The Million-Dollar Wound (12 page)

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You can catch the El at Western and Eighteenth.”

I did.

It was after six when I got back to the office, and everybody was gone for the day. I found a stack of memos Gladys had left on my desk, all of them calls that had come in in the late afternoon, in the aftermath of the O’Hare shooting, from reporters wanting a statement. I made a big wad out of them and dropped it in the circular file. Then I fished my keys out of my pocket and unlocked the bottom left-hand drawer of my desk and got out the automatic, the nine-millimeter Browning I’d had since my police days, all tangled up in its shoulder holster. I untangled the gun, took it out of the holster, put it on the desk; then I got out of my topcoat, slipped off my suitcoat, slung on the holster, sat and cleaned and oiled the gun like O’Hare had before me, an irony not lost on me I assure you, loaded it, stood, put on my suitcoat, put on my topcoat, slid the gun not under my arm but into my deep right-hand topcoat pocket, keeping my hand on the gun, rose from my desk and locked up and left.

It was dark now. A cold, nearly freezing rain was spitting at me; I kept my hand in my pocket gripping the gun. I felt tired—the evening may have been young, but the day and I felt old. Cutting down Plymouth, I thought for a moment about stopping in at Binyon’s, a favorite restaurant of mine that fortune had put just around the corner from my office. I was hungry enough, despite what I’d witnessed; being close to death doesn’t necessarily kill your appetite—matter of fact, it can make you appreciate life all the more, including such simple, taken-for-granted pleasures as good eats.

Instead I walked on to the Morrison, going in the main entrance on Madison, through the plush lobby with its high ceiling and inlaid marble and dark wood and overstuffed furniture and potted plants. To the left was a bank of elevators, but I stopped first at the marble-and-bronze check-in desk.

“Any messages?” I asked the assistant manager, a pockmarked young man named Williams, whose neatly tended slick black hair and tiny mustache complemented his pointlessly superior attitude.

“That’s an understatement,” he said, with more disgust than humor. He turned to his wall of boxes and withdrew a fat handful of notes; I glanced at them—phone messages from reporters. Davis of the
Daily News
had called half a dozen times, alone. Some journalistic joker, frustrated in not reaching me it would seem, had left the name Westbrook Pegler. Very funny. Pegler, of course, was a star columnist for Hearst, and hadn’t worked the Chicago beat in years.

I pushed the stack back at Williams, said, “Toss those for me, would you?”

His tiny mustache twitched with momentary displeasure, but he did it.

“And hold all my calls,” I said. “Unless it’s somebody from my office—that would be my secretary or my two operatives.”

He jotted their names down; at least he was efficient. Then he smirked at me. “I suppose you realize you have a guest.”

“A guest?”

“Yes,” he said, a little surprised that I was surprised. “An attractive woman. She said she was a friend and I gave her a key.”

My right hand was still in my pocket, gripping the automatic; with my left I pointed a finger at him like a gun, almost touching his nose. His eyes involuntarily crossed for a moment, trying to focus on the finger.

“Never do that,” I said.

“Well, I’m sorry… I just assumed…”

“Never let anybody in my room. Never give anybody my key.”

“She’s a very attractive woman, Mr. Heller. She said she was a friend, a close friend.”

“Never do that. Never let anybody in my room. Never give anybody my key.”

I was still pointing the finger at him.

He swallowed, his mouth obviously gone dry on him. “I assure you it will never happen again.”

“Good.”

I got on the nearest elevator; I wasn’t alone: in addition to the red-uniformed operator, there was a mustached midget in a gaudy yellow suit. The little man was smoking a big cigar and reading
Variety.
He got off on the fourteenth floor, and, when he was gone, the operator, a Swedish kid, said, “He’s a World’s Fair midget.” And I said, “What?” And the operator said, “He’s a World’s Fair midget. We have a troop of forty-five of them visiting from the New York World’s Fair. Appearing in town someplace.” I said, “Oh.”

He took me up to the tower. The Morrison was the tallest hotel in the city, its main building twenty-one stories high, a nineteen-story tower sitting on top of that. My suite (which is to say my apartment) number was 2324. The operator let me off at the twenty-third floor and I walked toward a room that almost certainly had an uninvited somebody waiting inside for me.

