“I really want to stay out of this,” I said.
Drury seemed almost jittery—I’d never seen him this way. “Nate—please. If this is a trap, I need somebody with your balls, and your savvy. You can handle yourself, if the lead starts flying…. Nate, who else can I ask?”
“How about your new friends on Kefauver’s advance team? They have their own private investigators working for them—a couple ex-FBI agents, or so I hear.”
Drury reddened; he tossed the newspaper he’d been cradling in his lap onto my desk. I opened it up—today’s Chicago Daily News.
“I thought maybe you’d seen that already,” Drury said.
“No,” I said softly, as I quickly scanned the story (bylined Hal Davis), which announced that Drury would soon be meeting with the Kefauver staff to arrange a date for his testimony. It also mentioned his new “bombshell” witness which would require the Crime Committee to “retry the entire Ragen case,” and that Drury would be turning over his voluminous notebooks and personal diaries detailing mobster activities.
“Here I am,” Drury said, “ready to spring a surprise witness, and it’s plastered all over the front page. What are they trying to do to me?”
“This is the kind of advertising you don’t need,” I admitted, “but, Bill, other than mentioning the witness—Fischetti and company knew all this stuff, anyway.”
“That’s not the point, Nate.” Drury sat forward. “All of the information in that article is a direct paraphrase of a letter my attorney sent to Chief Counsel Rudolph Halley, marked ‘confidential.’”
Now I understood why he didn’t want to go to the committee for his bodyguard.
“There’s a leak on the staff,” I said.
Drury nodded. “Ultimately, that doesn’t affect my ability to present Kefauver with testimony and information. I haven’t lost any of my confidence in Kefauver himself…”
“Lee Mortimer has doubts about Halley,” I said. “But I just saw Drew Pearson yesterday, and he pooh-poohed that.”
“Whether it’s Halley or some underling,” Drury said, “I can’t trust them for this kind of help…the kind of help you can give me, Nate.”
I thought about it. Then I shifted in my chair and said, “Bill, did you stake out Fischetti yesterday and today? At the Barry Apartments?”
Drury studied me—not sure what I was after. “You told me to clear out.”
“Yeah, but I notice you didn’t bring my Revere machines back till today. The truth.”
He shrugged—he knew better than to con me. “I was there today—I’ve shut that operation down, but earlier, I was there.”
“Did you hear anything or see anything of that girl of Rocco’s?”
“The former Miss Chicago?”
“That’s right.”
“No.”
“You didn’t hear any talk about her—or hear her come in at the apartment today? Or see her…?”
“No. Nothing interesting involving Rocco, at all today. Of course, I only ever had rooms at Charley’s pad bugged— that’s the nerve center of the Outfit, you know, Charley’s penthouse. Anyway, if I’d rigged Rocco’s place, I’d just have a bunch of train whistles and chugga chugga…. Why, Nate?”
“Personal matter. Never mind.”
Drury glanced at Bas, then turned his penetrating gaze back on me. “Okay, Nate—I’ve said my piece, and answered your questions…. Now—will you do it? Will you back my ass up? He was your client—Ragen. They murdered him on your watch.”
“I can wait while you go rent a flag to wave, if you like.”
He shot to his feet and leaned his hands on my desk and looked right at me. “Nate—Ragen was your friend…. Peggy’s uncle. Jake Guzik and Charley Fischetti and Ricca and Accardo…they had him killed. Jim Ragen wasn’t an Outfit guy! He ran a wire service…he sold information to mobsters, but he wasn’t a mobster. And they killed him to take over—to grab what was his and make it theirs. It’s an old, old story, Nate.”
“…You just want a bodyguard.”
He backed away from my desk, but did not sit. “That’s right.”
Leaning forward, Bas said, “Mr. Heller, we’d be very grateful. You’d have powerful new friends in Cook County.”
I glanced at Bill. “Marvin here does know that I was also Cermak’s bodyguard, doesn’t he? And Huey Long’s? Jim Forrestal, too.”
Bas looked somewhat alarmed.
Drury, amused, sat back down, saying, “Don’t pay any attention to him, Marvin. That’s just his way…. Nate? Will you?”
“When is this famous meeting?”
“Tonight—seven o’clock.”
“Okay,” I said.
Drury grinned and Bas smiled tightly.
The lawyer stood and said to us both, “I’ll meet you there a little before seven—I have to make a stop at my office, over on Clark.”
I shook his hand and Bas went out, with a spring in his step.
Drury, still seated, said, “Why don’t you follow me home, and I’ll drop my car off, and you can drive us over.”
“All right.” I checked my watch. “We have a little time…Want to get a cup of coffee, first?”
“Sure,” Drury said, and stood. “You’re, uh—already packing, aren’t you?”
I patted the nine millimeter in the sling under my left arm. “Oh yeah.”
“That’s not like you—you hardly ever wear that thing.”
“I had a little dustup with Rocco Fischetti the other night. At the Chez Paree.”
Drury’s eyes tightened. “Over Miss Chicago?”
I nodded.
“Well, Nate…all of us have our Achilles’ heel. Yours is just a little higher.”
In the St. Clair coffee shop, as we both drank coffee, I said, “Tell me about this witness.”
“I can’t give you the name, Nate.”
“Don’t you trust me, either?”
“No—I don’t have a name.”
My eyes almost fell out of my head and into my coffee. “You don’t have a name for your surprise witness?”
Drury shrugged, embarrassed; he knew this was half-assed. “I told you—we’ve been going through intermediaries, and we’ve been talking on the phone. Our witness is nervous, understandably so.”
“How did you find this anonymous witness?”
“That attorney, Kurnitz, has a client at Joliet, who’s unhappy with the warden there. Our witness is a friend of the unhappy inmate, who’s been our chief intermediary.”
“What’s the inmate get out of it?”
“Kurnitz is going after the warden for mistreatment of prisoners and misappropriation of funds.”
Actually, that rang a belclass="underline" I’d seen stories in the press about this unlikely lawsuit.
The dark blue eyes were no longer penetrating; they had turned soft, and even sentimental. “Nate—I appreciate this. I didn’t know who else I could turn to.”
“It’s okay.”
“I know you don’t want to buck these Outfit guys. I know I’m imposing on our friendship….”
“Shut up, Bill. Drink your coffee.”
He flashed a chagrined grin, and drank his coffee.
So I followed Drury home. He was driving a blue Cadillac—a new model—which sure didn’t reflect his A-1 earnings; apparently he’d been paid well by journalists Lait & Mortimer and Lester Velie for his insider’s views on Chicago’s gangsters and the crooked cops who served them.
Funny, if you think about it—Drury despised police officers who took the mob’s money…yet he’d been making good money off the mob himself, lately.
Traffic on the Outer Drive was heavy—rush hour—and the going was slow; dusk was already darkening into night. When Drury’s Caddy and my Olds rolled past the Fischetti penthouse on Sheridan, I wondered if Jackie was sitting up there with Rocco, an engineer’s cap on her pretty blonde head, her lovely brown eyes glazed with horse.
Drury lived on Addison, a mile west of Wrigley Field, which we passed on our way. I knew this area well—the United States Marine Hospital, where I’d had outpatient treatment after the war (for my recurring malaria, among other things), was just three blocks northeast of here. And Riverview amusement park, for whom the A-1 provided security consulting, was less than a mile northeast.