Sapperstein came in a few minutes later. He was still wearing the black arm band for his brother; it could do double duty, now. I called her mother in Evanston and Lou drove her home.
That left me alone in the office, wondering how Frankie Fortunato could be dead and I could be alive. Young Frankie. Old me. Shit. I wadded up the goddamn newspaper and shoved it in the wastecan. But the crumpled headline, spelling GUADNAL, seemed real enough to me now.
I sat at the desk in the inner office—my office once, Sapperstein’s for the moment—and made some calls regarding an insurance investigation in Elmhurst. It felt good to work. The mundane, which when I first got back had driven me crazy, was becoming my salvation. Day-to-day living, everyday working, was something I could get lost in. By eleven-thirty I even felt hungry. I was about to break for lunch when I heard somebody come in the outer office.
I got up from behind the desk and walked to the door and looked out at a beautiful young woman of about twenty-five in a dark fur stole and a dark slinky dress. Suspiciously slinky for lunchtime, but then when it was showing off a nice slender shape like that, who was complaining?
She stood at an angle facing Gladys’s empty desk. She had seamed nylons on; nice gams.
“My secretary’s out,” I said.
“You’re Mr. Heller?”
“That’s right.”
She smiled, and it was a lovely smile; pearly white teeth, red lipstick glistening on full lips. Her big dark eyes, under strong arching eyebrows, appraised me, amused somehow. Her black hair was pulled back behind her head, on which sat, at a jaunty angle, a black pillbox hat. If she wasn’t a showgirl once, I’d eat her hat. Or something.
“I don’t have an appointment,” she said, moving toward me slowly. Swaying a little. It seemed somewhat calculated, or is the word “calculating”? She extended one dark-gloved hand. I didn’t know whether she wanted me to kiss it or shake it or maybe crouch down and let her knight me. I settled for squeezing it.
“No appointment needed,” I said, smiling at her, wondering why she was so seductively cheerful; most women who come into a private detective agency are nervous and/or depressed, as their business is generally divorce-oriented. What the hell. I showed her into my office.
She took the chair across from the desk, but before I could get back behind it, she said, “Would you mind closing the door?”
“Nobody’s out there,” I said.
She smiled; no teeth this time. Sexy and wry. “Humor me, Mr. Heller.”
“Consider yourself humored,” I said, and shut the door, and sat behind Sapperstein’s desk.
“I’d like you to find something for me,” she said. Hands folded in her lap, in which a small black purse also resided.
“And what would that be?”
“A certain book.”
“A certain book.”
“A diary.”
Okay. I was awake now.
“A diary,” I said. “Yours?”
“No, Mr. Heller. Must we be coy?”
“You’re the one in the tight dress.”
“You’re an amusing fella.”
“In a tight dress I am. I’m a pip in spike heels.”
“Estelle Carey’s diary, Mr. Heller. A thousand dollars, and your assurance that you’ve made no copies.”
I cracked my knuckles. “You see, that’s why I never got in the blackmail business. There’s no way to prove to the customer that you’ve given ’em the only copy of the goods.”
Her smile seemed just a touch nervous, now. “We’d trust you. We hear you’re a man of your word.”
“Who told you that?”
“A certain Mr. Nitti.”
“Gee, I wonder which Mr. Nitti you might be talking about. I’m coy? Who are you, lady?”
No smile at all. “I’m someone who wants to recover Estelle Carey’s dairy. We’ve asked around. We know you have it. We know you bought it. If you’re intending to sell it to the press, we’ll top their best offer. If you’re planning blackmail, we’d advise you against it. You made an investment; I’m here to help you make a killing on it. But if you refuse, well, then, there are killings and killings, aren’t there?”
“Fuck you.”
She stood and she came around the side of Sapperstein’s desk and sat on the edge of it and hiked her dress up, legs open a hair, if you’ll pardon the expression; showgirl, all right.
“That could be arranged,” she said.
