Neon Mirage (7 page)

He nodded. It was barely perceptible, but it was a nod.

“And I wouldn’t skip town if I were you,” I said. “It just wouldn’t look good. In fact, after you had a day in bed, I want you to come back into the office. Business as usual.”

He opened his eyes. “Does this mean I’m not fired?”

I looked at Lou and shook my head. Lou was laughing silently.

“Bill,” I said. “I’m going to keep you on for the next month or two. Till this blows over. You’ll get paid and everything. I’m going to back you when the cops and anybody else, Walt Pelitier for example, asks about your part in this. I’m going to say you’re a stand-up guy and clean as a whistle. I don’t want any bad reflection on the agency, understand?”

He swallowed and nodded.

“But you’re going to stay away from me. Just go to your little cubicle and make your phone credit checks and wait for the day, before very long, when I’m standing before you with a smiling face, telling you to get out of my sight forever or I’ll fucking kill you.”

He looked at me blankly for a long time.

“Oh,” he said, finally. “Then I guess a letter of reference is out of the question?”

At one-thirty in the morning, the plush, high-ceilinged lobby of the Morrison Hotel tended to be about dead as its marble floor. A few clusters of out-of-town businessmen were getting in from their evening’s entertainment in the big city, talking a little loud, a little drunk; a well-dressed older man in a tux and a good-looking dame in a clingy gown were moving arm-in-arm onto an elevator; the overweight, alcoholic house dick, Matthews, was sitting on a divan almost as overstuffed as he was, next to a palm that was also potted. That was about it.

The night man lurking behind the marble-and-bronze check-in counter—skinny, pockmarked, Gable-mustached Williams, who had been assistant manager for going on ten years now, all the while maintaining the supercilious attitude of one rising fast in his chosen trade—was not glad to see me. He didn’t push it, however, because I lived here and took no shit at all off him.

“Messages?” I asked.

He smiled and nodded—which was unusual. I had expected the normal long-suffering sigh of one forced to endure the indignity of the superior doing the bidding of the inferior; instead he rather cheerfully turned to his wall of boxes and came back with a stack of note sheets.

“Reporters,” he said, looking down his nose, mustache twitching, as he smiled thinly so we could share his contempt for such lower life forms.

I shuffled through the messages; Davis of the
News
had called every hour. This was typical of the aftermath of an episode like this afternoon’s—not that today had been an average day in the life of Nathan S. Heller. If it were, I’d have been dead of old age at twenty-five. Still, I’d been pulled in off the sidelines into the middle of mob activity often enough to know the reporters would swarm in the wake.

“Hold all calls?” Williams asked, almost civilly.

“Yeah, except from Lou Sapperstein. And I guess Lt. Drury; no other cops—if they call, I’m out. Throw these away, would you?”

I pushed the stack of messages his way and he accepted them dutifully if not graciously.

I took an elevator up to the twenty-third floor, which was in the nineteen-story tower atop the Morrison’s central twenty-one stories (all of which made it the city’s tallest hotel), to “suite” 2317, one rather large room with a kitchenette and a smaller bedroom. Not unlike Tendlar’s place, just bigger and nicer.

And, I thought as I worked the key in the door, there was another nice difference: nobody would be handcuffed to a chair waiting for a rubber hose workout from yours truly.

But as the door barely cracked open, I realized somebody had to be waiting in there for me: the light was on, and I hadn’t
left
it on.

I had one bad moment, hand drifting toward my nine millimeter under my shoulder.

Then I smiled to myself, thinking
Peggy,
and went on in.

Where, smack in the middle of my floor, face down, kissing the carpet, as if he’d fallen off the nearby couch, was a guy in a lightweight, light brown summer suit. A big guy—not as big as a house, but if he were a garage he’d be the two-car variety. He also had a bloody head, or anyway a bloody back of the head, which otherwise was covered in dark brown, well-greased hair. Around and about his upper torso were the shattered pieces of a porcelain vase and some paper flowers; said vase had once resided on the RCA Victor console radio to the left of the door as you come in.

By this time, I was shutting the door behind me and getting my nine millimeter out, after all. It looked like this ungodly goddamn day wasn’t over yet….

I was bending over the guy, hand on his throat, seeing if he was alive or not, when I heard her.

“Nate…did I kill him?”

She was standing in the doorway to my bedroom. She was still wearing the dark blue dress with the floral pattern, but neither it nor she looked as crisp as at the hospital earlier. Her eyes were as violet as ever but also wider than ever. She had a .45 Colt automatic in her dainty hand. That hand, which was dwarfed by the gun, was trembling. So was the rest of her, but the hand more so.

