Barney was smarter than a lot of fighters, but just as lousy with money as the worst of 'em. He'd been pulling in big purses for almost a year now; fortunately, his managers. Winch and Pian, were straight, and got him to make a couple of investments that weren't at the track. One of them was a jewelry store on Clark; another was a building at Van Buren and Plymouth with a downstairs corner deli next to a "blind pig"- that is, a bar that looked closed down from the street, but was really anything but (lots of things in Chicago looked like one thing outside and something else from inside). Barney planned to call the place the Barney Ross Cocktail Lounge someday, after Prohibition, and probably after he retired from the ring. His managers had a fit when he decided to keep the speak going, because Barney was a public figure in Chicago, with a wholesome image, despite a background that included being a runner for Capone and hustling crap games.
"So you quit," Barney said. He had a soft, quiet tenor voice, incongruous coming out of that flat, mildly battered puss of his, and puppy-dog brown eyes you could study for days and not see killer instinct- unless you swung at him.
"That's what I said," I said. "I quit."
"The cops, you mean."
"The opera company. Of course the cops."
He sipped the one beer he was allowing himself. We were in a corner booth. It was midevening, but slow; the night was just cold enough, the snow coming down just hard enough, to keep most sane folk inside. I only lived a few blocks from here, so was only moderately nuts. None of the other booths were taken and only a handful of stools at the bar were filled.
You went in through a door in the deli and found yourself facing the bar in a dark, smoky room three times as long as it was wide. The only tables were on the small dance floor at the far end, chairs stacked on the little open stage nearby- the nightclub aspect of the joint was on hold till Repeal. Boxing photos hung everywhere, shots of Barney and other fighters, in and out of the ring, with an emphasis on other West Side kids like King Levinsky, the heavyweight, and Jackie Fields, the welterweight Barney used to spar with; and, of course, the great lightweight Benny Leonard, who last year suffered a humiliating defeat attempting a comeback- Jimmy McLarnin put him down in six, giving him a bloody beating (the photos of Leonard on Barney's wall were from the 1917 championship victory over Freddie Welsh).
"Your pa woulda liked you quitting," he said.
"I know."
"But Janey ain't gonna."
"That I also know," I said.
Janey was Jane Dougherty; we were engaged. So far.
"You want another beer?"
"What do you think?"
"Buddy!" he said. He was talking to Buddy Gold, the retired heavyweight who ran the place for him and bartended. Then he looked at me with a wry little grin and said, "You're throwing money away, you know."
I nodded. "Being a cop in the Loop is good money in hard times."
Buddy brought the beer.
"It's good money in good times." Barney said.
"True."
"This Nitti thing."
"Yeah?"
"It happened yesterday afternoon?"
"Yeah. You saw the papers. I take it?"
"I saw the papers. I heard the city talking, too."
"No kidding. You serve lousy beer."
"No kidding. Manhattan Beer, what you expect?" Manhattan Beer was Capone's brand name; his Fort Dearborn brand liquors weren't so hot, either. "When did you decide to quit, exactly?"
"This morning."
"When did you turn your badge in?"
"This morning."
"It was that easy, then."
"No. It took me all day to quit."
Barney laughed. One short laugh. "I'm not surprised," he said.
The papers had made me out a hero. Me and Miller and Lang. But I came in for special commendation because I was already the youngest plainclothes officer in the city. That's what having an uncle who knows A. J. Cermak can do for you; that and if you help "crack" the Lingle case.
The mayor was big on publicity. He had a daily press conference; made weekly broadcasts he called "intimate chats." inviting listeners to write in and comment on his administration; and kept an "open door" at City Hall, where he could be seen sitting in shirt sleeves, possibly eating a sandwich and having a glass of milk, just like real people, any old time- or till recently, that is. Word had it open-door hours had been cut back, so he could better "transact the business of the mayor's office."
Today the papers had been full of the mayor declaring war on "the underworld." Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti was the first major victim in the current war on crime; the raid on Nitti's office was the opening volley in that war, Cermak said (in his daily news conference); and the three "brave detectives who made the bold attack" were "the mayor's special hoodlum squad." Well, that was news to me.
All I knew was when I went to the station after the shooting, I wrote out my report and gave it to the lieutenant, who read it over and said, "This won't be necessary." and wadded it up and tossed it in the wastebasket. And said. "Miller's doing the talking to the press. You just keep your mouth shut." I didn't say anything, but my expression amounted to a question, and the lieutenant said, "This comes from way upstairs. If I were you, I'd keep my trap shut till you find out what the story's going to be."
Well, I'd seen Miller's story by now- it was in the papers, too and it was a pretty good story, as stories went; it didn't have anything to do with what happened in Nitti's office, but it'd look swell in the true detective magazines, and if they made a movie out of it with Jack Holt as Miller and Chester Morris as Lang and Boris Karloff as Nitti, it'd be a corker. It had Nitti stuffing the piece of paper in his mouth, and Lang trying to stop him, and Nitti drawing a gun from a shoulder holster and firing; and I was supposed to have fired a shot into Nitti, too. And of course one of the gangsters made a break for it out the window, and I plugged him. Frank Hurt, the guy's name was- nice to know, if anybody ever wanted the names of people I killed. I was a regular six-gun kid; maybe Tom Mix should've played me.
It was a real publicity triumph, made to order for His Honor.
Only I was gumming it up. Today I told the lieutenant I was quitting; I tried to give him my badge, but he wouldn't take it. He had me talk to the chief of detectives, who wouldn't take my badge, either. He sent me over to City Hall where the chief himself talked to me; he. also, didn't want my badge. Neither did the deputy commissioner. He told me if I wanted to turn my badge in, I'd have to give it to the commissioner himself.
The commissioner's office was adjacent to Mayor Cermak's, whose door was not open this afternoon. It was about three-thirty; I'd been trying to give my badge away since nine.
The large reception room, where a male secretary sat behind a desk, was filled with ordinary citizens with legitimate gripes, and none of them had a prayer at getting in to see the commissioner. A ward heeler from the North Side went in right ahead of me and without a glance at the poor peons seated and standing around him, went to the male secretary with a stack of traffic tickets that needed fixing, which the secretary took with a wordless, mild smile, stuffing them in a manila envelope that was already overflowing, which he then filed in a pigeonhole behind the desk.