Neon Mirage

by Max Allan Collins

  Ragen’s family made appearances throughout the week, with all the children, including the three married daughters, putting in regular visits, though Mrs. Ragen herself wasn’t seen much from Wednesday on, stopping by during regular visiting hours for an hour or so; she’d collapsed at home on Tuesday after an anonymous phone call came in, a gruff male voice saying, “Tell your old man to get out of the racing business or get fitted for a coffin.” Ellen Ragen was (as her husband put it) “a hypertension blood-pressure individual” and her doctor wanted her to stay in bed, and not answer the phone.

  Peggy had stopped going into the office and was keeping her aunt company, playing nurse, although a private nurse was on hand as well; consequently I’d only talked to Peggy a few times since Monday night, mostly over the phone, though tonight, Saturday, we had a date. In the meantime, I had put an op on the Ragen’s Seeley Avenue home, too.

  Jim, Jr., had taken over the business reins in his father’s absence, but to his credit he’d managed to come around every day during visiting hours. He seemed shaken and was not really holding up all that well, but hid it from his pop pretty much—of course, his pop wouldn’t have wanted to recognize that, anyway.

  I had the enormous pleasure, on Wednesday, of giving the bum’s rush to Wilbert F. Crowley, assistant to State’s Attorney Tuohy. Confiding in the State’s Attorney’s Office was like putting up a billboard in Cicero. The staff at Michael Reese, as well as the two Ragen family physicians attending Jim, were going along with me on keeping the cops and such away from him. We’d put word in to the local FBI office that they would be hearing from us—but kept it strictly “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

  It wasn’t merely a blind, either. Jim was heavily sedated and in an oxygen tent and mostly just slept, from Tuesday through Friday, at which time, after postponements from day to day waiting for him to get strong enough, the operation on his arm was finally performed in a grueling three-hour session, surgeons probing for pellet after pellet in his shattered arm and shoulder.

  On Friday, Mickey McBride showed up. Arthur “Mickey” McBride, that is, the onetime partner of Jim Ragen, in Continental, and who was still in charge of the Cleveland end of the operation.

  I’d never met him before, but he’d heard all about me from Jim, he said.

  “Jim thinks the world of you,” he said, pumping my hand. He was a small man, bigger than Mickey Rooney but just; his face was round, his light brown graying hair thinning some, his face pouchy, his glasses dark-tinted. Physically, he was an Irish, somewhat better preserved version of Guzik. A fairly natty dresser, he wore a gold and brown herringbone suit with a red bow tie and a monogrammed pocket handkerchief.

  “He’s mentioned you from time to time, too,” I said, giving him a polite smile. Jim liked Mickey McBride, but I instinctively didn’t. He was too fucking friendly for a stranger. Particularly for a stranger who’d made millions in the rackets.

  “You’re a pal of Ness’, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “He made some waves in Cleveland, I’ll give ’im credit for that. Don’t think he liked me much.” He smiled widely, puffing his cheeks; he looked like an aging leprechaun. “Hated it that I was making legal money off gambling.”

  “Eliot’s idea of a night on the town involves using an ax to go in a front door.”

  “Ain’t it the truth,” McBride said, grinning. “Well, he’s a nice enough guy. Harmless, now. Private business, these days.”

  “I don’t think you’ve heard the last of him.”

  “Maybe not.” He made a tch-tch sound. “Terrible about Jim. Terrible. Am I gonna get to talk to him today?”

  “I don’t know. He’s being operated on, now.”

  “He’s got balls, the man does. Going up against Guzik and company.”

  “What’s your position on this?”

  “Whether he should sell out or not? I don’t tell Jim his business. I sold out my interests years ago.”

  “Doesn’t your son still own a piece of Continental?”

  “Yes he does.”

  “But he’s not very active in the business.”

  “He’s a college student, Mr. Heller. Pre-law, down at the University of Miami. But he’ll need a place to work someday.”

  “You really want to get your son involved in the race wire business? After what happened to Jim?”

