Neon Mirage

by Max Allan Collins

  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.

  “No license plates,” I shouted, over the El.

  Walt sat forward. “They’re slowing next to Ragen—”

  They were indeed; rather than pulling up to the intersection of State and Pershing, next to the gray sedan, they had stopped next to the Lincoln.

  And the tan tarp on that same side was parting, down the middle, like theater curtains.

  The barrels of two shotguns slid into view. Shiny black metal caught some dying sun and winked at us.

  “Christ!” I said, and hopped out, shotgun in my hands, feet slapping cement, firing at the truck.

  Or trying to.

  The sawed-off jammed. I didn’t even know the fucking things could jam! But the trigger simply wouldn’t squeeze back. I knew the thing was loaded; it wasn’t mine, it was Bill Tendlar’s, the op I was replacing, but I had checked it and it was loaded when I left the office…

  And now the afternoon was interrupted by shotgun fire, but not mine, not mine, as the two barrels extending like long black snouts from the side of the delivery truck delivered on Ragen’s car, ripping the metal of the front right door, just under the absent rider’s open window, but you could barely hear the blasts, what with the roar of the El. The train made a great silencer.

  Up ahead the traffic light had changed, but the gray sedan before Ragen was keeping its position. Whether the driver had panicked (in which case you’d think the asshole would hit his gas pedal and hightail it away) or was in on the hit, I couldn’t say.

  In fact all I could think to say was, “Shit! You bastards,” as I moved quickly toward the truck, yanking the nine millimeter from under my arm and firing on them, three times, right into that fucking tarp.

  From which one of the barrels turned upon me and fired and I dove for the cement, between the two cars, as the windshield of the bodyguard car just behind me caught the brunt, spiderwebbing. As if sliding toward home, I landed in the next of the four lanes, sprawled in front of oncoming traffic. Despite the El’s rumble, I heard the screech of tires and wondered if I’d wind up so much spaghetti sauce on the Bronzeville pavement; but I seemed to be alive and rolled into the next lane, the sidewalk my goal, as another shotgun blast ate into the side of Ragen’s once-proud Lincoln, repeatedly puckering the top of the car, entering the rider’s window. I heard a scream, which had to be Jim, and then I screamed something, “Fuck,” I think, and got to my feet and started firing the nine millimeter again. Walt had climbed out of the bodyguard car, which shielded him some as he was shooting, ripping off shot after shot from his revolver, right at the truck. Traffic had finally had sense enough to stop and I stood there, feet apart, gun gripped in both hands, planted in the middle of the empty left lane like the world was my target range. I ripped three off and then a shotgun barrel was aiming my way, in the hands of an indistinct figure in a white sportshirt, but that shotgun was distinct enough, the guy standing up in the truck now, visible over the shot-up Lincoln, and I dove and rolled onto the sidewalk.

  The blast that followed blew across the top of the Lincoln and shattered the window of the corner drugstore. The colored pedestrians were running for cover, screaming their lungs out as if needing to be heard over the El, feet doing their stuff and it didn’t have anything to do with being colored. The blast went over my head into that window and I stayed down but shot the nine millimeter up and at the side of that truck, knowing that my bullets were probably too high, having to shoot across two empty lanes of State Street and over the Lincoln, but hoping against hope to get a piece of something, somebody…

  Then the nine millimeter was empty and the truck was gone. So was the gray sedan.

  Even the El had passed by. The street was silent, but for the occasional outbursts from the colored pedestrians, coming up for air, “Mercy!” “Judas Priest!” “Mama!”

  That sedan, which turned right on Pershing, did have plates: Indiana plates, though neither Walt nor I had caught the numbers. Maybe one of the colored witnesses had. The truck was heading on south, gears grinding as it picked up speed.

  Walt, who also was out of ammo, helped me up off the sidewalk, and then we were at the Lincoln, looking in, where James M. Ragen, gambling czar, was slumped behind the wheel, teetering between winning and losing, the front of him blood-spattered, his right shoulder and arm a scorched, red, sodden mess.

  “Jim,” I said, leaning in the window.

  He looked up at me and the little blue eyes damn near twinkled.

  “Well, my lad,” he grinned, “you were right…I guess if they want you, they’re going to get you.”

  And he either passed out or died.

  At that moment I couldn’t tell which.

  The year before, in May of ’45, I had taken on another job for Jim Ragen; it, too, had the taint of the Outfit. But it did bring Peggy Hogan back into my life.

