“How did you and Estelle get together?”
“She liked my looks. I liked hers. That’s all it takes.”
True enough.
“I knew her once, too,” I said.
“Really?”
“A long, long time ago.”
“Did you go with her?”
“Yeah.”
“Did…you love her, too, Heller?”
“A long, long time ago, I did, yeah.”
“So, then… I guess you do know how it is to come home to something like this.”
“We got that in common, pal.”
“We got a lot in common, don’t we, Heller?”
We sure did. We both had wounds that would never heal.
I said, “How did Monawk die, D’Angelo?”
“What do you mean? The Japs got him. What else?”
“Did you see it happen?”
“No. No. I was out. I bled a lot, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I sat there with him for a couple of hours. We talked some, but mostly we smoked. Like in that foxhole looking down on the ridge of kunai grass.
When I went out, his sister, wearing a very fresh blue dress with a crisp white collar, her black hair in a shining pageboy, greeted me. I think she liked me. I liked her. She smelled like sweet-smelling soap.
“You’re a good friend to come see him,” she said.
“I’ll be back.”
“I’d like that.”
I wasn’t Prince Charming, but there was a man shortage.
She walked me out to the street. The sky was a glowing red. The steel mills.
“Good night, Marie.”
“Good night, Mr. Heller.”
I didn’t think her brother had killed Monawk; I wasn’t sure, but my gut, my detective’s gut, said no.
Anyway, I knew he hadn’t killed Estelle yesterday.
Not on one leg.
Town Hall Station, a massive faded red-brick building built around the turn of the century, dominated the corner of Addison and Halsted. It was just three blocks west from Estelle’s “death flat” (as the papers were gleefully calling it), and within spitting distance of the Salvation Army’s national training camp, a baracaded, barbed-wire encampment devoted to saving souls.
Which could not exactly be said for the Town Hall Station, up the steps of which I went, through the main door on Addison, up into the big waiting-room area. It was Friday afternoon, and business here was slow-a few juvies were slouched on the hard wooden chairs lining one wall, waiting for their parents to show, flirting with a bored lone hooker sitting polishing her nails, waiting for her pimp or lawyer or somebody to pick her up. I checked in with the fiftyish flabby Irish sergeant who sat behind the booking counter reading a racing form, and was sent on upstairs. I was expected. Sergeant Donahoe, he of the basset-hound countenance, showed me to the small interrogation room where Drury stood grilling the seated Sonny Goldstone, Nicky Dean’s partner from his Colony Club days. A police steno, a plain young woman in matronly blue, sat just behind and to one side of Goldstone, taking it all down.
The cubbyhole was well lit but stuffy. Goldstone’s fleshy face seemed expressionless, even bored. He had the sort of soft, bland, unthreatening features-hooded eyes, straight nose, petulant mouth-that so often belong to the truly cold. He was wearing black-rim glasses tinted a slight brown. He was dressed neatly, successful businessman that he was, in a tailored, vested brown suit with a tasteful two-tone brown striped tie.
Drury’s usual dapper look was absent; he was stripped down to his vest, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, working up a sweat. He was as good a man as any at the verbal third degree. On the other hand, you still can’t beat a rubber hose.
Drury nodded to me, as I closed the door behind me, and Goldstone’s eyes flicked my way once, then stared back into nothing, ignoring both me and Drury, which was a good trick in this closet. I don’t know whether Goldstone recognized me or not; we’d only seen each other that once, that night in ’39 when Estelle took me up to a third-floor Colony Club suite.
“You were seen going into the apartment building Tuesday afternoon, Sonny,” Drury said, matter-of-fact, confident as God. “Positively identified by the manager of Estelle’s building.”
Looking at nothing, Goldstone said, “She’s nuts. She’s talking nonsense.”
“The woman picked you out of our rogues’ gallery files yesterday. And today she picked you out of a five-man lineup.”
“I remember. I was there.”
“I was there, too, Sonny. I saw her pick you out; no question in her mind.”
Shrug. “A lot of people look like me.”
“You were in that apartment, Sonny.”
Shrug. “I was there before. Not Tuesday. I got twenty or thirty people who saw me elsewhere at the time of the crime.”
“Name one.”
“I’ll wait for the trial. Which there’s never going to be.”
“Did she talk, Sonny? Did she finally tell you where that million was?”
Smirk. “Why, Drury? You want to borrow some of it to buy some more fancy-ass suits?”
This is where a rubber hose comes in handy.
Drury, unfortunately, was not that kind of cop. Donahoe came in and tapped Drury on the shoulder and said, “Visitor’s here.”
He nodded toward Goldstone, saying to Donahoe, “Lock that fat bastard up.”
“You got nothing,” Goldstone said.
Drury pointed at him. “We got bloody fingerprints in that apartment. Think about that in your cell, wise guy.”
We stepped out in the hall.
“You really got fingerprints in blood?” I asked Drury.
“Yeah, from off a kitchen cabinet,” he said, walking toward his office. I followed along.
“You think Sonny’s your man?” I asked.
“Maybe. But he was right about one thing-he really does have a common sort of face. Another Nicky Dean associate, Thomas Stapleton, who we’re looking for now, could be Goldstone’s brother. Ditto for John Borgia, who was tight with Dago Mangano, one of Dean’s partners. As for the bloody fingerprints, they belong to a woman or a small man-not Sonny Goldstone. We’re in the process of pulling in no less than a dozen Colony Club male employees for questioning, and half again that many working girls associated with Estelle, plus her former roommate. And then there’s that Adonis-crowd hood Eddie McGrath being sought for us in New York. And a suspect in the North Side fur thefts we got a line on. That doesn’t touch the thirty-plus respectable gentlemen whose names and numbers were in Estelle’s little black book.”
“Jesus. Why don’t you just gather all the suspects in Chicago Stadium and turn off the lights. It works for Charlie Chan.”
He stopped just outside his office, the door of which was closed. “It gets worse. But I didn’t ask you down here just to hear Sonny Goldstone not talk. There’s somebody waiting inside here who might prove a little more interesting.”
I followed him inside his private office, which was just big enough to comfortably house his desk, a few files and a couple of chairs, one of which was occupied by a small, dark, attractive but rather frail-looking woman in her late thirties, facing his empty desk, waiting for him to fill it. He did, nodding to her, smiling.
“Mrs. Circella,” he said. “Thank you for coming in to see us voluntarily.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Nicky Dean’s wife said sweetly, with just the faintest hint of an Italian accent. “I’m not a criminal.”
She was smartly attired, wearing a black Persian lamb coat over a navy blue suit and a wide-brimmed navy felt hat. The effect of the dark apparel was almost one of mourning. Her oval face was pale, which made her sensual red-lipsticked mouth seem startling, and next to the full red lips nestled a beauty mark, which was enough to make you wonder if Nicky Dean had been crazy or something. Even with a dish as luscious as Estelle Carey, why cheat on this stunning creature?
Greed, of course. Something Nicky and Estelle had in common.
I just stood and listened, leaning against one wall. The police steno filed in and took her inconspicuous place in the corner, as Drury said, “You don’t mind going on the record with your statement, Mrs. Circella?”