"That's fine, Nathan."
"Aren't you sore?"
"About what?"
"No, I mean aren't you sore? You know. Down there."
"Why don't you find out."
The electric moon smiled.
Cold hit Chicago like a fist. The wind conspired with the falling temperature and turned the city to ice: then eleven inches of snow joined in. turning it white. Those people in the Hoovervilles I'd talked to not so long ago probably made it through okay, because they at least had shacks to live in and sometimes a barrel with something burning in it to huddle 'round. But the down-and-outers in the parks froze. To death. Not all of them, but enough of them- though it didn't get much play in the papers. Not good publicity in the year of the fair. Of course the major role the papers played in the lives of the down-and-outers was insulation: wear it over your heart if you hope to wake up in the morning. I wondered if the guy who'd passed that piece of wisdom along to me had woken up this morning.
Me. I was in Florida, wearing a white suit, soaking up the sun, smelling the salt breeze. Men on the streets were in shirt sleeves and straw? hats; women wore summery dresses and tanned legs. The buildings were as white as Chicago's blizzard- though the similarity ended there- and the palm trees along Biscayne Boulevard leaned, as if bored with sunshine. Mayor Cermak should get in town late this afternoon; the blond man Frank Nitti was sending to meet Cermak might already be here.
The first thing I did. when I got off the Dixie Express at a little after seven on this Wednesday morning, was pay a cabbie to take me to the nearest used car lot. A guy in his shirt sleeves with a gold incisor that reflected the Miami sun sold me a '28 Ford coupe for forty dollars. It didn't exactly run like a million bucks- it ran like forty bucks- but it ran, and soon I was having a look around the Magic City.
It was a synthetic paradise, like a movie's elaborate background painting that was supposed to fool you into thinking it was real, but didn't quite make it- and you didn't quite care, because there was a charm to it. to the ice-cream buildings, the transplanted tropical foliage, the bay so blue it made the sky seem not blue enough, the skyline that rose off the flat terrain like Chicago in the imagination of an eight-year-old child. Twenty years ago, this was mangrove swamp, sand dunes, coral rock. Jungle. Now it was a playground for the rich, and the only sign of anyone remembering it having been a jungle was the pith helmets worn by the cops directing traffic, their uniforms pale blue, belted white.
Despite hard times, Miami seemed to be doing good business. On showy Biscayne Boulevard, the palm-lined four lane that ran parallel to the sprawling, tropically landscaped Bayfront Park, cars with license plates from all forty-eight states (including, at times, Florida) could be spotted, by anyone so inclined. The shopping district, west of Bayfront Park, was a dozen blocks of predominantly narrow, one-way streets and was a Florida version of Maxwell Street and State Street, slapped together: open-front shops sold fruit boxes and juice, and neckties with colorful hand-painted designs, and ashtrays the shape of the state; department-store manikins lounged in display windows, wearing swimsuits and sunglasses, and contemplated tossing the beach ball around; photo galleries invited patrons to pose before cardboard seashores while holding up a huge stuffed fish and leaning against what purported to be a palm; Seminole families in full tribal regalia sat in curio shops to attract the curious (and their money); theater doormen in elaborate paramilitary' attire hawked the latest screen thrill, while comer pitchmen offered suntan lotion and racing forms- the latter an especially hot commodity'. As I waited for the light to change on Flagler Street, a newsboy about ten years my elder sold me a Miami Herald, but when I said I didn't want a racing form too. he save me a look like I'd said I didn't like women.
I didn't see many down-and-outers as I strolled around downtown Miami, but there were some women in their thirties in pretty summer frocks, housewives I'd guess, who approached occasional paleface tourist types like myself, requesting "a penny a day to keep hunger away from somebody out of a job"; they weren't begging for themselves, of course- the little boxes they earned said "Dade County Welfare Board." Another woman, this one in her forties, but also rather nicely dressed, approached me and handed me a leaflet; she was with the Citizens Taxation Committee- despite falling property values, taxes were being kept at "Boom" levels of earlier years, it seemed.
"Something must be done about the mayor," she said, with her mouth a firm line, her eyes hard behind wire-frames.
I nodded agreement, and went into a restaurant called the Dinner Bell, where I had roast beef, peas, coffee, and apple pie for fifteen cents. A blond guy was sitting at a table nearby, drinking lemonade; he wore a white short-sleeve shirt and gray suspenders and buff trousers, and was about the right age. But he wasn't the blond guy I was looking for. Neither were half a dozen other blond men who passed me on the street that I save as careful a once-over as I had him.
It wouldn't be that easy. I wanted it to be- I wanted to just bump into the blond killer on the street and put my gun in his back and duck him into an alley and slam his head into a wall and, if he was walking around unarmed (which he might be, till he closed in on his target), plant my gun in his pocket and drop him off anonymously on the doorstep of a hospital or a police station, like an unwanted babe. His packing a pistol would be enough to assure him a few days at the expense of Dade County, which should keep him out of circulation till Cermak headed home.
Or I could hang a close tail on him, let him lead me to his hotel. That would allow me to see if he was working with a backup man, in which case I'd plant the gun on the blond and sic a cop on him, and the backup man would probably fade away. As for any confrontation with the blond himself, the best thing would be to clobber him from behind, bad enough to put him in the hospital, but not kill him; another possibility was holding him captive in his room (and running up his room service bill while I did) till Cermak left town. But an approach like that would mean he'd see me, get a good look at me. and the backup man (if there was one) would probably have to be dealt with head on, too, all of which could have nasty repercussions concussion seemed the better approach.
The gun I'd plant on him, incidentally, would not be mine: it would be the.38 Colt Police Special that had been delivered to my office by messenger, along with my train tickets, five hundred dollars expense money, and a letter from the office of Florida's attorney general authorizing Nathan Heller to operate as a private investigator in Florida (including a temporary gun permit). Attorney Louis Piquett apparently had some friends in high places in Florida- or rather Al Capone did. Despite some public posturing by state and city officials when he showed up in Florida, around '28, Capone had been a welcome addition to the community- in fact, a fellow named Lummus, Miami's mayor at the time, was the real estate agent who sold Capone a mansion on Biscayne Bay.
There was no explanation as to why the gun had been sent; none was needed. Capone assumed there was at least the possibility of my killing the man I'd been sent to stop; toward that end. he'd provided something that couldn't be traced to me. I took my automatic along as well, having immediately had the thought of using the Piquett-furnished gun as a plant, should I happen upon the blond gunman prior to any attempt on Cermak's life.
Which was a fantasy I'd nurtured all the way down here on the Express, sitting by the window, watching the midwestern snow dissolve into the bluegrass of Kentucky; crossing rivers, cutting through valleys, skirting mountains, stopping at cities. An American panorama slid by me, and I saw it all… and none of it, because I was thinking about that blond assassin.