One of which, you would think, was the friendship between Piquett and Heller, the way the stocky little man stood and smiled and flung his hand out toward me. I shook it, and he gestured for me to sit in a chair opposite him, and I did, but he remained standing.
For a small man, he cut an impressive figure. Even on this warm day (albeit in an air-cooled office), he wore a three-piece suit, though nothing fancy; the vest and gray-speckled tie were for respectability, but the slightly worn look of the suit was for Clarence Darrow mock-humility.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, with a disarming half-smile. His features were crowded toward the center of his chubby face—bright eyes, bulbous nose, tiny mouth; dark circles under the bright eyes gave him an intensity, and the effect was at once boyish and fatherly. His most striking feature, however, was his hair: a three-inch-high salt-and-pepper pompadour rose in startled waves, as if he’d stuck his finger in a socket.
“Nice to see you, too, Counselor,” I said, smiling faintly. The only time I’d ever seen him had been in court, in the Lingle murder case. I’d been testifying for the prosecution; he’d been the defense lawyer. Still, we’d been on the same team. Both of us were helping railroad a Syndicate patsy named Leo Brothers, Piquett’s client, who’d been chosen by the Capone crowd to take the rap.
“What brings you here, Mr. Heller?” He sat.
“I wanted to thank you for referring one of your clients to me. I sure can use the business.”
He brushed a hand over the pompadour and it did a little dance. “I don’t remember having recommended your services, Mr. Heller. Although I may have. You did reliable work for me, and my client, last year.”
All my dealings with Piquett on that job had been via intermediary or phone.
“But you don’t specifically remember recommending me to anyone?”
He shrugged, smiled like a pixie. “Sorry. I’d love to be of help. And I’ll certainly keep you in mind, for future referrals. I do, however, have a permanent investigator on staff.”
“I see. Do you know a John Howard?”
Piquett thought, then slowly shook his head. “Can’t say as I do.”
“He’s a traveling salesman.”
Piquett shook his head slowly, no.
“Works for a feed and grain company. Whose bosses gave him your name.”
Piquett shook his head slowly, no.
I described my client; Piquett shook his head.
“This isn’t good,” I said.
“Why is that?”
“I appear to have been used to set somebody up.”
“How so?”
“Mr. Piquett, my guess is that you already know the answer to that question.”
His round face took on a cherubic innocence that would’ve fooled most any jury.
He said, “I really don’t know what you mean, Mr. Heller.”
“You don’t.”
“I do not. I haven’t the slightest idea what point you’re trying to make.”
“Well, I’m no orator. That’s not my line. I’m just a detective who doesn’t like being played the fool.”
“No one does, Mr. Heller.”
“I understand you’re representing John Dillinger these days.”
With a tiny smile, Piquett said, “That’s correct.”
“The first time I ran into you, you were defending Leo Brothers—a man accused of killing Jake Lingle…a friend of yours. In fact you were one of the last to see Jake Lingle alive. And yet you defended the man accused of killing him.”
“Everyone deserves representation under the law, Mr. Heller. That’s the American way.”
“And on that job I did last year for you—your client was Al Capone.”
A small noncommittal shrug. “Yes.”
“And now you’re representing John Dillinger. Don’t you ever represent anybody who isn’t a gangster or a thief?”
Hands folded on his desk, he smiled like a child and said, “They’re the only ones who have money these days, Mr. Heller.”
“What I don’t get is why you’re helping set up your own client. The reward money’s substantial, but Dillinger himself ought to be pretty well fixed by now….”
Piquett stopped smiling. “If you’re implying that my client, Mr. Dillinger, is in some danger at the moment, that’s hardly news. Every lawman in the country is gunning for him. But I would hardly betray my own client, Mr. Heller. And if you have knowledge of any…conspiracy to do him harm, why, I’d be grateful for details.”
“You’re a slick one, I’ll give you that.”
“You flatter me, Mr. Heller.”
“Do I. Let me tell you something, Piquett—I got off the force and into private business because I was sick and tired of being pulled into this scam and that one. I got good and fed up with being up to my butt in graft and bullshit. And I didn’t—and don’t—like being played a patsy, particularly where setting somebody up for a kill is concerned. So I’m not taking kindly to being pulled into this setup, whatever the hell it’s really about.”
“I thought you said you weren’t an orator, Mr. Heller.”
“I’m not. But whoever decided to use me in this one made a bad mistake. Because I’m pulling the rug out from under this whole damn deal. Got it?”
“I haven’t the faintest notion of what you’re talking about.”
“Do you know Anna Sage?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Martin Zarkovich?”
“Not familiar with the name.”
“Polly Hamilton? Jimmy Lawrence?”
“No…no…”
“I see. You’re going to play it cute and innocent. Fine. And that traveling salesman who came to me just happened to use your name….”
Piquett stood, glanced out the window, down at City Hall; then moved around from behind his desk and sat on the edge of it. With a patient smile and a run of his hand over the salt-and-pepper pompadour, he said, “Mr. Heller, I am a public figure. Just because someone walks into your office and invokes the name Piquett, that doesn’t make Piquett a part of anything.”
That actually was pretty convincing; I tried not to show it in my face.