I thought about it. Sally was gone again, and this girl had long legs and everything else that went with it; and she smelled like some exotic faraway place. She was also wearing the first pair of black panties I’d seen since I got back in the States—except for one strange guy at St. E’s. I could always boff her and then tell her to go to hell. I was born in Chicago.
“What do you say, Mr. Heller?”
“Get your butt off my desk.”
She stood; she was clutching the little purse tight in one hand.
“You’re a stupid man.”
“You’re a smart bitch. So what? Go away.”
“Name your price.”
“No price! Get the fuck out of my office! If you got a gun in that little purse, I wonder if it’s as big as the one in my desk drawer.” Which from where she was standing she could see my hand was down in.
She sighed. “You’re foolish to prolong this. You won’t get a better price out of us by making us wait.”
“Who’s ‘us’? You and the Outfit?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“Lady, I burned the goddamn thing.”
She winced. “What?”
“I burned it. I was hired by a client who didn’t want to be embarrassed by its contents, so I fucking burned it.”
“No one would be that stupid.”
“I wasn’t born that stupid, I admit. I worked at it for thirty-some years. Now get the hell out of here. Go away.”
She smiled, only it was more of a sneer. “Why would you even say such a thing? Burned it my ass.”
Her ass indeed. Part of me still wanted her; she was a real doll. And in black panties. I bet her bra was black, too. Fortunately, I was thinking with my higher-up head at the moment. Tempered by a sick heart.
“I just learned one of my business partners was killed in the war,” I said. “So I’m in a particularly lousy mood today. No mood at all to be fucking around with this chickenshit conversation. I’m about to get up from this desk, take that purse and the gun you must have in it away from you, and kick the living shit out of you. I haven’t knocked a woman’s teeth out since my second wife left me, by the way, so I’m going to really enjoy this.”
Her eyes and nostrils flared; she obviously didn’t know what to make of me, or my nonexistent wives.
But she said, “I’ll be back.”
And left.
The door in the outer office was slamming shut as I dialed Drury at his Town Hall office; caught him going out the door to get lunch.
“I’m going to describe a woman to you,” I said.
“This sounds like fun.”
“It might be fun. That’s what the male spider thinks, anyway, when he crawls in the sack with a black widow.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Get an earful of this, and then tell me if it matches up with any of your Carey case suspects.”
I described her, seamed stockings to pillbox hat, and he said, “That would be so nice to come home to…only you may be right about that black widow spider. That sounds very much like Olivia Borgia, John Borgia’s wife.”
“Borgia? That name sounds familiar. Or am I just thinking about famous women not to go out for cocktails with.”
I didn’t mention to Bill that the Borgias had turned up in the diary, albeit briefly; mentioned as friends who’d stopped over a few times. No sexual escapades. Whatever the Borgias thought was in that diary, wasn’t. Or hadn’t been. It was ashes now, after all.
“John Borgia’s an Outfit guy who’s been around for year
s,” Drury was saying. “Don’t you remember, I mentioned him to you as one of our Carey suspects. He looks a little like Sonny Goldstone, only no glasses. He’s about fifty. An old pal of Dago Mangano’s; connected to Nicky Dean.”
“Wasn’t there something about a kidnapping, back around ’38?”
“Yeah, only it was ’37. Some ex-pals of Dean and Mangano grabbed Olivia and held her for ransom. The guys that did it turned up dead in a ditch. Poor bastards snatched the snatch to get even with Borgia, word was—it was for revenge more than dough; these were some guys Borgia had fired at the 101 Club. Which was where Olivia worked, by the way.”
“Twenty-six girl?”
“At one time. Also a would-be nightclub singer. Why, Nate? What’s this all about?”
“She was just in my office.”
“What? What for?”
“She wanted to know if I had Estelle Carey’s diary.”
“You? Why would she think you had Estelle Carey’s diary?”
“Yeah, it’s nuts, isn’t it? I told her I didn’t have the thing, and she went away. Only she didn’t believe me. She said she’d be back.”
“I didn’t even know she was in town. We’ve been looking for her, and her husband, from the start. I appreciate the tip, Nate. Every radio car in town will be alerted.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“If they did this, Nate, if they were the last guests your friend Estelle entertained, then there can be no doubt it was an Outfit hit.”
