Neon Mirage (6 page)

“I like Jim,” he said. “We’ve had our disagreements. But I think we can come to terms.”

“You’d still like to buy him out.”

“Or go partners. Heller, you got to understand our point of view. Back in 1940, after Jim was convicted on that tax rap, he was on probation—he was ordered by the court to stay out of the racing information business. We ran Continental for him, while he was on probation—we sank money in that we lost. Large sums of money, getting this new business off the ground, after Annenberg had to fold up. Of course Continental went on to be a big success, but without our backing, it couldn’t have gotten started. We feel we already own a part of Continental, based on this indebtedness.”

“None of this is on the books, though. You couldn’t go to court over it.”

“No.” Guzik’s thin smile connected his jowls again. “I get a charge out of Jim, taking us to court, on this, on that. He’s just taking a page out of my book—he knows I sue at the drop of a hat.” He grunted. “I’m paying those judges—why shouldn’t I put ’em to use?”

I sipped my wine.

Guzik sipped his, got reflective, said: “You know how you buy a judge, Heller? By weight—like iron in a junkyard. A justice of the peace or magistrate can be had for a five spot. Municipal court judge’ll cost you ten. Circuit or superior courts, he wants fifteen. And you can’t buy a federal judge for less than a twenty-dollar bill.”

“Ragen got a court order against you, though. And he’s got you tied up in litigation right now.”

Guzik shrugged. “I’m not the only guy in town with money. Jim’s got money, too. Judges don’t care who’s paying.”

“I’ve already advised him to retire. To sell to you.”

“That’s wise. I think Jim will come to his senses, too. He needs to understand that we—I—did not do this thing. He needs to understand that he’s up against a man who is sick in the head.”

“Siegel, you mean.”

“They don’t call him Bugs because he has fleas. You know me, Heller. You’ve known me a while, and you knew of me before you knew me. Am I lying when I say that it’s well-known I stand for a sound business approach? That I always say, don’t kill a guy when you can pay him off?”

“I’ve heard that,” I said. And I had.

“All I want to do is negotiate with Jim. Reason with him.” He shook his head again. “These Irishmen. I remember when Dion O’Bannion got himself in hot water. He was running twenty-some handbooks, forty-some speaks, seventy-some houses. I was ready and willing to buy him out. I offered him a six-figure sum for his territory. Said we’d pay him two grand a month, take in all his people in our Outfit. But he wouldn’t budge. Not an inch. These Irishmen.”

The aforementioned Scalise and Anselmi, they of the baseball bat banquet, had, of course, assassinated O’Bannion in his flower shop back in ’24. So despite all this talk of business and negotiation and reason, Guzik was still threatening to kill Ragen, if he didn’t sell.

“What do you want from me, Mr. Guzik?”

“I want you to do what you did for me before. Be a neutral intermediary.”

“I’m not neutral. I work for Jim. His niece is my girl. I’m just giving it to you straight, Mr. Guzik.”

“I appreciate that. But I only mean that you’re somebody both parties can trust. All I want you to do is get the message to Jim that we did not do this thing. That it is Siegel’s work—that Siegel is a madman and will try it again. I can’t stop it. Maybe someday somebody will stop Siegel; but right now his stock is high with his friends out East. I need to maintain good business relations with them.”

“So Siegel is Jim’s problem.”

“He would be my problem—one I could handle—if Jim were to sell us half interest in Continental. I believe Siegel’s Eastern friends would tell him to shut Trans-American down.”

“Would Siegel go along with that?”

“He’d have no choice. His friends out East aren’t going to say much of anything if he wants to go having a Jim Ragen shot up. But if he goes against
us
, he would be in effect going against them.”

“I see.”

“Here.” Guzik dug deep into his right pants pocket. He withdrew the fattest roll of paper money I have ever seen, bound by a thick rubber band. You couldn’t begin to get your forefinger and thumb around that wad. He peeled off five bills, like a hand of poker. I looked at them the same way: I had five of a kind. All hundreds.

I swallowed; my tongue felt thick. “Isn’t carrying a roll like that a little dangerous, Mr. Guzik? Even for a guy with bodyguards…”

“Just the opposite. I always carry ten or twenty grand with me.”

He said that like ten or twenty bucks.

“With a roll like this, I don’t have to worry about getting kidnapped no more. I just give the dough to the guys who want to snatch me and they go away more than satisfied.”

“All you want for this five hundred is for me to tell Ragen about Siegel?”

“Yes. And tell him we’re prepared to double our last offer to him.”

“Double it?”

“Yes. That’s two hundred grand for fifty-one percent of the business.”

That sounded like a lot of dough to me.

