The Million-Dollar Wound (27 page)

I got off the IC at a little after four at 115th Street, which I crossed—the obnoxious paint odor of the nearby Sherwin Williams plant mingling incongruously with wondrous spicy smells from various hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurants—to Kensington Avenue, the wide, airy street the little neighborhood was named for. This quaint four-block neighborhood was an Italian oasis in the midst of a Swedish and Polish area; it even had its own church. And Kensington was one Italian neighborhood in Chicago with little or no mob taint.

The bottom floor of the narrow three-story brick building was a grocery store; at the top of the second floor stairs was a landing and a single door, with no number. I knocked.

“Just a second!” a voice from within called. Female voice.

When the door opened, a slender, darkly attractive girl of about twenty stood there; she was in rather form-fitting coveralls with her hair covered by a bandanna, knotted in front, Aunt Jemima style.

“Can I help you?” she said, looking at me rather crossly, her thin frame blocking the doorway. What little of her hair was showing under the bandanna was matted from sweat and her face was smudged here and there.

“My name’s Heller. I’m a friend of Private D’Angelo’s.”

She brightened. Stepped back and gestured for me to come in, saying, “Nathan Heller, sure. You’re Tony’s friend. He told us all about you. Read about ya in the papers, too.”

I stepped inside. It was a small living room with nice but not lavish furnishings, overstuffed sofa, some chairs, radio console, Catholic icons.

She gestured to herself, to her coveralls, her bandanna, smiling widely. Her teeth were very white and her eyes were very brown. “Excuse. I just got off my shift at Pullman.”

I smiled at her. “Rosie the Riveter, huh?”

“Marie the arc welder. Would you like to see my brother?” She seemed hopeful and sad all at once.

“Sure. He’s here, then?”

“Yeah. Sure.” She seemed surprised I’d think otherwise. “It’s close to Roseland Community.” That was a hospital, about a mile from here. She went on: “I think some company might help Tony a little.”

She stepped closer; she smelled sweaty, the sweat of good hard honest work. I liked the way she smelled. She was, in fact, a cute kid, and if I wasn’t here to see if maybe her brother was a murderer I might have asked for her phone number. I never dated an arc welder before. Or the sister of a murderer, that I remembered.

“Is D’Angelo a little down?” I said. I couldn’t seem to bring myself to call him Tony; don’t know why.

She stood very close to me. “He’s been blue as hell. He was okay when he got home. We were all surprised how good his spirits were, considering. But when he saw the paper this morning…”

“The Estelle Carey killing?”

She nodded gravely. “He cried and cried. Don’t tell him I told you.”

“Look, uh, Marie. Let me give you a tip. Some of your brother’s letters and things were found in her apartment.”

The skin around her eyes tightened. “Really?”

“They haven’t connected them to… Tony, yet. But they will. And cops and reporters will be swarming around.”

“Oh dear. What should we do?”

I shrugged. “You may want to have him stay someplace else, till it all blows over. I don’t mean to suggest you keep him away from the police, but you may want to keep the reporters off him.”

She nodded. “Certainly. I appreciate this.”

“That’s okay. I figure you should be warned. And your aunt and uncle downstairs, with their business and all.”

She smiled again. Lovely smile. “It’s nice of you.”

I wasn’t so nice. I was here to confront my old war buddy about a murder. Two murders.

But I owed him this much, this warning. And I liked his sister’s smile.

“I’ll take you back to him,” she said.

“No. You can just point the way.”

“Okay. I need to get a bath, anyway.”

I didn’t want to think about her bathing. I had other things to do.

She pointed me down a hallway, off of which were various bedrooms, and at the end was a small kitchen, with a hoosier cabinet and a table and sink all crowded together. To the left was a bedroom, D’Angelo’s, she said.

But I found him sitting out on the enclosed porch, also off the kitchen. It was a little cold, out there. No insulation. But D’Angelo didn’t seem to notice. He was at a card table, but turned facing a window looking out on the alley, a half-played hand of solitaire spread out before him like a meal he wasn’t hungry enough to eat.

“Hello, D’Angelo.”

