Eliot had given up; he was staring out the window. Drury sat up in the chair, straight as his principles. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “I only know this is our chance to put Nitti and Campagna and Ricca and that whole sorry crowd away.”
“And then the next crowd’ll step in, and will they be any better? What are we talking-Accardo? Giancana? That’ll be swell. Nitti, at least, has kept the bloodshed to a minimum.”
Drury shook his head. “How in God’s name can you find anything good to say about that evil son of a bitch?”
“Nitti’s no worse than the next guy in his slot, and possibly a damn sight better. I remember the Capone days, and so do you, Bill.”
“Nate, I’m disappointed in you.”
“I told you I’d testify. I’ll sing like Nelson Eddy sitting on hot coals. But I want to see Louie B. Mayer and Jack Warner and Joe Schenck sitting in cells next to Nitti and Campagna and Ricca.”
“Schenck did time.”
“On income tax, and not much.”
Eliot looked at me, glumly. “They can subpoena you anyway, Nate. You know that.”
“Haven’t you heard? I’m battle-fatigued. I’m shell-shocked. I got amnesia, remember? Just ask the medics.”
Eliot shook his head, looked at the floor.
Bill sat there, dumbfounded. “I don’t get you, Heller.”
“Bill, those Hollywood schmucks Bioff and Browne and Dean plucked were just trying to get off cheap where paying the help was concerned. And the rank and file knew they had gangsters in their union but figured all that muscle was getting ’em some extra bucks, and looked the other way accordingly. So I say screw ’em. Screw ’em all.”
Drury started to say something, but the phone rang. It was Gladys, next door; for Drury.
“I left my number,” he said, taking the phone. “Hope you don’t mind.”
I waved that off.
Drury was mostly listening, so I said to Eliot, quietly, “No hard feelings?”
He smiled wearily again. “None. I’m just glad you’re back from that hellhole in one piece. Why don’t I buy you dinner tonight?”
“Why don’t you?”
Drury barked, “Jesus Christ,” into the phone, and we looked at him. Then he said, “Right away,” and handed me the receiver, and stood.
“Why don’t you come with me, Heller,” he said, his face ashen. “There’s something you might be interested in.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. A good example of your theory how Nitti and company soft-peddle the bloodshed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Grab your coat and we’ll go over to Addison Street, in Lakeview. You might be interested in seeing what’s become of Estelle Carey.”
She was naked under her red silk housecoat, but she wasn’t much to look at. Not in the way she had been, once.
She lay on the plush carpet partially under a straight-back chair in the dining room of her third-floor five-room apartment at 512 West Addison in an upper-middle-class neighborhood of wall-to-wall apartment buildings near the lake on the North Side. She’d been living well. Dying had been something else again.
Her hair-she’d dyed it red since I saw her last-was a fright wig, clumps of it torn away from or possibly cut off at the scalp, scattered on the floor nearby, like a barbershop. The face was recognizably hers, despite the cuts and bruises and welts that added touches of purple and red and black to her white face, and despite too the jagged slash through her left eye and the ice-pick punctures on her cheeks and her bloodied broken nose and her smashed pulpy lips. Her throat had been cut, ear to ear, but superficially, a mark of torture, not murder. She had lived through most of this.
The red silk housecoat was scorched from the waist down, and so was she, till her legs were virtually charred. So were her hands and arms. Someone had set the housecoat afire-had splashed whiskey on it and set a match to it, it would seem-and she had put the fire out with her hands, or tried to. She’d been somewhat successful, because only the lower part of her was burned, and even the red silk housecoat could still be seen to be a red silk housecoat. But the fire had spread to the carpet, where it met the broken and apparently not empty whiskey bottle and got ambitious. The two nearby walls were black from floor to ceiling, dripping wet from the firemen’s hose, the lingering smoke smell still strong, acrid in the room. Not enough to wipe out the smell of death, however, the smell of scorched human flesh. Not enough to smother the memory of a certain foul wind, of dead, rotting flesh, Japs bloating in the sun in the kunai grass, charred grinning corpses by a wrecked tank along the Matanikau and then I was out in the hall, leaning against the wall, doubled over, trying not to puke, trying to keep that corned beef platter from Binyon’s down where it belonged.
Drury was right there beside me, a hand on my shoulder, looking ashamed of himself. I’d been in there standing looking at Estelle Carey, frozen by the burned sight of her, for I don’t know how long, while he got filled in by the detectives already on the scene. Now he was embarrassed, saying, “Damnit, Heller. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
I was breathing too hard to speak.
He said, “I was trying to make a point. This came up, and bringing you along seemed like the perfect way to make a point.”
I said, “Don’t say ‘this came up’ to a guy who’s trying not to lose his lunch, okay, Bill?”
“Nate. I’m sorry. Shit. I feel like a heel.”
I let go of the wall; I seemed able to stand, without any help. “Well, you are a heel, Bill. But…who isn’t, from time to time?”
“Why don’t you go, Nate. Go on home. If you’re interested in how this sad affair plays out, I’ll keep you posted.”
I swallowed. Shook my head no. “I’ll stay.”
“I was a bastard to use that dead girl like this. I hope my apology’s enough. After what you been through overseas, I shoulda had sense enough not to…”
“Will you shut the fuck up? Let’s go back inside.”
Drury, having been one of my partners back on the pickpocket detail, knew very well that Estelle and I had been an item, once. So it was cruel of him to expose me to this. But then he hadn’t seen the condition of the corpse yet, when he made the decision; if he had, I doubt he’d have called me in.
He had an excuse though; I was the one who, officially, identified the body.
My lunch was staying down, but I was shaking. We moved through the vestibule into the living room and back into the dining room; it was cold, the windows open to air out the smoky place, letting in the winter chill. Eliot hadn’t joined us-he had business at the Banker’s Building; Drury had driven me over in an unmarked car. The firemen-who had been the first to the scene, the neighbor across the hall calling in to report smoke seeping out under the front door-had been and gone. The fire had been contained to the one room, only two walls of which were scorched. Present now were two patrol officers, Drury and two detectives; this was Drury’s bailiwick, as he was currently working out of nearby Town Hall Station. More police and related personnel would descend soon. Photographers, medical examiner, dicks from downtown. This was a good chance to get a look around before the professionals stumbled over themselves ruining evidence.
I walked into the next room, through a doorless archway, stepping around a shattered glass, which had apparently been hurled against one wall of the compact white modern kitchen. To my left was a small maple table with two maple chairs, one of them pulled away from the table, at an unnatural angle. Against the wall were cabinets and a sink and more cabinets; the cabinets to the far left were blood-smeared; there was blood spattered in the sink, too.