“What,” I asked, “if he wants to sell out altogether?”

“We’d make a fair offer. All I ask is to negotiate and reason.”

And then, failing that, shoot you dead.

“Okay,” I said. I rose, sticking the five hundred in my wallet. “Is that all you wanted, Mr. Guzik?”

“Yes. Report back to me. I’ll give you a number.” He took a card from his breast pocket and handed it to me. There was no name on it, just a phone number.

“I’ll send flowers, as well,” he said. “He’s in Michael Reese, I understand. I was in there for pneumonia, oh, ten or fifteen years ago, myself. Good hospital. I had ’em put me in that Meyer House wing. Better for security.”

“Really,” I said, slipping his card in my wallet next to the five C-notes.

I was just turning to go when I heard a commotion in the adjacent room.

One of the waiters, in his mock English accent, was saying, “You can’t go back there, sir,” and somebody else was saying, “Oh yes I can.”

And then, big as life, there was Bill Drury standing there in his natty vested blue suit. He was grinning like a fox; of course, the sporting prints on the walls around him were all about foxes getting killed, but that probably didn’t occur to him.

“Jake,” he said, not acknowledging my presence, “stand up. Everybody else, stay seated.”

“Drury,” Guzik said, standing slowly, a dirigible lifting off, “why don’t you wise up. Look at the record.”

“And what will I see if I do, Jake?”

“You’ll see I always reward my friends and punish my enemies.”

“Assume the goddamn position, Jake. That wall will be fine.”

Guzik’s gray face turned pink. He said, “Must I suffer that indignity?”

“Oh, yeah,” Drury said.

“You know I never carry a gun. I never carried a gun in my life.”

“How do I know tonight isn’t the first night? Maybe you didn’t hear—Jim Ragen got shot. You’re a suspect. Assume the fucking position, Jake.”

Guzik’s face tightened—an unlikely sight, considering how flabby that pan of his was—and he shook his head at the two tables of bodyguards, who sat on the edge of their chairs, ready to wade into this; but Guzik’s gesture meant for them to sit it out. He leaned against one wall, a fox hunt print just above his pudgy, splayed hands.

Drury patted him down hard. Came across the fat roll of bills and held it up to look at it, like a piece of evidence he was considering.

“What’s this, Jake?”

“More money than you see in a year. Why don’t you get smart and let me give you some of it?”

“Are you bribing me, Jake?”

Guzik turned away from the wall and looked at Drury with an expressionless expression that somehow oozed hatred. He said, “You came alone, Lt. I don’t think anything I say here is going to hold up in court, now, do you?”

“Well, then, we’ll just settle for hauling you in for questioning, for the moment. Okay? I think we’ll have a little lie detector test…”

“If I took a lie test, twenty of Chicago’s biggest men would jump out of windows.”

Drury threw the roll of dough at Guzik, whose fat hands clapped at it, caught it.

“I’ll try to make sure there’s a window nearby when we test you, then,” Drury said. “Do I have to cuff you, Jake, or will you come along quietly?”

Guzik glared at him, and Drury hauled him out of St. Hubert’s. I followed them out, watched Drury deposit Guzik in the back of an unmarked car pulled up against the yellow curb. A uniformed cop was driving.

“Excuse me, Jake,” Drury said pleasantly. “I need to talk to your little friend for a minute.”

Then he came over and took me by the arm and walked me out of ear shot, up against the front window of St. Hubert’s.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Drury said, edgily.

“Guzik sent for me, by way of armed messenger. I decided to go willingly—I’d already been in a shoot-out today.”

Drury shook his head. “I didn’t know you were in there, Nate—I wouldn’t want to put you on the spot. I’d have waited till you came out.”

“Thanks, but you’re the one putting yourself on the spot. You just had to bust Guzik personally, didn’t you?”

Drury grinned. “Hell, it’s no secret my pal Jake holds court at St. Hubert’s. He just didn’t think any cop would have the balls to beard him in his den.”

“You’re crazier than Ragen,” I said, shaking my head.

“We found your green truck, by the way. Over on 43rd Place and Union Avenue. It was built up with quarter-inch steel plates all ’round.”

“No wonder I never got a piece of them. Anybody seen ditching it?”

He nodded. “Witness saw two white men in white sportshirts get out of it. That’s the extent of the description. It was after dark.”

“Great.”

“Here’s something you’re going to like even less: that shotgun of yours? The one you said jammed?”

“What do you mean that I
said
jammed? And it wasn’t
my
shotgun…”

“Whoever’s it was, it’s working now. Sgt. Blaine tested it out this evening, over at the third district station. It fired first time out.”

