He stopped grinning. “What is this? What the hell are you talking about?”
I could have asked him the same thing, but I said, “I’ve never been one of that crowd. I’ve always been a free agent. I’ve worked with them, but that doesn’t mean I’m one of them. Hell, I’ve worked with you, too. I’ve worked with just about everybody in this town.”
“Tim, listen,” he said, and he was being very solemn now, “listen, this ain’t the time for that jazz. There’s gonna be a war in this town, Tim, and everybody’s got to line up, one way or the other. I heard about you turning them down when they wanted you to finger me to the reformers, so I figured you were quits with that crowd. I figured you’d be coming over with Abner Korlov and me.” Abner Korlov owned Amalgamated Machine Parts, where most of the North Side people worked. He and Jordan Reed had been bitter enemies for years. Reed had managed to grab control of the town, and Korlov had been trying ever since to get it away from him.
“You figured wrong, Jack,” I said. “I’m not picking any sides.”
“Tim,” he said, “listen. I’m in a bind. Up here, I know where I am, I know what the score is. Downtown, I’m lost. It’s out of my territory. Things have been okay up till now, but there’s a war coming. And I don’t have any contacts downtown.”
“Your whole damn family works for the city,” I reminded him.
He made a disgusted hand-motion. “They don’t know from nothing. Everybody knows they’re my people. Who talks to them, who tells them anything?” He frowned, then said, “Cindy, you two guys. Out a minute.”
Without a word, Cindy and the two guys left the room, closing the door behind them.
Jack leaned forward, his belly against the desk, his face serious and worried. “I got to know what the downtown crowd is doing,” he said urgently. “I was just lucky I heard about them asking you. That was just lucky. But I got to know what they’re doing, what they’re figuring. If I don’t they’ll crucify me. That’s why I want you, I need somebody downtown. And I know if you said you were with me I could trust you.”
“Jack—”
“Listen,” he said. “A deal, we make a small deal. I do you a favor, you do me a favor. That’s all there is to it. Okay?”
“What favor?” I asked him.
“You’re downtown,” he said. “You know what’s going on. If you hear anything that’s got to do with me, anything at all, you let me know. I’ll keep it under my hat, I swear to God, nobody will ever know it came from you, not even my wife. A personal favor to me.”
“Jack, listen—”
“Wait a second,” he said quickly. “I’ll give you something back. I’ll do you a favor back. Somebody’s been gunning for you, right?”
I nodded.
“You need a bodyguard,” he said. “You need somebody to watch your back, watch your sides. Those two guys that were here, I’ll have them stick with you. They’re good, Tim, they know what they’re doing.”
The idea was awfully appealing. Though it might not be so good to have two of Jack’s bully-boys on my flanks. “I don’t know if I’ll hear anything, Jack,” I said. “Everybody’s scared downtown, nobody’s telling anybody anything.”
“If you hear,” he said. “You don’t hear anything, okay, you don’t. I’m not even asking you to go looking. Just if you happen to hear. And you got these two boys to help you.”
I nodded. “All right,” I said. “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know. But don’t count on me.”
He grinned and leaned back in his chair. “They’re good boys,” he said. “They’ll take good care of you.”
“In what way, Jack?” I asked him.
He laughed. “Bodyguards walk in front, Tim,” he said. “That’s their job.”
He hollered for everybody to come back in, and Cindy entered, followed by the two good boys. “Listen,” Wycza said to them, “Tim’s gonna help us a little bit, and we’re gonna help him a little bit. Somebody’s been gunning for him. I want you two to go with him, make sure he doesn’t get hurt.” He turned to me. “Tim, that’s Ben and that’s Art. They’re good boys.”
Ben was dead-pan, and simply nodded, but Art grinned like the Cheshire cat and said, “You sure you need bodyguards, Mr. Smith? You don’t look like the type.”
I touched the bandage on my forehead, and I thought of the four tries the guy had already made. “I’m pretty sure,” I said.
Nineteen
We went down to the car, and the one named Art, the grinning one, slid into the front seat beside me, while the other one settled himself in back. I U-turned and headed back downtown.
After a couple of blocks, Art said, “Where we headed for, Mr. Smith?”
“Get some insurance,” I said. “Make your job easier.”
He grinned some more. “Jack told us you were shifty but honest,” he said conversationally. “How do you work a stunt like that?”
“I’m on the side of the angels,” I told him.
“There aren’t any angels in Winston,” he said. He reached out to flick on the car radio. “Mind some music?”
“That’s a police radio,” I told him. “All it picks up is squad-car calls.”
He looked impressed. “How come you rate that?” he wanted to know.
“I’m on the city payroll,” I told him. “I could have one of those things for my house if I wanted it.”
“Wow,” he said, in mock awe, and we rode the rest of the way in silence. I checked the rear-view mirror a couple of times, and Ben, the dead-pan one, just kept looking out the window at the houses as we went by. I wasn’t sure whether he was being extra conscientious and was looking for possible snipers, or whether he was just bored.
Downtown, I found a parking space half a block from the Winston Hotel. “I’ve got to go talk to somebody in there,” I told Art. “You and Ben can come along as far as the lobby, but from there on I walk alone.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Smith,” he said. “You’re the boss.” He unbent his lanky frame out of the car and strolled along beside me to the hotel. Ben kept a couple of paces behind all the way.
“Be right back,” I said, when we were all in the lobby together, and went on to the desk. I got Masetti’s room number from Charlie, the desk clerk, and took the elevator up to his floor. I followed the corridor around a couple of turns, and knocked on Masetti’s door.
He opened the door right away, and looked at me as though he didn’t at all like what he saw. I asked him if I could come in. He said, “Yes,” and turned his back on me.
I went on into the room, and was surprised to see his suitcase, half-packed, lying open on the bed. Completely ignoring me, he went on with the process of transferring his clothes from the bureau to the suitcase.
I waited a minute for him to remember I was there, and when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to remember, I reminded him, saying, “I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Masetti.”
“Go ahead and talk,” he said. He sounded peeved.
“I want to give you a piece of information,” I told him, “if I can get a guarantee from you you won’t use it until and unless I say you can.”
“Is that right?” he said. He went on packing shirts, moving with the fast, unnecessarily rough movements of a man about to boil over with rage.
I didn’t get it, and I didn’t much like it. This wasn’t the way I’d expected to find Masetti. I’d planned on telling him where the soup cartons full of files were hidden, if I could get a promise from him that he wouldn’t make a move toward them unless I didn’t call him at four o’clock. That way, I’d have double insurance against any double-cross from Jordan Reed. Because Jordan, after all, was one of the seven possibles on my suspect list.
But the way Masetti was acting, he couldn’t care less if I talked to him or left or flew to the moon. It wasn’t according to my plan, and it annoyed me.