“He’s alive,” I said, rising, going to her, taking the gun from her, tucking my own away, taking her into my arms. “What the hell happened here?”

“I was waiting for you,” she said, looking into my eyes apologetically. “I wanted to be with you tonight. I just didn’t want to be alone, after what happened to Uncle Jim and you…”

“You wouldn’t have a key if you weren’t always welcome,” I said. “Now, what about Kilroy, there? It was you who busted him over the head with my Aunt Minnie’s vase?”

“I didn’t even know you had an Aunt Minnie!”

“I don’t. It’s the hotel’s vase. I was just trying to keep things light.”

Her eyes and nostrils flared. “Light? Light? I’ve been waiting here with what I thought was a dead body for
hours
, waiting for you, thinking maybe I killed him, wondering what I should do…Nate…Nate, I’m frightened.”

I held her close, glanced back at the guy. “He showed up hours ago?”

She drew away just a little and nodded. “Don’t know how long, exactly. I let myself in about eleven and he was already here—after I closed the door behind me, he came out of the bedroom with that gun.” She meant the .45 that was now in my hand. “He told me to relax—we were going to wait for my ‘boyfriend.’ That’s you.”

“No kidding. So how did you arrange to smack him with the vase?”

“I was just nice to him for about fifteen minutes—smiling, chatting about the weather, just making an inane commentary—he didn’t tell me to shut up, either. He was smiling at me. He didn’t say much, but when he did, he called me ‘cutie.’” She cringed. “And then I asked him if I could turn on the radio. I said I’d be more comfortable with some music playing. He thought that was a good idea.”

“And he was sitting on the couch, there, with his back mostly to you, and you clobbered him.”

“But good. He fell over like a ton of bricks. Then I got his gun so when he woke up I’d be ready for him—only he never woke up.”

I glanced over toward our sleeping guest. “He’s hurt pretty bad. I better get some medical help for him, or maybe we will have a corpse on our hands.”

“I don’t understand…all I did was hit him with a vase.”

“This isn’t the movies, honey. A blow like that to the head’ll kill you, as often as not.”

“Well, he started it.”

I checked his wallet. According to his driver’s license, his name was Louis J. Fusco and his address was 7240 South Luella Avenue.

“I know this address,” I said, studying the license. “Where do I know it from?”

She raised her heavy dark eyebrows in a facial shrug, as she gazed down innocently at me and my pal Fusco.

“Of course,” I said, smiling, standing. “That’s Guzik’s address!”

Now her eyes narrowed. “Jake Guzik? That Greasy Thumb character that had Uncle Jim shot?” She kicked Fusco; not very hard. “I wish I
had
killed you,” she told the slumbering thug. “If that’s who you work for.”

“Guzik lives in an apartment house at this address,” I said. “He owns the place. This guy is probably one of his personal bodyguards, with an apartment in the same building. I should’ve known right away.”

“Why?”

“Guzik sent for me earlier. A man of his—that same clown that accosted us on the street, outside of Berghoff’s last year— was waiting in my office building. Guzik mentioned he’d sent a guy here, too. I figured they would’ve remembered to call him off, once they picked me up. They obviously didn’t.”

She cocked her head, looking at me like I was the eighth wonder. “You saw Guzik tonight?”

“I’ll tell you all about it. Let me make a couple of calls first.”

I phoned down to the front desk and Williams answered. “This is Heller. Send Matthews up.”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Heller.”

“How much did he pay you?”

“Pardon me?”

“How much did this mug who’s out cold on my carpet pay you for letting him in with a pass key?”

He gulped. “How can you even suggest…”

“I get suspicious when you don’t treat me like dirt, Mr. Williams. Of course, it could have been Matthews, or one of the bell boys. I’m just too tired to care, let alone look into it. But if this ever happens again, I’m going to feed you the fucking goldfish.”

“The what?”

I cut him off, then called the number on the card Guzik had given me.

“What?” a gruff voice said. Not Guzik’s.

“This is Heller. Your boss sent a guy around to pick me up at my place, and forgot to call him off. My girl crowned your boy with a vase and I think he’s going to need some stitches.”

“Oh. Where are you, the Morrison?”

“That’s right. I’m so pleased that you fellas keep up on my whereabouts. I’m sending him down with the house dick. He’ll have him in the alley, the loading dock area. You go in off Dearborn.”

“I know where it is. I’ll send somebody. Twenty minutes, probably.”

“Take all night, if you want. He might be dead by morning, but that’s your problem.”

