“No,” he said. “Who could put a price on a life?”
“Some people do it everyday.”
He lifted his shoulders and set them down again. “Some people put a price on death. That’s different.”
Now I was arguing semantics with Little New York Campagna. Well, it’s an interesting life.
“Frank would like to thank you for showing such good sense,” he said, “where the cops was concerned.”
Tubbo had acted fast.
“And if you could keep your story simple for the papers, Frank would be grateful. Can you manage that?”
He touched his hat by way of bidding me good-bye and started off.
I stepped out into the hall. “Don’t you want my answer?” I said.
Stupid question.
Campagna turned back and smiled at me; it was like a crack in a stone wall. “I got your answer. I got your number, too, Heller.” He turned and walked away. Then he turned back and, almost reluctantly, said, “Uh, Frank said to say he’s pleased you are still amongst us.”
“Well. Thank Frank for his concern.”
“Sure. Beats being dead, don’t it?”
And then he was gone.
I shut the door, latched it, put the gun back on the chair. Seemed as good a place as any.
Sally crawled out from under the table, straightening her clothes. “Sounds like you’re going to be okay, where the boys are concerned.”
“Sounds like,” I nodded, tentatively. “Campagna isn’t an errand boy, anymore. Sending him was a gesture from Nitti of how serious he takes this.”
“Is that a good sign or bad?”
“You got me. Look, Sally. Helen. You’re welcome to stay. You’re most very welcome to stay. But there’s no, uh, rent here. No strings. No obligations. By which I mean to say, you’re welcome to my bed and I’ll sleep out here on the couch.”
“Shut up,” she said, and began unbuttoning her blouse.
I didn’t make it into the office the next morning till almost ten-thirty. We’d had another breakfast, Sally and I, and I don’t mean anything racy by that: simply that I bought her some breakfast, this time, in the Morrison’s coffee shop. And we sat drinking orange juice and putting pancakes away and then cup upon cup of coffee as we filled each other in on our lives for the past five years. Then she noticed the time and remembered she had an eleven o’clock appointment with the manager of the Brown Derby and was off.
And I walked to the office, where Gladys greeted me, if “greeted” is the word, with a disgusted expression and a hand outthrust with another stack of memos.
“Reporters,” I asked, only it wasn’t really a question.
“Reporters,” she said. She had on a pale blue blouse and a navy skirt with a wide black patent leather belt and was everything a man could want in a woman except friendly. “Do you realize Westbrook Pegler’s been trying to call you?”
“Yeah, right,” I said. I went on through to my office.
I was sitting behind the desk, glancing at some insurance adjusting reports that Gladys had typed neatly up, when herself was standing in the doorway-never leaning, that wasn’t her style-and saying, “He really has been calling. Three times already today.”
“Who?”
“Westbrook Pegler! The columnist!”
“Gladys, my dear, you’re mistaken-you’ve apparently never read him. Pegler’s no Red.”
She did a slow burn. “I said columnist, not communist.”
I kept trolling for a sense of humor with the girl and coming up old rubber tires.
“My dear,” I started again, and she reminded me humorlessly that she wasn’t my dear. She reminded me further that she preferred “Miss Andrews,” to which I replied, “Gladys-that’s Hal Davis of the Daily News calling, needling me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Why would Westbrook Pegler be in Chicago, for Christ’s sakes, and if he was, why would he be calling about some Chicago racetrack tycoon getting pushed?”
“Pushed?”
She hadn’t been affiliated with the detective business long.
“Killed,” I explained. “Shot. Rubbed out. Liquidated. Mob style.”
“If you say so,” she said, disinterested but lingering.
“Shoo. Go file.”
“Yes, Mr. Heller.”
God, what I wouldn’t have given for even some sarcasm out of that kid. She was cute as lace panties but not nearly so much fun.
A client kept an eleven o’clock appointment, the office manager from the Swift Plant; he was white collar, but he brought the fragrance of the stockyards with him. He had a recurring pilferage problem-desks, lockers, cabinets forced open, pocketbooks gotten into. I explained how we could plant valuable articles in obvious places, as decoys to invite theft, articles to which thief-branding dyes would be applied. I was explaining how I preferred dry dyes of the sort that didn’t immediately stain, but that perspiration would soon bring out, when Gladys leaned in and interrupted.
“He’s here.”
It wasn’t like her to interrupt; most unbusinesslike.
“Who?” I said.
“Mr. Pegler.”
I shook my head, smiled; Gladys hadn’t met Davis yet. “Tell him to go to hell.”
“I will not.”
“Then tell him it’ll cost him a C-note if he wants a quote. That’ll get rid of him.”
She pursed her lips; she wasn’t blowing me a kiss. “What is a C-note?”
“A hundred dollars. Go.”
She went.
“Excuse me,” I said to my client. “Where were we?”
“Dry dyes,” the stockyard office manager said, looking bewildered.
The door flew open and I could hear Gladys saying, “Please,” and a big red-faced man was in the doorway. I yanked the automatic out from under my arm and yelled, “Up with ’em!”
Gladys screamed, the office manager dropped to the floor and the big man’s face whitened. He swallowed, thickly. He was very well dressed; double-breasted gray pinstripe suit with stylish wide lapels, a flourish of a hanky in his breast pocket, a wide, thick-knotted, dark blue tie patterned with white abstract shapes. He put his hands slowly in the air, narrowing his eyes, which hid under shaggy, cultivated-to-points satanic eyebrows.
“Put that ridiculous thing away,” he said. The words were strong, but the tenor voice had something of a quaver. The voice wasn’t as big as the man, that’s all there was to it.
I came around the desk, saying, “Just keep ’em up,” and patted him down. He stood for the frisk, but scowled all the while. He had on heavy, masculine lotion; pine needles.
He was clean. Which is to say no weapon, but also well tailored and freshly bathed. This guy had money and I didn’t think it came from the rackets. Not of the Nitti variety, anyway.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, lowering the gun but not putting it away.
“Who the hell do you think? Westbrook Pegler!”
“Oh.” Now I was swallowing. “I’ll be damned if I don’t think you are.” I turned to the stockyards office manager who was crouching on the floor, looking up like a big bug. “We about had our business taken care of, didn’t we, Mr. Mertz?”
He got up, brushing himself off, said, “Yes,” and I told him my secretary would call him and set up an on-site meeting with one of my operatives as he scurried out. I closed the door on Gladys’s pretty, glowering face.
“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Pegler?”
“I’m not sure I’m staying. I’m not delighted with having guns pointed at me.”
“But then, who is? Please,” I said, smiling nervously, pulling up a chair for him.
He cleared his throat, in a grumbling manner, and sat and I got behind the desk. Slipped the gun away, under my shoulder, feeling embarrassed and trigger-happy.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
He took a gold, FWP-emblazoned case from his inside suitcoat pocket and a cigarette from the case and lit it up and I pushed the ashtray his way, saying, “This wasn’t a story I expected someone of your stature to be interested in covering.”
“What story is that?”