The Million-Dollar Wound (Nathan Heller)

by Max Allan Collins

  “Am I wrong in assuming you’ll be wanting to get right back to work?”

  “No. Anyway, I don’t think you are.”

  “Mr. Heller,” Gladys said, her brow knit. I didn’t bother correcting her; “Nate” was just not in her vocabulary. “You do look a little peaked, if you’ll excuse me saying.”

  “Gladys,” Lou said, harshly.

  “It’s okay, Lou,” I said. “She’s right. I look like hell. But I just spent sixteen hours or so sitting on a train, with no place to sleep, and…” The train had been filthy, crowded; I was lucky to find room to stow my sea bag and plant my butt. The saddest thing had been the pregnant women, of whom there had seemed to be a batallion, and gals with small children in tow, trying to diaper ’em, feed ’em, in the most cramped god-awful conditions, all of these young mothers present and future on their way to see their overseas-bound husbands one last time, or coming back from having seen ’em off.

  Lou and Gladys were both staring at me, pity in their eyes, as I’d trailed off in mid-sentence and got lost in thought, thinking about the train ride. That was going to happen; me going in and out of focus like that.

  “You might as well get your minds set,” I said. “I’m going to be out of step for a while. Not long ago I was on a tropical island getting shot at. The comparative peace and quiet of Chicago is going to take some getting used to.”

  Lou stepped in my, or his, office and got into his overcoat. “Binyon’s okay?” he said.

  “Binyon’s is fine,” I said.

  As we were leaving, Gladys called out, “Should I tell people you’re in, if they call?”

  I stopped, the door open; Lou was already out in the hall. The abortionist was still in business.

  “Why should they even know I’m back?” I said.

  “Your friend Hal Davis on the News did a story about you. Or rather it was about your friend Mr. Ross, with you in it. How you’re a couple of heroes who are coming back to Chicago.”

  “That cocksucker!”

  “Mr. Heller!”

  “Gladys, I’m sorry. Forgive that. I’ve got a bad case of serviceman’s mouth, and I’ll try to get over it quick.”

  “Yes, Mr. Heller.”

  “Good girl.”

  “Mr. Heller—did, uh, did you see Frankie over there?”

  “Uh, no, Gladys. Sorry. It’s a big war. Why, is he in the Pacific?’

  “He’s on Guadalcanal, too, didn’t you know?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t. He must’ve been one of the Army boys who came in to spell us. Is he with the Americal Division?”

  “Why, yes,” she said. The concern on her face was easy enough to read. Specifically, she was looking at gray, skinny, hollow-eyed me and had to wonder about how her husband was faring. She was Mrs. Fortunato now, you see; they’d gotten hitched just before he joined up.

  “Will he be all right, Mr. Heller?”

  I knew enough not to assure her of that, but I could in good conscience say, “The Island’s a mop-up operation, now, honey. He should be fine. Barney and me did the hard work; all he’s got to do is clean up after us.”

  She liked hearing that; she even smiled. For a girl with no sense of humor, she had a great fucking smile. Nice tits, too. It made me feel good to know I could still appreciate the finer things.

  Like Binyon’s. My appetite at St. E’s had been lousy, but the corned beef platter (albeit a smaller serving now) in the familiar male-dominated restaurant with its wooden booths and spare decor reminded me of the simple pleasure of good food. In fact, I attacked the plate like a Jap whose bayonet I’d taken away and was using on him. I think I embarrassed Lou. He didn’t say a word through the meal.

  I wiped my face off with a cloth napkin. A cloth napkin; ain’t civilization something. I said, “I didn’t eat on the train ride. No dining car, and if you got off when they made a stop you could lose your seat.”

  “No explanation necessary, Nate. This is Lou, remember? We go way back.”

  Somebody laughed; me, apparently. “I guess two guys who got falling down drunk together as often as we did, in the old days, ought to cut each other some slack.”

  “That’s how I see it.”

