But none of them stopped by the union hall-only a steady stream of winos and bums went in and out.
Thenhe ound seven, I spotted somebody who didn’t fit the profile.
It was a guy I knew-a fellow private op, Eddie McGowan, a Pinkerton man, in uniform, meaning he was on nightwatchman duty. A number of the merchants along Madison must have pitched in for his services.
I left the stakeout and waited down on the street, in front of the plumbing supply store, for Eddie to come back out. It didn’t take long-maybe ten minutes.
“Heller!” he said. He was a skinny, tow-haired guy in his late twenties with a bad complexion and a good outlook. “What no good are you up to?”
“The Goldblatt’s shooting. That kid they killed was working with me.”
“Oh! I didn’t know! Heard about the shooting, of course, but didn’t read the papers or anything. So you were involved in that? No kidding.”
“No kidding. You on watchman duty?”
“Yeah. Up and down the street, here, all night.”
“Including the union hall?”
“Sure.” He grinned. “I usually stop up for a free drink, ’bout this time of night.”
“Can you knock off for a couple of minutes? For another free drink?”
“Sure!”
Soon we were in a smoky booth in back of a bar and Eddie was having a boilermaker on me.
“See anything unusual last night,” I asked, “around the union hall?”
“Well…I had a drink there, around two o’clock in the morning. That was a first.”
“A drink? Don’t they close earlier than that?”
“Yeah. Around eleven. That’s all the longer it takes for their ‘members’ to lap up their daily dough.”
“So what were you doing up there at two?”
He shrugged. “Well, I noticed the lights was on upstairs, so I unlocked the street level door and went up. Figured Alex…that’s the bartender, Alex Davidson…might have forgot to turn out the lights, ’fore he left. The door up there was locked, but then Mr. Rooney opened it up and told me to come on in.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He was feelin’ pretty good. Looked like he was workin’ on a bender. Anyway, he insists I have a drink with him. I says, sure. Turns out Davidson is still there.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. So Alex serves me a beer. Henry Berry-he’s the union’s so-called business agent, mousy little guy with glasses-he was there, too. He was in his cups, also. So was Rooney’s wife-she was there, and also feeling giddy.”
I thought about Pribyl’s description of Mrs. Rooney as a matronly woman with four kids. “His wife was there?”
“Yeah, the luctiff.”
“Lucky?”
“You should see the dame! Good-lookin’ tomato with big dark eyes and a nice shape on her.”
“About how old?”
“Young. Twenties. It’d take the sting out of a ball and chain, I can tell you that.”
“Eddie…here’s a fin.”
“Heller, the beer’s enough!”
“The fin is for telling this same story to Sgt. Pribyl of the State’s Attorney’s coppers.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But do it tomorrow.”
He smirked. “Okay. I got rounds to make, anyway.”
So did I.
At around eleven fifteen, bartender Alex Davidson was leaving the union hall; his back was turned, as he was locking the street-level door, and I put my nine-millimeter in it.
“Hi, Alex,” I said. “Don’t turn around, unless you prefer being gut-shot.”
“If it’s a stick-up, all I got’s a couple bucks. Take ’em and bug off!”
“No such luck. Leave that door unlocked. We’re gonna step back inside.”
He grunted and opened the door and we stepped inside.
“Now we’re going up the stairs,” I said, and we did, in the dark, the wooden steps whining under our weight. He was a big man; I’d have had my work cut out for me-if I hadn’t had the gun.
We stopped at the landing where earlier I had spoken to Sgt. Pribyl. “Here’s fine,” I said.
I allowed him to face me in the near-dark.
He sneered. “You’re that private dick.”
“I’m sure you mean that in the nicest way. Let me tell you a little more about me. See, we’re going to get to know each other, Alex.”
“Fuck you.”
I slapped him with the nine millimeter.
He wiped blood off his mouth and looked at me with hate, but also with fear. And he made no more smart-ass remarks.
“I’m the private dick whose twenty-one-year-old partner got shot in the head last night.”
Now the fear was edging out the hate; he knew he might die in this dark stairwell.
“I know you were here with Rooney and Berry and the broad, last night, serving up drinks as late as two in the morning,” I said. “Now you’re going to tell me the whole story-or you’re the one who’s getting tossed down the fucking stairs.”
He was trembling, now; a big hulk of a man trembling with fear. “I didn’t have anything to do with the murder. Not a damn thing!”
“Then why cover for Rooney and the rest?”
“You saw what they’re capable of!”
“Take it easy, Alex. Just tell the story.”
Rooney had come into the office about noon the day of the shooting; he had started drinking and never stopped. Berry and several other union “officers” arrived and angry discussions about being under surveillance by the State’s Attorney’s cops were accompanied by a lot more drinking.
“The other guys left around five, but Rooney and Berry, they just hung around drinking all evening. Around midnight, Rooney handed me a phone number he jotted on a matchbook, and gave it to me to call for him. It was a Berwyn number. A woman answered. I handed him the phone and he said to her, ‘Bring one.’”
“One what?” I asked.
“I’m gettin’ to that. She showed up around one o’clock-good-looking dame with black hair and eyes so dark they coulda been black, too.”
“Who was she?”
“I don’t know. Never saw her before. She took a gun out of her purse and gave it to Rooney.”
“That was what he asked her to bring.”
“I guess. It was a .38 revolver, a Colt I think. Anyway, Rooney and Berry were both pretty drunk; I don’t know what her excuse was. So Rooney takes the gun and says, ‘We got a job to pull at Goldblatt’s. We’re gonna throw some slugs at the windows and watchmen.’”
“How did the girl react?”
He swallowed. “She laughed. She said, ‘I’ll go along and watch the fun.’ Then they all went out.”
Jesus.
Finally I said, “What do you did do?”
“They told me to wait for ’em. Keep the bar open. They came back in, laughing like hyenas. Rooney says to me, ‘You want to see the way he keeled over?’ And I says, ‘Who?’ And he says, ‘The guard at Goldblatt’s.’ Berry laughs and says, ‘We really let him have it.’”
“That kid was twenty-one, Alex. It was his goddamn birthday.”
The bartender was looking down. “They laughed and joked about it till Berry passed out. About six in the morning, Rooney has me pile Berry in a cab. Rooney and the twist slept in his office for maybe an hour. Then they came out, looking sober and kind of…scared. He warned me not to tell anybody what I seen, unless I wanted to trade my job for a morgue slab.”
“Colorful. Tell me, Alex. You got that girl’s phone number in Berwyn?”
“I think it’s upstairs. You can put that gun away. I’ll help you.”
It was dark, but I could see his face well enough; the big man’s eyes looked damp. The fear was gone. Something else was in its place. Shame? Something.
We went upstairs, he unlocked the union hall and, under the bar, found the matchbook with the number written inside: Berwyn 2981.
“You want a drink before you go?” he asked.