Neon Mirage (8 page)

I crawled in next to her; wore my skivvies to bed. I don’t own anything blue and/or lacy.

“I want you to tell me everything that happened to you tonight,” she said.

“Should I start with the blonde or the redhead?”

She pulled my pillow out from under me and hit me with it.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “You mainly want to hear about Guzik.”

“That’s right.”

I told her. I wasn’t leaving anything out, though I didn’t figure to tell her about the rubber hose session; I’d just gotten to the place where Drury barged into St. Hubert’s when she barged into my story.

“Do you
believe
what that awful man said? That this character…Bughouse Siegel was responsible, not him?”

I shrugged. “It’s possible. And it’s Bugsy. Actually, it’s Ben. I don’t think he likes being called Bugsy. None of these gangsters like their nicknames. But then, if your nickname was ‘Greasy Thumb’ or ‘Hymie the Loudmouth,’ you might be sensitive, too.”

“You know, I get so mad at myself sometimes.”

“Why’s that?”

“I used to think that men like that were…exciting.”

“Yeah, you dated one of Capone’s bodyguards, didn’t you?”

“He was Mrs. Capone’s bodyguard. He was very handsome. Dark, like Valentino. Very polite. But he was quiet. You couldn’t hold a decent conversation with him. He made me nervous.”

“But it excited you that he carried a gun.”

“Hey, I was an impressionable kid, then. I looked up to my Uncle Jim, thought what he did was thrilling and dangerous.”

“You were right, weren’t you?”

“You gotta understand, Nate—I was never very close to my papa. He was one of those hardworking men who provided well for his family but worked eighty hours a week to do it. Well, it wasn’t just for us. I think he loved his work, loved poring over numbers and figures.”

“It’s important for a man to like his work.”

“You like your work very much, don’t you, Nate?”

“I do as long as it’s not today. Getting shot at in the middle of a Bronzeville street by two guys with shotguns isn’t my idea of a career. But yeah, I like being a businessman, and the business I’m in, private security, confidential investigations, I like it, yeah. I’m good at it. Of course, it’s been a little demanding.”

“How so?”

“Well, when you’re the boss, and you’re building up a business from scratch, you put in a lot of hours, like your dad did. Only at least he managed to marry the girl next door. I haven’t had much of a personal life.”

“You mean you’re thirty-eight years old and still single.”

“If I don’t settle down soon, people are going to start thinking I’m a fag.”

Her face went crinkly with a smile at the thought of that. “I don’t think that’s too likely. Say, you’re not proposing, are you?”

“Not just yet. Not after I saw your work with a flower vase. I bet you’d be murder with a rolling pin.”

She flashed those perfect white teeth. She touched the side of my face. “If you ever do get around to asking me…well, even if you don’t, I’ll still love you, you big lug.”

Men love it when women call them big lugs. Anyway, I do.

“Why will you still love me?” I asked. Begging for more flattery.

“Because you’ve really taught me so much.”

“Oh?”

“About the kind of man I want to marry. Even if it doesn’t turn out to be you. The things I admire about you are the things I saw in my father, and in my Uncle Jim. You care about what you do, and you care about people.”

I knew a certain badly bruised party on the Near Northwest Side who’d disagree with her on the latter, but I let that go.

“You really love your Uncle Jim, don’t you?”

“That’s what I started to say…I always felt closer to my uncle than to my father. Uncle Jim was always swell—he never treated us kids like kids, more like we were just people.”

“I’ve always had the feeling Jim was the black sheep of your family.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. But I know Papa wasn’t crazy about him. About the business he was in.”

“But it seemed kind of glamorous to you.”

“I think so. The gambling, the big money, names from the headlines, men with guns, beautiful women with minks and gowns.”

“Like your old pal Virginia Hill.”

“She’s back in town, by the way.”

I sat up in bed. “What?”

“She’s back in town. Visiting that friend of hers, what was his name? Joe Epstein. They’re still thick, after all these years. Imagine that.”