Probably not the attractive woman, though. Who wasn’t my girlfriend, or even
a
girlfriend, because I hadn’t been seeing anybody lately. Most probably this dish was sent to con a key out of the clerk, said key then being turned over to a male accomplice or accomplices with a gun or guns. And that’s who’d be waiting for me inside my room.

So, the Outfit considered me a stray thread from this afternoon; well, I didn’t feel like getting picked off.

I could have called the cops, or the house dick, but fuck it, I was a cop, I was a dick, and I had a gun and this was my apartment and the goddamn Outfit, goddamn Nitti who was supposed to have all this respect for me, had very nearly killed me this afternoon. If I hadn’t hopped out of that car, I’d be as dead as O’Hare right now. Deader.

So I got out my keys and I got out my gun and I worked the key in the door and when I swung it open, I was down low, lower to the ground than that goddamn midget, and I was pointing the gun directly into the sitting room of my small suite, where Sally Rand was sitting on my couch reading
Collier’s.

Sally had the biggest blue eyes in creation, but they were bigger right now than I’d ever seen them; she had her long light blond hair back in a bun and was wearing a light blue blouse and a darker blue skirt and silk stockings and she’d kicked off her heels and made herself at home, already.

I hadn’t seen her in over five years.

“Some greeting, Heller,” she said.

I let out a major sigh. Stood and shut the door behind me and latched it and tossed my gun, lightly, on an easy chair nearby.

“I had kind of a rough day,” I said, slipping out of the topcoat, tossing it on another chair. The room we were in wasn’t large, though there was a kitchenette at the far end by a window overlooking North Clark Street; the walls were papered in yellow and tan stripes, like a faded tiger. There was a console radio, a servidor, a standing bookcase.

And Sally.

She wasn’t a large woman, and, as I stood before her, she looked almost like a child sitting there, a child who’d tried to please and now was afraid of being scolded.

“I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said. “I flirted with the desk clerk and he gave me a key.”

“That answers a mystery I hadn’t been able to solve,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Whether that guy likes girls or not.”

She smiled, now, her wide, unabashed smile, and she stood slowly, smoothing her dress, shoulders back so that I could see how nice her body still was, as if there was any doubt, and she said, “Why don’t you kiss me?”

“Why don’t I?” I said.

And I took her in my arms.

She was such a sweet fit, in my arms, Sally was. She was a sweet fit elsewhere, as well.

But that had been a long time ago, and the spontaneous kiss at first reminded us how well we’d known each other once but by the time we broke our clinch we remembered how very long it had been, and then it was awkward, then we were sitting next to each other wondering what to say next.

I broke the ice. “What in hell are you doing here?”

“You’re such a sweet talker, Heller.”

“I’m known for my smooth line with the ladies. It’s great to see you again. It’s wonderful. That goes without saying.”

“No it doesn’t. Say it.”

“It’s great to see you again. It’s wonderful.”

“That’s better.” She leaned over and up and kissed me again, softly, briefly. But comfortably.

“It’s been over five years, Helen.”

Her smile turned into something sad. “It must be,” she said. “Because it’s been at least that long since anybody called me Helen.”

She’d been born Helen Beck; when I’d met her, in the summer of ’34, when she hired me to check up on a would-be suitor, I’d taken to calling her by her real name, at least some of the time. In bed, for example.

She laughed a little. Not much humor in it. “Even my mother calls me ‘Sally’ now.”

“Well, you’re a famous girl.”

“I’m not really a girl, anymore.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“I’m a woman past thirty, Heller. Never mind how far past thirty.”

“Yeah, you’re a wreck all right.”

Now the smile went crinkly. “Stop it, you. I’m…well preserved; it’s my job to be. But I do have a few miles on me.”

“Don’t we all.”

She did look her age, though, close up at least; I was sure with makeup and lighting, on stage, from a distance, she still looked like the Sally Rand who was the hit of the Chicago World’s Fair in the summer of ’33 (with her fan dance) and ’34 as well (with her bubble dance). She was still a top box-office draw, although she hadn’t played Chicago in some time.

Anyway, she looked her age, but a beautiful woman of, say, thirty-five who looks thirty-five is hardly over the hill. In fact, one of the oddities about being in my thirties myself was that women about my age seemed more attractive to me now than the sweet young things.

