Neon Mirage (9 page)

“I got one more to round up,” Pete said. “We gonna have some depth on our bench.”

Drury said, “Pete, I don’t know how to thank you. I’d have been lost, trying to work down here without your help.”

“My pleasure. I don’t like it when those Outfit bums come shooting up my beat. I don’t like those Outfit bums, period. Do you fellas have any idea how bad the dope problem is gettin’ down here? Not a week goes by we don’t haul in a dozen kids, eighteen years old, sixteen years old, some of ’em been on dope two or three years already. I know where the dope comes from. So do you, Lt. They’re preyin’ on us—ain’t it bad enough you got sixteen or twenty families living in a three-flat building, children sleeping four to a bed, in rat-crawlin’ firetraps? A man can’t find decent quarters for his family, can’t stretch a few dollars from his menial damn job to provide food for ’em. Kids playin’ in garbage-filled alleys, dirt and filth. And Jake Guzik sends his poison down here so these people can flee into some reefer dream, or stick a needle in themself and go hide in their minds, and pretty soon they’re pawning what little they own and after that they’re pulling stickups, whatever it takes to get the stuff. Bill, you want my help, going up against these Outfit bums, you got my help. Any time. Any day.”

Drury was smiling tightly, drinking that in. Me, I was drinking in the beer. That kind of idealistic talk was fine, in the bar room; in real life, it tended to get you killed.

Up toward the front, at the bar, two colored men were starting to push each other around. A couple of working stiffs in overalls, good size men, both a little drunk at this point.

It was starting to get loud, when Pete got up and said, “Pardon,” and took out his long-barreled, pearl-handled, nickel-plated .357 and strode up there.

“Who started this?” he demanded.

Behind the counter, the bartender was leaning against his boxes, smiling. He had a gold tooth.

The two men looked at Pete with wide eyes—they obviously recognized him, and just as obviously hadn’t realized he was in the place—and simultaneously pointed each to the other.

He swung the .357 sideways into the gut of the man at his right and with his left connected with the chin of the other. Both men were soon on the dirty wooden floor, one rubbing his chin, the other doubled over.

“No fighting,” Pete told them, and put his gun away and came back to us and said he had to be going.

What a coincidence.

So did we.

By the following Saturday a lot had happened and nothing had happened.

I did some time at Meyer House on Ragen’s door each day, but mostly turned it over to O’Toole and Pelitier, with Sapperstein doing a turn or two, as well. It was a round-the-clock vigil, so some of my boys put in long hours. The police kept three men on at all times, one outside patrolling Lake Park Avenue, another by the fire escape window, and one more sharing the corridor outside Ragen’s room with an A-1 man.

We got along with the cops just fine—we were all ex-Chicago P.D. ourselves—but of course didn’t trust them far as we could throw ’em. Like I said, we were all ex-Chicago P.D. ourselves.

The fire escape had a landing at each Meyer House floor, trimmed in flowers and plants, making for a regular balcony; Tuesday morning, I’d noticed men in pale green blousy shirts and pants, like pajamas, standing on every level.

“What the hell’s that about?” I asked the cop on guard there. “Can’t you keep that fire escape clear?”

“Aw, I kinda feel sorry for the poor bastards,” the cop said.

They were psyche ward patients, it turned out. The first floor of Michael Reese, where the lobby once was as lavish as that of the finest hotel, had been converted to a psychiatric unit in ’39. Some patients were allowed out in the enclosed yard of Meyer House, where they sat in chairs and/or wandered about the small area facing Lake Park Avenue. Hollow-eyed zombies, most of them.

I knew all about it. I’d done some time in a psyche hospital myself, during the war.

“Yeah, you’re right—let ’em enjoy themselves,” I said. “But if you see anybody on those landings who isn’t a psyche patient, clear ’em the hell off immediately. And nobody on
this
landing at all, or I’ll hand your ass to Drury. I don’t care if it’s Freud and his favorite patient.”

“Okay, Mr. Heller.”

I talked to Drury every day, to see how the investigation was going. The green truck, it turned out, had been stolen last March; the FBI had lent its fingerprint experts to help dust the vehicle, but nothing came of it. Nor did anything come of the gray sedan with Indiana plates, the license number of which no witness seemed to have gotten. Two-Gun Pete did manage to “round up” his fourth witness, a newsboy (possibly the one I bought those papers from, to soak up Ragen’s blood); and Drury had gone down to Bronzeville and questioned him, and was satisfied another good witness had been found. Early next week the four would be gathered at the Central Police Station to start going through pictures.

Drury had been less than successful with his frontal attack on the Outfit: Guzik, Serritella and the rest were all kicked loose after questioning. Serritella had been badly embarrassed, however, as Drury—around midnight, Monday night, fresh from his St. Hubert’s bust of Guzik—had taken several squads of coppers to surround the home of the First Ward Republican Committeeman (and former State Senator). It got a lot of play in the papers, making Serritella look like the front man for gangsters that he was. Unlike Guzik, though, Serritella submitted to a lie detector test, and passed with flying colors, where complicity in the Ragen shooting was concerned.

At the same time, Mayor Kelly ordered a crackdown on local gambling, handbooks especially; Police Commissioner Prendergast called it “the greatest gambling cleanup” in the city’s history. I figured it’d last maybe a week. Possibly even two.

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.”