“My God,” he said. “You took a hell of a beating, didn’t you?”
“They wouldn’t serve me at a lunch counter down South, would they?”
“Your friend Mr. Ross told me you took a beating, but I didn’t imagine...”
“That’s how you found me? Through Barney?”
He nodded. “When I couldn’t reach you at your office this morning, I called around. Ross wouldn’t tell me where you were on the phone. So I went and saw him in person and he finally consented.”
“He’s a good judge of character.”
“Does that mean you don’t mind seeing me?”
“No. I don’t mind. I wanted to talk to you anyway, and it’s better for my health if you come to me. There are people who wouldn’t appreciate my going to see you.”
“The people who did this to you?”
“Among others. Could we sit down? Or would you prefer to wait till I collapse?”
Looking genuinely concerned, he said, “Oh, hell, I’m sorry — you need some help?”
“No. Just let me take it at my own pace. Let’s sit in the kitchen. It’s through there...”
In the small white modern kitchen, there was coffee on the stove. Bless Sally’s heart. She’d be doing her matinee about now. Dancing with a bubble.
I sat at the table while Cowley, at my direction, poured us some coffee. He put a cup in front of me and sat and sipped his own.
With a disgusted look, he said, “I know the aftermath of a rubber-hose session when I see one.”
“Well, you’re a cop. You’ve probably administered a few.”
He didn’t take offense; he didn’t even deny it. “Never to an innocent man.”
I laughed, and it hurt. “I been called a lot of things, but innocent?”
Cowley’s laugh was short and gruff, like he didn’t do it much. “More or less innocent, then. Was it cops?”
“Yeah. East Chicago boys, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Zarkovich and O’Neill?”
“Not personally. Zarkovich was behind it, I’m sure. Did he bring any men to town with him?”
The disgusted expression returned as he nodded. “A contingency of four, not counting him and his captain.”
“I didn’t get a very good look at the bastards who did this to me, but with that small a field to choose from, I might get lucky.”
“What was this about, Heller?”
I sighed. It hurt. “They wanted me out of commission. They weren’t trying to kill me or anything. Just hurt me bad enough to put me on the sidelines for a few days. Take me out of the action.” I sipped the coffee. It was hot, black, bitter; I liked it. “I’d served my purpose.”
“Which was?”
“To finger Dillinger for them. Specifically, to contact you guys. The feds.”
Cowley did a slow burn, like Edgar Kennedy. “Would you mind telling me the rest of it, in your view? I think I know most of it. But I’d like to hear your thoughts.”
“First, why don’t you tell what’s been going down on your end, where Mr. Dillinger’s concerned?”
He thought about that, then said, with finality and formality, “A few hours ago, in the lobby of my hotel — the Great Northern on Dearborn, to be exact — Melvin Purvis and I met with Martin Zarkovich.” It was like he was writing his field report. “We’ve set up a meeting with Anna Sage. For tonight.”
“And she’s going to give you Dillinger.”
“Apparently, yes.”
I thought about giving him Jimmy Lawrence’s Park Grove address. I thought about Frank Nitti telling me to stay in bed. I thought about the rubber hose swishing in the air.
I said, “I’m going to tell you what I think is going on here. It’s my best educated guess. And it’s just between you and me. Agreed?”
He nodded.
I told him, briefly, about the traveling salesman who’d come to me. About tailing Polly Hamilton and Jimmy Lawrence. About Anna Sage. Everything that led up to my seeing Purvis.
“And contacting Purvis was my function in this,” I said. “A private detective working on a domestic case who just happens to stumble onto Dillinger. Much better than an East Chicago cop like Zarkovich making first contact — the corruption on the East Chicago force makes the Chicago cops look like priests. You guys knew of Zarkovich’s reputation, and wouldn’t have liked the smell of this, if he’d initiated it. Yesterday you said straight out you’d rather deal with me than him, and that you liked the idea of having me — honest ol’ me — as an independent, outside, corroborating source.”
Cowley was nodding again, slowly. “No doubt about it. You gave the Dillinger story credibility.”
“Agreed. Now, anybody else in my shoes would’ve gone to Captain Stege, rather than Purvis. Stege has a solid name in this town, whereas Purvis’s been a joke since Little Bohemia. But my past differences with Stege — well known to just about everybody — made it easy to predict I wouldn’t go to him with the information. And if I had, I’d probably got tossed out on my ass.”
“You sound as if you think there’s a... conspiracy, here. That somebody consciously selected you for this. To put all this in motion.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know who selected me for my role. Piquett, probably. But it’s obvious who gave the go-ahead for the overall plan.”
“Who?”
I told him about my meeting with Nitti.
“If the Outfit wants Dillinger dead,” Cowley said, “why not just kill him, if they know where’s he hiding?”
“Well, they’ve obviously known that from the start. Nothing happens on the North Side that Frank Nitti doesn’t know about. And Dillinger’s hidden out on the North Side any number of times, over the course of a year.”
“Which would mean...”
“Which would mean he did so with Nitti’s knowledge — and, most likely, blessing.”
“You think Dillinger is connected to the Outfit, then.”
I shrugged. It hurt. “Only loosely. Only in the ways I outlined to Nitti. Baby Face Nelson is a former Capone torpedo, remember. They aren’t in the same organization, but they’re members of the same club.”
“Make your point.”
“Nitti made it: ‘It’s better for some people to be dead.’ Dillinger’s at the end of his string. But he’s got a reputation for not shooting it out with the cops, and after all his jailbreaks, security next time’ll be tight. Johnny won’t be doing any more crashing out.”
“Then it’s a simple case of ‘he knows too much.’”
I nodded. It hurt. “That’s why they wanted Purvis in on it. Because Purvis would agree to something Stege never would: to shoot Dillinger on sight. After all, your boss Hoover gave the go-ahead on that. Fuck capture. Kill him.”
Cowley looked bleakly into his coffee.
“It’s Syndicate all the way, Cowley. Anna Sage is a madam — and the Syndicate always has a piece of every brothel in any city of any size at all. Zarkovich has connections to the Capone crowd going back ten years, and is a bagman between the brothels and various crooks, some of ’em political, some of ’em Syndicate. Louis Piquett is in the Syndicate’s pocket, enough so to betray his own client, it would seem. Do I have to spell it out for you? Frank Nitti has set you up to kill Dillinger for him.”
Cowley’s face seemed impassive, but there was anger in his eyes. In his voice, too: “Why, damnit? Why don’t they just kill him themselves?”
“Why send a man when you can get a boy to do the job?”
“Don’t be cute.”
I gestured with one hand. It hurt. “That’s Nitti’s style. It’s the Cermak kill all over again. The world thinks a ‘demented bricklayer’ tried to kill FDR in Miami last year, and ‘accidentally’ killed the mayor of Chicago instead. But you and I know that Cermak and Nitti were blood enemies, and little Joe Zangara was a one-man Sicilian suicide squad, sent to take His Honor out. Which he did.”