The Million-Dollar Wound (35 page)

Willie’s Vegas mentor Greenbaum was killed in 1958; he and his wife were trussed up in their home and their throats slashed.

Such deaths were typical of the post-Nitti Outfit’s style; the headlines were often bloody, the heat was frequently stirred up. Not until the 1960s did the style revert, somewhat, to Nitti’s lower-key approach.

The Chicago local of the IATSE, by the way, continues to be linked to the Outfit; in 1980 the
Chicago Tribune
reported that the feds had identified twenty-four men with mob ties as members of Local 110. And the second-highest-paid labor leader in the entertainment industry,
Variety
said in 1985, was the business manager of that local, who took home nearly a million in salary and expenses over the latest ten-year period.

As for me, from time to time I had dealings with Nitti’s successors, but never again did I come to know one of the mob bosses in the way I knew Nitti. My agency, A-1, is still around; but I retired years ago.

Barney? On January 12, 1947, he was released from the U.S. Public Health Service addiction hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, where he had admitted himself voluntarily three months earlier. He’d gone that route because (he told me later) he heard “those private sanitariums ain’t tough enough.” Also, by going to a government hospital, he’d make a clean breast of it, publicly; he might encourage others with the same problem to come forward, too. It was also a gesture to his wife, who had recently left him, of his sincerity about quitting the stuff. Cathy was there for him, when he got out of Lexington.

“The withdrawal gave me the miseries,” he told me, “because the reduced dose of morphine wasn’t enough to kill the cramps and the sweats. I learned quick enough where the expression ‘kick the habit’ come from. When they gradually cut down my dope, I got spasms in the muscles of my arms and my legs actually
kicked.
And then I was back there again, Nate. On the Island. I kept fighting the Japs in that muddy shell hole, over and over again. But now I don’t have to go back there no more.”

I hope nobody does.

Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and a few liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible—and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of my conflicting source material, and the need to telescope certain events to make for a more smoothly flowing narrative. The E. J. O’Hare and Estelle Carey cases are complex and, in order to deal with them both within this one volume, the use of compressed time and composite characters was occasionally necessary. While in most cases real names have been used, I have at times substituted similar or variantly spelled names for those of real people, when these real people—particularly, more minor, non-“household name” historical figures—have been used in a markedly fictionalized manner. Such characters include Nate and Barney’s fellow Marines and soldiers in the Guadalcanal section; Sergeant Donahoe; the Borgias; and Wyman. All of these characters did, however, have real-life counterparts.

While numerous books and newspaper accounts were consulted in the writing of the Guadalcanal section of
The Million-Dollar Wound,
several books proved particularly helpful.
Semper Fi, Mac
(1982), by Henry Berry, a Studs Terkel-style oral history of the Marines in the Pacific, was far and away the most valuable resource for that section, and is highly recommended to any readers interested in exploring this subject further. Very helpful as well (and recommended reading) were (are) two Marine memoirs:
With the Old Breed
(1981), E. B. Sledge; and
Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War
(1980), William Manchester. And, of course, the autobiography of Barney Ross (written with Martin Abramson),
No Man Stands Alone
(1957), provided the basis for Barney and Nate’s story; it should be noted that the death of a Marine by “friendly fire” in this novel is fictional, although it grows out of an admission in the Ross autobiography that such an event
nearly
occurred. Otherwise, the account of Barney Ross’s experiences in that bloody, muddy shell hole is a true one.

The portrait of Westbrook Pegler is drawn primarily from two biographies—
Pegler: Angry Man of the Press
(1963), Oliver Platt; and
Fair Enough: The Life of Westbrook Pegler
(1975), Finis Farr. Also consulted were Pegler’s own writings, including the collections
’T Ain’t Right
(1936) and
George Spelvin, American, and Fireside Chats
(1942), as well as his newspaper columns pertaining to Bioff and Browne. The anti-Semitic behavior of Pegler depicted here is reflected in these biographies to an extent, as well as in Louis Nizer’s
My Life in Court
(1961); but is based also upon an interview with an acquaintance of Pegler’s who was on the receiving end of the columnist’s prejudice.