But he caught it. And went on: “Futhermore, I may very well have mentioned you as a reliable investigator to several people, who may have passed your name along to this Howard fellow. Yes, it seems to me I have mentioned your name to several other lawyers and a number of other professional people as well….”
Now he’d gone too far; I knew he was faking.
I said, “Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on? Maybe if you cut me in, I’ll play along. Otherwise, I’m liable to blow off the whole deal.”
Hands folded over his vested belly, he sat perched like a leprechaun and said, “What deal?”
I stood. “Think about it, Louie.”
“About what?”
I was going out the door, when he called out, “Always nice to see you, Mr. Heller. Drop by anytime.”
The secretary-receptionist gave me an icy look and I walked out of the office, wondering if I should talk to Captain Stege about this, or maybe try to get through to Cowley—he’d seemed anxious enough to hear my story. Purvis I wanted to avoid at all costs; he was just too damn eager to bag his man.
The elevator ride was just as stifling going down, and in fact after the air-cooled comfort of Piquett’s office seemed even worse. The elevator operator didn’t smell so good.
I slipped out of my coat, when I got outside, LaSalle Street or no, and slung it over my shoulder.
That was when two big guys in suits and ties and hats came up to me and smiled. They looked like they could play catch with a Ford. They both nodded to me.
But only one of them spoke.
He said, “Mr. Nitti would like to see you. Just walk along with us, okay, Heller?”
13
It wasn’t much of a walk to the Capri Restaurant on North Clark Street. Just a block up. Like Piquett’s office, the Capri
was close to City Hall, and its large, smoky, air-cooled dining room—the walls paneled in an unfinished oak, the booths covered in brown leather—was crowded with judges, city officials, attorneys, theatrical folk, strictly male. A few of them were heavies: in a booth nearby, Jake Arvey was animated as he chewed Pat Nash’s ear, while Nash seemed more intent on chewing his corned beef and cabbage. I thought I saw Rudy Vallee sitting at a table back in the far left corner, chatting over steaks and chops with a couple of men I didn’t recognize, theatrical agents or producers I supposed.
But I didn’t see Frank Nitti, even though it was widely known that he owned the Capri and held court here.
My two burly escorts escorted me politely to the left, through a glass door into a little tiled waiting area by an elevator. One of the pair, a guy with smile dimples so deep they stood out when he wasn’t smiling, pushed the button for the elevator. It came down and the cage door was opened from within by an elevator operator wearing a suit and tie and a bulge under his left arm.
“Better pat him down,” the elevator operator said.
The other escort, a guy without smile dimples but with several facial moles, said, “He don’t have his coat on, fer crissakes. Where’s he gonna keep a gun?”
As he was saying this, the other guy was patting me down. I didn’t have a gun. Or a knife or a bomb. Just my car keys and a money clip with ten bucks, a five and five ones. These he had me remove from my pockets, however, and examined them and handed them back, laughing a little at the money clip, smile dimples deepening.
“Sure rolling in dough, ain’t ya, dick,” he said, cheerfully.
He was too big to banter with.
So I said, “Right,” and stepped inside the elevator. They followed me.
We went to the third floor, where the two guys got off first. The elevator didn’t go back down; the elevator operator with the suit and the gun bulge stepped out and joined us. We were in an anteroom paneled in that same unfinished oak; the walls were barren.
Opposite the elevator there were double doors, which smile-dimples pushed through; he came back a moment later and, holding the door open for me, gestured with a thumb.
“Mr. Nitti’ll see you now,” he said.
I went in, and my escorts didn’t.
I was alone in a big dining room—cloth-covered tables and along the left wall a banquet table, the walls that same scarified oak—alone, that is, with Frank Nitti.
He sat, by himself, at a table for four at the far right of the room, his back to the corner. He was eating. He looked up from his plate and smiled on one side of his face and waved me over with a hand with a fork in it and looked back at his food.
NITTI
There was no carpet on the parquet floor and my shoes made small echoes as I weaved through the well-spaced-apart tables back to the corner table, where Nitti glanced up again, half-rose, and nodded to a chair across from him. I sat.
I hadn’t seen him in about a year. He looked skinny and quite a bit older; he’d shaved his mustache off. Still, he was a roughly handsome man, with flecks of scar here and there on his face, notably his lower lip. His hair was slicked back and parted at the left. A former barber, he was always immaculately groomed. His suit was black, his shirt too; his tie was white, with a ruby stickpin.
He was eating what looked to be boiled beef with some small skinned potatoes and some sliced carrots. He was drinking milk.
He must’ve noticed me looking at this less-than-lavish lunch, because he grimaced and said, “Goddamn ulcers. Can you believe it? And this is one of the better meals I had lately.”
“Hardly pays to own a restaurant,” I said.
He smiled a little. “Yeah. Maybe I oughta find another line of work.”
I didn’t say anything; I was nervous. Nitti seemed to like me, but he was an intimidating figure, albeit a short one.
“Heller,” he said, “you look older.”
“You look about the same, Frank.”
“Bullshit. I aged ten years since those bastards shot me last year. If you hadn’t been there and made ’em call an ambulance, I’d be with the angels right now.”