“Why, have you
heard
from her?”

“Well, yes. I had lunch with her last Friday. In the Walnut Room at Marshall Field’s. She looked me up.”

“She looked you up!” I gripped her arm. “Tell me about it.”

“Ouch! You’re hurting me.”

“Sorry,” I said. I let go. “Tell me about it.”

“It was no big deal. She called me on the phone, at the office. I’ve seen her a few times over the years. We’ve had lunch before. She’s kept in touch with her girls.”

“What did she want?”

“To have lunch! Nate, what’s the big deal?”

“Did she question you about your uncle, at all? His daily schedule?”

“No,” she said, very confused. “Why would she?”

“Did your uncle come up in conversation in any way?”

“Well—yes. She asked about his business.”

“What did she ask about his business?”

“How he was doing. How’s the tip sheet racket these days, is what she wanted to know. I said my uncle was doing great and left it at that.”

“That was the extent of it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes I’m sure! Nate…”

“Good girl. Listen, do you remember me telling you, years ago, that Epstein was Jake Guzik’s accountant?”

She rubbed the side of her face; her eyes went dark with worry. “Oh…oh, my. I’d forgotten that…I’ve never seen Epstein, not in years. I never thought past Virginia herself, when she called. I never dreamed…you don’t think she was trying to pump me about my uncle—for Guzik? Nate, you don’t think I inadvertently
aided
them in setting up Uncle Jim, for that shooting today?”

“If you didn’t say anything about his daily routine, no. If you did…yes.”

“I didn’t.” But her eyes were racing, as she thought back, making sure she hadn’t. Then her look became determined and she said: “I didn’t.”

“Good. Stay away from the Hill dame. I said it before, and I
hope
to never have to say it again: she’s poison.”

She frowned in thought for a while, then said, “I guess this proves it, then.”

“What?”

“That Guzik was the one responsible for what happened to Uncle Jim.”

“Not really. He’s not the only one La Hill has connections with. Haven’t you kept up on your old mentor’s career?”

“Sure. There’s been a lot in the papers about her. Lee Mortimer’s column, especially. She’s the belle of cafe society— hostess of big cocktail parties in New York and Hollywood. At places like Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip.”

“Ever been to any of those joints?”

“Nathan, I’ve never even been to Hollywood.”

“It’s a great place. The buildings are made of mud and cardboard—you can put your foot through any given wall.”

“I can’t believe that. You’re so cynical. It sounds like a fabulous place to me.”

“Why, you still thinking of becoming an actress?”

“No. I let go of that dream a long time ago. But Ginny was in a movie.”

“Really? I must’ve missed that.”

“Well, it was her only one. Little role. She’s busy with all her social obligations, I guess.”

“Where’s her money coming from, you suppose?”

“Epstein, other guys like him. She used to have this other sugar daddy, Major Riddle.”

I nodded. “He owns the Plantation Club in Moline. Pretty ritzy gambling joint.”

It always came back to gambling, didn’t it?

“She’s done all right,” she said, troubled by the thought that her good, old friend might have tried to use her.

“She’s had another sugar daddy in recent years,” I told her. “Fellow named Joe Adonis.”

Her eyes turned into slits. “Isn’t he a gangster?”

“He ain’t a Greek god. She gets her money from mob guys, baby. Epstein and Riddle, who are tied in through gambling, and the likes of Adonis, who’s tied in to every dirty racket you can imagine, from murder-for-hire to peddling heroin.”

Her eyes widened. “So then what I said was right: Ginny was after information for Guzik.”

“Not necessarily. Adonis is East Coast, and Virginia Hill has been based out in California for years. Hooray for Hollywood, remember? Making movies and tossing parties at Ciro’s? She’s a goddamn bag man, Peg.”

She smiled wryly. “Virginia Hill is no kind of man.”