“What? Somebody pulled a switch, Bill! That sawed-off was rigged against me.”

“Well, so is this, apparently. It’s not going to make you look good. And if the papers get wind of you meeting with Jake tonight…”

“The hell with that. Witnesses saw me charge that truck with a gun in my hand, shooting. Nobody can say I was bought off on this one.”

“People say a lot of things in Chicago.”

“People can go fuck themselves.”

He smiled sympathetically. “Where those colored witnesses are concerned, I got Two-Gun Pete on the job. He’ll come up with something. Hey—you look beat. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?”

I sighed. “Not a bad idea.”

And I walked back toward the office, while Drury joined his “pal” Jake in the unmarked car. I would have loved to take Drury up on his advice, and head for my warm bed in the Morrison. Only I wasn’t ready to sleep just yet.

I still had a trip to make, over to the Northwest Side.

Had to see a man about a shotgun.

It was nearly midnight by the time I got to the Polish neighborhood near Wicker Park where Bill Tendlar’s flat was. I drove my blue ’41 Buick straight up Milwaukee, leaving the Loop behind, ending up on this narrow, dirty side street just south of Division, in the shadow of a huge, ornate Catholic church. God had it great in this neighborhood, but the residents in these sagging two-and three-story frame buildings sure as hell didn’t.

I parked behind a tipped-over trash barrel and locked up the Buick and stood on the sidewalk, the street as quiet as death, the breeze as soothing as the thought of an afterlife. But the paint-peeling dreariness of the gray three-story building before me was a puzzler. I paid my ops a good wage—there was a housing shortage, yes, but Tendlar should’ve been able to afford better than this. Not a lot better, maybe, but better.

The building was dark but for a window on the third floor, light peeking out between the sides of and cracks in the green shade. Tendlar’s room. Worn wooden steps, half-heartedly bordered by a leaning, rusted iron rail, led me to a heavy, paint-curling, unlocked door. The hall, which seemed more narrow than it was, thanks to walls painted a dirty-chocolate brown, was stuffy, and barely lit by a forty-watt bulb in a corroded copper fixture above an old wooden wall-mounted hatrack that in another part of town might’ve sold as an antique. I checked the mailboxes on the opposite wall and saw Tendlar’s name on 3-A. At the end of the hall, between twin rows of closed doors, stairs rose into darkness. That was okay. I had a rubber hose in my hand, not to mention a loaded automatic under my arm.

I went up to the third floor and another poorly lit, dreary hall, to a gray-painted door next to the metallic 3-A hammered into the nearby woodwork. I rapped once.

Lou Sapperstein let me in. He smiled tightly. He had the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, his red and blue striped tie loose around his neck. He was sweating, face beaded, loops of sweat on his shirt under his arms. His glasses had slid down some on his considerable nose.

“I was getting worried,” Lou said, quietly, stepping out into the hall, closing the door partway behind him.

“Guzik sent for me,” I said. “I had to drop by St. Hubert’s for a chat.”

“Gosh, I wish I could’ve been there; sounds like a swell way to cap off your day. What did that fat little monster want, anyway?”

I told him; told him about Drury busting Guzik, too. And about the sawed-off that had fired when the cops tested it out.

“What do you figure—they switched guns?” Lou asked.

“That, or unjammed it, then fired it. Either way, it’s an obvious attempt to make me look dirty.”

“Well, it won’t take.”

“Maybe. What’s been going on?”

Lou shrugged. “I kept it friendly for a while. I found Bill in bed. He’s got a bad cold.”

“I know. He’s been passing it around the office. But this is the first day he’s gone home sick.”

“Right. We just talked for a while. Then after I gave your girl that message, out in the hall pay phone, I came back in and had Bill sit up at his little kitchen table and have a beer with me. Then I pulled his arms behind him and handcuffed him, and he got pissed off, strangely enough. Really chewed me out, for a while there. For the last hour he’s been less indignant and more solicitous.”

“Well, let’s see what he has to say to his boss.”

“His boss,” Lou snorted. “Hell, I was working suspects over with a rubber hose when you were in diapers.”

“Maybe so, but Tendlar didn’t give you a fucked-with sawed-off and send you into battle.”

“Good point.”

We went in. Tendlar, a medium-size guy in his mid-thirties, was sitting, barefooted, in his gray and white striped pajamas on a wooden chair that Sapperstein had pulled out into the middle of the small room; he looked a little like a convict strapped in the electric chair. His hands cuffed behind him, he was otherwise in no discomfort, except psychological. His baby face was made incongruous by a heavy beard—his five o’clock shadow was midnight black at this point—and his eyes were small and dark blue. Bloodshot dark blue at the moment.