He turned slowly and looked at me. His face was hollow-eyed, haunted, like the Marines of the 1st Division we’d come to the Island to spell, those wasted scarecrows who’d met us as we waded ashore off the Higgins boats. Only D’Angelo looked even worse. He’d always been razor-thin, and he still was, only now that razor was dull. His eyes were dead.

But something in them came marginally alive when he recognized me.

“Heller,” he said. It was cold enough for his breath to show. He smiled, just a little.

I went over to the card table and sat next to him. Just looking at him I knew he hadn’t killed Estelle. Monawk was another matter.

“I’m sorry about your girl,” I said.

“Hell of a thing,” he said. His eyes were full of water. “Hell of a thing.” He reached for a deck of Luckies on the card table; shook a smoke out and lit it nervously off a battered silver Zippo lighter from his plaid flannel shirt. “You can’t know what it’s like to come home and your girl’s dead, your goddamn girl’s dead. Murdered! Tortured…”

I said nothing.

“Want a smoke?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. He lit it off his—hospital habit—and handed it to me. I sucked the smoke into my lungs and felt strangely alive.

“What the fuck kind of world is it?” he said. “Come home from what we went through, and somebody murdered your goddamn girl! Your goddamn girl.” He didn’t want to weep in front of me, I knew, but it was killing him holding all that water in his eyes.

“Go ahead and bawl,” I told him. “We all do it.”

He covered his face with his hand and tears dripped through his fingers. I looked away. Smoked.

“Who am I kidding?” he said. He rubbed the tears off his face, as best he could; some smears of moisture remained. “She had a lot of guys. Some of my friends wrote me and said she was out with this swell, and that one. She loved money more than she loved any man.”

That was true.

He looked at me curiously, all of a sudden. “What were
you
doing there?”

“What?”

“I saw your name in the papers. You were there, at her apartment, with the cops.”

“I know the detective whose case it is, is all. Coincidence.”

He gripped my arm. “If you find something out, you gotta let me know. If you hear something. If I can get my hands on the bastards that did that to her, I swear I’ll wring their fucking necks. How could anybody
do
that to a beautiful girl like her?” He shook his head. “Aw, shit, Estelle. Why’d you have to love money so goddamn much?”

“I remember back at San Diego,” I said, “you mentioned you worked for Nicky Dean at the Colony Club. Is that where you met her?”

He nodded. “I was a waiter there. Head waiter. I ran errands for Nicky, sometimes.”

“How did you and Estelle get together?”

“She liked my looks. I liked hers. That’s all it takes.”

True enough.

“I knew her once, too,” I said.

“Really?”

“A long, long time ago.”

“Did you go with her?”

“Yeah.”

“Did…you love her, too, Heller?”

“A long, long time ago, I did, yeah.”

“So, then… I guess you do know how it is to come home to something like this.”

“We got that in common, pal.”

“We got a lot in common, don’t we, Heller?”

We sure did. We both had wounds that would never heal.

I said, “How did Monawk die, D’Angelo?”

“What do you mean? The Japs got him. What else?”

“Did you see it happen?”

“No. No. I was out. I bled a lot, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I sat there with him for a couple of hours. We talked some, but mostly we smoked. Like in that foxhole looking down on the ridge of
kunai
grass.

When I went out, his sister, wearing a very fresh blue dress with a crisp white collar, her black hair in a shining pageboy, greeted me. I think she liked me. I liked her. She smelled like sweet-smelling soap.

“You’re a good friend to come see him,” she said.

“I’ll be back.”

“I’d like that.”

I wasn’t Prince Charming, but there was a man shortage.

She walked me out to the street. The sky was a glowing red. The steel mills.

“Good night, Marie.”

“Good night, Mr. Heller.”

I didn’t think her brother had killed Monawk; I wasn’t sure, but my gut, my detective’s gut, said no.

Anyway, I knew he hadn’t killed Estelle yesterday.

Not on one leg.

Town Hall Station, a massive faded red-brick building built around the turn of the century, dominated the corner of Addison and Halsted. It was just three blocks west from Estelle’s “death flat” (as the papers were gleefully calling it), and within spitting distance of the Salvation Army’s national training camp, a baracaded, barbed-wire encampment devoted to saving souls.