“Oh yes she is. She’s a bag man for mobsters—shuttling between New York and Chicago and Hollywood with money and messages. It’s no secret.”

“So then…she could’ve been looking out for the interests of this Bugsy Siegel person, when she came to me.”

“Could be, if she knows him. And she undoubtedly does, since he’s the guy running the West Coast end of the mob’s wire service. When I say mob, I’m not just talking the local Outfit, either—I mean the East Coast, too. There are men out there who make Guzik look cuddly.”

“You’ve got to find out, Nate.”

“Find out what?”

She shook a small fist. “Whether it was Siegel or Guzik who tried to have my uncle killed!”

“Ultimately it doesn’t matter.”

“How can you say that?”

“Well, it doesn’t. Your uncle has to sell out to stay alive. If he doesn’t sell, and Siegel doesn’t get him, Guzik eventually will.”

“You’re saying Uncle Jim can’t win in this.”

“Sure he can. He can win big. He’s already a millionaire. He’s a winner when he sells to Guzik for big bucks and retires.”

“Wouldn’t you fight to hold on to your business, if it was being threatened?”

“Not if I was a sixty-five-year-old millionaire.”

Her eyes were moving back and forth with frantic thought.

She said, “You know, Virginia’s still in town…”

“Stay away from her!”

“She’s always been my friend. I can’t believe she’d try to use me for something…criminal.”

“Yeah, the mind does boggle trying to picture Virginia Hill using somebody for something criminal.”

That stopped her and even made her laugh, a little.

“Why do I love you?” she asked, shaking her head, brown curls shimmering.

“Search me.”

“Okay,” she said, and she ran her smooth small hands under the blankets, down inside my underwear.

“You’re on a fool’s mission,” I said. “You’re not going to find anybody in there—not anybody who isn’t sleeping.”

“Oh? Who’s this?”

“Whoever it is, uh…is waking up.”

“Turn that lamp off.”

“Okay.”

“Just let me give you a goodnight kiss.”

“Okay.”

She crawled up on top of me and kissed me. She put her tongue in my mouth and I told every fiber in my body: everybody up! We weren’t tired anymore. I slid my hands under her nightie, under the lacy panties, cupping her small, perfect ass. She reached a hand down and held me, lifted herself, and slid me up in her. She was tighter than a fist but so much smoother. Heaven. Heaven.

“I should use something,” I said, moving in her.

“Don’t use anything,” she moaned. “You’ll marry me if I get pregnant.”

“I might even marry you if you don’t,” I said.

Then I didn’t say anything; her, either. We just moved together, slowly, her on top, but me driving. I loved her in bed, but I also just plain loved her. She got me into this, goddamn her, shotguns and Jake Guzik and rubber hoses and out-cold bodyguards on the floor with blood and paper flowers.

But I didn’t care. I was in heaven. And I wasn’t even dead yet.

Tuesday afternoon, around three-thirty, against my better judgment, I let Drury pick me up in front of my office in an unmarked car, no police chauffeur, and we headed south on State to Bronzeville. We wound up on the same block where the Ragen shooting had taken place not twenty-four hours before, parking not far from the drug store whose broken window had since been haphazardly patched with cardboard. We had plenty of foul sideways glances and suspicious looks from the men and boys loitering about the street, but, despite the unmarked car, we were so obviously cops that nobody said one word to us, as Drury led me to a hole-in-the-wall saloon a few doors down.

The High Life Inn would have been an apt description for the place if you replaced high with low. The exterior was weathered brick with the peeling ghosts of various pasted-on political campaign posters from the fairly recent past; the words “judge” and “alderman” could still be made out. Above the remains of the posters was a big Coca Cola sign, suggesting a person “Pause…drink,” to which I mentally added “…get mugged.” Above it, smaller, was a wooden sign with the joint’s name on one line in stubby red capitals against yellow; fairly new sign, a trifle weather-blistered. In front of the place, between an Old Gold poster showing a white society girl in a flowery chapeau selecting just the right cigarette from a pack, a somber colored kid perhaps ten wearing a black derby hat, a short-sleeve plaid shirt and baggy brown pants and black tennis shoes sat on an upended crate next to a card table with a homemade display with tiers of small brown stapled bags, above which in a grease-pencil scrawl it said peanuts—5 cents. I paused and selected a bag, tossed the kid a dime, waited for my change.

