He shrugged. “What’s the difference? You’re alive, and Hauptmann isn’t. I’d suggest you go along about your business.”
“They…must’ve given him a few days’ reprieve. He was supposed to go at the end of March.”
Nitti was nodding. “Yeah. Right at the last minute, that hick detective Ellis Parker had Wendel arrested for confessing; it even went before a grand jury. They had to give Hauptmann a temporary stay.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Wilentz and Wendel got together and repudiated the confession. Wendel told tales of getting the shit beat out of him in basements and so on. Ellis Parker and a bunch of his boys are under arrest, now.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised. Goddamn!”
“Easy, now. Take it easy.”
“What about the Lindbergh kid?”
“They found that baby dead a long time ago.”
I tried to sit up but couldn’t. “You expect me to keep quiet about…”
“Yes.”
Rage and frustration bubbled in me; if I hadn’t been so goddamn weak, so fucking tired, I might have screamed or even grabbed the little bastard. But all I could manage was, “Or I’m fish food, Frank?”
He stood; he patted my arm, like a father soothing an infant. “Be a good boy, Nate. You think I let Hauptmann die? I didn’t let him die. Your pal Lindbergh did. You think that phony son of a bitch deserves his son? The only thing I’d like about that kid turning up is the embarrassment that phony flyboy would suffer. Any time anybody suggests to him his son might still be alive, he bites their goddamn head off. That boy is with a family who loves him. He’ll have a good home, a good upbringing, out of the public eye. What’s wrong with that?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. The image of the little boy clinging to Carl Belliance, saying “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” popped into my brain. The little boy loved the father he had, the father he knew. Would it be such a wonderful thing to yank him away from that? Hadn’t once been enough?
But the thought passed as quickly as it came. “That’s a bunch of bullshit, Frank, and you damn well know it.”
“You go looking for that boy, Nate, and you probably are going to have a dead kid on your conscience.”
“Why…what…?”
His lip curled ever so slightly; it was almost a sneer. “You think Paul and Al are gonna let this come out? You saw what the Waiter was gonna do; you were part of what he was gonna do. You go public, or you go looking, you’d be giving the Belliances a death sentence, and probably the boy, too. You want that on your conscience, Nate? You go ahead. You go look for ’em. I won’t be able to protect them, then. Or you.”
I thought about that. Finally I said, “What about you and Ricca?”
His smile was faint but it was there. “Now I have something, now I know something, something I can use, where Paul and Al are concerned. Now I’m not so worried about Al getting out, or Paul moving up.”
“Ricca could go looking for the Belliances and the boy…”
“Not without crossing me. Paul’s not ready to openly defy me just yet. And by the time he ever does, this will be ancient history.”
I shook my head, smiled mirthlessly. “You would never have let this come back on the Outfit, would you, Frank?”
“Never,” he admitted.
Hauptmann wasn’t the only patsy in this case.
Now I was worried. “Maybe you’re right that Ricca won’t go after the Belliances and their ‘son.’ But he sent those fuckers to kill me, too, Frank. What’s going to keep him from doing that again?”
He patted my arm. “Me, Nate. And you. Our respective reputations. I told Paul you were took care of. You been paid off. He’s heard about you, about the Lingle case; he knows you’re…discreet.”
I laughed harshly; it made my side hurt. “He figures I’m for sale. Maybe I am, at that. So what’s this worth to you, Frank? How much am I gonna get for keeping quiet about the ‘crime of the century’? It ought to be worth a lot.”
“Oh, it is. And I think you’re gonna like what you get.”
“What do you mean?”
“You get to wake up tomorrow, Nate.”
“Oh.” I tasted my tongue again. “Well. That is fair.”
“I’m even throwin’ in picking up your hospital bill.”
I was shaking my head. “Frank, there are people who are going to want explanations from me. Governor Hoffman, for one….”
He gestured with an open palm. “You came to Chicago to follow up a lead. You got shot up by some nasty fellows who didn’t like you. You wound up in the hospital. But the lead didn’t pan out. End of story.”
“I got no choice in this at all, do I, Frank?”
“Nate, every man has free will. Every man can choose his destiny. This is America. In America, a man can do whatever he thinks is right.”
I might’ve cracked wise, but he believed that shit; he was an immigrant who made good.
“Well,” I said. “That family loves that little boy. And he loves them. And you’re telling me, they’re protected, they’re off somewhere raising that little boy, living a nice quiet life?”
“Yes.”
“Well. I guess I can live with that.”
“My point exactly,” Nitti said, and patted my arm and went out.
A few days later I was back in my office, trying to pick up the pieces of my life, my health and my business. I was calling a list of my regular credit-check customers on the phone when the damn thing rang under my hand and scared the hell out of me.
“A-1 Detective Agency,” I said. “Nathan Heller speaking.” “Nate,” a voice said. A familiar, throaty female voice, conveyed in that one word a world of disappointment. “Evalyn,” I said.
“What happened to you?”
“I was going to call tonight,” I lied. I did intend to call her, but I wasn’t near ready. Governor Hoffman I intended to write, refunding the balance of my retainer minus the days I’d worked and my somewhat padded expenses.
“What happened, Nate?”
“I just got out of the hospital. I was following up a lead, and stepped on the wrong toes. I got shot in the side, actually.”
“I see,” she said.
It was an odd reaction: I thought when she heard I’d been shot, I might buy myself some sympathy. For Evalyn Walsh McLean, her response was uncharacteristically cold.
“By the time I woke up,” I said, “it was too late. Hauptmann was already dead. The cause was already a lost one. I’m sorry, Evalyn.”
“You disappoint me, Nathan.”
Now I was feeling tired; just plain tired. “Why is that, Evalyn?”
“You’re not the only private detective in the world, you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, exactly, Evalyn?”
“I was worried about you.” Now I could hear emotion in her voice. “I hired someone to look for you, to see if you were all right, to see if you were in trouble….”
Oh shit.
“Well, that was sweet, Evalyn, but…”
“Sweet! The first thing the operative discovered was that you’d made a phone call from my house to a number in Chicago. The number was that of a business, a ‘cigar stand,’ owned by a certain Mr. Campagna, who is a Chicago mobster, as you well know.”
“Evalyn.”
The husky voice sounded strangely brittle, now. “You lied to me. You were reporting back to them, weren’t you?”
“This isn’t anything you should pursue, Evalyn. It could be dangerous for you, if you did.”
“Are you threatening me, now?”
“No! Hell, no…I just don’t want you to get yourself in trouble.”
“You were in the hospital, all right. And I know it was a gunshot wound, and I was concerned, I am concerned, and maybe there’s a good explanation, maybe you can make me feel good about you again, but can you answer one thing?”
I sighed. “What’s that, Evalyn?”
“Why were you in a hospital where the chief of surgery is the in-law of some top gangster?”
“Your private detective found this out, did he?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Evalyn, those ‘gangsters’ run Chicago. It’s just a coincidence. Don’t make it something it’s not.”
“Do they run you?”