Which could not exactly be said for the Town Hall Station, up the steps of which I went, through the main door on Addison, up into the big waiting-room area. It was Friday afternoon, and business here was slow—a few juvies were slouched on the hard wooden chairs lining one wall, waiting for their parents to show, flirting with a bored lone hooker sitting polishing her nails, waiting for her pimp or lawyer or somebody to pick her up. I checked in with the fiftyish flabby Irish sergeant who sat behind the booking counter reading a racing form, and was sent on upstairs. I was expected. Sergeant Donahoe, he of the basset-hound countenance, showed me to the small interrogation room where Drury stood grilling the seated Sonny Goldstone, Nicky Dean’s partner from his Colony Club days. A police steno, a plain young woman in matronly blue, sat just behind and to one side of Goldstone, taking it all down.

The cubbyhole was well lit but stuffy. Goldstone’s fleshy face seemed expressionless, even bored. He had the sort of soft, bland, unthreatening features—hooded eyes, straight nose, petulant mouth—that so often belong to the truly cold. He was wearing black-rim glasses tinted a slight brown. He was dressed neatly, successful businessman that he was, in a tailored, vested brown suit with a tasteful two-tone brown striped tie.

Drury’s usual dapper look was absent; he was stripped down to his vest, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, working up a sweat. He was as good a man as any at the verbal third degree. On the other hand, you still can’t beat a rubber hose.

Drury nodded to me, as I closed the door behind me, and Goldstone’s eyes flicked my way once, then stared back into nothing, ignoring both me and Drury, which was a good trick in this closet. I don’t know whether Goldstone recognized me or not; we’d only seen each other that once, that night in ’39 when Estelle took me up to a third-floor Colony Club suite.

“You were seen going into the apartment building Tuesday afternoon, Sonny,” Drury said, matter-of-fact, confident as God. “Positively identified by the manager of Estelle’s building.”

Looking at nothing, Goldstone said, “She’s nuts. She’s talking nonsense.”

“The woman picked you out of our rogues’ gallery files yesterday. And today she picked you out of a five-man lineup.”

“I remember. I was there.”

“I was there, too, Sonny. I saw her pick you out; no question in her mind.”

Shrug. “A lot of people look like me.”

“You were in that apartment, Sonny.”

Shrug. “I was there before. Not Tuesday. I got twenty or thirty people who saw me elsewhere at the time of the crime.”

“Name one.”

“I’ll wait for the trial. Which there’s never going to be.”

“Did she talk, Sonny? Did she finally tell you where that million was?”

Smirk. “Why, Drury? You want to borrow some of it to buy some more fancy-ass suits?”

This is where a rubber hose comes in handy.

Drury, unfortunately, was not that kind of cop. Donahoe came in and tapped Drury on the shoulder and said, “Visitor’s here.”

He nodded toward Goldstone, saying to Donahoe, “Lock that fat bastard up.”

“You got nothing,” Goldstone said.

Drury pointed at him. “We got bloody fingerprints in that apartment. Think about
that
in your cell, wise guy.”

We stepped out in the hall.

“You really got fingerprints in blood?” I asked Drury.

“Yeah, from off a kitchen cabinet,” he said, walking toward his office. I followed along.

“You think Sonny’s your man?” I asked.

“Maybe. But he was right about one thing—he really does have a common sort of face. Another Nicky Dean associate, Thomas Stapleton, who we’re looking for now, could be Goldstone’s brother. Ditto for John Borgia, who was tight with Dago Mangano, one of Dean’s partners. As for the bloody fingerprints, they belong to a woman or a small man—not Sonny Goldstone. We’re in the process of pulling in no less than a dozen Colony Club male employees for questioning, and half again that many working girls associated with Estelle, plus her former roommate. And then there’s that Adonis-crowd hood Eddie McGrath being sought for us in New York. And a suspect in the North Side fur thefts we got a line on. That doesn’t touch the thirty-plus respectable gentlemen whose names and numbers were in Estelle’s little black book.”

“Jesus. Why don’t you just gather all the suspects in Chicago Stadium and turn off the lights. It works for Charlie Chan.”