“Why the gun?” she asked, a little concerned, nodding over at the automatic that was sitting on the chair.

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“I like long stories.”

I told her about O’Hare. Unlike my report to Stege, I told her everything. The summer I’d spent with her had been a rough one—I’d been involved in the Dillinger case up to my ass, and she’d seen some of the rough stuff go down, or anyway saw the aftermath of the rough stuff, and had taken it in stride. She was a tough cookie, Sally, without being hard; and she was a good sounding board, had helped me figure some things out. She was smarter than me, I’d discovered. Probably still was.

“Frank Nitti,” she said, shaking her head. “After all this time. You told me you intended to steer clear of him, for once and forever.”

I shrugged. “It’s his town. In my line, I’m bound to bump up against his interests from time to time.”

“He almost bumped up against
you,
this time.”

“You’re telling me. He told me he owed me one, once. Maybe he forgot the debt.” I thought back. “Or maybe he remembered I forgave it without exacting payment.”

The wide eyes narrowed. “You thought Nitti might have sent someone here, to your hotel suite, to…?”

Another shrug. “Definite possibility.”

“Why?” she said, indignantly. “What did
you
do?”

“I spent time alone with O’Hare just before he died. They may think he told me something damaging, something I could carry to the cops or the papers.”

“You talked to Captain Stege already, didn’t you? And told him nothing?”

“Yeah. And Tubbo Gilbert will see Stege’s report, and Tubbo will tell the Outfit that I either don’t know anything, or chose to keep my mouth shut And the morning papers will show I haven’t talked to the press. So if I can just last the night, I may be all right.”

She slipped tier arm in mine; sat very close to me. “We’ll just stay inside your cozy little place, then, just you and me. Have you had supper?”

“No.”

“I checked your Frigidaire. All you have is eggs and beer and half a loaf of bread. Is there an all-night grocery I could slip out to, and…”

“You know what I’d like. Helen? One of those breakfasts you used to make me. Nobody makes an omelet better than Sally Rand.”

“You’re right. It’s not exactly what I’m famous for, but you’re right.”

Soon she was serving me half of a big fluffy omelet, serving herself the other half—like the Kingfish says on “Amos n’ Andy,” she even gave me the “bigges’” half; she also toasted up some bread and managed to round up some butter somewhere. We drank beer out of glasses. Real elegant like.

We were midway through the meal when I finally asked her again.

“Helen, what the hell are you doing here? I saw your bags near the bedroom door as I came in.”

She ate some eggs. Between bites, blandly, she said, “I’m bankrupt.”

“What?”

“I’ve gone bankrupt. It’ll be in the papers soon enough.”

“That’s crazy. You’re one of the top nightclub draws in the country!”

She nodded. “Right after Sophie Tucker and Harry Richman. And nobody can touch me in vaudeville and the picture houses.”

“So what happened?”

She cocked her head; it was a shrug of sorts, but her expression was reflective, the big blue eyes searching. “Got too big for my britches, I guess.”

“Helen, you don’t wear any britches in your business.”

Now her smile was wistful. “You should’ve taken me up on my offer that time, and been my business partner. You’re more conservative than I am. You’d have stopped me.”

“Stopped you from what?”

“Overdoing. Maybe you heard, I put together a thing called Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch. We played the San Diego and Forth Worth fairs. Set record gates at both. Then for this San Francisco Exposition—which is trying to compete with the New York World’s Fair, you know—I went all out. Top-flight costumes, lighting, scenery, the works. Built and paid for my own buildings to house the show. Hired forty girls. Overextended myself.”

“It could happen to anyone.”

She shook her head. “Never thought it would happen to me. I have the reputation of being a savvy businesswoman, you know. Me and my shows have generated over three million bucks’ worth of business, the past six years, starting with the Century of Progress. I was making forty-five hundred a week, not so long ago.”

Her weekly wage was a yearly wage many men would’ve killed for. And here she was broke.

We’d finished eating now, but we stayed at the table. City lights winked at us through the adjacent window. She pushed the plates aside and reached out and held my hands in hers. “I had to let my girls go,” she said, as if apologizing to them through me. “I have to start over, as a single. The natural place to do that is Chicago, I got the right connections, I could find a top club easy enough. But I couldn’t even afford a room while I went about it.”