  “Mr. Heller, the race wire business has been around for almost sixty years. In all that time, Jim’s the first guy to take a hit, and it looks like he’s gonna pull through. Now, I know a hundred lawyers that got killed in the past forty years…hell, my boy might get hit by a brick from this building and bumped off. Life is a game of chance, my friend.”

  “Well, you don’t seem to be getting in the game, at this point, Mr. McBride.”

  “Call me Mickey. It’s Jim’s show, Mr. Heller. I’ll back him up, a hundred percent. But I’m not the boss. I’m not even an owner. If Jim wants to go up against Jake Guzik, well he’s a better man than I.”

  “Then why don’t you advise him to sell out?”

  “I thought you knew Jim, Mr. Heller,” McBride said, his smile finally turning nasty like I knew it could. “You think that stubborn mick would listen to me? Just because I taught him everything he knows about this business? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find someplace where I can smoke a cigar. Hate the smell of hospitals, don’t you?”

  He’d spoken to Jim, later that day—night, actually—but I don’t know what they spoke about. Me, I hadn’t talked to Jim much at all, not since Monday night. And what conversations we’d had were limited to me reassuring him that security here was tight. Between the sedation and the doctor’s advice to keep him calm, I figured the time wasn’t right to spring Guzik’s offer on him.

  I took the Saturday morning guard slot. I drove down State, then began cutting over on side streets to avoid the Bud Billikens festivities that would be swarming over the South Side, starting around 29th Street. Bud Billikens was a mythical character concocted by the Chicago Defender, the Negro newspaper, to be a sort of colored Santa Claus, and today was the annual parade and festival at which damn near the entire colored population of Chicago would be in attendance.

  I arrived at eight, taking over for a bleary-eyed Walt Pelitier, who’d been on since midnight, and met Dr. Snaden for the first time. He was the Ragens’ Miami doctor who happened to be in town and who, with Dr. Graaf, their Chicago family doc, was attending Jim. At my suggestion.

  He was a thin, very tan man of about forty-five; he wore thick, heavy-rimmed glasses that made his eyes look too big for his face.

  “Don’t know how we’ve managed to miss each other,” I said, shaking his hand. “I’ve been here mostly evenings.”

  “I’ve been here mostly days,” he said with a small smile, though he didn’t seem like the type who smiled much.

  “You know, I’d swear I know you from somewhere.”

  “We met a long time ago, Mr. Heller, in Miami.”

  I snapped my fingers. “You were one of Cermak’s doctors.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “I was Mayor Cermak’s personal physician in Miami. I wish I could have done more for him.”

  “Well, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. How do you think Jim is coming along?”

  He shrugged. “Hard to say. He came through the operation yesterday fairly well. He’ll have somewhat more use of that arm than was first anticipated. But he has several extensive skin graft operations ahead of him. I don’t think he’ll see the outside of this hospital for several months.”

  That was going to be a long haul for the A-1 Detective Agency to provide round-the-clock protection. On the other hand, Jim was a millionaire and there was money in it.

  “You think he’s up to me talking to him this morning?”

  “He’s in there, sitting up, drinking juice right now. I think he’d like to see you, Mr. Heller.”

  “Thanks, Doc. I wish you better
luck on Jim’s case than you had with the late Mayor.”

  “I’ll see if I can’t do a little better this time,” he said, a wry smile cracking his parchment tan. “On the other hand, if I recall, you were Mayor Cermak’s bodyguard as well. Do all your clients get shot up like this?”

  “Not more than half,” I said, with a put-in-my-place grin, and the doc smiled thinly and walked on, and I went in.

  Jim was indeed sitting up in bed, sipping orange juice through a long plastic straw. He looked skinnier than I ever saw him, and his right arm was heavily bandaged and in a sling, but his cheeks looked damn near rosy. I guess that’s what a dozen transfusions can do for you.

  “I feel like a million bucks today, Nate,” he said.

  “What, green and wrinkled?”

  “That joke’s older than me,” he said, smiling, putting his glass on the bedstand where arrangements of flowers huddled.

  “Yeah, but it’ll outlive us both.” I pulled up a chair. “You given any more thought to selling out?”

  “I have.”

  “And what’s your position?”

  “Unchanged.”

