He nodded. "Winch and Pian have been on my case about a nice respectable Jewish contender like me running a speakeasy, so now that I can open up legal, I'm gonna. You'll be able to buy your rum here aboveboard and over-the-counter, 'fore too long. Roosevelt'll come through for us, wait and see."
Eliot was back; sat down. Sipped his beer and said to Barney, "When are they going to give you your shot at Canzoneri? After you put Billy Petrole away at the stadium last month, I don't see how they can deny you."
"You spoiled my surprise, Mr. Ness," Barney grinned, "I haven't told Nate yet, 'cause we won't get the contracts back signed and sealed till this afternoon. But I put my John Henry down a couple days ago. I'm getting my title shot."
I said, "Barney, that's great. When's it set for?"
"June. Gonna take advantage of those world's fair crowds."
"That's just great, Barney."
"I'll have tickets for you guys if you want 'em. I hope you both'll be there."
Eliot said. "Try and stop us." and raised his mug of beer in a toast.
Barney turned to me. "Can I get you a beer or something? Help me celebrate a little?"
"No thanks, champ. I got to testify in half an hour."
Eliot looked at his watch. "That's right." He drained the beer. "Let's 20."
Near the Bismarck there was a parking lot. where Eliot left his government Ford, and we walked over to City Hall, half of which was the County Building, where the courtroom was. The day was cloudy and in the lower forties, windy enough to be chilly; a light rain fell. We walked with our heads lowered and our hands dug in our raincoat pockets.
"Eliot," I said.
"Yeah?"
"This prosecutor."
"Charley, you mean?"
"You just answered my question."
"What question?"
"I've just been wondering if the prosecutor was a friend of yours, that's all."
He pretended not to get my drift.
But before we went in the building, I stopped him, put a hand on his arm and we stood in the rain, close enough that I could smell the beer on his breath.
"I know you got my best interests at heart," I said.
"Yeah,'but'..."
I grinned. "No 'buts' about it. I know you got my best interests at heart. Thanks, Eliot."
He grinned back. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
Eliot sat next to me in the courtroom, and that made Lang, a couple rows up, nervous. He kept craning his neck around to look at us, a vaguely desperate look on his face. He'd brought some of the nervousness along with him, apparently, as he'd also brought his lawyer, who sat next to him- the same dapper little fat attorney who'd come to that ditch in the Indiana dunes to identify the body of Ted Newberry, back in January- and who noticed Lang turning to look at me and stopped him doing it.
But Miller, sitting on the other side of Lang, wondering what his partner was looking at. turned and looked at us, too, and seemed similarly disturbed.
I hadn't had any contact with either of them since Nitti got his continuance, in this same courtroom, a few weeks before. No threatening phone calls or bribes or confrontations. Not that I had expected them to try anything. They probably wouldn't have risked doing anything to me themselves, at this point; and as far as I knew the only gang affiliation they had was with the Newberry/Moran group, who weren't much of a threat to anybody these days, many of their various members having defected to sign up with other factions, primarily the major one: Nitti's. But I'd been sleeping with my gun under my pillow just the same.
Besides, for all they knew I might get on the stand and tell the story they wanted me to.
The judge came in, and we all rose, and, despite his lawyer's admonitions, Lang turned and looked at me again, and I winked at him, like Cermak did at Roosevelt.
And Lang was the first witness called.
He walked to the stand and as he passed Nitti, Nitti muttered something, presumably nasty. It wasn't loud enough for the judge to rap his gavel and reprimand Nitti- but it was plenty to unnerve Lang another notch. He took the stand and, after the prosecutor had asked a few perfunctory questions to establish the legality of entering the office at the Wacker-LaSalle without a warrant. Nitti's lawyer rose from the defense table and approached the bald cop.
"Who shot you?"
Lang looked at me.
"Who shot you. Sergeant Lang?"
The answer to that question, of course, was supposed to be. "Frank Nitti."
But Lana said. "I don't know who shot me."
Over at the prosecution table, the prosecutor jumped to his feet, as did several associates of his. and a wave of surprise- noisy surprise rolled over the courtroom. Several people stood; one of them was Miller. His fists were clenched, and he said, "Dirty son of a bitch."
The judge rapped his gavel, and everybody shut up, or anyway kept it down; the jury sat looking at each other, wondering if all trials were like this.
Nitti's lawyer leaned against the rail in front of the witness stand and, calmly, asked, "Can you say under oath that the defendant, Frank Nitti, shot you?"
"No."
A group of surprised prosecutors and police officials were on their feet and moving forward, and the chief prosecutor pushed his way to the forefront.
His face was red as he thrust a finger at Lana.
"Do you see the man who shot you?" he shouted. "Is he in the courtroom, sergeant?"
"No," Lang said. A calm had settled over him: with his bald head, and his folded hands, he looked damn near cherubic.
Nitti's lawyer stood next to the prosecutor but turned to the judge, who seemed to be having as much trouble believing his eyes and ears as the jury, and said, "I object, Your Honor! The prosecution is impeaching its own witness!"
The prosecutor turned to Nitti's lawyer and said, with contempt, "Yeah, he's my witness. But he turned out to be yours."
That left Nitti's lawyer momentarily at a loss for words.
The prosecutor jumped back in. "I want to ask him if he committed perjury just now. Or did he commit perjury when he testified before the grand jury, when this indictment was voted? Because before the grand jury, he said Nitti shot him."
I could see Nitti, sitting in his chair sideways; he was amused by all this. He was leaning back, a smile turning the downward V of his thin mustache into an upward one.
I leaned toward Eliot and said, "Your friend the prosecutor is getting pretty worked up about this."
We both knew that the prosecutor wasn't finding anything out about Lang he didn't know already.
"I don't know what he's so steamed about," Eliot said "You're the one Lang's upstaging."
I was supposed to climb the stand and contradict Lang's Nitti-shot-me story; who could've guessed the pressure of the possibility of my doing that would be enough to make Lang contradict the story on his own?
Well, one person might have predicted it: Lang's lawyer, who was rising from the gallery to go toward the bench, saying as he went, "Your Honor! Your Honor! I am appealing here as this policeman's lawyer. As his counsel I advise him not to answer any more questions."
"Your Honor." the prosecutor said. "This man has no part in this proceeding. A witness has no right to a lawyer."
The judge agreed, but Lang's lawyer did not retire to the gallery; he stood beside the defense table, where Nitti and his lawyer were sitting, just two more spectators fascinated by a trial straight out of Lewis Carroll.
"Either you lied before the grand jury," the prosecutor said to Lang, "or you're lying now. I am giving you the chance to straighten yourself out here."
Lang's lawyer called out, "I advise my client not to answer"
The judge's gavel interrupted him.
Lang said. "Right after I was shot, my memory wasn't as good as it is now. Because of shock."
"You weren't suffering from shock in January, when you testified before the grand jury." the prosecutor said. "You were out of the hospital and cured by that time!"