  “I’m goddamn sorry about your brother.” I couldn’t keep my eyes off his armband.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “But it isn’t,” I said.

  “No it isn’t, but it’s not something I can talk about. I thank God you made it back. I was afraid I might never see you again, you dumb son of a bitch. You were too old to go in the service, what were you thinking of?”

  “Ya talked me out of it,” I said. “I’m not going in.”

  The waiter brought us each a second beer.

  Lou shrugged, smiled. “I understand the impulse. I’m older than you and I thought about it, too.”

  “When your brother enlisted,” I said, beer at the ready, “you went down the next day and took the physical. If you hadn’t flunked, you’d be in right now.”

  Wide-eyed, smiling, he said, “How do you know that?”

  “I’m a detective.” I took a sip of beer. “Anyway, I used to be. How much play did Davis give me in the News?”

  “‘Barney Ross’s Private Eye Pal.’ Pretty corny. All the Cermak and Dillinger and Nitti stuff, dredged up. The Pegler bit, too. But just one story. Yesterday.”

  “Fuck. Did I understand Gladys to say Barney’s coming back to town?”

  “I believe so. His malaria flared up, and he was off Guadalcanal before New Year’s; he’s been in the States for—”

  “I know,” I said. “They let us read the papers in the bughouse. It’s just sharp objects they kept from us.”

  “No offense meant, Nate…”

  “Me neither. Anyway, I know about Barney. I talked to him on the phone once, even. Did you know Roosevelt pinned the medals on him, personal?”

  “We get the papers here, too,” Lou said, smiling faintly.

  “But he didn’t say anything about coming back to Chicago, on this extended furlough they’re promising him. He said he was going out to Hollywood, to be with his girlfriend. Wife, I mean.”

  “Well,” Lou said, “he’s changed his mind, apparently. My guess is he’s needed to pump some business into his cocktail lounge. His brother Ben just isn’t the manager that Barney was.”

  “Shit—Barney was a terrible manager, Lou. But he was a draw. A celebrity.”

  Lou shrugged facially. “Now that he’s a war hero, they’ll flock there to see him.”

  For some reason I didn’t like to hear that. I didn’t know why, exactly, but I could feel anger behind my eyes.

  Lou said, “Do you want to hear about our business, or not?”

  “Sure. How have I been doing?”

  “You’re not getting rich, but you’re no pauper. Business is off slightly—divorce work is way down—but there’s still too much for one op to handle. If Frankie were here, one of us might be feather-beddin’, but there’s plenty here for the two of us.”

  Why didn’t I care? I tried to look interested and said, “Such as?”

  “Half a dozen suburban banks are using us for investigating loan applicants and credit; also some personnel investigation, and inspection of property and businesses. We got plenty of retail credit-risk checks to do, and four lawyers are now using us to serve their papers…”

  I couldn’t listen. I tried. I swear I tried. But after while I was just looking at his face and his mouth was moving but I couldn’t make myself listen.

  This is your business, a voice in my head was saying, this is what you worked so hard to build, once upon a time, so jump back in, jump back in, but I didn’t give a shit.

  “Nate?” he said. His change of expression, to concern, made me tune his words in. “Are you all right? You seemed…distant, all of a sudden.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I sighed. Sipped the beer. “You just drop a stack of work on my desk and I’ll get to it. I promise you.”

 
; “You’re the boss,” he said.

  “In name only. You got to run the show till I get back on the ball. I had amnesia, did you know that?”

  “No,” he said. Trying not to show his surprise. “We were told…battle fatigue. Shell shock…”

  “I blocked it all out,” I said. “Forgot everything I could. My name. Who I am. Who I was. I don’t know if I can remember how to be a detective, to be quite honest with you.”

  He smiled a little, swirled his beer in its glass. “Nate Heller with amnesia is still twice the detective of any other man I can think of.”

  “That’s horseshit, Lou, but I do appreciate it.”

  He looked in the beer, not at me, as he said, “I took the liberty of setting up an appointment for you this afternoon.”