“The angels, Frank?”
He shrugged elaborately. “I’m a good Catholic. Are you a Jew, Heller? You look more like a Mick.”
“I’m both and neither. I never been to church in my life, except your occasional wedding and funeral.”
He pointed his finger at me, and gave me a scolding look. “That ain’t good. Take my advice, kid—get some goddamn religion. You ain’t gonna live forever.”
“Should I take that as a threat, Frank?”
His smile returned; the ruby on his tie winked at me. “No. Just advice. I like you, kid. You did me a favor. I don’t take that lightly.”
“You returned the favor. We’re even.”
“Maybe. But I like you. You know that.”
“Well, uh, that’s good to know.”
“I got respect for you. You got, whaddya call it, integrity. Not too many people got that, you know.”
I figured he held this opinion because I’d quit the force after Mayor Cermak’s two police bodyguards had taken me along, unawares, into what turned out to be an assassination attempt on Nitti’s life.
“And you got balls,” he said, picking at one of the potatoes with his fork. “You’re smart and honest—though not so honest as to be a problem—and you got integrity. So that’s why I like you.”
I risked a wisecrack. “This is starting to sound like a testimonial,” I said. “Maybe we should move over to the banquet table, and invite those guys who brought me up here to join us.”
He tolerated that, even smiled again, then frowned and quickly said, “They didn’t get nasty, did they? I told ’em you were to be my willin’ guest. Nothin’ nasty.”
“They weren’t nasty, Frank. But they didn’t have to be. Where’d you get those guys, Lincoln Park Zoo?”
He drank some milk and this time when he smiled he had a milk mustache, which he wiped off with a thick hand on which rested a gold ring that must’ve weighed half a pound.
“Healthy-looking boys, ain’t they?” he said. “I beefed up my security after the Cermak hit.”
I didn’t know if he was referring to the attempt on his life by Cermak’s two cops, or the subsequent assassination of Mayor Cermak in Miami last summer, which he’d directed. And I didn’t ask.
“Would you like something to eat?” he asked, gesturing to the empty place in front of me.
Actually, I hadn’t eaten all day. But somehow I didn’t have much of an appetite, and declined.
“You’re wondering why I asked you up here,” he said.
“I think I know, Frank.”
He looked up from his boiled beef, with an almost pop-eyed look. “Really?”
“Well, let’s just say that I’ve figured out that Piquett kept me waiting in his office for half an hour so he could call you and you could send some people over.”
Nitti didn’t confirm or deny that.
He just said, “You’re involved in something. And I’m sorry as hell about it.”
He cut his beef with the side of his fork, leaving a pause for me to fill, but I couldn’t find anything to fill it with.
He ate a bite, and went on. “This thing that’s about to go down, I’m on top of it—it’s happening with my approval, even my guidance. But I’m an executive, kid. I don’t handle the detail shit, you know?”
“I can understand that, Frank.”
“I didn’t know they were going to pull you into this. And if I’d known, I’d have stopped ’em.”
“Who, Frank?”
“Don’t ask questions, kid. Just listen.” He paused to see if I was going to pay heed, and I was.
“I want you to get out of this,” he said. “And stay out. Just let things take their course.”
He ate his boiled beef.
“Is that all, Frank?” I said.
“Sure. You wanna go, go ahead. It was good to s
ee you again.”
He’d been very careful in choosing his words—everything vague, all references couched in euphemism.
“Frank, we are talking about setting John Dillinger up, aren’t we?”
He shrugged, chewed, watched me with eyes that warned me not to go too far.
I went ahead anyway. Just a step at a time.
“It makes sense that you and your associates might like to be rid of a guy like this,” I said. Carefully. “Having the likes of Dillinger in town—and he seems always, eventually, to come back to Chicago to hide out—stirs up all kinds of heat. Local and federal.”
Nitti nodded, chewing.
I shook my head sympathetically. “Cops and feds can’t put out the dragnet for Dillinger and his ilk without disrupting your Outfit’s activities, of various kinds, in the process. Public outcry over gangsters like Dillinger leads to mass arrests—which your people get caught up in. Dillinger’s bringing down too damn much heat on the Outfit.”
Nitti narrowed his eyes and said, “Last December three of my best people were killed. It was a raid on a flat on Farwell Avenue by Stege’s Dillinger Squad; those trigger-happy sons of bitches mistook my guys for Dillinger and two of his pals. Shot ’em dead. Didn’t know they had the wrong men till they took their fingerprints, hours later.” Disgusted, Nitti sipped his milk. “It’s gotta end.”
“Is that what’s happening?” I asked. “You’re putting an end to Dillinger?”
“Be careful what questions you ask me, kid—I might answer ’em.”
“That fed Cowley came to see me today.”
Nitti said nothing; pushed his plate away from him. There was still some food left, but he’d had all of it he could stomach.
I said, “I got the feeling he’d cut a deal with Zarkovich, agreeing to shoot Dillinger down. Rather than take him in.”
Nitti patted his mouth with a napkin.
“So it’s not enough for Dillinger to be captured,” I said. “He’s got to buy it. He’s got to die.”
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