We went on in, past the propped open door, Drury leading the way. The place was dark, as regards both lighting and clientele. In fact, I had the distinct feeling, as numerous eyes at the bar turned our way, that Bill and I might well be the first white people ever to enter. The boxcar of a room had a long counter at left, where eight or ten men stood (there were no stools), some table seating along the right, mostly empty right now, a small bandstand with a piano at the back, and a small cleared-away area for dancing. No music at the moment. No sound at all, as these dark men took us white boys in.

The bartender was a big lanky bald man in a black shirt; no apron. Behind the bar, beer cartons lined the wall, with the stack toward the middle only going half way up the wall, so some bottles of whiskey and such would have a place to sit. But the patrons standing at the bar weren’t drinking anything but cold sweaty bottles of beer.

In the back of the room, near the bandstand, sitting at a table by himself, was Sylvester Jefferson, the colored cop known variously as “the Terror of the South Side” and “Two-Gun Pete.” He was respected and feared in Bronzeville—which in Bronzeville terms was the same thing—and I knew him, a little. He’d been on the job since the mid-’30s and we’d had some friendly run-ins over the years—he’d helped me out, I’d helped him out.

Pete was a handsome, light-complected Negro who had a somber, almost sad expression on his slightly puffy face; he looked a little like Joe Louis, though with an alertness in the eyes that no boxer has. He was damn near dapper, with a mustache about as wide as Hitler’s but a third as tall, and his just slightly overweight, five-ten frame was bedecked in a tan suit and white shirt with a wide tie with a tiger-skin pattern. His hat, which had a three-inch brim, was on the table next to a bottle of Schlitz and a poured glass.

He smiled tightly, showing no teeth as we approached, standing, gesturing for us to sit down. Drury said hello, but immediately excused himself to go to the bar and get us some beers. That left me to shake hands with Pete, whose suit coat was open and you could see the two guns on the front of two overlapping belts, framing his police star, clipped to the middle of the lower slung of the belts.

“Those are the biggest revolvers I ever saw, Pete,” I said, sitting down.

He grinned and withdrew the guns and set them on the table, like a gunfighter on a riverboat sitting down to play poker at a possibly crooked table. Both guns were nickel-plated and shiny and although light was at a premium in this place, they found some to reflect. One of the guns had a pearl handle and a six-inch barrel, the other a brown handle and a three-inch barrel.

“You’re not still packin’ that candy-ass nine millimeter?” Pete said to me, huskily, sitting back down.

“Fraid I am,” I said. “Sentimental attachment.”

He waggled a thick black finger at me, narrowed the sad eyes. “That’s a bad idea. That’s the gun your daddy killed hisself with, ain’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“Carrying it, that’s your idea of makin’ sure you don’t use your piece too easy, right?”

“That’s it, I guess. I never want to take death too lightly.”

“I’ll tell you what you don’t want to do,” he said, patting the pearl handle of the revolver like a baby’s butt, “you don’t want to have nothing in between you and a shooting situation. You don’t want to be thinking about whether or not you should shoot, or this is the gun my daddy killed hisself with. That’s bullshit, Heller.”

“Well, you may have a point, Pete. But I’ve been under fire a few times in my time, and I seem to be alive.”

