supply the wire info to the nation’s thousands of bookie joints.
Ragen, like Frank Nitti, was a business executive in the world of crime. I’d done jobs for him before, and I liked him.
But I’d never seen this tough, irascible little Irishman in a state like this. He seemed shaken as he came into my office, unannounced, no appointment, which was also not like him; he was nothing if not businesslike. Even his gray suit was rumpled, his red and blue striped tie askew.
Of course that day had been no ordinary one in the life of James M. Ragen. That day, in April, James M. Ragen was convinced he’d narrowly missed being bumped off.
That morning two men in a car had trailed Ragen’s Lincoln Continental, from his home, and when he sensed he was being shadowed, he increased his speed to sixty miles an hour, and still they came, still they clung to him. They chased him through the city streets until finally Ragen pulled up in front of, and scurried into, a precinct house-the would-be assassins whooshing by.
It was in the aftermath of that that he came to me, Nathan Heller, president of A-1 Detective Agency, looking for bodyguards. Trustworthy ones.
“Who can I trust in this town but a friend?” Ragen said, his oblong face a dour mask. “The cops offered to provide me ‘protection’-of a sort I’d be safer without, goes without saying. You can buy a Chicago cop and get change for a five-everybody knows that. And most of the private dicks in this town, even them that’s employed by the big agencies, is ex-cops.”
“So am I, Jim,” I said.
“Yeah, but you ain’t for sale, my lad. Not when a friend is what they’re buying.”
I sighed. I think he thought of me as Irish, despite the Jewish last name my father left me. It’s what my Irish Catholic mother bequeathed me that fools people-her blue eyes, regular features and reddish brown hair. Of course, where the latter’s concerned, mine is graying some, at the temples, the only temples I attend, by the way, which’ll give you an idea of about how Jewish I am. Papa was apostate, he didn’t believe in God, Hebrew or whatever else you got, though he tried to see some good in his fellow man; I guess I inherited that from him too, minus the part about my fellow man. As for my mother, she didn’t live long enough for her hair to go gray at all, which may explain why I’m not very Catholic, either. Just the same, I was Irish enough for Ragen.
“Well,” I said, shrugging, “I can fix you up with some bodyguards. But if the Outfit wants you, I’m afraid they’re going to get you. You know that. You know what you’re up against.”
“If they kill me,” he said, chin jutting, eyes slitting, “there’s a Ragen to take my place.”
“Your son Jim, Jr.”
He nodded curtly.
I didn’t think the boy had near the stones his old man had, but I said only, “And if Jim should go the way of all flesh, as well?”
“
I have two more sons.”
Oh brother.
“Is it worth it, Jim?”
“Nobody has ever stood up to these dago sons of bitches. If I stand up to ’em, they’ll back down.”
“You really think so?”
“Let ’em run their competing wire service. They’ll never deliver the quality product I can, so they’ll never put me under. I caught ’em tapping my phones, pirating my news, and got a court order against ’em!”
Jesus, I thought. Does this guy really think the courts is where he can win against the Outfit?
But he was ranting on: “There’ll be some poor bastards operating handbooks out there, feelin’ they gotta pay for both services, letting themselves be shook down…but if they want to knuckle under to the Capone crowd, that’s up to them.”
Coming from most people, talk of standing up to the Outfit would go past suicidal into idiotic. But Ragen had coexisted with the Outfit for years; despite all the talk of “dagoes,” he’d been cordial with Guzik and thick with Dan Serritella, the longtime state senator and longertime Capone mob crony. Serritella even had business ties with Ragen, who had taken control of the horse-race wire service business in 1939, shortly before Moe Annenberg, his mentor, got sent up for tax evasion. Since then, the Outfit had been content to pay the price for Ragen’s service; but of late they’d been trying to buy in. Ragen had been resisting all offers, despite Guzik’s assurances that the little Irishman would be kept on as a partner.