  I didn’t even know she was Ragen’s niece when he pitched me the job. We had just finished lunch at Binyon’s, a no-nonsense, businessman-oriented restaurant on Plymouth, just around the corner from the seedy building my growing private investigative firm was trying to escape from. He’d had the finnan haddie, I the corned beef and cabbage plate. We were sharing one of the wooden booths, drinking coffee.

  “I made a mistake,” Ragen said, tiny blue eyes staring into the steaming black cup; he was the kind of man who could admit a mistake, but couldn’t look you in the eye doing it. “I trusted Serritella.”

  “That does sound like a mistake,” I said. “He’d sell out God if the devil was buying.”

  “I know, I know,” Ragen said, waving it off. Wearily, he said: “Couple years back, I went partners with the senator, on a tip sheet.”

  “The Blue Sheet?�
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  “Yeah. I thought he was operating for himself, but he was playing his usual tricks, fronting for Guzik and company. I don’t mind doing business with those wops, but I don’t want to be in business with ’em.”

  “A fine distinction, don’t you think?”

  “Not at all, my lad. Not at all. As customers, I got ’em where I want ’em—putting their money in my pocket. As partners, I wouldn’t trust ’em far as I could throw ’em.”

  “You think they’ve been using Serritella to worm their way into your business? Into Continental Press?”

  “Hell yes. They’ve had their hand in my pocket ever since I went with Serritella; bilking me right along. Of course, I can’t lay my hands on the books to prove it. And that’s why I’m suing the bums. Serritella and Guzik both.”

  “Suing them? Outfit guys?”

  “It’s the only way I can get an accounting.”

  I shook my head. “Sounds dicey to me.”

  “Where would they be without Continental? They’re making noises about starting up their own wire—let ’em try it!”

  I sat forward in the booth. “I don’t know where you think I fit into this, Jim, but I don’t do mob-related work. I gave that up the day Frank Nitti blew his brains out.”

  He smiled his tight smile. “You played intermediary in the Guzik kidnapping, I hear.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t my idea.”

  “I hear Greasy Thumb thinks you’re aces.”

  “Let’s keep it that way. And let’s keep him a distant admirer.”

  He frowned. “They’re trying to spook my lawyer, Nate. He’s been getting threatening calls; nasty notes.”

  “Telling him to drop the case.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds like swell advice to me.”

  “His secretary’s been getting the calls. It’s a small office— there’s no receptionist; just one girl, and him. And they’ve threatened her, too.”

  “That’s a little nasty, I’ll grant you.”

  He leaned forward; spoke softly. “The secretary is my niece. I feel a responsibility, here: I got her this job. Her father died last year, and the family business went with him. I’m trying to help the lass out.” He sighed. “She’s a good girl, though she has a bit of a wild streak that gets away from her sometimes.”

  “And you mean to straighten her out,” I said.

  “Yes. But my concern right now is her safety. Her family’s had enough tragedy…they lost the only son in the war.”

  I sucked some air in. “Yeah, well.”

  “Bataan,” Ragen added.

  I winced. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Spend some time with her.”

  “If you’re looking for a bodyguard, I’ll put one of my men on it…”

  “I want you, Nate. What’s your rate these days?”

  “Twenty-five a day, unless you insist on the boss himself, in which case it’s thirty-five. And even if you do, I still have to run the office; I can’t be on her all the time. I’d talk to the girl, spend the first day with her, then put an op on it. I don’t work just one job at a time, you know—we have sixty-some clients, at the moment.”

  “Make it hundred a day, with a week’s retainer.”

  That raised my eyebrows and lowered my standards. “What do you expect to accomplish? What do you expect me to accomplish?”

  He shrugged elaborately. “I think the threats are so much hot air. Those dagoes can’t afford to fuck with Jim Ragen. They’re just makin’ noise.”

  “So do guns.”

  He smirked humorlessly and waved that off as well. “We go to court next week. That’ll be the end of it.”

  “You didn’t answer me, Jim. What do you want from me, exactly?”

  “Be at her side. Make her feel safe. Make her safe.”

  “Have you talked to her about this?”

  “Yes. She insists she’s not afraid, though I can tell she is…though she resisted the notion of protection, at first. But, who can predict a woman; headstrong lass that she is, she up and turned around and said she’d go along with it.”

  “Why, do you think?”

  “She said she’d heard of you. You’ve a certain notoriety, after all.”

  I’d made the papers a few times. Most of the occasions had been bad for my health but good for business.

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Margaret.”

  “Ragen?”

  “Hogan. She’s my wife’s little sister’s girl. Pretty little lass. You should pay me, for the pleasure.” He raised a stern finger, the tiny eyes getting tinier. “Which isn’t to give you no ideas, lad. Don’t ye lay a hand on ’er, now.”

