I didn’t say anything.
“Well,” Cowley said, with an air of finality, “think it over. But think quickly. Because this is liable to come together quickly.”
“And go down the same way?”
He nodded slowly. He put on his coat, his hat. “Your help would be appreciated. By tomorrow, say.”
“I’ll be thinking it over.”
“Why don’t you contact your client, if you’re worried about getting his girlfriend involved?”
“I’m afraid I have no way of contacting him. He’s on the road, and said he’d check back in with me. He hasn’t, yet.”
Cowley shrugged. “You’re a detective. How did he get in touch with you?”
Through a referral from a lawyer. Specifically, Louis Piquett. Piquett!
“Say, Inspector. You’re obviously more up on the Dillinger case than I am. What lawyer was it Dillinger contacted to come up to Crown Point and defend him, right before he broke out last year?”
“It was February of this year,” Cowley said. “And I’m surprised at you, Mr. Heller — you said you read the papers, and the papers played up Dillinger’s hiring such a colorful ‘mouthpiece.’”
And I — like you — knew what he’d say next.
“Louis Piquett, of course,” Cowley said, and nodded to me, and left.
12
They call LaSalle Street the Wall Street of the West. Whatever, it’s a concrete valley where money and power live — if there’s a difference. Between Randolph and Washington streets, well before its claustrophobic canyon dead-ends at the Board of Trade Building, LaSalle in an act of sacrifice before the great god graft devotes an entire city block to City Hall, a modern whitestone monolith with classical airs. Money and power reside there, as well.
But tucked away in the skyscrapers along LaSalle, above the giant banks and brokerages, are small offices where men who are not financial wizards nor politicans but who find their way toward money and power, just the same, also reside. Men like attorney Louis Phillip Piquett.
On the west corner of Washington and LaSalle, a sleek gold-brick skyscraper was where Piquett kept his office. He was on the twenty-fifth floor. Looking down on City Hall.
Going up in the elevator was like riding in an oven; it was just me, the uniformed operator and a couple of guys in business suits. I was in a business suit, too. We were basting in our own sweat. This was LaSalle Street, however, and one of the few places in the city where shirt sleeves were not the heat-wave order of the day. I suppose when you’re on your way to an air-conditioned office, you can afford roughing it.
Piquett’s office was air-conditioned, beyond its pebbled-glass-and-wood facade, and brother did it feel good. The waiting room was surprisingly modern, for such an old-fashioned mouthpiece, with a white wall-to-wall carpet and black leather chairs with chrome arms along the glass-and-wood walls; there were several doors leading off the reception area, all of which said PRIVATE in black letters. A disturbingly pretty secretary at a big black desk, her head a cap of blond curls, gave me a sharp businesslike look, letting me know her chorus-girl beauty may have got her the job, but she was here to work, by God. She was, in fact, typing at the moment, sitting sideways at her desk working at a typewriter on a stand. She had black-frame glasses she maybe didn’t need and a white mannish blouse and said, “Yes?”
“I’m Nathan Heller,” I said. “Would you tell Mr. Piquett I’m here to see him?”
“Have you an appointment?”
“No.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Piquett’s a busy man.”
The office wasn’t exactly jumping: we two were alone in the reception area, and there were no sounds from behind the doors marked PRIVATE.
“Just let him know I’m here, would you?” I said, and smiled politely, letting her know her chorus-girl beauty didn’t interest me particularly, which I could tell bothered her. She was the sort who resented you for noticing she was pretty but if you didn’t, resented you for that. I sat down. She knocked on Piquett’s door and went in and in a minute or so came out looking vaguely confused, then covered it quickly with that businesslike manner.
“He’ll see you,” she said, and I started to rise, but she motioned me back. “It’ll be a few minutes.”
And she returned to her typing.
I sat and read one of the handful of magazines on a small glass-and-chrome table between two of the chairs; a Saturday Evening Post from the second week of January. Between the air conditioning and pictures of kids building snowmen, I was ready to find myself a pair of snowshoes.
The frosty receptionist answered the phone on her desk and it was an inner-office call; she glanced up at me disinterestedly and said, “You can go on in, now.”
I’d been waiting half an hour.
Piquett was seated behind his desk, paperwork spread out across it unconvincingly. He’d kept me waiting on purpose; why, I didn’t know. But one thing was for sure: Piquett wasn’t a paperwork-style lawyer.
He’d never been to law school; he studied the law books while working as a bartender and waiter. That much was well known by the public at large, who viewed him as a colorful character. Lesser known was Piquett’s stint as a hanger-on at police precinct houses, carrying messages to lawyers and bail bondsmen, as sort of an apprentice ambulance chaser. Ward heelers and politicians, as well as various underworld characters, were valuable connections made in those days by the would-be lawyer (rumor had it he tried out for the bar a dozen times before passing). And working as a waiter and bartender in road-houses and, later, in various Loop and North Side restaurants and taverns enabled Piquett to make some good, lasting friendships.
One of which, you would think, was the friendship between Piquett and Heller, the way the stocky little man stood and smiled and flung his hand out toward me. I shook it, and he gestured for me to sit in a chair opposite him, and I did, but he remained standing.
For a small man, he cut an impressive figure. Even on this warm day (albeit in an air-cooled office), he wore a three-piece suit, though nothing fancy; the vest and gray-speckled tie were for respectability, but the slightly worn look of the suit was for Clarence Darrow mock-humility.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, with a disarming half-smile. His features were crowded toward the center of his chubby face — bright eyes, bulbous nose, tiny mouth; dark circles under the bright eyes gave him an intensity, and the effect was at once boyish and fatherly. His most striking feature, however, was his hair: a three-inch-high salt-and-pepper pompadour rose in startled waves, as if he’d stuck his finger in a socket.
“Nice to see you, too, Counselor,” I said, smiling faintly. The only time I’d ever seen him had been in court, in the Lingle murder case. I’d been testifying for the prosecution; he’d been the defense lawyer. Still, we’d been on the same team. Both of us were helping railroad a Syndicate patsy named Leo Brothers, Piquett’s client, who’d been chosen by the Capone crowd to take the rap.
“What brings you here, Mr. Heller?” He sat.
“I wanted to thank you for referring one of your clients to me. I sure can use the business.”
He brushed a hand over the pompadour and it did a little dance. “I don’t remember having recommended your services, Mr. Heller. Although I may have. You did reliable work for me, and my client, last year.”
All my dealings with Piquett on that job had been via intermediary or phone.