He’d moved up in the Outfit, it was said, by virtue of his accounting wizardry, and because he had once warned Al Capone-who he barely knew at the time-of an impending visit by a pair of hitmen. Later, when Jake was roughed up by a hardass thief named Joe Howard-who stuck around the bar where it happened bragging about “making the little Jew whine”-Capone repaid the debt, by confronting Howard at the bar, holding a gun to the man’s cheek, instructing him, “Whine, you fucking fink.” Howard begged a little and Capone shot him in the face. Six times.
Now Capone was crazy as a bedbug, syphilis nibbling his brain while he fished in his swimming pool down in Florida, and Jake was still here. Here in St. Hubert’s; sitting alone at a table for four near an unlit fire place, cutting off his next bite of lamb chop. The low, open-beamed ceiling and prints of fox hunts and other sporting events made this a warmly masculine room. At tables nearby, coldly masculine bodyguards sat, lumpy-faced men in loose-fitting suits under which guns lurked, men with the blank expressions of somebody who could kill you in the morning and forget about it by noon.
Guzik did not look like a killer; he looked like a prosperous, gone-to-seed accountant, which is what he was. He was chubby but small, flesh hanging loose on him everywhere like the underside of a fat lady’s arm. His pouchy eyes huddled behind dark gray tinted wire-rimmed glasses; his flesh was a lighter gray, mottled, aged beyond his perhaps sixty years. His suit was dark blue, nicely tailored but nothing fancy, his tie a solid color blue as well, a shade lighter. He was eating the lamb chop slowly but single-mindedly.
They say the night that Capone threw the testimonial banquet for Scalise and Anselmi at Robinson’s Restaurant in Cicero, only to surprise the boys by pulling a baseball bat out from under the table and clubbing them to death, Guzik just kept calmly eating his dessert while the fatal beating went on. And when Capone, bloody bat in hand, began giving a speech to the stunned assemblage, pointing to the fresh corpses, saying, among other things, “This should teach you to keep your traps shut-and to be loyal,” Guzik tugged Capone’s sleeve and paused between bites to say, “Okay, Al-that’s enough. You made your point.”
“Heller,” Guzik said, glancing up from his plate, his mouth tightening between the jowls into what passed for a smile on that ravaged face.
“Hello, Mr. Guzik.”
A pink-coated waiter, whose English accent struck me as about as real as Mayor Kelly’s campaign promises, had ushered me here, to this side room which Guzik and his retinue had to themselves.
“Sit.” The fat little man gestured. On his pudgy fingers there were no fancy rings-just his wedding band.
“Thanks,” I said, and pulled up a chair across from him.
He nodded to the Greek who’d accompanied me here and the man took a seat at one of the nearby tables with his fellow (if less spectacularly attired) bodyguards.
“How did you and the Greek get along tonight?”
“I didn’t slap him around, and he didn’t kill me. I consider that a fair exchange.”
Guzik grunted his laugh. “Frank got a charge out of you. I can see why.”
He meant Nitti.
“How did you know I’d be going to my office?” I asked.
“I didn’t. I posted a man there and another at the Morrison.”
Fat little bastard thought of everything.
“Mr. Guzik, before we get into anything, there’s something you ought to know: Lt. Drury has a warrant out for your arrest right now.”
Guzik shrugged gently. “I’ll talk to my lawyer. Go in to the station, tomorrow or the next day.”
“But you’re in a public place…”
“Don’t be silly, Heller. Are the police going to bother me here? Who is Drury going to get to make the collar?”
He was referring to the fact that St. Hubert’s was where Guzik acted as paymaster for the police, prosecutors and political bosses of the eight-county metropolitan area. So that pretty much made it hands off. He felt safe here. That was more than I could say.
“I have a job for you,” he said, cutting the lamb.
“I guess you know I’m working for Jim Ragen,” I said, carefully. “I don’t mean to insult you, Mr. Guzik, but there’s such a thing as a conflict of interests.”
“I like you, Heller,” he said, but I didn’t figure he liked me. I didn’t figure he liked anything or anybody, except maybe his family, money and food. Of course that’s true of a lot of people.
He went on: “Loyalty is important. Al was loyal to me, and now I’m loyal to Al. He’s down there in Miami nutty as a squirrel, and a lot of the boys think there’s no need to keep him on the payroll. There’s not a lot of call for brain-damaged people in our business. But I keep him on the payroll. That’s loyalty.”
He ate a bite of lamb, leaving a place for me to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I could feel the eyes of the bodyguards on me.
“We aren’t friends,” he said. “I don’t expect loyalty from you. If you do a job for me, I expect it. But you and me-well, I think you and Frank had an understanding. But to be truthful, to me you’re just a guy who did me a favor once. A guy who can be trusted. That’s a lot. I don’t mean to play that down.”
“I already asked you for a favor, Mr. Guzik,” I said, meaning when I asked him to lay off Ragen’s niece because she was my girl. “I don’t figure you owe me anything.”
“I don’t know about that. When those bookies snatched me, we needed somebody both sides trusted to deliver the dough. And when things got ugly, during the exchange, you came through for me. You did right by me. I don’t forget things like that.”
He was finished with his lamb chop. Since it was after ten o’clock, I wondered if this had been a late supper for him or just a snack.
He poured himself some Mosel wine; then he poured me some.
“Jim Ragen is a friend of mine,” he said. “This has all been a misunderstanding.”
“Mr. Guzik, I was there. I had shots fired on me. I took Ragen’s body to the hospital-he’s been crippled for life from this. Excuse me, but that’s not a misunderstanding.”
Guzik’s eyes went hard behind the gray glass. He pointed a stubby finger at me; it was as steady a finger as has ever been pointed my way.
He said, “That wasn’t my hit. It was that crazy bastard Siegel.”
I felt my face tighten. “Siegel? Bugsy Siegel?”
“Don’t ever call him that or he’ll have you killed.”
Yeah, and you don’t like being called “Greasy Thumb,” either, do you, Jake? But you can’t peel off all those bills without getting some ink on your thumb…
“Why Siegel?” I asked.
“Siegel wants Ragen gone. He figures when Ragen goes, Continental Press will close up shop. The survivors will be too afraid to compete with him and his Trans-American.”
“I thought that was your operation. I thought Siegel was your boy.”
Guzik’s mouth twitched. “He’s supposed to be working for us, and for his Eastern friends.” He shook his head, frustrated. “He was their idea.”
Meyer Lansky’s idea, probably; but I thought it best to leave that unsaid. I was already hearing more from Guzik than I cared to, my curiosity aside.
“I like Jim,” he said. “We’ve had our disagreements. But I think we can come to terms.”
“You’d still like to buy him out.”
“Or go partners. Heller, you got to understand our point of view. Back in 1940, after Jim was convicted on that tax rap, he was on probation-he was ordered by the court to stay out of the racing information business. We ran Continental for him, while he was on probation-we sank money in that we lost. Large sums of money, getting this new business off the ground, after Annenberg had to fold up. Of course Continental went on to be a big success, but without our backing, it couldn’t have gotten started. We feel we already own a part of Continental, based on this indebtedness.”