“Heller,” Tendlar said; his medium-pitched voice was hoarse from pleading with Sapperstein for several hours. “You can’t believe I’d sell you out.”

“Bill,” I said, pleasantly. “You used to be a cop. How can you expect me to trust you?”

I glanced around the small, shabby room. You could play a game of poker in here, if you didn’t invite more than five players. A cloth-covered brown couch and a cloth-covered brown (but not matching) easy chair and a couple of wobbly end tables were all the furniture in the room. Under my feet was a green Wilton carpet with about as much nap as Sapperstein’s skull. Between a closet door and a Murphy bed was an alcove archway, through which a dingy kitchenette could be seen, with the small table from which Sapperstein got the chair Tendlar was trapped in.

“You want a beer, Nate?” Sapperstein asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“He’s had three of my beers,” Tendlar said, almost pouting. “Hasn’t let me have a one. It’s warm in here.”

The room’s window was open, but the cracked green shade was drawn. He was right. It was warm in here. I took off my suitcoat. His eyes widened at the sight of the shoulder-holstered nine millimeter. Tendlar knew I didn’t carry it often.

“Sapperstein’s a hard man,” I said with mock sympathy, loosening my tie. “I don’t know how you’ve held up under this torture.”

Then, just to be a bastard, I gently slapped the rubber hose with one hand into the palm of the other.

Tendlar gave with a twitch of a one-sided smile.

“I don’t buy that,” he said. “You’re not the type.”

“What type, Bill?”

“The type of cop who’d use a rubber hose on a guy.”

“You know something, Bill, I’ve been a cop of one sort or another for a long time. And I’ve learned one thing in all those years.”

Tendlar swallowed. Smiled bravely. “Yeah, and what’s that, Heller?”

I smiled. “You never can tell about people.”

And I smacked him across the left shoulder with the hose.

He groaned, and it was a little loud.

“Now, Bill,” I said, “if you’re going to make noise, I’m going to have to find a dirty sock to stick in your mouth. I don’t think you’d like that. So you’re going to have to keep it down.”

And I hit him again, across the other shoulder.

He howled, but softly.

“That’s better. We don’t want to wake the neighbors— although I got a feeling this isn’t the kind of building where the cops get called in, much, even if there is a disturbance.”

Tendlar sat there crying, eyes squeezed together, tears rolling down his face. But quietly. He’d gotten the idea.

Lou, who’d come back from the kitchen about midway through all this, handed me a sweating bottle of Pabst. I took a couple of swigs.

“How’s Bill holding up?” he asked.

“Not so well,” I said. “I don’t think anybody ever fed him the goldfish before.”

“Fuck you, Heller,” Tendlar said.

“You know, I had a couple of tough coppers from East Chicago feed me the goldfish, once. Back in ’34, it was. I puked my guts out. I cried my eyes out. And I could barely walk for three days. And the bruises—God, the colors my skin turned. You wouldn’t see that many shades at high noon in Bronzeville.”

“I didn’t sell you out,” he said.

I slapped him hard on the right thigh with the hose.

He made a soft crying sound. Then he coughed some. He did have a cold.

“As a guy who used to be on the cops, Bill, you know the whole routine. Good cop, bad cop. We’re not going to insult your intelligence. We’re not going to subject you to that old wheeze. But we are going to do a variation on good cop/bad cop that we think you’ll appreciate.”

I took another swig of beer and handed the hose to Lou.

“We’re going to both do bad cop,” I said, and Lou whapped him across his other thigh.

“I didn’t sell you out! I didn’t sell you out.”

I grabbed him by his pajama front and looked him right in his beady blue eyes, which were dancing with fear, which was just how I wanted them.

“Listen to me, you little cocksucker. You sent me wading into deep shit, this afternoon. You handed me a jammed-up shotgun, knowing I’d take it into a mob hit getting carried out on our client. But what concern was that of yours? You probably figured you’d never see me again, not alive, anyway. Well, I’m alive, and you’re dead. You’re fuckin’ dead.”

And I yanked him, by his wadded-up pajama front, to one side, hard, and his chair went crashing on its side to the napless rug. Fortunately, the chair didn’t break, and Tendlar didn’t, either, at least nothing important. I set him back upright. He was shivering and he was weeping. His nose was running. Those summer colds are the worst.

“You’re dead unless you talk,” I said through my teeth. “Who bought you. Guzik?”

He was shaking his head side to side, face slick with tears and snot, lips pulled back, teeth showing, and it was not a smile. “I don’t even
know
Guzik. I never even met the son of a bitch.”