  “Really? I don’t think I’m in any mood to see a client just yet, Lou—”

  “It’s not a client, and this is something you might just as well deal with right away, ’cause they’re not going to let loose of you till you do. They been calling for weeks, trying to set something up.”

  “Oh. The federal prosecutor. That grand jury thing.”

  “Yeah. Treasury and Justice Department investigators been swarming around town for weeks. Months. They’re really trying to put the screws to the Outfit. For whatever good it’ll do ’em. The prosecutor’s name is Correa, by the way.”

  “Don’t know him.”

  “He’s out of New York. That’s where the grand jury will eventually meet. But much of the investigation’s going on here. Most of their witnesses, and those they indict, will be from here, so Correa keeps a local office. And there’s an Illinois-based grand jury in the works, as well. Same subject—the Syndicate infiltrating the unions.”

  “Aw shit.”

  “They want to talk to you, bad.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “There’ll be somebody to talk to you, informally, at the office at two this afternoon. If you don’t want to face it, duck out. Me, I’d suggest you get it out of the way. You won’t get any rest till you do.”

  “Shit.”

  “Correa won’t be there; he’s in New York at the moment. But a couple of old friends of yours will be.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as your favorite cop, for instance.”

  “Stege?”

  “Stege?” Lou shook his head, grinned. “You’re behind the times, Nate. Stege retired months ago, while you were overseas.”

  I felt a strange pang; a sense of loss. Funny.

  “I’m talking about our buddy from pickpocket-detail days,” Lou said. “Bill Drury.”

  Drury. That lovable hard-ass.

  “I should’ve guessed,” I said. “He always has had a hard-on against the Outfit. He would get involved in something like this. You said two old friends.”

  “What?”

  “You said two old friends were going to meet with me about this grand jury deal. Drury, and who else?”

  He smiled on one side of his face. “If you were Uncle Sam, and you wanted to convince Nathan Heller to testify, who would you send?”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  Lou toasted me with his beer.

  “That’s right,” he said. Drank some beer. “Mr. Untouchable himself.”

  Eliot Ness.

  ELIOT

  Eliot was fifteen minutes early.

  He walked into the big single-room office—into which he’d walked so often, years before—and the sight of the Murphy bed against the wall, in its long-ago position, and me sitting behind my big old scarred oak desk in my long-ago position, made him smile.

  “Isn’t that a Murphy bed?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “There’s a housing shortage. It’s been in all the papers.”

  I got up from around the desk and I thought I could make out a slight tightening around his eyes as he got his first good look at me, skinny, gray, sunken-eyed me. I put the sore into sight for sore eyes.

  He, on the other hand, looked much the same; a slight salt-and-peppering around the ears was the only noticeable difference. All else was familiar: a comma of dark brown hair falling down on his rather high forehead, a ruddy, handsome six-footer who was pushing forty and didn’t look it, partly due to the trail of freckles across his nose that kept him looking boyish in the face of time.

  We shook hands, exchanging grins. His topcoat was over his arm, hat in hand; his gray suit with vest and dark tie was nicely tailored, giving him an executive look. I took the coat and hung it on the tree by the door.

  “You look good, Nate.”

  “You’re a liar, Eliot.”

  “Well, you look good to me. You crazy SOB, what’s a grown man doing fighting a young man’s war?”

  SOB was about as blue as Eliot’s language got.

  “I’m not fighting it anymore,” I said, and got back behind the desk, gesturing to one of the two waiting chairs I’d placed opposite me in anticipation of my visitors. “What are you doing in Chicago, anyway? Who’s minding the store?”

  “If you mean Cleveland,” Eliot said, crossing his legs, resting an ankle on a knee, “I resigned.”

  That was a shock; the public safety director slot—which was essentially like being commissioner of both the police and fire departments—was perfect for Eliot. He’d had a lot of glory, a good salary, and accomplished plenty. I thought he’d die in that job, an old bearded public servant.

  “First I heard of it,” I said.