  They always get more Irish when they’re warning you.

  “For a hundred bucks a day,” I said, “I can leave my dick in a drawer, if you like.”

  “Fine,” he smiled, picking up the check. “And leave the key with me.”

  It’s funny I didn’t recognize her name. Hell, I didn’t recognize her, at first, as she sat at a typing stand near her desk in the little wood-paneled outer office on the tenth floor of the Fisher Building. She was small, and what you saw about her first was all that dark brown hair, the sort of dark brown that looks black till you study it, piles of curls cascading to the squared-off shoulders of her yellow dress, a startling dress with black polka dots, shiny cloth, silk perhaps. It hadn’t come cheap, this dress, but it seemed out of place in a law office, even a cubbyhole like this.

  She turned to me and smiled, in a business-like way, and then the smile widened.

  “Nate,” she said, standing, extending a hand. “It’s been a long time.”

  She had pale, pale skin, translucent skin, with the faintest brown trail of freckles over a pert nose. She had a wide full mouth with cherry red lipstick, and big violet eyes. Her eyebrows were rather thick, unplucked, unfashionably beautiful, and she had a couple pounds of eyelashes, apparently real, and the whitest teeth this side of Hollywood. She looked about seventeen, but she was ten years older than that—a few laugh crinkles around the enormous eyes were almost a giveaway—and she had a very slim but nicely shaped frame. The hand she extended, in an almost manly fashion, had short nails with bright red polish, the color of her lipstick.

  She was a stunning-looking girl, and in 1938, I’d slept with her once. Well. That was part of what we’d done together that night….

  “Peggy,” I said, amazed. “Peggy Hogan.”

  Her hand, as I grasped it, was firm and smooth and warm.

  Her big grin, dimpling her slightly chubby cheeks, was one of amusement and pleasure.

  “You’re still a private eye,” she said.

  “You’re still a dish,” I noted.

  “You told me I shouldn’t sleep with strange men.”

  “I waited till the next morning to give you that advice, though.”

  Her smile closed over those white teeth and settled in one dimple; she gestured to a chair, which I pulled up, and she sat behind her desk.

  “I was a pretty wild kid,” she said, echoing her uncle’s words.

  “I remember.”

  “I never did sleep around much, Nate. You were one of a select few.”

  “It was my honor. My pleasure, actually.” I felt awkward about this, but was immediately taken with this older version of the fresh young girl I’d once bedded and then lectured and sent on her way.

  I’d met her at a party at a fifth-floor suite in the Sheraton. My boxer friend Barney Ross, who’d grown up on the West Side with me, and some other big shots in the sporting world were going to a wingding tossed by Joe Epstein, who ran the biggest horse-race betting commission house in Chicago. Epstein was an overweight, meek-looking little guy in his early thirties, with hornrimmed glasses and a disappearing hairline; but he was a sucker for the night life, and when he wasn’t hitting the local night spots he was throwing his own bashes.

  Epstein had a girl friend who’d been around town since th
e World’s Fair in ’33. She’d danced a pretty fair hootchiekoo for a kid from the sticks—an Alabama girl with a sultry lilting accent and lots of chestnut hair and baby-fat curves and a full pouty mouth. Her name was Virginia Hill and she was looking pretty sophisticated these days, greeting Joe’s guests with a smile and giving them a look at a couple of yards of creamy white bosom; her clingy black gown didn’t leave much of the rest of her to the imagination, either.

  “You’re Nate Heller, aren’t you?” Virginia had said, taking my hand. You could’ve camped out on this girl’s tits.

  “Yeah. Surprised you remember me.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she beamed. “You used to catch pickpockets at the fair.”

  “You used to attract crowds,” I shrugged. “That attracts pickpockets.”

  She walked me into the suite, a modern-looking job appointed in black and white, the furnishing running to armless sofas and easy chairs, on which were poised pretty girls in their early twenties, wearing low-cut gowns, drinking stingers and the like, waiting for male guests. Paul Whiteman music was coming from a phonograph, louder than a traffic jam.

  “Afraid I never gave your girl friend Sally Rand much of any competition,” she said, talking over the music.

  She was still holding onto my hand. Her hand was hot, a friendly griddle.

  “Sally isn’t my girl friend,” I said. “Never was. We’re just pals.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” she said, wrapping her accent around the words, making them seem very dirty indeed.

  “Last I saw you, Ginny, you were a waitress at Joe’s Place.”

  Joe’s Place was no relation to Joe Epstein: it was a one-arm joint at Randolph and Clark where the waitresses were pretty and wore skimpy skirts and V-neck blouses. A lot of men ate there.