Or so I thought, till Charley went on to say: “What we really want to talk to you about is this guy Drury, who works for you.”
“He doesn’t work for me anymore.”
“You let him go? Fired him?”
“That’s right.”
“When?”
“Recently.”
Charley thought about that, then sighed and said, “I understand you’re friends—you were on the department, together. He saved your life. That has to carry weight.”
“Bill is still my friend. But he’s his own man.”
“You need to talk to him. He’s making trouble. Settle him down.”
I gestured with an open hand. “I don’t carry that kind of weight with him. Nobody does.”
Charley’s eyes narrowed under the dark slashes of brow. “You could offer him his job back—at an increased salary, if he concentrates on his work for you. I could arrange to pay you the difference, every month.”
“That’s generous, Charley. But I don’t understand—if you’re not really worried about the Kefauver Committee—”
“I told you: it’s the bad publicity. This lunatic Drury, he’ll testify, he’ll bring up all kinds of ancient history, he’ll spin his yarns, and we’ll look like a bunch of gangsters.”
Can you imagine that?
“He’s a hard-headed Irishman,” I said. “Proud as hell and twice as stubborn—you can’t buy him, and you can’t scare him. And if you…do anything else, you’ll really have bad publicity.”
Rocco glared at me. And this time I didn’t feel like kidding him.
Charley looked unhappy, too, as he got up and poured himself another martini. Still over at the bar, he said, “What you’re implying is out of line, Nate. That’s the old school. This is not 1929.”
Joey said to Charley, as he was sitting back down, “Ask him about Frank.”
Charley sipped his fresh martini and said, “You ask him. Frank’s your friend.”
Joey swallowed and sat forward. “Nate, you must’ve seen Frank out in Hollywood.”
“Just the other night, actually. Why?”
Joey’s handsome face contorted as he said to me, “I can ask him, but what’s he gonna say? I mean, to me? Being who I am. What do you think?”
I said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Joey held out open palms. “Where does Frank stand?”
“Oh. Well—he’s scared right now. The feds are squeezing him—you want bad publicity, try being a show business guy labeled a Red.”
“Never mind that,” Charley said. “What’s your opinion of Sinatra’s integrity?”
“I can’t see him selling you guys out,” I said.
Rocco asked, “Too scared?”
“No. He likes you guys. Respects you. You know how some people feel about movie stars? That’s how he feels about you.”
Charley thought about that, nodded, set his martini glass on the coffee table. “Appreciate your frankness, Nate. Your insights.” He checked his watch, then patted my shoulder. “Gotta chase you out, now—before my next appointment.”
When Charley stood, so did I, and his brothers. I shook hands with Charley and Rocco, and Joey walked me to the elevator.
“Thanks for standing up for Frank,” Joey said, in the entryway. “I’ll get you a ringside table, opening night.”
“Make it a booth,” I said.
Afternoon was turning to dusk, as I reached my car, parked across from the apartment house. I sat for a while, wondering if Drury had gotten his ass out of there yet. But I was also waiting to see who the next appointment was.
A heavy-set man in an expensive topcoat with a fur collar walked up the sidewalk to where George the doorman held the door open for him, like he was a regular. Maybe he was: the guy was Captain “Tubbo” Gilbert, candidate for Cook County sheriff.
I was chewing that over when the blonde showgirl with the black eye came out, wearing a pink long-sleeve sweater and pink slacks and carrying two big pink suitcases with a gray garment bag over her arm. I had a hunch her railroad cap wasn’t in either suitcase.
She was stumbling; she’d been crying. George looked like he might want to help her, but didn’t.
She must not have had a car of her own, because she hauled the suitcases to the corner and sat on them, like she was waiting for a bus. A cab might come by, eventually—maybe she’d called one. I knew I should mind my own business.
Instead, I called out, “Hey!”
She looked up and squinted across the street at me.
“You need a lift?” I asked.
She swallowed and nodded.
So I got out and went over and helped with her bags, and loaded them—and her—into my Olds.
As I headed back to the Loop—it was on the tail end of rush hour on the Outer Drive—she looked over at me, timidly, using big brown eyes that were beautiful even if they were bloodshot. “You…you’re not one of them, are you?”
I figured she meant, was I a mob guy?
“No,” I said, and hoped to hell I was right.
At the time of its construction before the turn of the century, the sixteen-story Monadnock Building in the south Loop had been the world’s biggest office building, as well as the last—and largest—of the old-style masonry structures, with walls fifteen feet thick at the base. The dark brown brick monolith nonetheless had a modern, streamlined look—thanks to its flaring base, dramatic bay windows, and the outward swell at the top, in lieu of a cornice. A classy building, a classic building—and home of the A-1 Detective Agency.
The A-1 had begun back in December ’32 as a single office over a blind pig in an undistinguished building on nearby Van Buren, sharing a street with hockshops, taverns, and flophouses, with fellow tenants numbering abortionists, shylocks, and a palm reader or two. It was always an awful place, but my friend Barney Ross, the boxer, owned it, so that’s where I got my start.
By ’43 I’d expanded to a suite of two offices and had taken on two operatives (including Lou Sapperstein, who was now a partner) and a knockout secretary named Gladys, who was unfortunately all business; we eventually took over most of the fourth floor. After the war we were briefly in the Rookery, but the space was limited and the rent wasn’t.
So we now had the corner office on the seventh floor of the venerable Monadnock, with a view over Jackson Boulevard of the Federal Building. I had four full-time operatives and two part-time, who shared a big open bullpen of desks; Lou had a small office and I had a big one (Gladys had a reception cubbyhole). We were close to the courts and the banks, and yet still within spitting distance of the Sin Strip of State Street. It was everything a private eye in Chicago could want.
I even looked like one, in the military-style London Fog raincoat and my green Stetson fedora, as—on the cool, overcast September morning after my meeting with the Fischetti boys—I strolled in the Monadnock’s main entrance at 53 West Jackson. Plenty of natural light filtered through the store windows on either side of the corridor—the building was narrow and these were the back-end show-window entries of stores facing Dearborn and the glorified alley that was Federal. The Monadnock had open winding stairwells all the way up, beautiful things, but I took the elevator to seven.
I took a left as I got off on my floor and strode down to the frosted-glass-and-wood wall behind which was our reception nook—or was it a cranny? In bold black, the door said:
A-1 DETECTIVE AGENCY
Criminal and Civil Investigations
Nathan S. Heller
President
and in smaller lettering,
Louis K. Sapperstein Senior Operative
I went in and Gladys Fortunato looked up from her work. A busty brown-eyed brunette with a sulky mouth, primly professional in a white blouse and dark-framed glasses, Gladys was sitting behind her starkly modern plywood and aluminum desk with its phone, typewriter, and intercom.