“I didn’t leave till one,” the secretary said, not at all defensively. She walked to the coat tree, near the wall of books and the solemn Napoleon busts, where O’Hare’s topcoat hung, as did mine. She stood digging in one of his pockets, her back to me; her seams were straight, despite the curves in the road they traveled.
Then she turned and shrugged and displayed two open hands to me and said, “I was looking for his keys. I’m missing some papers that I thought might be in his car.”
She didn’t have to explain herself to me; I wondered why she bothered.
“Tell Mr. O’Hare I’m back from lunch, will you?” she said, and left.
Curiouser and curiouser.
I got up and looked around a little. In the midst of the framed photos on the one wall, just under the clock, was a framed poem, in flowery lettering:
The clock of life is wound but once
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop,
At a late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own:
Love, live, toil with a will.
Place no faith in tomorrow,
For the clock may then be still.
Having absorbed that bit of philosophy, I sat back down. The faces in the framed photos on O’Hare’s desk-a boy and two girls who, in the various photos, grew into a handsome young man and two attractive young women-seemed as confused about being here as I was. They were innocent faces, out of place here, ill at ease, sharing the desktop with the foreign-looking automatic.
O’Hare came back in and smiled, not in his glad-hand manner, and said, “I see you’re admiring my kids.”
“Nice-looking family.”
“Separated from my wife. I’m getting married again, when…when everything’s straightened out.” He was behind the desk again, cleaning the gun. “I think my kids understand.” He put the gun down and turned one of the photos to me: the boy, in a Naval uniform.
“He’s a pilot,” O’Hare said, beaming. And to himself: “I’d do about anything for Butch. Or Patricia Ann or Marilyn Jane, for that matter.”
“Your secretary came in while you were out.”
He looked up sharply; put his boy’s picture back in place. “I didn’t realize she was back from lunch.”
“Well, she is, and said to tell you so.”
“Oh. Anything else?”
I gestured back to the coat tree. “She was looking in your coat, for your car keys, she said.”
Something like relief crossed his face. “Oh. There were some papers of hers in the car. Anyway, my keys weren’t in my topcoat pockets.”
“I gathered as much.”
“It can wait.” He stood, dropped the gun in his suitcoat pocket. “Let me get you back to the Loop.”
“Mr. O’Hare-”
“Eddie.”
“Mr. O’Hare, what is this, anyway? You haven’t said two words to me about your pickpocket problem, and now you’re hustling me back to the Loop.”
He waved that off, getting into his black topcoat and fedora. “We’ll talk in the car.”
I got my own coat and hat and gloves on and followed him out. We entered directly onto the betting area, two rows of cashier’s windows facing each other across a wide expanse of unpainted cement. No Oriental carpets here.
We rounded a corner and Patton was talking to another little man, pale, slight, bespectacled, conservatively dressed, and both men stopped talking as we approached, smiling and nodding at us.
“I won’t be back in till tomorrow, Johnny,” O’Hare said as we passed. And to the other man: “See you later, Les.”
Les said. “See you later, E. J.”
As we were going out onto Laramie Street, into the crisp overcast November afternoon, I said. “Who was that little guy?”
“The park’s accountant.”
“He looks familiar.”
O’Hare said nothing, moving toward an expensive-looking, shiny black late-model Ford coupe.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Les Shumway.”
“Shumway.” Familiar.
He unlocked the door for me on the rider’s side and I climbed in.
“Shumway,” I said.
He got behind the wheel, started her up, pulled out onto Laramie. Awkwardly, he withdrew the automatic-a.32, I’d say-from his suitcoat under his topcoat and placed it on the seat between us.
“Wait a minute,” I said “That’s not the same Shumway that testified against Capone, is it?”
O’Hare said nothing, glancing behind him as he drove. A railroad yard was on our left; Sportsman’s Park stretched along our right.
“That’s who it is, isn’t it?” I said. “The accountant from the Hawthorne Smoke Shop who identified Capone as his boss? Without him, the feds couldn’t have made their tax case.”
“Yes, yes,” O’Hare said, irritably.
“What’s he doing working for you? Better still, what’s he doing alive?”
“Les’s a good man,” O’Hare said, as if that explained it.
“Capone’s getting out in a few days,” I said. After seven years and some months. “He and Les’ll have a lot to talk about. Old times and all.”
“Capone’s sick.”
“So I hear,” I said. “Syphilis. The papers say the docs gave ’im malaria, to induce a fever. Some cure.”
We were in Cicero, now, having passed out of a thumb of Stickney that stuck into Cicero’s pie; this was a working-class neighborhood of single-family dwellings, an occasional two-flat, mostly wood-frame structures.
“Never mind that,” he said, looking nervously behind him. “We don’t have all that much time.”
“For what?”
“For me to tell you why I hired you.”
“Oh. Somehow I figured it didn’t really have much to do with picking pockets. But why the elaborate show in front of your secretary and everybody?”
We were passing by a nice little park, now. O’Hare turned right onto Ogden, which was a well-traveled four-lane thoroughfare, a diagonal street, making each major intersection a three-way one. For now, the railroad yard was on our left, more frame dwellings on our right. And lots of neighborhood bars. This was Cicero, after all.
“I don’t know who I can trust,” he explained. “Every person in my life, with the exception of my kids, is tainted by those hoodlums. Even my fiancee.”
“Who’s your fiancee?”
Vaguely sad, he said, “Sue Granata.”
I’d seen her before; a beautiful young woman with dark blond hair and a brother who was a mob-owned state representative.
I said, “And you figure you can trust me?”
“You have that reputation. Also, we have a mutual friend.”
“Besides Frank Nitti, you mean?”
“Besides Frank Nitti.”
“Who, then?”
He looked back over his shoulder. Then he said, flatly, “Eliot Ness.”
“How do you know Eliot?”
“I was his inside man with the Outfit.”
I felt my jaw drop. “What?”
O’Hare had a faint, sneering smile. He was gripping the wheel like it was somebody’s neck. “I’ve always detested the hoodlums I’ve been forced to deal with. Their loud dress, their bad grammar, their uncouth manners.”
“Yeah, their grammar’s always been one of my chief complaints against ’em.”
“This is hardly amusing, Mr. Heller.”
“What happened to ‘Nate’?”
“Nate, then. All I ask is that you ride along with me, into the city, and listen to what I have to say.”
“I’ll listen, but I don’t appreciate being brought out to your track on false pretenses.”
He shook his head, the firm little chin contrasting with the quivering flab it rested on. “The security work for which I’ve retained you is legitimate. But I have a second job for you-a matter that must stay between just the two of us.”
“I’m listening.”
“Some years ago, I was a conduit of information for your friend Mr. Ness, as well as Frank Wilson and Elmer Irey.”
Jesus. That was a laundry list of the federal agents credited with “getting” Capone.