“Nothing…it’s nothing….”
“Vera Jayne’ll make you forget…or die trying….”
I was the one who almost died—we did it on the kitchen table next, after I’d fixed us sandwiches, and eventually we even got around to the bedroom. It was close to midnight, with Vera curled up against me, her full lips smiling in slumber, when the phone on the nightstand rang.
Catching it on the first ring, hoping not to disturb my guest, I said, “Hello.”
“Nate…Nate….”
It was Jackie!…and she sounded strange…out of breath…was she crying?
“What is it, baby?” I said into the phone.
Vera, half-awake now, looked up at me, propping herself on an elbow.
“Nate,” Jackie said. “Please help me…you have to help me….”
“Where are you?”
“Riverview. A lad…”
“A lad? Baby, what—?”
Now another voice came on the line, a male voice, rather high-pitched but gruff. Was this the “lad” she was referring to?
“She’s hurting, Heller. She needs a fix.”
“Who the fuck—”
“Bring those notebooks to Aladdin’s Castle.”
“Notebooks?”
“Don’t play dumb. We know your pal Drury gave ’em to you—notebooks, diaries, tapes, the works. Come alone. Before one a.m., or the next injection this junkie slut gets is forty-five caliber.”
And the phone clicked dead.
Sitting up in bed, clutching the receiver, eyes and mouth wide open, I must have looked like a madman, because Vera backed away as she said, “What’s wrong?”
“I have to go somewhere.” I swung over and sat on the edge of the bed; then I was using the phone again—dialing this time. “You’ll have to stay here, Vera.”
“Where are you going?”
“Riverview.”
“What’s Riverview?”
“An amusement park—the world’s largest.”
“Well that sounds like fun! Take me along!”
“They’re closed for the season, Vera.”
“Then why…?”
“Quiet,” I said, as the party I was phoning responded.
“Yeah?” the sleep-thick male voice said. “Who is it? You know what the fuck time it is?”
“Tim,” I said to Bill Drury’s ex-cop partner. “This is that call you asked me to make.”
Riverview amusement park—bordered on the north by Lane Tech high school, on the east by Western Avenue, on the west by the Chicago River, and on the south by Belmont Avenue— had been a fixture of the Northside as long as I’d been alive. In fact, one of its rides—the Pair-O-Chutes—loomed over that part of town like a Chicago Eiffel Tower; actually that’s what it had originally been called—the Eye-Ful tower, an observation deck that had been condemned by the city and cannily turned by the Riverview management into a freefall parachute drop. From miles around, you could see the oil well-like structure, crosshatched against the sky.
Some of my earliest and fondest childhood memories were of the so-called “world’s largest amusement park”—free entrance passes were routinely mailed out all across the city, and the park refunded the two-cent streetcar fare for kids (a big table of shiny pennies awaited inside the front gates), encouraging customers for what was already a bargain-packed extravaganza.
When I was a kid, I’d held onto my stomachful of cotton candy and popcorn through the wild ride that was the Jack Rabbit roller coaster, only to be defeated by the Crazy Ribbon, with its barrel-shaped cars rolling and twisting back and forth down an inclined track. Dreams during my adult life on occasion had returned me to the funhouse called Hades, a hell of a ride through dark passageways filled with flashing figures and unearthly noises.
And my memory still tingles with other vivid images of Riverview: the freak show with the Tattooed Lady, the Rubber Man, and Pop-Eye (not the sailor but a guy who could force his eyeballs to jut from their sockets); midget fire eaters; hootchie-kootchie dancers; the African Dip (colored guys dressed like jungle warriors who taunted you into hurling baseballs at them— “Hey man, that ain’t the gal you was here with las’ night!”); and of course every kid’s favorite, the Monkey Races, where you bet on the driver of your choice among the tiny terrified creatures “steering” cars of various colors, cute little critters but if you petted them you’d get nipped—don’t say you weren’t warned.
I hadn’t been a stranger over the years, and Riverview in full sway—especially at night—remained a wonderland unparalleled in the western world, or anyway on Chicago’s Northside. Ablaze with neon, flickering with banjo lights—pop-tune-blaring sound-system horns in dishes ringed by tiny flashing white lights on lamp poles—the midway was a twisty, turny paradise of sleazy nirvana. With a doll on your arm (with a doll under her arm that you’d won for her), you wound through two and a half miles of bright loud midway crammed into a three-block-by-two-block area. Frequently, the air would be torn by the shrill horrified screams of plunging patrons enjoying the park’s legendary roller coasters, sounds of terror giving way to the clanking of chains as more victims were dragged up steep wooden slopes to their delighted doom.
Like most Chicagoans, however, I hadn’t ever set foot inside Riverview in the off-season, much less after midnight. Having parked on Western, I approached the front gates—a white wide pillared archway trimmed patriotically in red and blue. Had I been here just a few weeks ago, that archway would have radiated with neon; now, in ivory-tinged light courtesy of half a moon and a scattering of stars and few streetlamps, the night reluctantly gave up dark shapes beyond the gates, like massive slumbering beasts, and the filigree outline of trees losing their leaves. I could also make out the lettering RIVERVIEW PARK on the ticket booth inside the six-foot fence, which I scaled without any problem, dropping to the cement without hurting myself or making a racket.
While the park was dark—not even security lighting of any kind—the sky glowed off to my left, strangely enough, as if a small sunrise was taking place in the midst of the night. Looming over everything, the steel lacework of the Pair-O-Chutes tower dangled its metal cables like weird tendrils. The air was crisp, almost cold; I was dressed for a night at Riverview, particularly a night I wanted to blend into—a pair of dark slacks, black gum-soled loafers, and a black horsehide jacket over a navy sportshirt.
The jacket was unzipped, to make it easier for me to get at the .38 in the shoulder holster…I had left my nine millimeter Browning at home, preferring to use this gun, which I’d taken from that elevator operator at the Barry Apartments, the night Drury and Bas were killed. Using someone else’s gun has its benefits.
Wearing black leather driving gloves that fit like a second skin, I was carrying a duffel bag I’d packed with some old catalogs and newspapers, snugging in an extra revolver, a .32 that also couldn’t be traced to me. Whoever had abducted Jackie—assuming she had been abducted and wasn’t just party to some Fischetti scheme—was under the mistaken impression I had Drury’s notebooks, tapes, and papers; so the duffel bag seemed a necessary prop.
Riverview struck me as a good choice for the bad business my adversaries were up to—in the midst of the city, the abandoned sprawl of the off-season park provided a large, deserted landscape with many vantage points for positioning lookouts (and snipers) and countless possibilities for hiding, as well as numerous opportunities for hasty exits on all sides.
That these apparent kidnappers had chosen Riverview as a drop point made me suspicious of Fischetti involvement. For one thing, this was Charley’s turf—we weren’t that far from the Barry Apartments, in fact—and only a few blocks away from where Drury had been murdered in his garage.