He stopped just outside his office, the door of which was closed. “It gets worse. But I didn’t ask you down here just to hear Sonny Goldstone not talk. There’s somebody waiting inside here who might prove a little more interesting.”

I followed him inside his private office, which was just big enough to comfortably house his desk, a few files and a couple of chairs, one of which was occupied by a small, dark, attractive but rather frail-looking woman in her late thirties, facing his empty desk, waiting for him to fill it. He did, nodding to her, smiling.

“Mrs. Circella,” he said. “Thank you for coming in to see us voluntarily.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Nicky Dean’s wife said sweetly, with just the faintest hint of an Italian accent. “I’m not a criminal.”

She was smartly attired, wearing a black Persian lamb coat over a navy blue suit and a wide-brimmed navy felt hat. The effect of the dark apparel was almost one of mourning. Her oval face was pale, which made her sensual red-lipsticked mouth seem startling, and next to the full red lips nestled a beauty mark, which was enough to make you wonder if Nicky Dean had been crazy or something. Even with a dish as luscious as Estelle Carey, why cheat on this stunning creature?

Greed, of course. Something Nicky and Estelle had in common.

I just stood and listened, leaning against one wall. The police steno filed in and took her inconspicuous place in the corner, as Drury said, “You don’t mind going on the record with your statement, Mrs. Circella?”

“Of course not. I’m a good citizen. I always cooperate one hundred percent with the authorities.”

If there was any sarcasm in her words, I couldn’t find it.

“I came, at your request,” she said, “although I must admit I don’t understand why you would want to question me in regard to a
murder.
Particularly one committed while I was out of the city.”

“Where were you on February second?” Drury asked.

She batted long lashes, innocently; her eyes were wide and brown and lovely. “I was in New York City, of course. I was staying at the Alamac Hotel. To be close to my husband in his hour of need. Nicky and I learned of her death together, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She was twisting a lace hanky in her hands, nervously. “We were sitting outside of the grand jury room of the U.S. Courthouse in New York, and someone brought in a copy of a Chicago paper. The
Herald-American,
I think it was. There was a picture of Estelle on the front page, but at first I didn’t recognize it. I recognized the name, though. So I turned to Nicky and said, ‘Didn’t this girl work for you?’ And he looked at her picture and said, ‘Yes.’ Then he said, ‘Let me read that paper.’”

“What did he have to say?”

She lowered her eyes. “‘That poor girl,’ he said.”

“I see. Let’s start at the beginning. Did you know about Estelle Carey?”

She shook her head, no. “I didn’t know her. I knew who she was, but we never talked. I wouldn’t recognize the sound of her voice if I heard it today. Oh, I saw her from time to time—at the dice tables at the 101 Club and the Colony Club, which Nicky owned.”

Drury smiled, but his eyes and forehead frowned; this woman was either very naive or very crafty, and, either way, it was getting to him. “Mrs. Circella, I didn’t ask if you knew Estelle. I asked if you knew
about
her. By which I mean…”

She licked the lush lips. “I heard the rumors that she and Nicky were friendly. I could never verify them, though.”

“How hard did you try?”

She smiled slightly, regally. “I didn’t. I never tried. I’m a Catholic, Captain Drury. When I married I made a contract with God. None of us is infallible. I am not my husband’s judge. Nick has been a good husband to me for nineteen years.”

“Have you been aware of how he’s earned his living during that time?”

“Yes. Nightclubs. But they were no part of
my
life. I spent my time at home, with our two children. I won’t pretend I liked his business. It’s the one thing we’ve argued about. But when I’ve asked him to give up his nightclubs, his answer is always the same—that he had to do
something
for a living.”

Drury was drumming his fingers on the desk. “Were you aware that Nick was connected with the Stagehands Union?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “I know Mr. Browne and Willie. But Nicky resigned from the union before all the trouble started.”

“You know nothing of a million-dollar slush fund then?”

She smiled again. “The FBI and the Internal Revenue Service have that same interest. I’m sure if we had a million dollars, I’d know about it.”

“And you don’t?”

“Of course not.”

