You Bet Your Life: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Three) (19 page)

“Don’t let go till I have a grip on your wrist,” I shouted.

He responded, but I couldn’t make out the words. I did manage to get a reasonably good grip on his left wrist, but the whole operation was full of potential failure. My hands were cold and so were his, and I didn’t know if I had the strength to pull him up even if I could hold my grip.

“Don’t try to pull,” he shouted. “Just get a firm grip and let me try to get up on your arm.”

He let go with both hands and my left arm pulled painfully in the socket, but I held my grip. His right hand reached up to get a grasp on my sleeve and he threw his legs up agilely over the same concrete outcropping to which he had been clinging. Just as my right hand lost its hold on the moist wrist, Fleming’s left hand grabbed the brick along the roof and he pulled himself up and over.

We lay there panting and enjoying the firmness beneath us for a minute or two without speaking.

“Do things like this happen to you often?” he finally gasped.

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Fascinating,” he came back with a grin. He pulled himself up and helped me to my feet. “I hope you don’t resent my saying this Toby, but aren’t you getting a bit long of tooth for this sort of thing?”

I shrugged and he nodded in understanding.

As we made our way down the stairs back to his room, Fleming explained that he had heard the man with the gun take a shot at me and had, in turn, thrown a snowball with a rock in it at the carrier of certain doom. The man, whom he did not get a decent look at, had turned and taken a few shots at him, and Fleming had scrambled over the side of the roof to avoid the bullets.

“I don’t think anyone heard the shots with the wind blowing like this,” I said, as we went into the room and Fleming closed the door behind us.

He kicked off his remaining slipper, finished off his bourbon and branch water while humming a tune I didn’t recognize, and went into the bedroom to get his gun.

“We must stay in touch,” he said, turning an armchair to face the door. “Now I suggest you lie down on the sofa and get a few hours sleep while I tell you my life’s story.”

I was too tired to argue so I kicked my shoes off and stretched out. The last thing I remembered him saying was that he had either studied under a psychiatrist in Austria or been studied by one. Either possibility seemed reasonable to me at that point.

In my dream, Cincinnati was undergoing a massive reconstruction and I kept having to move from house to house to stay out of the way. I’d had the dream before and I didn’t like it. When I woke up in the morning, Fleming was sipping a cup of coffee. He wore a fresh suit and was clean shaven.

“Sleep well?” he said.

“O.K.,” I said.

Fleming looked at his watch. “I have an appointment or two,” he said, “and I think you have a crime to get on with.”

We shook hands.

“If you ever get to L.A., look me up,” I said. “I’m in the phone book.”

“And if you ever get to England after this damned war of ours, look me up.”

I went out the door without looking back, made it to the lobby without being shot, let the doorman get me a cab, and told the cabbie Merle’s address.

12

In the very late morning, I shaved, made a couple of scrambled eggs and some toast for Merle and threw two more eggs on for Narducy, who stopped in. Merle coughed her way through breakfast and put up a half-hearted resistance to the orange juice I forced on her. Narducy just looked at his coffee and pulled out a copy of the
Chicago Times,
a tabloid with a little line drawing of a camera looking at the reader at the top of the page.

Merle had a half box of Rice Krispies on a high shelf, which wasn’t so appetizing, but she also had two brown bananas, which compensated. I had three bowls of Krispies with bananas and read about Servi being found on the Lincoln Park bench frozen solid. The story was on page four with no picture. My tale of murder and machine-gunning, under O’Brien’s by-line, made page three with one-column shots of Bistolfi, Canetta, Morris Kelakowsky, and me. The photo of me was the worst, which seemed unfair since I was the only one of the quartet still alive. They had dug up an employment photo from my Glendale police days and had it sent by wire. It was a good ten years old. As awful as I felt, I knew I looked a lot better than that right now.

O’Brien played up the fugitive bit and added a little more blood to my already bloody tale. Aside from that, and the strong indication that I was responsible for the murders, the story seemed fair enough.

“I fixed the lock and cleaned out the trunk,” Narducy muttered.

Merle wandered dizzily back to the bedroom in her floppy robe and groaned.

“Toby,” she croaked in a voice two octaves lower than I recognized, “take care of yourself.”

“Well, Raymond,” I said, rinsing out dishes, “I’ve got two hours to turn myself in to the cops.”

“Hell,” he said, “you can just get on a bus or train and get out of here. The paper says they just want you for questioning. They wouldn’t drag you back from California, would they?”

“I don’t think so, but I promised a guy I’d turn myself in. I haven’t got much to sell but a body that’s ready for scrap, a brain that doesn’t work half the time, and my word. I can’t count on the body and brain, but my word has held up pretty well.”

Narducy shrugged and threw down the last two scrambled eggs and a slice of toast.

“How about finishing up and getting me over to the Drake so I can give the bad news to the Marx Brothers?”

Narducy nodded, finished eating everything on the table that could be eaten, put on his jacket and cap, inched his glasses up, and said he was ready. I looked in on Merle, who was asleep and giving off rasping sounds.

The sun was high, but nothing was melting as we went through the streets. I tried to think, but I was out of tricks and ideas. Narducy said he’d wait for me while I talked to the Marxes. Costello and Chaney were in the Drake lobby not even pretending to hide behind a newspaper. I walked over to them.

“Marx don’t leave,” said Costello. “Not till Frank finds out what happened to Gino. You don’t leave either till Frank says.”

“Someone’s been reading the papers,” I said.

“That a crack about my being able to read?” said Costello through his teeth.

“No,” I reassured him, “I’m not in the crack-making business today. I’ve got more important things to do.”

“Like?”

“Like keeping somebody alive,” I said, and walked to the elevator.

The Marxes were dressed and arguing, at least Groucho and Chico were arguing. Harpo was doodling on a pad.