As was the case in
True Crime
(1984), the portrait of Sally Rand herein is a fictionalized one, though based upon numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and especially drawing upon Stud Terkel’s oral history
Hard Times
(1970); but I feel I must label it as fictionalized, as I know of no historic parallel in Sally Rand’s life to her relationship with Nate Heller. Her portrait in these pages is also drawn from a 1939
Collier’s
article by Quentin Reynolds. The portrait of Robert Montgomery is largely drawn from another
Collier’s
article by Reynolds of approximately the same vintage (it is typically Heller-ironic that two articles by Quentin Reynolds, whose libel suit against Westbrook Pegler spelled the beginning of the end for the feisty columnist, served as major reference sources for this novel). The Montgomery portrait was further drawn from
Current Biography
(1948) and
Contemporary Authors,
his own book
Open Letter From a Television Viewer
(1968), and various other magazine articles and books.

Other books that deserve singling out include
The Legacy of Al Capone
(1975) by George Murray—the only comprehensive study of the post-Capone mob era, and a very valuable reference to the writing of the Nitti Trilogy;
The Tax Dodgers
(1948), a memoir by Treasury Agent Elmer L. Irey (with William J. Slocum); and
The Extortionists
(1972), a memoir of Herbert Aller, business representative of the IATSE for thirty-six years.

The portrait of Antoinette Cavaretta, the second Mrs. Nitti, must be viewed as a fictionalized one. Although the basic facts of her business involvement with Nitti, working as E. J. O’Hare’s secretary, marrying Nitti, etc., are accurate, few interviews with her exist (and these brief interviews were at the stressful time of her husband’s death); my imagined portrait of her is largely drawn from the newspaper accounts of the day, and from material in Murray’s
The Legacy of Al Capone
and Ed Reid’s
The Grim Reapers
(1969). Also consulted (in regard to Antoinette Cavaretta and other mob-related figures in this book) were the transcripts of the Kefauver Senate Crime Investigating Committee hearings. Nate Heller’s speculations about Cavaretta’s personal relationship with Nitti prior to their marriage—including her possible role in O’Hare’s murder—should be viewed as just that: speculation; and speculation by a fictional character in a historical novel, at that. It should be noted, however, that the Kefauver investigators explored the same area in the questioning of various Chicago crime figures.

Several hardworking people helped me research this book, primarily George Hagenauer, whose many contributions include helping develop the theory regarding Frank Nitti’s “setting up” Al Capone, and exploring the suspicious circumstances surrounding Nitti’s death. In the previous two volumes “from the memoirs of Nathan Heller,”
True Detective
(1983) and
True Crime
(1984), which with this novel comprise the Nitti Trilogy, theories regarding the assassination of Mayor Anton Cermak, and the substitution of a “patsy” in the FBI-sanctioned shooting of John Dillinger, were respectively explored; these theories, however, had been discussed and developed, in part at least, by previous crime historians. To our knowledge, no one has ever before questioned and explored the circumstances of Nitti’s suicide, or seriously suggested that Nitti engineered Al Capone’s fall; these theories are new to this volume. Despite their presentation within this fictional arena, we offer, and stand behind, these as serious theories and invite further research by crime historians, which we feel will only serve to demonstrate the legitimacy of our claims. (We have, for example, visited the Nitti death site, the terrain of which tends to confirm our notion that a gunman or gunmen may have been firing at Nitti just prior to his suicide.)

Mike Gold, another Chicagoan who is a Chicago history buff with an eye for detail, provided his usual help and support. My friend John W. McRae, a Marine through and through, was kind enough to read the Guadalcanal section and make some suggestions, all of which I took. My friend and frequent collaborator, cartoonist Terry Beatty, also lent his support and editor’s eye to this project. And I would like especially to thank Dominick Abel, my agent, who has done more for me than these few words can indicate. Ruptured Duck awards for combat duty are due Tom Dunne, my editor, who has believed in Heller from the beginning; and his associate Susannah Driver, whose hard work on these books was well above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks also to editorial assistants Susan Patterson and Pam Hoenig. And a big thanks to Ed Gorman and Connie Sisson of Media Consultations. Thanks also to Jane Crawford, of AAA Travel Agency, Muscatine, Iowa; and Chris Dobson, American Airlines historian. Thanks to Chicago’s Bob Cromie for sharing his Pacific experiences in an interview (and whose original
Tribune
articles were invaluable). And a tip of the fedora to three suspense masters: Andrew M. Greeley, Howard Browne and Mickey Spillane, for help, suggestions, and support.

