True Detective (7 page)

"First, I killed somebody, and I wasn't planning to kill anybody yesterday afternoon. Let alone a kid. Nobody seems too concerned about him. though. Nitti's boys say he has no relatives in the city. Claim he's from the old country, an orphan. But that's
all
they claim: they aren't claiming the body. That goes into potter's field. Just another punk. Only I put him there. And I don't like it."

The smile was gone now: a straight line took its place, a pursed straight line. "I understand." the commissioner said, "you weren't so self-righteous one other time."

"That's right. I helped cover something up, and it got me some money and a promotion. I'm from Chicago, all right. But awhile back I decided there's a line I don't go over anymore. And Miller and Lang forced me over that line yesterday."

"You said two things."

'What?

"You said two things got… gummed up. What's the second?"

"Oh." I smiled. "Nitti. We went up there to kill him yesterday. I didn't know that, but that's what we were up there for. And he fooled all of us. He didn't die. He's in the hospital right now. and it's beginning to look like he's going to pull through."

Nitti had been taken to the hospital at Bridewell Prison, but his father-in-law. Dr. Gaetano Ronga, had him transferred to Jefferson Park Hospital, where Ronga was a staff physician. Ronga had already issued statements to the effect that Nitti would live, barring unforeseen complications.

The commissioner stood: he wasn't very tall. "Your allegations are unfounded. The address at the Wacker-LaSalle Building was believed to be the headquarters for the old Capone gang, now under Frank Nitti's leadership."

"It was a handbook and wire room."

"An illegal gambling den. yes, and in the course of your raid. Frank Nitti pulled a gun."

I shrugged Got myself up. "That's the story," I said.

"Keep that in mind," the commissioner said There was a tremor in his voice; anger? Fear.

'I will." I said.

I turned and headed out.

"You've forgotten something."

I glanced back; the commissioner was pointing to my badge, where I'd laid it on his desk.

"No I didn't," I said and left.

"So what's bothering you?" Barney said. "Killing some innocent kid?"

I sipped at my third beer. "Who's to say he was innocent? That isn't the point. Look. I held on to this goddamn thing"- I patted under my arm, where the automatic was- "because my father blew his brains out with it. Anytime I take it out of its harness, somewhere in my brain I keep the thought of that. So that I won't take using it lightly. Only I
did
use it, didn't I?"

"Yeah." He patted my drinking ami. "But you ain't takin' it lightly."

I found a smile. "I guess not."

"So where do you go from here?"

"To all one rooms of my apartment. Where else?"

"No, I mean, what kind of trade you gonna take up?"

"I only got one trade. Cop. For what it's worth."

We'd talked about it plenty of times. Barney and me. That one day I'd quit the department and open my own agency. I'd talked about it with my friend Eliot, too; he'd encouraged me to do it. said he'd help line some business up. But it had always been a pipe dream.

Barney stood up and got a funny little smile going, a little kid smile, and motioned with a curling forefinger. "Come with me," he said.

I just sat there with half a beer in my hand, giving him a "what the______" look.

He grabbed me by the coat sleeve and tugged till I got up and followed him, back through the deli and out onto the street, where the snow had stopped and the city had got quiet, for a change. There was a door between the blind pig and the pawnshop next door. Barney searched for keys, found some, and unlocked the door. I followed him up a flight of narrow stairs to a landing, and then did that two more times, and we were on the fourth floor of his building, which ran mostly to small businesses, import/ export, a few low-rent doctors and lawyers and one dentist. Nothing fancy, certainly. Wood floors, glass-and-wood office walls, pebbled glass doors.

At the end of the hall the floor dead-ended in an office that bore no name. Barney fished for keys again and opened the door.

I followed him in.

It was a good-size office, cream-color plaster walls with some wood trim, sparsely furnished: a scarred oak desk with its back to the wall that had windows, a brown leather couch with some tears repaired by brown tape, a few straight-back chairs, one in front of the desk, a slightly more comfortable, partially padded one behind it. The El was right outside the windows. It was a Chicago view, all right.

I ran a finger idly across the desk top. Dusty.

"You can find a dustcloth. can't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's your office. Leave it filthy if you want."

"My office?"

"Yeah."

"Don't go
meshugge
on me. Barney."

"Don't go Yiddish on me. Nate. You can't pass."

"Then don't go Jewish on me when you tell me the rent."

"For you, nothing."

"Nothing."

"Almost nothing. You gotta live here. I can use a night watchman. If you ain't gonna be here some night, just phone in and I'll cover for you somehow."

"Live here."

"I'll put a Murphy bed in."

He opened a door that I thought was a closet. It wasn't. The office had its own washroom: a sink, a stool.

"Not all the offices have their own can," he said, "but this was a lawyer's office, and lawyers got a lot to wash their hands over."

I walked around the room, looking at it; it was kind of dingy-looking. Beautiful-looking, is what it was.

"I don't know what to say, Barney."

"Say you'll do it. Now, in the morning, you want a shower, you walk over to the Morrison." The Morrison Hotel was where Barney lived. They had a traveler's lounge for regular patrons who were in town for the day and needed a place to freshen up or relax- sitting rooms, shower stalls, exercise rooms- one of which had been converted into a sort of mini-gym by Barney, with the hotel's blessing.

"I'll be working out there most mornings," Barney continued, "and at the Trafton gym most afternoons. You're welcome both places. I'm training, you know."

"Yeah,
somebody's
got to pay for all this."

Barney was known for being a soft touch: a lot of the guys from the old neighborhood had taken advantage of him, hitting him for loans of fifty- and a hundred like asking for a nickel for coffee. I didn't want to be a leech; I told him so.

"You're makin' me mad, Nate," he said expressionlessly. "You really think it's smart to make the next champ mad?" He struck a half-assed boxing pose and got a laugh out of me. "So what do you say? When do you move in?"