“Well, Peters,” said Groucho, “you got more publicity in Chicago today than we had all last year.”

“In my business, publicity is not a sign of success,” I said.

I hadn’t sat down, and Chico invited me to pull up a chair. I did and the three brothers looked at me.

“You’ve got something to say, Peters,” said Chico.

“Yeah, Nitti’s boys are downstairs, and Nitti’s not a patient man. I’ve got to turn myself in to the Chicago cops in an hour about those killings, and I don’t think they’ll let me go for a while. I don’t know who killed those guys, and I don’t know who set Chico up as the fall guy. I’m no closer than I was five days ago. The only changes are that I’ve managed to get four guys killed and to give pneumonia to a lovely lady. My advice to you,” I said, looking at Chico, “is to borrow the $120,000 from your brothers, give it to Nitti, and go back to California.”

“O.K.,” said Chico. “Then what do you do?”

“Cops hold me a few days, and I keep trying to find out who killed those guys. Maybe I get lucky and it ties in to who set you up. I think it will.”

“And what does Nitti say about your staying around?” asked Groucho.

“I don’t think he’ll like it, but I’ve never been very good at keeping friends.”

“One more bit of feeling sorry for yourself and we’ll call Nitti and have him cart you out of here right now,” said Groucho.

“Whoever’s pulling all this is always a step ahead and inside my mind. It might take me forever to catch him, or them,” I said.

“Who knew?” said a voice.

I didn’t recognize the speaker. At first I thought someone had come through the door or the radio was on, but the door was closed, and the Arvin on the table was dark and cold.

“Who knew where you were going? Who did you tell?”

The voice came from Harpo. It was the first time I had heard him speak since I met him. I looked at Groucho and Chico, but they didn’t find speech from their brother worthy of comment.

“What?” I said, looking at him. His voice had been soft, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

“Did you tell anyone where you were? Anyone who knew each place you went?”

“Somebody may have been following me,” I said, “but the killer was ahead of me on the West Side, and—” Then I got the idea. It seemed good, and then it seemed stupid, and then it seemed good again. There was only one thing wrong with it, one thing that didn’t make sense.

“Can I use your phone for a long distance call?”

“Be our guest,” said Chico.

I got the operator and placed the call to Miami. It took me and the operator about ten minutes to reach the person I wanted, but when I got him I asked him one question. The answer told me who my killer was.

“Well?” said Groucho. “You look like the cat who swallowed Kitty Carlisle.”

“I’ve got less than an hour to turn myself in to the cops,” I said. “I think you can start packing and stop worrying about that $120,000. I’ll give you a call or be back later.”

In the lobby I stopped to have a talk with Costello. He said he’d have to check with Nitti about what I wanted, but he’d call right away.

Narducy was reading a detective magazine when I got in the cab.

“Know where the Maxwell Street Police Station is?” I said.

He did, and we shot into traffic going south.

If it weren’t so close to two, I probably would have gone back to Merle’s for my .38. I’ve thought about it a couple of times. It would have changed things, probably a lot, but I’m not sure it would have been better.

We hit Twelfth Street and headed east, turned left at an old church, and pulled up in front of a dirty, three-story brick police station that looked like a good man in a bulldozer could level it in five minutes.

“Don’t wait,” I said, paying Narducy off. “This may take a while.” He nodded and drove off.

My watch said it was two minutes to two when I walked up the worn stone steps and pushed open the door.

13

My picture had been on page three of the
Chicago Times,
and probably in the
Tribune.
It was also posted, I was sure, in the Maxwell Street Police Station. Granted that the picture didn’t resemble me, there must have been a pretty good description going. Nobody in the station grabbed me.

There was an old cop on the desk. His face looked like Death Valley. He was in agony over a crossword puzzle he was working on with a well-sharpened pencil, and didn’t look up when I asked for Kleinhans. He directed me through a door marked “Squad Room.”

The Squad Room was a high-ceilinged wreck stained with years of things that come from human bodies—things like tears, vomit, and tobacco juice. It smelled of heavy, ancient sweat. There were four desks and a long table in the room. At the long table, a little man who looked like an insurance salesman, except for his shoulder holster, was patiently going through a mug book with a serious-looking young guy in a brown wool jacket.

The insurance salesman cop was saying, “Are you sure, Mr. Castelli? The man you just identified is Tony Accardo. I don’t think he’d be likely to con you out of five bucks on a street corner.”

“I think it’s him,” said Castelli.

“Let me put it to you this way, Mr. Castelli,” said the insurance cop, “if I thought Accardo conned you, I’d be happy to pull him in, but I don’t think he did, and I think I should tell you he’s not a con man. He’s a mobster.”

“I’m probably wrong,” said Castelli, looking at the picture again.

“Probably,” said the cop. “Let’s look at some more.”

They looked at some more, and I looked around the room for Kleinhans. A cop at one desk was typing a report and singing “Shine on Harvest Moon.” His hair was clipped short, and he had a red bull neck with bristles on it that rubbed against his collar. The woman sitting at the chair near his desk wasn’t singing. She was holding on to her purse with two hands and trying to read what the cop was typing. She looked like a scared bird or Zasu Pitts. At another desk, three cops were looking at something in a folder and laughing. It was loud dirty laughter. I felt at home. It was like most of the police stations and precinct houses I had been in and out of since I was twenty.

Kleinhans was seated at the desk furthest back, near a drafty window covered with bars and so dirty you couldn’t see through it. It was the choice location in the room. Kleinhans saw me before I saw him. He was talking to a thin man with a day’s growth of beard and a brown hat that had gone mad trying to keep its shape. It may have been driven over the brink by the hole in the crown that looked like it came from a bullet. The thin man’s hands were moving furiously in explanation, anguish, pain, and plea bargaining.