  “I had a little talk with Guzik.”

  His eyes tightened. “When was this?”

  “Monday night,” I said. “It wasn’t my idea—he sent for me.”

  I gave him the particulars, including Guzik’s claim that Siegel did the hit, including Guzik’s $200,000 offer. I didn’t see any reason to mention I’d been paid five C’s to deliver the message.

  “Two hundred grand is chicken feed,” Jim said, sneering.

  “It is?”

  “My business is worth $2 million a year.”

  “It is if you’re alive,” I said, not showing how impressed I was by that figure, mentally raising his daily rate. “Why not quote Guzik a price? Tell him what you would settle for.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Mostly mine. Then yours. Not Guzik’s at all.”

  Jim laughed. “At least you’re honest, lad.”

  “Don’t let it get around. It’s bad for business.”

  “Do you think Greasy Thumb could be tellin’ the truth? Do you think this—” he gestured with his left hand toward his bandaged right arm “—could be the work of that crazy Jew bastard instead?”

  “Siegel? Sure. It could be.”

  “Are you looking into it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you trying to find out who did this to me?”

  “Not really. I’m mostly just trying to keep you alive. I have been cooperating with Drury, who’s doing his best to find the shooters.”

  “You think he’ll get the job done?”

  “Stranger things have happened.” I told him about the trip to Bronzeville and the witnesses that Two-Gun Pete turned up for Drury.

  “If the shooters are Outfit,” Jim said, almost gleefully, “that will prove it was Guzik behind it.”

  “No it won’t. There are plenty of people in this town who do work for Guzik who also take on freelance work, from time to time.”

  “But if it’s out-of-town talent who did it, that would clear Guzik, and point to Siegel.”

  “Not necessarily. Frank Nitti used to hire out of town talent all the time, for his hits; just to confuse the issue. That’s what he did where Tommy Malloy was concerned, and O’Hare, too.”

  “Damnit, Nate!” He pounded his bed with his good hand. “Give me some good news!”

  “Take it easy, Jim. The good news is you’re alive. The good news is Guzik wants to buy you out, not kill you.”

  “He says.”

  “It’s his style. You’re not dealing with Ricca or Campagna or Accardo, here. Guzik’s favorite weapon is money.”

  “How can I do business with a man if he tried to have me killed?”

  “You don’t know that he did.”

  “I don’t know that he didn’t. Find out for me.”

  “What?”

  “I want to look into it—work with Drury, but work on your own, as well. You have your contacts, your ways. Find out whether it was Guzik or Siegel who did this; I’ll pay a fancy fee.”

  “I just love fancy fees, but I don’t want that job. Jim, I can get away with playing your bodyguard. I have enough clout with Guzik to manage that. But if I go snooping in Outfit business, it could get me killed.”

  The features of his face squeezed tight as a fist. “You’ve been saying you think I should sell—well, I’m seriously considering it, now. But I’ll only do it, if it’s that crazy bastard Siegel who put the hit out on me. How can I sell to Guzik, if he took out the contract?”

  “What’s the difference who took out the contract? Guzik’s willing to buy you out and, apparently, let you walk. Maybe those affidavits of yours, your ‘insurance policy,’ is working.”

  Jim rubbed his chin. “That would explain it. Siegel could care less about those affidavits coming out. They’re no skin off his ass…”

  “True. And if Siegel’s the one gunning for you, well, once you’ve sold out to Guzik, the heat’s off. Siegel would no longer have reason to want you dead. No matter how crazy he is.”

  “Damnit, Nate! Find out for me! Find out whicha them bastards tried to kill me. Tried to kill us!”

  I stood. “Jim I’m just upsetting you. I’m going to have to go. I’ll be outside the door, if you need me, till noon. That’s when another of my ops comes on for me.”

  His expression pleaded with me; so did his words: “Nate…take the assignment. There isn’t a private dick in town, in the country, that knows these Outfit bastards better than you. You’re the only man for the job, lad…”

  “Jim, you’re my friend, and more important, my client, and I’m doing my best to keep you alive. It ends there.”

