The big man was still standing there, so Barney, smiling back at him, said, “Thanks. Do join us, why don’t you?”
“No, thanks. And I apologize for busting in. I just wondered if I could have a little of Mr. Heller’s time... in private... when you two men are through talking. I can wait over at the bar...”
He was smooth, I had to give him that. But seeing him here was giving me a sick feeling.
He was the cop in East Chicago who the madams paid off every month; he was the bagman, the collector, who Anna Sage would’ve had dealings with. Would’ve, hell — that was where I’d seen him, where he’d been pointed out to me — in East Chicago, at the Kostur Hotel.
“Don’t be silly,” Barney said, “join us — have a beer on the management.”
“Well, okay,” Zarkovich said, his smile turning shy. Aw shucks, the bagman said.
He scooted in on Barney’s side, dwarfing the champ.
“I knew you had Canzoneri,” he told Barney. “I wasn’t worried a second.”
“You were the only one, then,” Barney said. “That was too close to call. They didn’t even consider me champ in NYC, till I beat their boy on his home ground.”
“And gave him a good licking.”
Barney made an embarrassed face; but he enjoyed the attention. He was a good guy, but he was human.
“Tried like hell to knock him out,” Barney said, almost apologetically. “Son of a gun just wouldn’t go down.”
“Look, Zarkovich,” I said, leaving off the “Sergeant.” Annoyed with all this small talk. “If you got business with me, let’s go upstairs to my office.”
Barney seemed offended by my lack of manners. “Nate, come on — I’m the one who insisted he join us.”
Zarkovich half-stood. “I apologize for intruding.”
Barney really was embarrassed now, put a hand on Zarkovich’s arm, stopping him. “You’re not intruding. Let me get you that beer—”
I slid out of the booth and stood. “I’d just like to get business out of the way, first. We’ll be back down later, Barney. We’ll both let you buy us a beer — if you’ll be around awhile.”
Barney’s face settled into a distrustful mask. “Uh, sure, Nate. I’m just waiting for Pearl to get back with what’s left of my money. I’ll be here half an hour or so at least.”
Zarkovich thanked Barney for his hospitality and followed me out onto the street, in the shadow of the El, where we went in the door between the cocktail lounge and the pawnshop and up the stairs to my office, where I unlocked the door and ushered him in. We hadn’t said a word on the way.
I opened a window and got back behind my desk and Zarkovich stood till I gestured for him to sit, in one of the chairs opposite me. He took off his hat, and I invited him to take off his suitcoat; he smiled politely and, despite the heat, declined.
“I thought we should talk,” he said.
“I wonder what about.”
“You seem to be ahead of me, Mr. Heller.”
“Let’s drop the ‘mister’ horseshit, okay, Zarkovich? Anna Sage still owns two houses in East Chicago, so you’re here today collecting from her, right?”
His handsome face was impassive.
I went on. “Only this trip Anna happened to tell you a story, and it interested you. A story about a man one of her girls has been seeing.”
He nodded.
“What Anna told you was she thinks the man might be somebody famous,” I said.
He nodded.
“Now I wonder who that somebody famous might be. The Dionne Quints? Charlie McCarthy? John Dillinger?”
He had big hands; he clasped them together and then cracked his knuckles. It sounded like the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
He said, “Your remarks don’t amuse me, Heller.”
“They were for my own benefit. It’s my office, after all. What the hell.”
“This is a serious business, you know.”
“No. Do tell.”
“You’re just a penny-ante private cop who used to be a penny-ante Chicago cop, Heller. You’re nothing special. You were on the take like everybody else.”
“You’re repeating yourself. You already said I was a Chicago cop.”
“Funny. Just don’t be so high and mighty. Some graft comes my way, all right? I don’t deny it. That doesn’t make me a bad cop. If times weren’t so hard, I—”
“Wouldn’t be wearing a hundred-dollar suit and a ten-dollar tie? I don’t care if you’re a grifter, Zarkovich. If you weren’t, you’d be unnatural, a saint or something. And I wouldn’t feel comfortable around you.”
“You feel comfortable around me, do you?”
“Yeah. I’m at home. I know where you’ve been and where you’re going.”
“I could say the same thing about you. Mind if I smoke?”
“I don’t care if you burn.”
Zarkovich gave me a little twitch of a smile and took out a silver cigarette case, selected a cigarette and inserted it in a black holder, and lit up.
“How did your meeting with Purvis go?” he asked.
If that was supposed to throw me, well, I felt steady enough. I didn’t like the idea that I’d been tailed and hadn’t picked up on it; but I didn’t bust out crying.
I said, “I told him I might have seen Dillinger. But I didn’t go any further than that.”
He nodded, the cigarette holder at a jaunty, FDR angle. “Wise. Waiting to talk to Cowley?”
“Yeah. Maybe. If I talk to anybody.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe there’s nothing to talk about; Jimmy Lawrence takes an awful lot of taxicabs for a Board of Trade clerk, but that isn’t illegal.”
“You have your doubts he’s Dillinger?”
“Hell yes. If this guy is Dillinger, he’s the brazenest, coolest lad I’ve ever come across. He goes to public places all over the city, day and night; he bumps into cops without blinking; wears snappy clothes — this is a whole new way of lyin’ low. And he’s apparently unarmed... he doesn’t even look like Dillinger, exactly.”
Zarkovich nodded knowingly, smiled the same way. “Plastic surgery. Good enough to give him a sense of confidence. To go out in public and be an everyday joe. But it’s a false sense of security. Anna recognized him, for one.”
“So she says.”
“So does he. He admitted to her last night he was Dillinger.”
“What?”
“Call her,” he said, pointing to my phone. “Ask her yourself.”
“Why would he admit that?”
“He trusts Anna. She can be warm and motherly, you know.”
“I bet.”
“She’s been nice to him and, as a madam, she seems trustworthy from his point of view... fellow underworld denizen and such like. And Anna’s been known to, uh... rent space out to fellas on the run.”
“I see. And now Anna wants to sell Mr. Dillinger out.”
“What’s to sell out? He isn’t one of her roomers; he’s got his own place, doesn’t he? On Pine Grove Avenue?”
I nodded.
“Is it Anna’s fault the guy confided in her?”
“Zarkovich, what’s this got to do with me?”
He drew on the cigarette holder. “I’d like you to talk to Purvis again — or Cowley. I’d like you to arrange for one or both of them to meet with Anna.”
“Why doesn’t Anna approach them herself?”
“With her criminal record, she could use an intermediary.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
He made a sweeping, magnanimous hand gesture. “I could. In fact, I was going to suggest we go together. You could report what you’ve observed; and I would say Mrs. Sage, an old friend from East Chicago, contacted me about Dillinger, and put us in touch.”
“Why don’t you just leave me out of it?”