“Meaning you’ll expect me to be a good citizen and testify against Nitti.”
“That’s right. Anything else you need? I got lunch to catch.”
“Actually, there is. Some bad news. Frankie Fortunato was killed in action.”
“Aw, shit.”
“Guadalcanal.”
“Hell, the papers say we ran those slant-eyed bastards right off that island!”
“We did. It just wasn’t free.”
We both hung up, and then for a while I sat there staring out the window, where the service flag with Frankie’s star hung.
Then around one, Olivia Borgia’s promise to return lingering in my brain like a bad taste, I went next door and got the nine millimeter out of my bottom desk drawer and the shoulder holster too and took my coat off and slung it on. Guadalcanal was over. But there were always battles to be fought.
Then I walked around the corner to Binyon’s and had the finnan haddie. Meatless Tuesday.
CAMPAGNA
I saw my father. He was sitting at the kitchen table with my gun in his hand. He lifted it to his head and I said, “Stop!”
Then Barney’s hand was over my mouth; he was shaking, wildeyed. His .45 was in his other hand. We were still under the shelter half, in the shell hole. D’Angelo was awake, .45 in hand; the Army boys had .45s in hand too.
“You passed out,” Barney whispered. “Be quiet. Japs.”
Twigs snapping, brush rustling.
Barney took his hand off my mouth; I got the .45 off my hip.
And Monawk woke, in pain, and screamed.
And I shot him. I shot him! Be quiet, you’re gonna get us killed, but he didn’t die, he just looked down at the holes my .45 punched in his chest and his face contorted and he reached for the .45 on his hip and he started firing at me and I sat up in bed, in a cold sweat.
Not screaming, like Monawk. I’d done that a few times, sure. But usually it was like now: jerk awake, dripping with sweat.
I glanced at my watch. A few minutes after 2:00 A.M. I flipped the sheets and blankets off and, wooden floor cold on my feet, padded over to my desk. The nine millimeter in my shoulder holster lay on top of it. The rum bottle was still in the bottom drawer, but almost empty. I sat and, slowly, finished it off, drinking from the bottle, looking out the window at the El. Sitting in the orangeish glow of the neon. Quietly shaking.
Well, this was a new twist. I’d been back in the shell hole many, many times in my dreams. But this time it had been different.
Usually I was just generally back there, mortars landing, machine guns zinging, and the people, why the people weren’t necessarily D’Angelo and Monawk and Barney and the Army boys and Watkins and Whitey and me. No, it could be Eliot and Bill and Lou and Frankie and the guy behind the counter in the deli downstairs. Or anybody I knew, or ever knew.
This time, though, it had followed the script. This time it mirrored what had really happened, right up to the moment I fired the .45 at Monawk…
Had I done that? Had I really done that? Fired at Monawk, to shut him up? To stop the screaming that was telling the Japs right where to find us?
My dream seemed to be saying so, but awake, I couldn’t remember doing it. If the door to the answer had cracked open during my sleep, it had slammed shut again, upon waking.
I couldn’t allow that. I forced myself back there, back to the dream and the event it was trying to tell me about, and then I remembered: in the dream Monawk screamed and I fired at him. In life Barney had clasped his hand over Monawk’s mouth, but it had been too late, a machine gun opened up and D’Angelo dove for Monawk, as if to strangle him, only Barney stopped him.
“Bastard’s gonna get us killed,” D’Angelo had said.
Mortar shells, then, bullets zinging.
Beyond that point, I couldn’t seem to go.
But I knew one thing.
“I didn’t kill him,” I said aloud. I put the empty rum bottle in the wastebasket. I didn’t know why, exactly, but I’d come away from the dream with the very real feeling, even the certain knowledge, that I had not killed Monawk.
Maybe now I could sleep. I padded back over to the Murphy bed, crawled under the covers and was sliding into sleep when I heard the sound from next door.
Your classic bump in the night.
