“You got it. This was an inside job, and it wasn’t Walt. He was under fire just like I was.”
“What about that truck driver pal of Ragen’s who had the day off?”
“I want him checked out, too. Maybe you can put Richie on that. But my nose says Tendlar. Of all the guys we got working for us, him I know the least about.”
“He was on the pickpocket detail,” Lou said, “but after both our times. We had mutual friends, though. He came recommended.”
“Judas looked good to Jesus, too. It was Tendlar’s shotgun that jammed and almost got me killed. Find him. Sit on him. ’Cause I want him.”
“You’ll have him, if he’s still in town to be had.”
And Lou hung up.
Then I dialed the detective bureau at the Central Police Station, at 11th and State in the Loop. And asked for Lt. Drury.
Bill Drury was another former pickpocket detail dick-only he had stayed on. Recently he’d been acting captain over at Town Hall Station, till he and a handful of the other honest detectives got railroaded out of their jobs by the Civil Service Commission, over supposedly tolerating bookie joints on their beats.
“Drury,” he said.
“Welcome back,” I said.
He laughed. “I been wondering when you’d get around to congratulating me.”
“Well, give me a chance. They only reinstated you Friday. And this is your first day back on the job.”
“It’s not the greatest shift,” he admitted, “but it beats unemployment.”
“How long you been on?”
“Since five o’clock. Where you calling from? Why don’t you come over and I’ll buy you a cup of lousy coffee?”
“I’m calling from Michael Reese. Get your reinstated butt over here and I’ll give you more than a cup of coffee.”
“Oh?”
And I told him, very quickly, about Ragen getting shot up at the corner of State and Pershing.
“Guzik,” Drury said, with a smile in his voice.
“Probably. But remember-I don’t want to end up in the middle of this, now…”
“You’re already in the middle of State Street, exchanging fire with a couple of shotguns-and you don’t want to be in the middle of this?”
“Well, I don’t. Get over here, if you can.”
“Who’s going to stop me?”
I joined Walt in the emergency room, where Ragen, still unconscious but now stripped down to his waist, his pasty Irish flesh even pastier than usual, his wounds dressed, was being rolled out on his back on what looked like a mobile morgue tray, a young fair-haired intern on one side of him, an older heavy-set dark nurse on the other. They were giving him a bottle of plasma.
We followed them out into the corridor, toward an elevator, where they wheeled him on and the intern looked out at me and said, “Who are you?”
“I’m his bodyguard. Let’s hope you’re better at your job than I am at mine.”
I squeezed onto the elevator and so did Walt.
“You can’t come along,” the intern said.
“Watch me,” I said.
It was one of those self-operated elevators.
“What floor?” I asked the nurse, pleasantly.
“Second,” the nurse said, warily.
I pushed the button and we went up.
Walt and I waited outside the surgery, down at one end of a narrow, rather dark corridor, where footsteps echoed on the tile floor and the cool disinfectant-institutional smell constantly reminded us where we were. Ten minutes after Ragen had been wheeled in, two uniformed cops and a detective from the third district joined us.
The detective, a Sgt. Blaine, was a pot-bellied guy in his forties with dark, stupid eyes in a round, stupid face. He pushed his porkpie hat back on his head, to let us know he was appraising us. Big deal. I didn’t know him from Adam, but he’d heard of me.
“Heller,” he said, his humorless one-sided smile buried in a pocket of puffy cheek. “You’re the guy who sided with Frank Nitti over your brother cops.”
“If you’re going to be mean to me,” I said, “I might just bust out crying.”
Now he tried to sneer. “Nobody likes a cop who rats out other cops.”
“Hey, that was twelve, thirteen years ago. And they weren’t cops, they were a couple of West Side hoods Mayor Cermak hired as bodyguards. Okay? Can we move on to new business? Like the guy bleeding to death in the next room? Or do you wanna read the minutes of the last meeting?”
He looked at me like he was thinking of spitting, and maybe he was, but the hospital floor looked too clean. So instead he posted the two uniformed cops at the surgery’s double doors, and got out his little notebook, licked the tip of his pencil, and started asking questions. I knew we’d have to make a more formal statement later on, but I answered the questions, anyway. There was nothing better to do.
“Where’s this shotgun that wouldn’t shoot?” he wanted to know. The first vaguely pertinent question in nearly five minutes of piss-poor interrogation.
“In the trunk,” I told him, and dug out the keys for him. “You’ll be impounding the heap, anyway, right?”
“Yeah, right,” he said, like he’d thought of it too. He tucked the little notebook away, and the Lincoln keys. “I guess you boys can find your way home without it.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” I said. “We work for Ragen.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot,” he smirked. “You’re protectin’ him.”
“That’s right. And we’re sticking, or anyway somebody else from my agency will be sticking, till Ragen or his family sends us away.”
“Listen, buddy.” He prodded the air with a forefinger. “You just take a hike.” He jerked a thumb over one shoulder. “You let the cops do their job.” He pointed at himself with the other thumb.
“Do their job,” I said. “Like look the other way, if the price is right. A fin, say.”
The stupid eyes narrowed, tried to get smart. Without any particular success. He was trying to summon some indignation and come up with something clever or nasty to say, when a finger tapped his shoulder.
“You better call in, sergeant,” Bill Drury said. “I can take over on this end.”
Drury wasn’t big, really, but his broad shoulders and sheer physical presence turned his five-foot-nine, hundred-sixty-pound frame into something formidable. His eyes were just as dark as Blaine’s, but infinitely more intelligent. His hair was thinning, but combed so as to spread what little there was around. His nose was somewhat prominent and his jaw jutting. And, as usual, he was nattily dressed, wearing (despite the heat) a vest with his dark blue suit, the breast pocket of which bore a white flourish of handkerchief, his wide tie a light blue with a yellow sunburst pattern. He was easily the best-dressed honest cop on the Chicago P.D.
Blaine, about the same size as Bill, nonetheless seemed dwarfed by him. He probably felt dwarfed by him, too. The sergeant swallowed, said, “Yes, lieutenant. I should call this information in. You’re right about that.”
And he clip-clopped down the tile floor toward the elevator, and went away.
Drury grinned at me, nodded at Walt. Walt had splotches of Ragen’s blood on his brown suit. I had some on my brown suit, too, I noticed.
Walt excused himself to go grab a smoke. Drury dispatched one of the uniformed cops to stand by the window near the fire escape down the hall, and the other to guard the elevator. Then it was just me and Drury and the surgery double doors.
“Well, Nate,” Drury said. “For a guy who swore off gangsters, you sure pick a hell of a boyo to play bodyguard for. What’s a big executive like you doing work like that for, anyway?”
I smiled at this sarcasm, stalled on the answer; I wanted Lou to have a chance to track Tendlar down before I gave all the details to the cops, even to the honest exception of a cop that was Bill Drury.
“Nobody else was available,” I explained. That wasn’t a lie. It was only marginally the truth, but it wasn’t a lie.
Bill folded his arms, leaned back against the cool brick wall. “I’ve got warrants out on Guzik and Serritella. Also, Murray Humphreys and Joe Batters. And Hymie the Loud Mouth, too.”