Drury sighed. “You were in show business once yourself, weren’t you, Mrs. Circella?”

She sat up; she didn’t seem so frail, all of a sudden. “I met Nicky when I was appearing in a show at the Cort Theater. Each night he’d come and listen to my singing. Then he’d send roses. Finally we met through a mutual friend. That was in 1923; we were married the following year.” The past glory faded, and she settled back into the chair, frail again. “Now I can’t even sing the baby to sleep, since I had diphtheria. My vocal cords were affected, but that doesn’t matter. When I married Nicky, I washed my hands of show business. A wife stays home and minds the children, like Nicky says.”

“Getting back to Estelle Carey…”

“I was at fault.”

Drury leaned forward. “Pardon?”

She gestured with the lacy hanky. “I have been a sick wife for a long, long time. Nick couldn’t be blamed for seeking the company of a gorgeous creature like Estelle—and she
was
gorgeous.”

Was as in past tense.

She went nobly on: “None of us knows what life has in store for us. We are all in God’s hands.”

Anyway, Estelle was.

She smiled bravely. “I have only pity for Estelle Carey. She missed everything that is fine in life—home, family, the respect and esteem that are every woman’s birthright.”

“No bitterness at all, then.”

She shook her head no. “I’m sorry for her from the bottom of my heart. Since this has happened, I’ve gone to church and lit candles in her memory. Her murder was a terrible, terrible thing.”

Drury smiled politely, rising, gesturing to her. “Thank you, Mrs. Circella. You’re free to go now. Thank you for stopping by.”

She rose, smiled politely back at him. Fluttered her eyelashes. Great eyes on this dame. “Certainly, Captain Drury,” she said.

“Sergeant Donahoe, in the hall there, will show you out.”

She walked by me, snugging on navy gloves, trailing a wake of expensive tasteful perfume. I closed the door behind her.

Drury sat back down. “What do you think?”

I was still standing. “Some classy broad.”

“I mean, is she on the level?”

“Yeah. In her way.”

“What do you mean, in her way?”

I shrugged. “She’s lying to herself, not to you. She’s human; she hated Estelle like any good wife would. But she prefers to affect her good-Catholic-wife, stiff-upper-lip, superiority-through-suffering stance. It gets her through the day.”

“In other words, her marriage is an arrangement she can live with.”

“I’d say so.”

“I say if she’d been in town Tuesday, we might have a real suspect.”

“No. I don’t think so. I can’t picture that sweet little thing with an icepick in her hand.”

“Sometimes women can surprise you, Nate.”

“Hell, they always surprise me. Personally, I wouldn’t mind finding a wife like that—beautiful, devoted, expects you to fool around on the side. I didn’t know they made ’em like that anymore.”

“You want a girl just like the girl that married dear old Nick.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I don’t think she’s a killer. I don’t think she even
hired
a killer.”

“The papers are going to love her,” Drury said, glumly cynical. “They’ll fall all over themselves for that ‘every woman’s birthright’ speech.”

“You got that right. Anything else you’d care to share with me? Or should I let you get back to your couple of hundred suspects?”

His face narrowed into anger, or at least a semblance thereof. He shook his finger at me. “Yes there is. Why didn’t you give me D’Angelo’s name?”

“Oh. So Uncle Sam finally ran him down for you, huh?”

“Yes, and we were out to see him this morning. And we discovered you’d been there Wednesday night. What gives?”

I held my hands out, palms open. “He was on Guadalcanal with me, Bill. He was in that same shell hole as Barney and me. We almost got killed together. I owed him a warning of what was ahead for him—cops, reporters. He had that much coming.”

“Being in the service together doesn’t justify withholding information…”

“Yes it does.”

He shook his head. “Go on, make me feel like a heel. You been to fight the big war and I haven’t. Make me feel like a piker.” He thrust his finger at me. “But if you’re going to be sniffing around the edges of this case, don’t you goddamn
dare
withhold information or evidence from me again; our friendship isn’t going to cover that, Nate.”

“Understood.”

“Now do me a favor and get the hell out of here.”

I did.

On my way out, I stopped by Sergeant Donahoe’s desk. “You got it?” I asked him.