Apparently nobody had seen what happened: there'd been no screams, no shouts, when Cooney took those silenced slugs- no lights going on suddenly in windows. Just me tumbling into the bushes, and when the car had gone by and showed no sign of returning, and it seemed safe to come out, I took my powder, and unless somebody had recognized one of us when I'd gone pushing through the crowd after
Cooney, I didn't see how I could be pulled in on this.
And today had borne this out. I'd had a call from one of the boys from the pickpocket detail, telling me Cooney had been killed, wondering if that news was worth the fin I'd been offering 'round; and I'd said no. Cooney wasn't worth squat to me dead, but if my pal came around to Barney's sometime. I'd buy him a beer for his trouble. And we'd left it at that.
Also. Cooney had got a small mention on the inside pages of the afternoon papers: a longtime pickpocket with a record had been gunned down, and police figured it was a mob-related slaying, but had no leads. It would be added to the list of hundreds of gangland slayings in Chicago these last ten or fifteen years; if a gangland slaying had ever been solved in Chicago, I hadn't heard about it. Except for Jake Lingle's, of course.
But what did Cooney's death mean? I was afraid I knew. I was afraid that Mary Ann's brother, with his connections to Ted Newberry via the Tri-Cities liquor ring, had got in hot water with the Nitti crowd, and now that my snooping was leading me to Nitti's doorstep, the bullets were stalling to fly.
Nitti was supposed to owe me one. but I hadn't thought this was what he had in mind.
So I called him. Or tried to- I couldn't get through to him at his office over the Capri restaurant on North Clark Street (which was across from the City Hall, incidentally), but whoever I talked to relayed the message, and around seven that night, just before I was going to head out to the fair, Nitti returned my call.
"Heller, how are you doin'?"
"Better than Dipper Cooney," I said. "He died last night."
"So I hear."
"I was with him."
"That I didn't hear."
"Are you on the level with me. Frank? I did you a favor once, you know."
"I didn't have anything to do with what happened to Cooney. You want me to find out who did?"
"That. I'd appreciate."
"Let's talk. Meet me at my office tomorrow afternoon. Two o'clock. I want to know about this punk you're trying to find."
"Jimmy Beame?" So he'd heard about that.
"Right. Who knows. I might even be able to help you out on that score."
"I'd appreciate that. Frank."
"See ya tomorrow, Heller."
And the phone had clicked dead.
I sat staring at it. wondering if I was being set up; I had the clammy sort of feeling you get waiting in a doctor's office for the results of your tests.
So I took my gun with me to the fair, and now I was trying to get Mary Ann to leave with me. since being at the fairgrounds with all these people was making me nervous.
"Nervous? What about? Nathan, don't be a grouch. Look. I'll let you take me to see Sally Rand some other night. But it's about time you took me up on the Sky Ride."
"We went on the Sky Ride last week."
"Not the observation deck."
"I'm not crazy about heights, okay?"
"Tough guy! Come on." And she tugged on my arm.
We were almost there, anyway; I glanced behind me, half-expecting to be followed. But I couldn't see anybody suspicious. Nobody that seemed inconsistent with his surroundings. And there were pith-helmeted guards with sidearms all around who knew me, and I could call on, if trouble turned up. So what the hell.
The Sky Ride towers were like twin Eiffels, and why not? That tower had been the hit of the Paris Exposition of '89. and these towers loomed over the Century of Progress in much the same way. The steel-web frameworks rose over six hundred feet, higher than any of Chicago's skyscrapers, the tallest towers this side of the Atlantic coast. A third of the way up, the silver, red-striped "rocket" cars, carrying thirty or fort)' passengers, crossed the lagoon on overhanging cable tracks. Last week, when we'd taken that trip, I felt we were up plenty high enough; now, as we entered the pennant-flapping SKY RIDE entryway, getting into one of the two elevators that went to the top (two others went to the rocket-car platform), we'd be going up another four hundred feet, to the observation deck.
It took a whole minute to get there, and we looked first from the windows of the enclosed observation room, the fair spread out before us like a colorful electric map. One of the fair's pith-helmeted security' guards was on-duty in the observation room; not too many people up here tonight- maybe a dozen, mostly couples. I said hello to the guard, a florid-faced guy of about forty who used to be a traffic cop; he said hello back, and whispered he'd got a pickpocket earlier that day, seeming proud of himself. I patted him on the arm and told him atta boy.
Mary Ann was still looking out the window, breathless; she loved looking down on the lights of the fair and, beyond that, of the city. But I was ready to go, and said so.
"Oh, Nathan! We haven't even been up on the observation deck."
"This is as far as I go."
She hugged one of my amis with both of hers. "Don't be a wet blanket. It's a beautiful night; there'll be a nice breeze."
"Freeze our butts off. is more like it," I said, but then we were walking the final flight up. and Mary Ann dragged me to the highest exhibit at the fair- the Otis Elevator exhibit, which showed the machinery that operated the Sky Ride's high-speed elevators- also the dullest exhibit. I might add- which was in a building that covered all but the outer walkway area of the unenclosed observation deck.
Outside, on the deck, there weren't many people; the wind was blowing a bit too much for standing on top of a tower six-hundred-some feet off the ground. We found a place around one side of the building, where the deck jutted out like a porch so you could get a better look at the fair, and stood by the rail, having a gander, enjoying some privacy.
And seeing the fair stretched out before you, not through a window, but right before you, leaning against a rail and looking out at it, well, dammit if it didn't take my breath away. Searchlights cut across the sky, from the very tower we stood upon, intersecting with the arc lights of the fair below; the fair's geometric buildings turned into abstract shapes and colors as if on the canvas of some Tower Town modern artist.
I turned to Mary Ann to comment on this, to leave cynicism behind for a moment and be frankly impressed with all this, and Mary Ann's eyes were wide and she was intaking breath, and not because of the view.
Somebody was coming up behind me.
Fast.
The outstretched hands hit me just as I was turning, my right hand reaching toward the automatic under my coat, but not quite getting there, and it was a guy in a straw hat and pale yellow suit and just as I was going over the rail, backward. I saw Mary Ann slapping at him with both hands and his hat flew off. got caught by the breeze and went flapping by me as I fell, and I recognized him. and the sole thought in my panic-stricken brain was. the son of a bitch is blond again.
I hit a steel support beam, hard, on my back, and it knocked the wind out of me, but somehow my mind or instinct or some goddamn thing overrode, and I grabbed at the beam, catching it in the crook of one ami, and I clung to it, hugged it, wrapped both amis, both legs around it. The support connected the platform to the tower structure at a 45-degree angle, and thank God I hadn't got to my gun, because I needed both hands. The support was about as big around as a man's leg, and had rough sharp edges all 'round, digging into my flesh as I hung there in the breeze, my tie, my suit, flapping.
I was on the underside of the beam, like some animal clinging to a tree limb. I didn't look down; I knew what was down there- my fucking stomach, for one thing.