He ignored that, saying, “It’s like the night I was out driving along 35th—I was off-duty. Just me and my pal Bob Miller, the undertaker. I hear this woman scream and see a kid, maybe nineteen, run out of a store, with a gun in his mitt. I yell for him to halt, but he ducks in the alley and I follow and he starts to shoot back at me. I think, well, hell, least I got an undertaker along—’cause one of us is sure as shit gonna need him. So the kid ducks in back of this laundry, and when I find him, he’s locked hisself in the shitter. I yell at him to come out, give hisself up—he says, ‘Fuck you, nigger! You want me, you’re gonna have to come in and get me.’ So I empty this baby into the fuckin’ door.” He patted the brown-handled gun. “I didn’t hear nothing for a while, so I went on in. I got him, all right—more than once. He didn’t even make it to Michael Reese. Funny thing, though—when I pulled that poor bastard out of there, dying, holes in his chest, he was puffing on a reefer like a crazy man.” He shook his head. “People is strange.”

Drury arrived with the beers.

“How’s it going, Pete?”

Jefferson stood up, and shook Drury’s hand and put the guns back in their holsters. “I was just telling Heller he should toss that old automatic of his in a dumpster. He oughta get one of these .357s like I got.”

“I thought those were .38s,” Drury said, sitting, pouring some Schlitz in a glass. I was doing the same.

“You can load ’em up with .38s,” he said, matter of factly, “but what
I
use can shoot clean through a automobile engine block.”

“Lot of call for that, is there, Pete?” I asked, beginning to munch my peanuts. They were pretty good.

He didn’t answer me, not directly. He just said, “A .357 Magnum is the world’s most powerful revolver. These is the finest guns that money can buy.”

“I suppose that’s important down here,” I said.

“The only way to keep law and order and get respect is to earn a reputation for yourself as bein’ as tough or tougher than the roughest s.o.b. on the street.” He patted his guns. “People around here know: they don’t fuck with Mr. Jefferson.”

Like Greasy Thumb and Bugsy and everybody in the world of crime who didn’t like his nickname, Two-Gun Pete was the same. He expected to be called Mr. Jefferson and accepted “Pete” only from friends and fellow cops.

He was a good cop, easily the best in his world, and like most Chicago cops took his share of graft—he wasn’t interested in hassling the bookies or the numbers runners or numbers bankers or the streetwalkers or their madams; but he was hell on muggers and purse-snatchers and con men and heisters and dope pushers. A bachelor, a ladies’ man with a part-time valet and an apartment behind steel bars, Pete Jefferson liked his work.

“So,” Drury said, satisfied that Pete had been allowed to flex his muscles and impress his worth upon the two white cops (who already knew damn well what his worth was), “have you found anything out?”

He glanced at his watch. “In a few minutes you’ll meet the first of my witnesses.”

“How many did you round up?” Drury asked.

“Three so far. Got a line on a fourth.”

“These are witnesses who clearly saw the faces of the two men with shotguns?”

“That’s a fact,” Pete said.

“Did you rough these guys up any?”

“I hardly ever have to rough anybody up no more,” Pete said, almost regretfully. “I just come around and they spill their guts.”

Better than having a .357 Magnum do it for you.

“Pete,” I said, “I have to level with you—I got my doubts. I was there—I was right there in the street shooting it out with those guys, and
I
didn’t begin to get a look at either of them.”

Pete sipped his beer, licked a foamy mustache off his lip; his real mustache remained. “These boys got a better look than you did. They was on the street. They was not occupied with shooting back.”

“I don’t mean any disrespect,” I said, “but colored witnesses, testifying against white people, in front of a probably mostly white jury and a very white judge, have got to be unimpeachable.”

“I know that,” Pete said, irritably. “I didn’t just fall off a hay wagon, Heller. That’s one reason why I’m rounding up four. Taken together, they’ll be goddamn hard to impeach.”

A few minutes later the first of Pete’s witnesses wandered in; he was a thick-set man of about forty, wearing a frayed white shirt and rumpled brown slacks, with gray in his hair and mustache and bloodshot eyes and hands that were shaky, until Pete put the rest of his own beer in them.

“Okay, Tad,” he said. “Take it easy.”