Funny. The El can go rumbling by and I don’t even notice it. The slightest other half-imagined sound and I think the Japs invaded. What the hell. I rolled over and forgot about it and then it bumped again.
I sat up in bed. No cold sweat, this time. Silently as I could, I eased out and went over to the desk and slipped my nine millimeter out of the holster. I listened at the wall, heard muffled sounds, no voices. I put my pants on, and went quietly out into the hall, barefoot, bare-chested, gun in hand.
A light was on in my office. Outer office. Gladys’s goose-neck desk lamp, from the look of it. It enabled me to see, through the pebbled glass, the shadow moving around in there.
Frankie Fortunato’s voice whispered in my ear: it worked before, and I slammed the side of the gun barrel against the pebbled glass and it shattered and I stuck my gun in hand through the opening and there was the beautiful Olivia Borgia, in slacks and sweater and a sporty little beret and a .38 in one hand, the outer office turned topsy-turvy, file drawers emptied, desk drawers stacked, and now cushions of the couch about to be explored. Her lip curled into a sneer and she took a shot at me; the sound of it cracked open the night and I felt it whiz past and shatter the abortionist’s glass and I squeezed the trigger and sent one back at her. It knocked her back, onto the couch, with a yelp; caught her in the shoulder.
“Get comfy right there,” I told her. I stayed out in the hall, pointing my gun at her through the gaping, spiky hole in the window.
She’d dropped the .38, on the impact of my round; the revolver was on the floor, just out of her reach. She sat clutching her shoulder, blood dripping through the cracks of her fingers.
When she spoke, it was almost a snarl.
“Where’s the diary?” she said.
“Why do you want it?”
Sneering smile. “Why should I tell you?”
“Because your gun is on the floor and mine is pointed at your sweet head.”
Arching eyebrow. “You want a piece, then?”
“Sure. I want a piece.”
Blood oozing. “She had a million dollars hidden away. More than a million.”
“And the diary has the answer to where she stowed it?”
&n
bsp; Curt nod. “The diary has the answer, yes.”
“I read it, lady. I didn’t see any answer.”
Wide eyes. “It’s there! It’s in the diary.”
“I don’t think so.”
Narrowed eyes. “If not words, then a key, perhaps—taped inside. Something!”
“Why are you so sure?”
Flaring nostrils. “She told us it was.”
“When?”
Sneering smile. “Before she died.”
The El went clattering by. I had to shout to be heard over it; but I’d have shouted anyway: “You killed her! Goddamn. You little bitch. You and your husband killed her! Where is the bastard?”
Gunfire gave me my answer, four fast blasts that barely rose above the El’s rumble, flaming my way from the doorway of my inner office, and, still out in the hall, I hit the deck, glass raining over me.
I stood, meaning to fire again, but he’d ducked back in my office.
His wife hadn’t got that far, though. Bleeding shattered shoulder or not, she had gone for the .38 on the floor; her bloody hand was on the gun when I put a bullet in her brain.
Then I dove through the yawning glass-toothed hole where the window used to be, landed on the couch, some pieces of stray glass crunching beneath me, El in my ears, and he was in the doorway, big automatic in hand, .45 maybe, a big man in heavy sweater and trousers, and he did look like Sonny Goldstone, only it wasn’t Sonny, it was her husband, John Borgia, whose pockmarked fleshy face fell when he saw his pretty wife on the floor, her head cracked like a bloody egg.
“You killed her!” he said, outraged, white showing all the way round his eyes, and he turned to fire at me, but I was off the couch and doing the one thing he hadn’t counted on, moving right toward him, and I was on him before he could even react and my gun was shoved in his gut, firing, firing, and I said, “Who the fuck do you people think you’re dealing with,” and fired again, “who the fuck do you people think you’re dealing with,” and fired again.
He fell back, on the floor, landed hard, flopping, thudding, five scorched puckered holes in his gut and chest with five slow red leaks, eyes still open and looking up at nothing. The wastebasket, which he’d knocked over as he fell, spilled next to him, the wadded-up paper saying, GUADNAL.
The Million-Dollar Wound (Nathan Heller) Page 30