  And I went out in the hall. Breathed out some air. I felt battered. Even with a clipped wing, that Irish son of a bitch was a handful.

  I went down to the lounge area where I’d spoken to Peggy last Monday night and, after bumming a cigarette off a passing doctor, sat and smoked. I don’t smoke, as a rule—I picked the habit up overseas, in the Marines, and dropped it when I got back. But now and then I got the craving. Usually when I started getting the combat jitters. I’d been smoking off and on all week.

  A few minutes later, just as I was standing up, grinding the cigarette under my heel, ready to go back and help guard Ragen’s door, an orderly approached me, a colored kid of maybe twenty with a light brown complexion and dark close-cropped brown hair.

  “Are you one of the detectives watching Mr. Ragen?” he asked.

  I said I was.

  “I think I have something I oughta tell you about.”

  “Well why don’t you, then.”

  He swallowed. “Okay. After work yesterday, I was playing ball over at the recreation grounds. At Wentworth Avenue? I was playing softball. I saw these men looking at me in particular. They was watching us play ball, I thought, but they was looking at me. I had my badge on that shows I’m an employee here at the hospital.” He swallowed again.

  “Go on, son.”

  “Well, one of them come up to me and asked if I work at the hospital. I say I did. He ask me some questions about Mr. Ragen’s condition. He say he was a reporter. Anyway, he ask where Mr. Ragen’s room was. I…I told him.”

  “He gave you money, didn’t he?”

  The boy looked at the floor and nodded.

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Just that Mr. Ragen was on the third floor away from the fire escape.”

  “What did these men look like?”

  “White men—real white. One had dark hair, real curly. The other had glasses and was kind of bald. They were both kinda big.”

  Well, what do you know.

  “What happened then, kid?”

  “The man had some more questions—he was the one that didn’t have no glasses—and I said I didn’t think I wanted to talk to him anymore. Last night I was thinking about it, and I thought, what i
f he wasn’t a reporter? Those men didn’t look like reporters. I didn’t sleep so good.”

  “Have you told anybody else about this?”

  “No, sir. I heard you was a private detective and not city. So I waited to tell you. I didn’t want Mr. Ragen to get hurt, but I didn’t want to get myself in trouble, neither.”

  I patted him on the shoulder. “You were smart to come to me.”

  “I don’t want any money from you, mister.”

  “Good, ’cause I’m not going to give you any. Now go back to work.”

  I went down to the second floor, to the nearest phone booth, and tried to call Drury at home; his wife said he was still asleep and I told her not to wake him—I’d call back around noon. Then I walked back toward Ragen’s room and plopped myself down in a straightback chair next to the cop. He was reading the morning Tribune. I told him he ought to be more alert than that, and took it away from him, read it myself. But all I could think about was the two guys the orderly had seen.

  About eleven o’clock I glanced down the hall and noticed the fire-escape cop was gone.

  “Where’s your pal?” I asked the cop next to me.

  “How should I know? Takin’ a dump?”

  “I’m going to cover the fire escape till he gets back.”

  I went down there and looked out the window. Down through the grating of the fire escape I could see a few psyche ward patients, in their green pajamas, enjoying the view of the I.C. tracks from their perch.

  Maybe ten minutes later, a patient started up the stairs onto the third level; he was followed by another.

  I stepped out onto the fire escape just as they had gotten onto the landing and said, “Nobody on this level, boys,” and realized I was looking at two sallow individuals, one of whom had dark brown curly hair and a widow’s peak and a wedge-shaped face, the other of whom was balding and round-faced and wore glasses, both of whom were wearing green psyche-ward p.j.s, but neither of whom were mentally sick, though I wouldn’t have minded giving either one of them a lobotomy with my nine millimeter, which I was grabbing out from under my shoulder.

  “Hold it right there,” I said, pointing the gun at them.

  They froze. The widow’s-peaked guy had a big nose and bushy brown eyebrows and thick lips and bad teeth and a couple of facial moles; the guy with glasses hadn’t exactly stepped out of an Arrow shirt ad, either, though he had more regular features that added up to a baby face, albeit a pretty ugly baby. They both had the blankly evil expression of the business end of an automatic.