“Tore one on last night,” Tad said. “Tore one on.”

“This is Theodosius Jones,” Pete said to us. “He used to be a bedbug.”

That meant he’d been a Pullman porter.

“Till last year,” Tad said.

“Drinking on the job?” I asked, tearing the shell off a peanut.

Pete frowned at me; it wasn’t pleasant being frowned at by Pete. I had the feeling he could, if he so chose, tear the shell off me.

But the former bedbug only nodded and gulped at the glass of beer, till it was drained.

I looked at Drury and shook my head, popping the peanut in my mouth.

Drury didn’t give up easily, though; he went up and got a fresh beer for Tad and came back with it and said, “I want to hear your story.”

“Okay,” Tad said, and he reported what he’d seen, very accurately, and described the two white shooters in some detail.

“One was fatter than the other,” he said, “but they was both big men. One of ’em had hair that come to a point…” He gestured to his forehead.

“A widow’s peak?” Drury asked.

Tad nodded. “His hair was black and curly. The other’s hair was going. Not bald, but will be. He had spectacles on. I seen their faces plain as day. If you could show me pictures, I could pick ’em out, if they was in there.”

“I’ll bring you pictures, Tad,” Drury said, smiling.

“Tad,” I said, “are you up to a court appearance?”

“Pardon?”

“You’d need to be on the witness stand, and you’d need not to have been drinking.”

“Got to be sober as a judge,” he said, agreeing with me.

“The judge can get away with being drunk,” I said. “You can’t.”

Tad nodded. “Don’t matter, really. I been thinkin’ of headin’ out.”

“Heading out?” Drury said, sitting up.

“Detroit. I hear they’s jobs up there.”

Drury reached in his pocket and peeled a ten off a small money-clipped roll. “Take it, Tad. More to come.”

“Thank you kindly,” Tad said, smiling.

Pete was looking at me hard. The sullen brown face above the tiger-striped tie seemed to give off heat. He said, “You don’t think my witness here has what it takes, do you, Heller?”

“No offense to Mr. Jones, but I wouldn’t want to build a case on him.”

“No offense taken,” Tad said, toasting me with his beer.

Pete nodded toward me and said, “Tad, do you know who this fella is?”

“Sure. He’s the guy who was shootin’ back at ’em.”

Pete smiled and patted Tad’s shoulder. “I think you’re a damn wonder as a witness, Tad. Why don’t you take your beer on up to the bar, and tell the man behind the log to charge your next one to Mr. Jefferson.”

Tad nodded, took his ten-spot and beer and went and stood at the bar.

“You’re
buying
witnesses, now?” I said to Drury.

“Every cop pays his snitches,” Drury said.

“You must want Guzik bad.”

“I want him any way I can get him.”

“What if it isn’t Guzik who bought the hit? What if it’s Siegel’s contract?”

“Who told you that fairy tale?” Drury snorted, smirking cynically. “Guzik?”

“Whoever it was,” I said, “I didn’t pay for the information.”

The next two witnesses, who came along at roughly fifteen-minute intervals, were admittedly stronger. One of them was a steel worker, a big guy named James Martin who’d gotten his hair cut at the corner barber shop before he wandered over to pick up some cigarettes at the drugstore, just before the shootout. Martin was a crane operator at Carnegie-Illinois Steel’s South Works, a union man, a family man, and a church deacon; even colored, this was some witness. Like Tad, he recognized me, immediately. All white people did not look alike to these folks. The other witness was Leroy Smith, a nineteen-year-old clerk from the drug store; he was skinny and a little scared but his description of the two shotgunners matched the others’: black curly hair with a widow’s peak, balding with glasses; he too recognized me. These latter two witnesses each had a description of the driver of the truck, as well, which tallied.

When all three witnesses had gone, promising to meet with Drury and Pete again when the detectives had suspect pictures for them to sort through, I leaned back in the wooden chair and admitted to the two tough cops that these witnesses weren’t all that bad.