  “It was while you were away.”

  “I knew you’d had that trouble…”

  In March of ’42 Eliot had been involved in an auto accident that had found him, wrongly, briefly, accused of a hit-and-run; as a public safety man known for taking a tough stand on traffic violators, Eliot caught a lot of public heat.

  “The press never left me alone after that,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact but his expression just barely revealing a buried hurt.

  “Fuck ’em! You’ve been their fair-haired boy for years. You were cleared, weren’t you? Goddamn newspapers. Why couldn’t the bastards give you a fair shake…?”

  He shrugged. “I think it was the fact that Evie and I had both been drinking. We weren’t drunk, Nate, I swear—but we had been drinking, and, well, you know my reputation as the big-shot prohibition agent. It made me look like a hypocrite.”

  “How are you and Evie?”

  Evie was his wife; his second wife.

  “Not so good,” he admitted. “A little rocky. I’m traveling a lot.”

  I was sorry to hear that, and said so. He just shrugged again.

  Then I said, “What are you doing these days? Since you’re here to quiz me for the grand jury, I assume you’re back in the law enforcement business. So what is it? Treasury or Justice or what?”

  “Nothing so glamorous,” he said, with a chagrined grin.

  “Come on. Spill.”

  “Actually,” he said, sitting up straight, summoning his self-respect, “it’s a pretty important job. I’m working for the Federal Security Agency. Specifically, the Office of Defense Health and Welfare.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well,” he said, shrugging, “I’m the Chief Administrator of their Division of Social Protection.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “We’re dealing with social problems of the sort that inevitably develop when there’s a rapid expansion of a work force in a community, or a large concentration of armed forces.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He pursed his lips, mildly irritated, or was that embarrassment? “I’m talking about safeguarding the health and morale of the armed forces and of workers in defense industry. What do you think I’m talking about?”

  “I think you’re talking about VD.”

  He sighed; laughed. “I am talking about VD.”

  “I think I saw some of your movies while I was in the Corps.”

  That did embarrass him, and he waved it off. “That’s only a small
part of it, Nate. I’m supervising the activities of twelve regional offices, and what we’re primarily doing is trying to help the local law enforcement people cut back on prostitution, especially in areas close to military and Naval bases, or industrial areas. And in cities where military and Naval personnel are likely to go on leave. That’s why they brought an old copper like me in to be in charge.”

  “I see.”

  “You can sit there and grin if you like. But VD’s a big problem; in the first war, soldiers suffered more cases of venereal disease than wounds in battle.”

  “I think you’re right. What we need in this world is more killing and less fucking.”

  He smiled wearily. “Only you would look at it that way, Nate. I look at it as important work.”

  “You don’t have to sell me, Eliot. I know enough to wear my rubbers when it rains.”

  “You haven’t changed much.”

  “Neither have you. You’re still with the goddamn Untouchables.’’

  He laughed and so did I. It was a nice moment. But then the moment was gone, and silence filled the room, somewhat awkwardly. An El rumbled by and eased the tension.

  “You know why I’m here,” he said, tentatively.

  “Yup. I don’t know why they sent the top VD G-man to do a grand jury prosecutor’s job, though.”

  “I am still a G-man, and that’s why I’m in town, doing a joint workshop with the FBI over at the Banker’s Building. We got cops from all over the city and the suburbs coming in.”

  I bet I knew the conference room they were using—the one next to the old FBI HQ, that big room whose windows faced the Rookery across the way, windows from which agents like Melvin Purvis and Sam Cowley hung suspects out by their ankles till they talked. At least one suspect had been dropped. It made a splash in the papers. And on the cement.

  Now Eliot Ness was using it to teach cops about whores. Wasn’t law enforcement a wonderful thing?

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The steel mill district on the east side must be hooker heaven about now.”

  He nodded. “The Pullman plant, just west of there, is another key area.”

  They were Pullman Aircraft, for the duration. Electromotive was near there, too; even before I joined up, it was rumored they were making tanks.