“Of course a hundred-and-fifty’s cheap,” I said, “compared to what Bioff’s hitting you for, these days. By the way, he said, ‘Give my regards to my partner Jack.’”
Which Bioff had in fact said, and which proved to be what opened Barger’s floodgate: “That arrogant little pimp! Partner! The first time I ever talked to him, what, must’ve been four years ago anyways, he walked in here with Browne and said, ‘Kid,’ called me kid, the condescending little bastard, ‘kid, everybody’s paying to keep the unions happy. So you have to pay.’ What the hell, this is Chicago, I expect that, so I say, ‘How much?’ And Bioff says, ‘Let’s say twenty-five grand to start.’ And I damn near fall off my seat! I say fuck you, go to hell, I ain’t got twenty-five grand, and Bioff says, ‘You want to stay in business, that’s how it’s gotta be.’ I told ’em to get the hell out and they did.”
He smiled to himself, pleased with the memory of getting tough with Bioff and Browne, then noticed his cigar had gone out and was relighting it when I said, “Yet here I am, Jack, giving you a message from your partner Willie.”
His expression turned as foul as the cigar smoke. He said, “The fat little pimp came back alone, next time. No Browne, just the two of us, in this same office, and he said, ‘How’s tricks, partner?’ And I said, ‘I ain’t your goddamn partner, and I suggest you leave.’ And he said, ‘I already talked to the Outfit about our partnership.’ And I told him I’d close my show down before I got in bed with the mob.”
Barger was shaking, now; whether with anger or fear or just the intensity of the memory, I couldn’t say. But he went on speaking, and it seemed more for his own benefit than mine.
“The bastard Bioff says, ‘You’re already in. There’s no getting out. You’re partners with me, and I’m partners with the Outfit.’ He said it’d be foolish for me to close down my show ’cause a man’s gotta work, a man’s gotta eat.” Then with harsh sarcasm he added, “‘Like the man said,’ he said, ‘don’t throw away the blanket because you’re mad at the fleas.’”
He sat smoking, his eyes glowing like the cigar’s tip.
“That’s Willie Bioff,” I said. “A proverb for every occasion.”
Very softly, with what I felt to be self-hate, he said, “And then he said, ‘And just think, if you close the show, there’s always the fact that maybe the mob wouldn’t like it. They’re sensitive people.’”
“And you went along with it,” I said, with a tiny matter-of-fact shrug. “What else could you do?”
He slammed a fist on the desk and the clutter there jumped. “I didn’t go along with it. Not till…aw, fuck it.”
I made an educated guess, based on past experience: “Not till Little New York Campagna invited you in a certain suite at the Bismarck Hotel.”
Where Frank Nitti himself would’ve waited.
Barger only nodded.
Then he sat up, pointed with the cigar. “Some friendly advice, kid. If you can get out from under Bioff, do it. That’s bad company you’re in. I like you, Heller. Any friend of Barney’s is a friend of mine. This is no good for you.”
I had a card left to play. On two occasions, in Barney’s cocktail lounge, I’d seen Barger approached by Frankie Maritote, also known as Frankie Diamond, Al Capone’s brother-in-law, a big ape with a broad homely mug and thick eyebrows like grease smears over beady eyes. It had stuck with me, and, when Bioff mentioned Barger as one of those I was to warn about Pegler, I remembered the mob connection the earlier Barger/Diamond encounters seemed to indicate.
Anyway, I played the card: “How long was it before Frankie Diamond came around?”
Barger shrugged. He seemed defeated. “Not long. They thought I was monkeying with the books, because I said business was off, and they heard we did standing-room-only, which was true, when the fair was in town. Since then it’s weekends and conventions; we die during the week.”
“So they sent a Syndicate bookkeeper over.”
“Yeah. This guy Zevin. He’s the Stagehand Union’s bookkeeper, for this local anyway. He found I was giving myself a salary of two hundred a week. They made me fire myself and take Diamond on as manager. Only he never came around except to collect money from me, me who was doing the actual managing. Then, on one of the happiest days of my life, Diamond leaves town, for some other Syndicate deal, and I figure I’m rid of the leech. And this guy Nick Dean-you know him?’