I hung up. She was looking at me carefully, the violet eyes still narrowed but filled with wonder. She looked like a kid, freckles trailing across her nose.

“How can you talk to people like that,” she asked, “like that?”

“I have to talk to all kinds of people in my line.”

“No, I mean, get so tough with them. Aren’t you afraid of them?”

“Scared shitless. But if you let them push you around, they don’t respect you.”

“You want the respect of such people?”

“Sure. They leave you alone, more, if they respect you.”

She gestured to the unconscious Mr. Fusco on the floor.

“Leave you alone like this, you mean?”

“Tonight’s an exception,” I said. “Is it Tuesday yet?”

“Technically.”

“Good.” I sighed. “I’ve had enough of Monday. You want a beer or something?”

“Please,” she said.

I got a couple of bottles of Blatz out of the Frigidaire and poured hers in a glass. We sat at the table in the kitchenette end of the room, by the window, which was open, the breeze wafting through, some traffic sounds too, and drank our beers and waited for Matthews to come up.

Which he did, in several minutes. The red-faced heavy-set dick in the rumpled brown suit had trouble bending over to help me lift the still out-cold Fusco up off the carpet. I got my first look at Fusco’s face, at this point, and it was nothing to write home about—he was just another dark, craggy dago stooge from the Guzik camp.

“The least you could do,” Matthews said, in his gravelly way, breath like a brewery, “is slip me a fin for my trouble.”

“Somebody let this guy in my room,” I said, helping Matthews usher the heavy Fusco out into the hall, “and it just might’ve been you.”

“I swear it wasn’t, Nate!”

“Well, then why don’t you do some detective work tomorrow and get the fin out of whoever it was that did.”

He couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

So I helped him drunk-walk Fusco to the service elevator, though from the smell of him it was Matthews who should’ve been drunk-walked by Fusco and me. We sat Fusco in the corner of the cubicle, and I left the slightly dazed house dick and his charge to descend to the alley without any further help from me.

When I got back to my room, Peggy was on her knees trying to clean the blood off the floor with soap and water. She had put the paper flowers on the couch.

“That’s good enough,” I said, bending, patting her on her padded shoulder, smiling. “I’ll get the hotel to take care of that.”

She gave me an arch look. “Is it their responsibility to clean up bloody stains off a private detective’s carpet?”

“It is when somebody in the hotel let the mug in my room in the first place. I’m going to get some mileage out of that, sugar.”

I eased her up by the arm. “You want to go out for a bite to eat? Plenty of places still open…”

“I couldn’t eat after that. How can you still be standing? You look beat.”

“I am beat. I plan to sleep till Thursday.”

“But Nate—you’ve got to look after Uncle Jim…”

“It was just a figure of speech, honey. I’m going to be on your uncle’s door part of the time myself, and the rest of the time my most trusted people will be there.”

“You told me once you didn’t trust anybody but Nate Heller—and that you sometimes look at yourself suspiciously, in the mirror in the morning.”

“True. But there’s only one of me and I can’t do twenty-four-hour guard duty. Also, I got a business to run. Sometimes you just have to trust people, even if it is against your better judgment.”

I put my arm around her and walked her away from the bloodstains.

“Don’t send me home, Nate. I want to be with you tonight.”

“I’d love you to stay. But let’s just sleep. I’m not up to any romance. I barely have enough energy to strip down to my underwear and flop in bed.”

She embraced me, put her head against my chest. “I couldn’t make love tonight, either, after what happened to Uncle Jim.”

“And me. Don’t forget. I was there getting shot at too, you know.”

“I know. And shooting back. I heard all about it from Uncle Jim tonight. You were very brave.”

We moved into the bedroom.

“How was he doing when you left the hospital?”

Her expression was a disheartened one. “He looked deathly pale. He was in an oxygen tent. They’re going to operate on his arm tomorrow.”

“I hope they can save it—but even if they do, I don’t think he’s going to be pitching for the Cubs.”

She shook her head sadly. “I don’t know if he’ll be able to hold a spoon. It’s really sad. Active man like that.”

“Let’s go to bed,” I said.

“Good idea.”

She had a little short powder-blue nightie she kept with some other things of hers in a drawer in my dresser, a lacy thing that decorated rather than concealed her creamy white flesh, small dark nipples. Just the sight of her, radiant in the muted glow of my bedstand lamp, on her side on one side of my bed, half under the sheet, leaning on an elbow, the piles of brown curls framing her sweet face, was enough to get me going. Almost enough. I truly was beat beyond caring about sex. But the events of the day were still churning through my brain; Peg’s eyes were bright with thought, too.