I didn’t ask whether that problem was blackmail or going to the press or cops or what. It didn’t much matter.
“So he had you hit her?”
“It was a fuck-up. I was just suppose to put the fear of God in her and get that fucking picture.”
I pressed the gun into his cheek; the one that wasn’t bloody. “That kid — Lapps... he was your accomplice?”
“No! I didn’t know who the hell he was. If we knew who he was, we coulda got that photo a long time ago. Why the fuck you think you were hired?”
That made sense; but not much else did. “So what was the deal, George?”
His eyes tightened; his expression said: You know how it is. “I was slapping her around, trying to get her to tell me where that picture was. I’d already tossed the place, but just sorta half-ass. She was arrogant. Spitting at me. All of a sudden her throat got cut.”
Accidents will happen. “How did that kid get the photo album, then?”
“I heard something at the window; I looked up and saw this dark shape there, out on the fire escape... thought it was a cop or something.”
The black leather jacket.
“I thought fuck it and cut out,” he said. “The kid must’ve come in, stole some shit, found that photo album someplace I missed, and left with it and a bunch of other stuff.”
But before that, he washed the victim’s wounds and applied a few bandages.
“What about the second girl?” I demanded. “Margaret Johnson? And the Keenan child?”
“I had nothing to do with them crimes. You think I’m a fuckin’ psycho?”
I thought that one best left unanswered.
“George,” I said calmly, easing the gun away from his face, “you got any suggestions on how we can resolve our differences, here? Can you think of some way both of us can walk out of this graveyard tonight?”
He licked his lips. Smiled a ghastly, blood-flecked smile. “Let bygones be bygones. You don’t tell anybody what you know — Sam included — and I just forget about you working me over. That’s fair. That’s workable.”
I didn’t see where he got the knife; I hadn’t seen a hand slip into a pocket at all. He slashed through my sleeve, but didn’t cut me. When I shot him in the head, his skull exploded, but almost none of him got on me. Just my gun hand. A limestone angel, however, got wreathed in blood and brains.
I lifted up off him and stood there panting for a while. The sounds of muted traffic reminded me there was a world to go back to. I checked his pockets, found some Camels, and lit one up; kept the pack. Then I wiped my prints off his gun, laid it near him, retrieved my tire iron, put it back in the trunk, which I closed up, and left him there with his peers.
18
The phone call came late morning, which was a good thing: I didn’t even make it into the office till after ten.
“You were a busy fella yesterday, Heller,” Sam Flood’s voice said cordially.
“I get around, Sam.”
“Papers are full of you. Real hero. There’s other news, though, that hasn’t made the papers yet.”
“By the afternoon edition, it’ll be there.”
We each knew what the other was talking about: soon Giorgio (George) Morello would be just another of the hundreds of Chicago’s unsolved gangland killings.
“Lost a friend of mine last night,” Sam said.
“My condolences. But I don’t think he was such a good friend. He loused up that job with the girl, and he tried to sell me a cemetery plot last night.”
The possibility of a phone tap kept the conversation elliptical; but we were right on track with each other.
“In other words,” Sam said, “you only did what you had to do.”
“That’s right.”
“What about that item you were gonna try to obtain for me?”
“It’s in the hands of the U.S. Postal Service right now. Sealed tight — marked personal. I sent it to you at your liquor store on the West Side.”
“That was prompt. You just got hold of the thing last night, right?”
“Right. No time to make copies. I didn’t want a copy, Sam. Your business is your business. Anything I can do to make your happy home stay that way is fine with me. I got a wife, too. I understand these things.”
There was a long, long pause.
Then: “I’ll put your check in the mail, Heller. Pleasure doin’ business with you.”
“Always glad to hear from a satisfied customer.”
There was a briefer pause.
“You wouldn’t want to go on a yearly retainer, would you, Heller?”
“No thanks, Sam. I do appreciate it. Like to stay on your good side.”
“That’s wise, Heller. Sorry you had that trouble last night. Wasn’t my doing.”
“I know, Sam.”
“You done good work. You done me a favor, really. If I can pay you back, you know the number.”
“Thanks, Sam. That check you mentioned is plenty, though.”
“Hey, and nice going on that other thing. That sex-maniac guy. Showed the cops up. Congratulations, war hero.”
The phone clicked dead.
I swallowed and sat there at my desk, trembling.
While I had no desire to work for Sam Flood ever again, I did truly want to stay on his good side. And I had made no mention of what I knew was a key factor in his wanting that photo back.
It had little, if anything, to do with keeping his wife from seeing him pictured with his former girlfriend: it was the table of Sam’s friends, glimpsed behind Sam and the girl in the photo. Top mobsters from Chicago, New York, Cleveland, and Detroit. Some of kind of informal underworld summit meeting had been inadvertently captured by a nightclub photographer. Proof of a nationwide alliance of organized crime families, perhaps in a major meeting to discuss post-war plans.
If Sam suspected that I knew the true significance of that photo, I might not live to see my kid come into the world.
And I really wanted to.
19
A little over a week later, I was having lunch at Binyon’s with Ken Levine, the attorney who had brought Bob Keenan and me together. The restaurant was a businessman’s bastion, wooden booths, spartan decor; my old office was around the corner, but for years I’d been only an occasional customer here. Now that business was good, and my suits were Brooks Brothers not Maxwell Street, I could afford to hobnob on a more regular basis with the brokers, lawyers, and other well-to-do thieves.
“You couldn’t ask for better publicity,” Ken said. He was a small handsome man with sharp dark eyes that didn’t miss anything and a hairline that was a memory.
“I’m taking on two more operatives,” I said, sipping my rum cocktail.
“That’s great. Glad it’s working out so well for you.” He made a clicking sound in his cheek. “Of course, the Bar Association may have something to say about the way that Lapps kid has been mistreated by Chicago’s finest.”
“I could bust out crying at the thought,” I said.
“Yeah, well they’ve questioned him under sodium pentathol, hooked his nuts up to electrodes, done all sorts of zany stuff. And then they leak these vague, inadmissible ‘confessions’ to the papers. These wild stories of ‘George’ doing the crimes.”
Nobody had connected George Morello to the case. Except me, of course, and I wasn’t talking.
“The kid faked a coma for days,” I said, “and then claimed amnesia. They had to do something.”
Ken smiled wryly. “Nate, they brought in a priest and read last rites over him, to try to trick him into a ‘deathbed’ confession. They didn’t feed him any solid food for four days. They held him six days without charging him or letting him talk to a lawyer. They probably beat the shit out of him, too.”