“Kefauver.”
He twitched a sick smile. “I didn’t think ‘she’ was in town.”
“No, but her sisters are.”
“Good-looking girls?”
Now I twitched a smile. “Sam, don’t ask me to tell you who I talked to up there.”
“Did I ask? I don’t remember asking.”
“You see, the way this works, Sam, is I don’t inform on anybody, on either side. I’m not playing—I’m not even in this game.”
One shoulder shrugged. “If you don’t want to tell me you talked to Robinson and Halley and Kurnitz and Drury’s pal O’Conner, that’s fine. But I would like to know what you told them.”
I shrugged both mine. “I told them if they’re dumb enough to call me as a witness, my amnesia will recur. Or I’ll plead the fifth, or attorney-client privilege.”
The cold eyes were studying me. “That’s all you told them?”
“That’s all…. Well—you saw Rubinstein, I take it?”
“Am I gonna not notice another Westsider? I saw the prick.”
“Well, I told them Jake went way back with Tubbo, and if he told ’em anything, they should consider the source. And that’s all the help I gave them,”
“That’s all?”
“That’s the boat.”
He nodded slowly. “I appreciate this. Your frankness.”
“Can I ask a favor?”
“Ask.”
“I told Charley Fischetti I wasn’t going to cooperate with these clowns; I think he knows I can be trusted. Sam, would you make sure Guzik knows? And Accardo, and Ricca?”
“I can do that.”
“I don’t need anybody thinking I’m a problem.”
“Like your friend Drury is a problem?”
“Like that.”
“What about your friend Drury?”
“He’s still my friend, Sam. But you probably heard, I fired him.”
“I did hear. That’s for real?”
“That’s for real.”
“Okay. Appreciate it.”
I knew this friendly, even charming little man could turn on a dime, but I had to risk it….
“Sam—these guys, these Crime Committee guys, you know they’re not worth killing anybody over.”
He had his shark eyes fixed on me. “What are you trying to say, Heller?”
“Bill Drury—and Tim O’Conner, for that matter—are just a couple of cops trying to get their badges back. Bill’s still flogging the Ragen shooting. Two of the shooters are long since missing, and the other one, well…that’s your world, not mine.”
“Seems like yesterday’s news to me.”
“I’m just saying, these committee guys—they got no power of arrest. The FBI wants no part of them. All Kefauver can do is turn what they find over to local law enforcement. So suppose they come up with some stuff, and then what? Turn the evidence over to Tubbo Gilbert?”
Giancana laughed, once. “You make a good point. But these things sometimes got a way of getting out of hand.”
“Well, Frank Nitti used to say, ‘Don’t stir up the heat.’ That’s good advice, Sam. ’Cause if this turns bloody, all bets are off.”
Kefauver wouldn’t even have been in the crime-busting business if somebody—probably Charley Fischetti—hadn’t ordered the slaying of slimy politico Charley Binaggio in Kansas City, last April. Binaggio had failed to deliver a post-’48-election wide-open K.C. to his out-of-town mob investors. The classic gangland hit—Binaggio and his top goon were found with two bullets in the head each, in the straight-row “two deuces” formation that signified a mob welsher’s ultimate payoff—made embarrassing national headlines…in part because the bodies were found in the local Democratic headquarters under Harry Truman’s picture.
“Are you saying if Drury has an accident,” Sam asked, “your attitude toward testifying might change?”
“Draw your own conclusions, Sam.”
Giancana reached out and gripped me by the arm. He was smiling and his voice hadn’t changed tone…he was still his charming self…letting his words convey the menace.
“You want to be careful, Heller, about threatening me. I like you, you’re a smart guy, and I like that smart mouth; it’s cute. But you don’t want to fuckin’ threaten me.”
I don’t know where he came from; I don’t know if he was staking out the lobby himself, or was on his way up to join his friend O’Conner with the Kefauver advance team.
But suddenly Bill Drury was yanking Sam Giancana to his feet, Giancana’s hat flying off, his grip on my arm popping open, just like the gangster’s eyes were popping when he saw the brawny Drury—in topcoat and homburg—right on top of him, all but screaming in his face.
“Are you getting rough with my friend?” Drury asked Giancana, gripping him by a bicep, looming over him.
I got up, saying, “Jesus, Bill—back off!”
Drury’s flushed Irish puss made a stark contrast with Giancana’s grayish Sicilian pallor. “You don’t want to get rough with my friends, Mooney.”
Giancana’s teeth were bared, like a growling dog. “You’re not a cop anymore, you dumb mick!”
Drury clutched Giancana’s other bicep, holding it as if to shake him. “I’m a licensed private investigator, Mooney. I’m an officer of the court. Are you packing? Care to stand for a frisk?”
I grabbed onto Drury and pulled him away from Giancana, whose eyes were wide and wild. I said, “Don’t do me any goddamn favors, Bill!”
People in the lobby, guests getting off the elevator, were noticing this, some frozen, others moving quickly on, but all of them wide-eyed and murmuring.
I turned to Giancana. “Sam, I apologize.”
His suit rumpled from Drury’s hands, Giancana was breathing hard, trembling with rage. He wasn’t looking at me: his crazed glazed gaze was strictly on the grinning Drury.
Giancana’s voice was soft—a terrible kind of softness: “You ain’t at fault, Heller. It’s your friend who has the problem.”
With me standing between them, my arms out like a ref who broke up a basketball court scuffle, Drury shouted at Giancana. “You’re goddamn right! I’m your problem, and all of you Sicilian sons of bitches better pack your bags, ’cause you’re either going to jail or back home to the motherland!”
Giancana picked up his hat, dusted it off.
I reached a hand out and said, “Sam….”
Snugging the snapbrim down over his bald pate, Giancana said, “Heller—you’re not to blame. You’re not to blame.”
And then the little gangster made a beeline through the white marble lobby, toward the Michigan Avenue exit, leaving his sports section behind.
Drury looked at me with concern. “Are you okay, Nate?”
“Am I okay? Are you drunk? Are you fucking crazy? That’s the looniest homicidal son of a bitch in the city! If you want to die, that’s your business—leave me the hell out of it!”
A hotel employee approached, a youngish man in a blue Stevens blazer. “Gentlemen—I’m afraid we can’t have a scene…. You’ll have to leave.”
Scowling, Drury got out his badge—his P.I. badge—and flashed it and said, “I’m a cop. This is police business. You just get back to your desk.”
“Yessir,” the hotel guy said, and scurried.
I sat back down on the round couch, and flopped back, stunned.
Drury plopped down next to me, grinning, pleased with himself. “They’re all cowards at heart…. Are you all right, Nate?”
“No, I’m not all right! What the hell was the idea?”
“That bastard was getting tough with you.”
“Do I look like I need you to defend me? If I want saved, I’ll go to a goddamn revival meeting. Jesus! Stay away from me, Bill—just stay away. I don’t want to be in your line of fire.”
Drury was spreading his hands. “What? What did I do?”
“You’re not a cop, anymore, Bill. They can shoot at you now—get it?”
He patted beneath his arm, where his shoulder-holstered .38 lived. “Let ’em try.”
“Oh, they will,” I said. “They will.”