I nodded. “He’s a cold one.”
He almost shivered. “Freezing. He brings Phil D’Andrea around. Phil D’Andrea!”
D’Andrea was the Capone bodyguard infamous for attending the Big Fellow’s trial armed with a revolver, and getting caught at it. Contempt of court and six months in jail.
Barger was shaking his head. “Now D’Andrea’s the ‘manager.’ That girl down in the box office is his goddamn sister.”
Silence and cigar smoke filled the air.
“I appreciate the words of advice,” I said, rising. “I’ll finish this job for Bioff, and be done with him.”
“You do that. The bastards’ve damn near drained me dry. I had to sell the Star and Garter for a lousy seven gee’s, just to pay my goddamn taxes, and when they found out, they took half of that! Stay the hell clear of ’em, Heller.”
“I’ll do that. And you stay clear of Pegler, or anybody he might send to sniff around.”
“Yeah, yeah. They won’t get word one out of Jack Barger.”
The baggy pants comics and a couple of girls from the pony line were doing the “Crazy House” routine on stage, when I came downstairs, leaving Barger behind. I watched from the back of the house, watched another stripper. good-looking dame with black hair, and somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
Barger again.
“You pay yet?” he asked.
“No.”
“You must still think you’re a cop. Everything’s a free ride. Is it true Sally Rand’s in town?”
“Yeah.”
“You think you’ll see her? Barney says you two were an item, once.”
“I might see her.”
“I hear she’s broke.”
“For the moment.”
“If she’ll stoop to a grand a week, I’ll cancel my next booking and make room for her.”
“I’ll tell her if I see her. But I don’t think she does burlesque.”
“She will. She’s not getting any younger.”
Then he disappeared, and soon so did I, around the corner to my office.
Two other names on Bioff’s list, Barney Balaban of the mighty Balaban and Katz chain, and James Coston, who managed the Warner Brothers chain in Chicago, were not receptive to visits by me. When I called from my office to make appointments, they insisted instead on taking care of our business over the phone.
“Willie Bioff wants you to be aware that Westbrook Pegler is in town,” I told Balaban, “asking embarrassing questions.”
After a long pause a confident baritone returned: “Tell Mr. Bioff that no one has been around to see me, and that should anyone do so, no embarrassing answers will be forthcoming from me. Good afternoon, Mr. Heller.”
Coston was also inclined toward brevity: “Tell Willie not to worry. I won’t talk.”
These distinguished representatives of the Chicago motion picture community had, in their few short phrases, spilled as much in their way as Barger had in his.
They both knew Willie Bioff, and they both shared secrets with him they had no intention of revealing to the press, or anyone else, for that matter.
Coston had told me volumes by simply repeating a typical Bioff aphorism; as a parting shot, I’d said, “Willie said to tell you if you got cornered, somehow, to lie, lie, lie.”
“Tell Willie it’s like he told me, once, when he threatened me with a projectionist’s strike: ‘If the only way to get the job done is to kill Grandma, then Grandma’s going to die.’”
Now, only one name remained on Willie’s list: my old flame Estelle Carey.
Nicky Dean’s girl.
She was wearing a skin-pink gown with sequins on the bosom, cut just low enough to maintain interest, her curled pageboy barely brushing her creamy shoulders. Tall, almost willowy, her supple curves and picture-book prettiness made her look twenty, when she was thirty. At least she did in the soft, dim lighting of the Colony Club, Nicky Dean’s ritzy Rush Street cabaret, where Estelle Carey was overseeing a battery of “26” tables-numbered boards about three feet square at which mostly male customers shook dice in a leather cup and “threw for drinks.” Each table was in turn overseen by another young woman, a “26 girl,” a breed as much a Chicago fixture as wind or graft, pretty birds sitting on high stools luring homely pigeons. Here at the Colony, with its upstairs casino, the girls were on the lookout for the compulsive customer ready to graduate from the 26 table to “some real action” on the second floor, roulette, craps, blackjack.