“Those greasy sons of bitches would need my know-how at first,” Ragen told me, “but then some fine morning you’d find me gutted in an alley, with my dick stuffed in my mouth.”
“And then what would you have to say for yourself?” I asked.
“And this guy Siegel is a fruitcake,” Ragen said, distastefully, ignoring my remark, shifting in the client’s chair across from my desk. “They call him ‘Bugsy’ and it fits.”
It seems Guzik, in response to Ragen’s rebuffs, had set up a rival wire, Trans-American, in cooperation with the East Coast version of the Outfit, the Combination; the West Coast branch of Trans-American was under this fellow Ben Siegel.
I nodded. “I’ve heard of the guy. Out of the old ‘Bugs and Meyer’ gang in New York. What’s he doing in California, anyway?”
Ragen snorted. “Hanging around with movie stars. Screwing starlets. Pushing his wire service down people’s throats. He’s a thug in a two-hundred-dollar suit.”
“Have you had any run-ins with him?”
“His people roughed up my son-in-law out there-pretty bad,” he said, referring to Russell Brophy, who ran the L.A. Continental office. “The lad went to the hospital over it.”
“No offense, Jim,” I said, with gentle sarcasm, “but there was a day when you used the strongarm approach yourself-back when you were circulation chief for the Herald and Examiner? It proved successful, as I recall.”
Ragen waved that off; then he smirked humorlessly, saying, “Well, the crazy bastard has cut into me, some-in California and other points west. He owns a horse store downtown in Las Vegas, and he’s got that little desert flyspeck in his pocket…” Some humor drifted into the smirk. “…though some of the Vegas boys are paying for my wire, too.”
I tapped my finger on my desk. Said, “I think you should consider selling out. You’re, what? Sixty-five? You can retire and take the Outfit’s dough and get your sons into something legitimate.”
Ragen’s face turned redder than usual and he clutched the arms of the wooden chair, like a guy in the hot squat when they turned on the juice. “My business is legitimate, Heller! But it wouldn’t be if those dago bastards bought their way in! You think Hoover would put up with that? The mob running the interstate race wire business? Why, we’d have the FBI all over us like flies on horse manure-”
“But you’d be out of it. I didn’t say go in business with them. I said sell out to ’em-take their money, and run. You’ve had your fun.”
The red faded but his mouth became a tight line, which parted, in a barely perceptible manner, as he said, “You think I’m getting old, Nate?”
“You’re not getting any younger. Hell, neither am I. But you are rich. Christ, if I had a tenth your dough, I wouldn’t work another hour!”
The tight line curved upward into the slightest smile. “Bullshit, Heller. You love your work.”
“I love to eat, Jim. Without working, I don’t get to.”
“You love your work, you love bein’ in business. What would you do with your time, lad, if you didn’t have your work, your business? Where would you go? What would you do?”
“I’d think of something,” I said, lamely.
“You’ll die in harness, just like me. Christ! I’m not gonna let a bunch of wop pricks muscle me out of my business! Now, are you in, or are you out?”
Quite frankly, I would’ve been out, friendship or not. And what Ragen was calling a friendship was more a friendly acquaintance. But he had a niece named Peggy, about whom I’ll tell you later. At which time you’ll better understand why I said:
“Yeah. I’ll play bodyguard for you. Or anyway, I’ll put two of my ops on it. I don’t want to be around when the bullets start to fly. I’m not anxious to die at all, let alone ‘in harness.’”
But here I was, two months later, a hot late June afternoon at rush hour, just before six o’clock, cruising down State Street in a black Ford behind Ragen’s dark blue Lincoln Continental.
We’d started on foot, at Ragen’s office at 431 South Dearborn; it was hot and muggy and our clothes were sticking to us. Few of the men on the street were wearing their suitcoats; we stood out, some, accordingly. Of course Ragen-wearing a crisp-looking light brown suit and a green and yellow striped tie and a dark brown snap-brim-looked cool, unbothered by the heat. Except for that one day in my office, I’d never seen the little hardass otherwise.