“Give me that fucking thing,” I said to Lou, and held out my hand, and Lou filled it with the hose, and Tendlar cried out, “Don’t! I can’t take any more of it. I don’t know anything, Christ! Honest!”

“Honest?” I said. “Swear to God?”

“Don’t hit me again….”

I hit him again. In the chest.

He coughed and wheezed and moaned.

I turned to Lou, casually. “Did you know we’re only four or five blocks south of the Nitti family deli, Lou? You can spit from Bill’s doorstep and, if the wind is with you, hit an Italian.”

“Really,” Lou said, interested.

I finished my beer, handed the empty to Lou, paced about Tendlar, slapping the rubber hose gently into my palm. “Nice place you got here, Bill. Just you and the rest of the rats.”

“It’s…I know it’s a dump, but I got divorced last year. You know that. Alimony. You know.”

“I pay you better than this. Alimony or not, why are you living in such a goddamn dump?”

“It’s…it’s hard to find a place…”

I went over to one rickety end table where today’s Green Sheet, a racing publication, sat under an empty Pabst bottle; various horses were checked off, various notations had been made.

“One of our client’s publications,” I said, picking up the tip sheet, taking it over and holding it front of him. “He’ll be glad to hear you’re supporting him.”

He sucked some snot up inside him. Tried to pull himself together. Tried to keep his chin from trembling. Couldn’t.

“I knew you gambled some, Bill. I didn’t know it was this serious.”

He swallowed. “You know how it is.”

“Got in a little deep, did you?”

He nodded.

“Not anymore you aren’t. You got out, didn’t you?”

He swallowed again. “I don’t have anything to tell. Honest to Christ I don’t.”

“You’re thinking they’ll kill you if you tell. Well, I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

“You’re no killer.”

“Ask the Japs.”

He looked like he was going to start crying again. “But I really don’t have anything to tell you.”

“Let’s start with the obvious. You did sell me out. Just tell me that much. Never mind who.”

“If…if I said that I did sell you out…I’m not saying I did, Heller…but if I did say that, you wouldn’t make me tell
who?
”

“I wouldn’t make you tell who, Bill. Just tell me you sold me out.”

He swallowed. He cast his eyes toward the floor. He began to nod.

“You sold me out?”

He kept nodding.

“Say it, Bill.”

“I sold you out, Heller.” He looked up, with a pleading expression. “It was big dough. You’d’ve done it in my place, and I wouldn’t blame you.”

“How much, Bill?”

He coughed. “Damn summer cold,” he said.

“How much, Bill?”

“Five gees.”

I glanced at Lou. He raised his eyebrows. That
was
a lot of dough.

“It got you out of the hole,” I said.

He nodded frantically. “And then some.”

“Why didn’t you take off? You had to know I’d come around.”

“I didn’t figure you for this…the goddamn rubber hose treatment. You just don’t seem the type.”

“You’d be surprised how testy I get when people try to kill me.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Did they tell you not to run, Bill?”

He nodded again, not frantically. “Yeah…they said if I held up under whatever came…cops or you or whatever…there’d be another gee in it for me.”

“Six thousand to play finger man,” I said. And to Lou: “I wonder what the hell the
shooters
got paid?”

“Whatever it was,” Lou said, working on a bottle of Pabst, “I bet they have to give it back. They screwed up. Ragen’s alive, after all.”

“That’s true.” I smiled at Bill. “Now. Who?”

“What? You said…”

“I lied. Who bought you?”

“Don’t hit me again.”

“Tell me and I won’t.”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“You’ll think I’m lying. You’ll hit me again.”

“No I won’t. Who?”

“I don’t know, really. It was all done over the phone.”

I hit him again. Across the left bicep.

“You liar,” he said, bitterly.

“I can be a real asshole sometimes,” I admitted, and hit him again.

“You can hit me all you want,” he said, bawling like a baby, “but it’s true. It was all done by phone, and money drops. I never saw nobody. They called me, I never called them; I don’t have a number or nothing. The voice was male, but it didn’t even have no accent. I’m telling the truth.”

I looked at Lou. He shrugged.

“Yeah,” I said, tossing the rubber hose over on the worn couch. “I think you are.”

I told Lou to get a cold wet towel and I wiped Bill’s face off. Lou uncuffed him. I took the Murphy bed down and helped him to bed.

“You’re going to have a couple of rough days,” I said.

He was on his back, pajamas clinging to him damply, eyes closed, arms at his side. He looked like a corpse.

“You’re going to hurt like hell,” I said, “but don’t tip to anybody that we worked you over. We stayed away from your face, so you should be able to pull it off. Don’t tip the cops, don’t tip the newshounds, don’t tip nobody. Not your phone contact, either.”