I shrugged. "Soon as I break it to Janey, I guess. Soon as I see if I can get an op's license. Jesus. You're Santa Claus."

"I don't believe in Santa Claus. Unlike some people I know, I'm a
real
Jew."

"Yeah, well drop your drawers and prove it."

Barney was looking for a fast answer when the El rumbled by like a herd of elephants on roller skates and provided him with one.

"No cover charge for the local color," he said, speaking up.

"Don't you know music when you hear it?" I said. "I wouldn't take this dump without it."

Barney rocked on his heels, smiling like a kid getting away with something.

"Let's get out of here." I said, trying not to smile back at him, "before I start dusting."

"Nightcap?" Barney asked.

"Nightcap," I agreed.

I was having one last beer, and Barney, staying in training, was just watching, when a figure moved up to the booth like a truck parking.

It was Miller; the eyes behind the Coke-bottle glasses looked bored, half-asleep.

"How's the fight racket, Ross?" Miller asked, in his off-pitch monotone, hands in his topcoat pockets.

"Ask your brother," Barney said, noncommitally. Miller's brother Dave, also an ex-bootlegger, was a prizefight referee.

Miller stood there for a while, his capacity for making small talk exhausted.

Then moved Iris head in a kind of sideways nod, toward me, and said, "Come on."

"What?"

"You're coming with me. Heller."

"What is it? Visiting time at Nitti's hospital room? Go to hell, Miller."

He leaned over and put a hand on my arm. "Come on. Heller."

"Hey, pal, this is where I came in."

Barney said, "I'm going to land you on your fat ass, Miller, if you don't take your hand off my friend."

Miller thought about that, took the hand off, but out of something closer to boredom than fear from Barney's threat.

"Cermak wants to see you," he said to me. "Now. Are you coming, or what?"

I'd never spoken to Mayor Cermak, but I'd seen him before; almost every cop in Chicago had. His Honor liked to pull surprise personal inspections on the boys in blue and then cany his criticisms to the press. He claimed he wanted to weed the deadweight out of the department, to cut down on the paperwork, to have a maximum number of men out on the streets at all times, battling crime. All this from a mayor with the behind-his-back nickname Ten Percent Tony, whose political life seemed a study in patronage; who as Cook County commissioner (a position also known as "mayor of Cook County?") had given Capone free reign (well, not exactly "free") to turn the little city of Cicero into gang headquarters, with it and nearby Stickney becoming the wettest of the wet in this dry land, as they were simultaneously overrun with slot machines, whores, and gangsters. Cook County, where two hundred roadhouses had been personally licensed by Tony; where Capone dog tracks flourished thanks to an injunction by a Cermak judge; where Sheriff Hoffman permitted bootleggers Terr Druggan and Frankie Lake to leave his jail most anytime they pleased, and they consequently spent more time in their luxurious apartments than behind bars, though Hoffman eventually landed behind bars himself- for thirty? days- after which Cermak gave him a post with the forest preserves at ten grand per annum; and, well, all this "reform" talk coming from Cermak sounded like a crock of shit to most Chicago cops.

But we cops didn't underestimate our mayor. We may have referred to him as "that bohunk bastard," among other things, and, like most other civil service employees, hated or feared him or both, and at the very least resented the "for sale" nature of positions and promotions; but we didn't underestimate him. We knew him to be unfailingly familial' with every operation in his administration- from beat cop to building inspector, from clerk to cabinet officer; and he brought a level of competence, even administrative brilliance, to the office of mayor, equaled only by the level of his paranoia, which he manifested in his incessant wiretapping, mail interception, use of surveillance, planting of undercover men. and seeking out of stool pigeons- all within his own administration.

Cermak was a roughneck made good. He was foreign-born (a first for a Chicago mayor), brought to this country as an infant, from Czechoslovakia, and went no farther than third grade. By age thirteen he was working with his father in the coal mines of Braidwood. Illinois; by sixteen he was a railroad brakeman in Chicago. A brawler and two-fisted drinker, he was soon leader of a youth gang that based itself in a saloon; this rising star attracted the local Democratic organization, and young Tony was suddenly a ward heeler. He purchased a horse and wagon, started hauling wood, and built a business, using his political contacts to good advantage. He became secretary to an organization called the United Societies, a lobby of saloonkeepers, brewers, and distillers; he maintained this position when, in 1902. he entered the state legislature- showing his versalitity by simultaneously serving as state representative and lobbyist for the saloon interests.

From the state legislature Cermak went to the city council (a step up: an alderman got a bigger salary and had more patronage at his disposal), then on to baliff of municipal court, commissioner of Cook County Board and, by '29, head of the Democratic organization of Cook County. His mayoral victory in '31 was by the widest margin in Chicago history; he had crossed ethnic lines to build coalitions within his party, and put together a machine. It was a lot like what Capone had done.

Cermak probably had no idea, till tonight, that I lived across the alley from him. He lived in the Congress Hotel, and had a view of the park, I'd bet; I lived across the alley in the Adams Hotel, a residential hotel that was not a flophouse, but it sure didn't have a view of the park. It had a view of the back of the Congress, is what it had.

I wasn't home when Miller came calling on me, of course, but evidently somebody- Cermak's fabled espionage system. I supposed- had known enough about me to gather I'd be at Barney Ross' speak. After all. somebody had known enough about me to know where I'd be yesterday afternoon. I was starting to feel like an open book. A well-thumbed one.

It wasn't much of a walk from Barney's building to the Congress; just follow the El up Van Buren a few blocks- the wind off the lake seemed more cool now than cold, the powderlike snow blowing around a little- then down State Street, past Congress and up Harrison, past my hotel, all three less-than-luxurious stories of it, and on to Cermak's.