When we reached the parking lot, two blocks later, Jim had climbed into his car alone (once a week his staff bodyguard, a racing sheet truck driver, got the day off, and this was the day) and we-me and Walt Pelitier, an ex-pickpocket detail dick, like most of my ops-got into the bodyguard car, Walt behind the wheel, me riding with shotgun in my hands, my nine millimeter automatic snug under my shoulder, an old friend I’d rather not get reacquainted with.
For fifteen minutes or so, we’d had an uneventful journey. We’d just passed through the remnants of the once-proud Levee district, reduced from its former red-light and saloon glory to a handful of rundown bars and weedy vacant lots. We were heading south on State, making our way to Beverley, a nice neighborhood on the far South West Side, one of those sedate upper-middle-class areas that whispered money. Ragen and his family lived there, in a spacious two-story with a sprawling lawn, at 10756 Seeley. So, for two months now, in the apartment over the garage, had Walt Pelitier.
We were not, at the moment, in a nice neighborhood. We were, in fact, in the midst of a colored corridor that might charitably be described as a slum; we were at the west end of the South Side Bronzeville, and the black faces that watched Ragen’s fancy car slide by were not sympathetic. Several blocks to the right, across the tracks, yet worlds away, was a nice neighborhood. A white neighborhood.
A certain irony, here, was not lost on me: Ragen’s late brother Frank had, in the first couple decades of the century, ruled “Ragen’s Colts,” a vicious street gang which began, as so many gangs in those days did, as a baseball team. Frank, the star pitcher, offered his team’s slugging services to the local Democratic Party, for whom they won votes in much the same muscular manner as brother Jim won readers for the Trib and, later, the Herald and Examiner.
To my knowledge, Jim had never been a part of the notorious Colts, but it still chilled me, momentarily, to be gliding through the very black area where the Colts had, back in 1919, started the city’s biggest race riot. It should be kept in mind that one member of the Colts publicly derided the Ku Klux Klan as “nigger lovers.” On this very street, not so many years ago
, blacks had been shot on sight, residences had been burned and dynamited, shops looted. That “nice” white neighborhood, a few blocks over, had been the scene of reprisals, as colored world war veterans dug out their service weapons and returned fire, attacked streetcars, turned over autos, destroyed property. In four days, twenty whites died, fourteen colored died, and a thousand-some others of both races were injured. My father, an old union man who had no truck with bigots, had told me the story many times. It was his favorite example of “man’s inhumanity to man.” In my time I’ve seen plenty more.
This stretch of Bronzeville was so shabby that the riot might have taken place here last week, instead of a few decades ago. Some storefronts were boarded up, as if the depression were still here. For many of these people, it still was, of course. Always would be, probably. An occasional prosperous business-a barber shop, a laundry, a drugstore-seemed the exception, not the rule; the streets were thick with hot, sweating coloreds, men mostly. The curbs were all but empty of parked cars. This was a poor neighborhood. The cars on this street were moving.
Actually, ours was slowing to a stop; maybe it makes me a bigot, too, but in a neighborhood this colored, this poor, I feel uncomfortable whenever a traffic light insists I stop. For a moment I was glad I had a shotgun in my lap.
Up ahead, a gray Buick sedan had stopped at the light; a shabby-looking green Ford delivery truck, with a tan tarp covering its skeletal frame, some orange crates visible in the back end, rolled past Walt and me and came to a slow stop in the righthand lane. I sat up.
“That truck,” I said, pointing.
We were poised just behind Ragen’s car. I had to speak up, because a train was rumbling by on the nearby El; it was to our left, just back of these ramshackle buildings along State Street.
“Huh?” Walt said. He was a puffy-looking, heavy-set man of fifty-some, with hooded eyes. Despite all that, despite the “huh” as well, he was a hardnosed, alert dick.
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