At the office, Gladys informed me that Bill Drury had called, wanting to meet with me this afternoon.
“You didn’t have anything in the book for four o’clock,” she said at her reception area desk, “so I wrote him in…. I can try to contact him and cancel if you like.”
“No, that’s all right.”
“I told him to bring back those Revere recorders, if he was dropping by.”
“He hasn’t returned them yet?”
“No. And he has a paycheck coming.”
I doubted Drury had been doing much A-1 work in the past several weeks, but I merely nodded at Gladys and headed for my office.
A knock at my door preceded Lou Sapperstein sticking his head in; he found me sitting at my desk, leaning my chin into an elbow-propped hand.
“How was D.C.?” he said, ambling over and depositing himself in one of the client chairs.
I’d made Lou aware not only of my trip, but that the A-1 was working for Sinatra, on the singer’s “pinko” problem.
“Fine,” I said. “A success. McCarthy’s laying off.”
“Great.” Lou didn’t ask how I’d managed it; he’d learned a long time ago not to ask me how I pull things off. “Have you called Frankie boy, yet?”
“No. I’ll do that.”
“Man, is he gonna be relieved…. You look a little peaked, my friend. Have a rocky ride home?”
I looked at him, wondering if “rocky” had been a dig; Lou’s deadpan showed nothing.
I said, “That girl I took in…the one Rocco threw out on her ass—Jackie Payne? She’s disappeared.”
He sat forward. “Shall we put somebody on it? I got two good boys sitting out in that bullpen, doing paperwork, just to keep ’em from playing with themselves.”
“She seems to have left my protective custody of her own volition.” I had not told Lou about Jackie’s drug habit, merely that she had been a punching bag of Rocco’s.
“Sometimes these masochistic dames go back for more from assholes like that,” Lou said, shaking his head. “I could send somebody around to talk to the doorman and janitor at the Barry Apartments.”
“Let me think on it. In the meantime, I’ll call Sinatra and tell him the good news.”
“I got a couple of jobs I need to talk over with you, this afternoon, Nate, if you’re up to it—that banker in Evanston, looks like his brother-in-law is embezzling, all right, and—”
“Sure. Let me make my phone call.”
Lou nodded, got up, and went quietly out.
I called Sinatra at the Palmer House, and filled him in, without sharing my theory that McCarthy had been rattling his cage at the behest of his mob friends. No reason to get Frank stirred up; better to let him think I was a miracle worker.
“You’re the best, Nate,” he said. “How did you like the new material, the other night?”
“You were great. Shave that mustache, and you just might have a career again.”
He laughed. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
“Yeah, definitely see what Ava thinks.”
“Fuck you, Melvin,” he said, cheerfully, and hung up.
For maybe the next half hour, I sat and tried to think if there was something I could do about Jackie—do for Jackie. And I couldn’t come up with a goddamn thing.
So I went back to work, and dealt with the matters Lou Sapperstein had for me, and a couple of other things. Then at four o’clock, Bill Drury was shown into my office, his usual natty self, blue suit and gray homburg.
“I’m not alone, Nate,” he said, the homburg in hand, exposing his thinning dark hair. “Someone’s with me—this is business. Can I have him come in?”
“Sure.” I hadn’t got up to greet Bill—I was still sitting behind the desk.
Drury turned to the open doorway and crooked his finger. A rather fleshy man in his mid-forties stepped in—six foot, hatless, with a square head, dark alert eyes highlighting strong features, and black, gray-at-the-temple hair, wearing a dark gray vested suit with a gray-and-blue tie. His name was Marvin J. Bas, and he was an attorney and Republican politician, in the Forty-second Ward—the turf of notorious saloonkeeper/alderman Paddy Bauler.
I stood up as Bas approached, smiling anxiously; we shook hands across the desk, said hello—using each other’s first names, though we didn’t know each other well, at all.
A folded newspaper tucked under his arm, Drury—who seemed uncharacteristically edgy—shut the door and came over and sat next to Bas, the pair filling both client chairs across from me at the desk.
“I’m a little surprised, Bill,” I said. “I thought you were coming around to settle up—return equipment, collect a paycheck. I hope Marvin’s presence doesn’t mean you plan to sue me.”
I’d said that with a smile, but anything was possible.
“No,” Drury said, with his own small smile, the newspaper in his lap like a napkin, “I realize I’ve taxed your patience, and took advantage of our friendship, these last few weeks…putting you on the spot, thoughtlessly.”
“If you’re expecting an argument—”
“No. I returned the tape recorders, and I’ll forgo any further paychecks from the A-1. Frankly, I’ve really been working for myself, for a good month now…longer, but prior to that I did earn my agency paycheck.”
“Fine. Is that why you’re here—to apologize? Patch up our friendship? And does that take an attorney?”
Bas, who had a resonant voice, sat forward and said, “Actually, we’re here to seek your help—not to ask a favor, based upon your long-standing friendship with Bill…rather, to hire you.”
“Really. To do what?”
Drury said, “I have a witness—a new witness—to an old crime.”
“And what crime would that be?”
“A murder, Nate.” Pouchy as those dark blue eyes of his might have become, they had lost none of their unsettling penetrating power as he fixed them on me like magnets seeking metal. “A murder you and I tried to solve together in 1946.”
“…You have a new witness to the Ragen shooting. Another eyewitness?”
“Not an eyewitness,” he said, but nodded and kept nodding as he continued, “a witness who will testify to Yaras admitting being one of the assassins—and that Tubbo Gilbert himself covered up the murder. That the witnesses who recanted did so due to Tubbo using a prostitute to—”
I held up a hand. “I know the story, Bill—each of the witnesses admitted to the same chippie that you told them what to say and who to identify.”
“Which was pure utter horseshit,” Drury said.
“It was enough to invalidate them as witnesses…and get you suspended.” I turned to Bas. “You’re working for Babb’s campaign?”
Bas had intense eyes, as well, and his courtroom orator’s voice gave him further weight, as he said, “That’s right. But I’m also working for the Chicago Crime Commission. Virgil Peterson and I are old college chums. I share his enthusiasm for cleaning up this—”
“The idea being,” I said, “expose Tubbo for the corrupt, mob-connected bastard he is, and your man Babb wins the race for sheriff.”
Bas winced. “That’s an oversimplification, but…yes.”
“So why do you need me?”
Drury said, “We have to meet with this witness, tonight— our first face-to-face.”
Bas said, “It’s strictly been intermediaries and phone calls…till tonight.”
I shrugged. “So meet with him.”
Drury said, “That is where you come in, Nate—you and your Browning. I’m hot right now—never hotter. We need backup. The address is at Orchard and Frontier…near the El.”
“That’s a rough neighborhood. Edge of Little Hell.”
Drury raised an eyebrow. “You can see why we need help. This could be a setup.”
A guy didn’t need Drury’s list of blood enemies for this meeting to be dangerous—you could get killed without trying, in that part of town.