He waved that off. He looked at me; his eyes narrowed-in concern? Or was that suspicion?
“I hope my business meeting didn’t disturb your sleep,” he said.
“Nope,” I said, cheerfully. I hoped not too transparently cheerfully. “Slept right through it.”
“Why was it you wanted to talk to me, Heller?”
“Uh, you invited me here, Frank.”
“Oh. Yeah. Correa called you. That prick.”
“He’s going to call me to testify. I guess they were keeping tabs on you, when we were having our various meetings over the years. They’re going to ask about those meetings, and…”
He shrugged. “Forget it.”
“Well, that’s what I intend to do. What you and I talked about is nobody’s business but ours. Like I told Campagna, I got some convenient after-effects of my combat duty-they treated me for amnesia, while I was in the bughouse. I don’t remember nothing, Frank.”
He patted my shoulder. “I’m proud of what you did over there.”
“What?”
“I brag on you to my boy, all the time. You were a hero.” He got up and crossed to an expensive, possibly antique cabinet and took out a bottle of wine and poured himself a glass. “This is a great country. Worth fighting for. An immigrant like me can have a home and a family and a business. Some vino, kid?”
“No thanks, Frank.”
He drank the wine, pacing slowly around the little study. “I never worried about you, kid. You coulda gone running off the mouth about Cermak, and you didn’t. You coulda done the same thing where Dillinger was concerned, but you didn’t. You understand it, omerta, and you ain’t even one of us.”
“Frank, I’m not going to betray you.”
He sat down next to me. “You seen Ness lately?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Last month.”
“You know what he’s doing these days?”
“Yeah,” I said, and smiled.
Nitti sat there and laughed.
“Al coulda used his help,” he said, and laughed some more.
When he stopped laughing, he finished the glass of wine and said, “That’s another secret you kept.”
“Frank?”
“You knew about O’Hare.”
I swallowed. “You mean, you knew…”
“That you figured out I…” He gestured with one hand, as if sculpting something. “…sent Al away. Yeah. I saw it in your eyes, kid, when we talked that time.”
He meant that night in ’39 in the suite at the Bismarck.
“Then why in hell am I alive?” I said.
“I told you to stay out of my business. You stayed out, more or less. I trust you. I respect you.”
“Frank-I’m right in thinking you didn’t have anything to do with Estelle Carey’s death, aren’t I?”
“Would I invite such heat?” His face tightened into an angry mask. “My bloodthirsty friend Paul the Waiter sent those”-and then he said something in Sicilian that sounded very vile indeed-“to hit her. He was afraid she’d talk, this grand jury thing. I believe her killers took it on themselves to try to make her talk.” He laughed without humor. “To make her lead them to money she never had.”
“Money she…what?”
He got up and poured himself some more wine. “The Carey dame never had Nicky’s dough. He didn’t trust her. He thought she’d fingered him to the feds. That million of his, well, it’s really just under a million, the feds exaggerate, so they can tax you more…anyway, that million is stashed away for Nicky when he gets out. He’s being a pretty good boy. He’s talked some, but not given ’em anything they didn’t already have. Willie and Browne, well…don’t invest in their stock.”
Nitti’s openness was startling. And frightening. Was he drunk? Was he telling me things he’d regret telling me, later?
“You killing that bastard Borgia and his bitch was a good thing,” he said. “And then calling me so we could clean up, that I also appreciate. Think of what the papers woulda done with that; talk about stirring up the heat. Do you know how many of the boys have been pulled in over the Carey dame? Shit. That’s Ricca for you. Anyway.” He sipped his wine. “I owe you one.”
He’d said that to me before, more than once. More than twice.
“Hey, you have some wine, now,” he said.
I had some wine. We sat and drank it and I said, “If you feel you owe me one, Frank, I’d like to collect.”
Nitti shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”
“You know about my friend Barney Ross.”
He nodded. Of course he knew; I’d heard it from him. Or from Campagna. Same difference-before tonight, at least.
He said, “Have you talked to him about this problem of his?”
“Yes I have,” I said. “And he claims he can handle the stuff. He needs it for his pain, he says. To help him sleep. He acted like it was no big deal-then made me promise not to tell his wife, his family.”
“He’s a good man,” Nitti said. “He shouldn’t have this monkey on his back. It will ruin him.”
“I know.”
It seemed to anger Nitti. “He’s a hero. Kids look up to him. He shouldn’t go down that road.”
“Then help me stop him.”
He looked at me; the old Nitti seemed to be home, if only briefly, in the hard eyes.
“Put the word out,” I said. “Nobody in Chicago sells dope to Barney Ross. Cut off his supply. Capeesh?”
“Capeesh,” Nitti said.
We shook hands at the front door and I walked out into the wintry air, wondering how many eyes other than Nitti’s were on me.
Drury drove. We left his unmarked car on Cermak Road, near Woodlawn Cemetery, and walked along the railroad tracks, south. A light drizzling rain was falling. These were Illinois Central tracks, freight, not commuter; at this time of afternoon, just a little before four, there would be little or no train traffic, not till after rush hour-Cermak Road was too major a thoroughfare to be held up by a train, this time of day.
We were out in the boonies, really. To my left a few blocks was downtown Berwyn, but just due north was a working farm; and right here, the tracks ran through a virtual prairie-tall grass, scrub brush and trees. Up at right was a wire fence, behind which loomed the several faded brick buildings of a sanitarium. Some uniformed cops were gathered there; three men in coveralls, railroad workers obviously, were being questioned over to one side.
I followed Drury down the gentle embankment from the tracks through brush and tall grass to where the cops stood by the wire fence. One of the cops, a man in his fifties, in a white cap, walked to Drury and extended a hand and the men shook, as the white-capped cop said, “Chief Rose, of the Riverside P. D. You’d be Captain Drury.”
Drury said he was.
“Thanks for getting out here so quickly. We need you to positively ID the body. And we could use a little advice about where to go from here…”
Drury didn’t introduce me; everybody just assumed I was another cop. This time I’d been in his office, when he got the call. Correa had asked him to talk to me again, and as a courtesy I’d taken the El over to Town Hall Station. I was sitting there being scolded by him when his phone rang.
Now here we were, in a ditch next to an IC spur between North Riverside and Berwyn, in the midst of a bunch of confused suburban cops who’d drawn a stiff who was just a little out of their league-although very much a resident of their neck of the woods.
He sat slumped against the fence, parting the tall grass around him, brown fedora askew on his head, which rested back against a steel post, eyes shut, a revolver in his right hand-a little black.32, it looked like-and wearing a snappy gray checked suit, expensive brown plaid overcoat, blue and maroon silk scarf. On his shoes were rubbers; some snow was still on the ground, after all. Above his shoes stretched the off-white of long woolen underwear. Behind his right ear was a bullet hole; above his left ear was the exit wound.