A special thanks to my aunt and uncle, Beth and Paul Povlsen, who shared with me their wartime experiences as nurse and corpsman, respectively, at St. Elizabeth’s. Some of the medical treatment described herein (including the use of hypnosis in treatment of amnesia) derives from John Huston’s classic documentary
Let There Be Light
(1948).

Photos selected by the author for use in this edition are courtesy AP/World Wide Photos and the
Chicago Tribune;
the rest have been selected from the personal collections of George Hagenauer and the author, the bulk of them having been culled from long out-of-print “true detective” magazines of the late thirties and early forties—a few others are U.S. Marine Corps photos. Efforts to track the sources of certain photos have been unsuccessful; upon notification these sources will be listed in subsequent editions.

Hundreds of books, and magazine and newspaper articles (from the
Tribune, Daily News, Herald-American,
and other Chicago papers of the day), have been consulted in researching
The Million-Dollar Wound;
among the magazines are issues of
This Week in Chicago,
a publication that provided background on Rinella’s Brown Derby (where Sally Rand did indeed appear in 1943), the Barney Ross Cocktail Lounge and the Rialto Theater. I am particularly indebted to the anonymous authors of the Federal Writers Project volumes on the states of California and Illinois, both of which appeared in 1939. A few other books deserve singling out:
Hollywood Babylon II
(1984), Kenneth Anger;
Maxwell Street
(1977), Ira Berkow;
Cleveland: The Best Kept Secret
(1967), George E. Condon;
This Was Burlesque
(1968), Ann Corio (with Joseph DiMona);
Captive City
(1969), Ovid Demaris;
Time Capsule: History of the War Years 1939–1945
(1972), John Dille;
Pacific Victory 1945
(1944), Joseph Driscoll;
Dining in Chicago
(1931), John Drury;
Gone Hollywood
(1979), Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz;
The Art of Detection
(1948), Jacob Fisher;
Mafia USA
(1972), Nicholas Gage, editor;
The Battle for Guadalcanal
(1963), Samuel B. Griffith II;
The Homefront: America During World War II
(1984), Mark Jonathan Harris, Franklin Mitchell, and Steven Schechter;
WW II
(1975), James Jones;
Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone
(1971), John Kobler;
Chicago Confidential
(1950), Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer;
World War II Super Facts
(1983), Don McCombs and Fred L. Worth;
Guadalcanal Remembered
(1982), Herbert Christian Merillat;
The Mob in Show Business
(1973), Hank Messick;
People to See
(1981), Jay Robert Nash;
The Untouchables
(1957), Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley;
The Great Battles of World War II, Volume I: The Pacific Island Battles
(1985), Charles E. Pfannes and Victor A. Salamone;
The Green Felt Jungle
(1963), Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris;
Since You Went Away
(1973), Donald I. Rogers;
The Man Who Got Capone
(1976), Frank Spiering;
The 100 Greatest Boxers of All Time
(1984), Bert Randolph Sugar;
Encyclopedia of American Crime
(1982), Carl Sifakis;
Syndicate City
(1954), Alson J. Smith;
The Good War
(1984), Studs Terkel;
Guadalcanal Diary
(1943), Richard Tregaskis;
Yank: The Story of World War II as Written by the Soldiers
(1984),
Yank
editors; and
The Guadalcanal Campaign
(1949), Major John L. Zimmerman, USMCR.

When all the debts have been paid, or at least acknowledged, one remains: this book could not have been written without the love, help and support of my wife, Barbara Collins—Nate’s mother.