The Million-Dollar Wound (15 page)

“Smoke, if you like,” he said, lighting up the pipe.

“I don’t smoke.”

“I thought all private eyes smoked.”

“Nope. And my secretary isn’t in love with me, either.”

That amused him. “So the Hollywood clichés don’t apply in real life, hmmm? Well, some do.”

“How’s that?”

“Let’s just say, Jimmy Cagney, Eddie Robinson, and George Raft seem to be drawing from life.”

Well, Raft, anyway.

“By that you mean,” I said, “there really are gangsters in this wicked old world.”

“Precisely. And in this wicked old Hollywood as well.”

“Pegler told me Willie Bioff has muscled into the unions out here. And that that’s what you wanted to talk to me about.”

He nodded sagely, puffing at the pipe, getting it going. “I’m one of the people who got SAG off the ground. A three-time past president.”

“SAG?”

“Screen Actors Guild. We aren’t under Bioff’s thumb—yet. He’s been making some moves in that direction. Now, I invoke Bioff’s name, but in fact the president of the IATSE is Browne.”

“But Browne’s just the figurehead.”

“Right. Do you know a man named Circella?”

“Uh, isn’t that Nicky Dean’s real last name?”

“Yes it is. He and Bioff and Browne are all but inseparable, out here.”

“That’s bad, Mr. Montgomery.”

“Bob.”

“Bob. And if you’d call me Nate, that’d be just swell, too, but I don’t think I’m going to take this job. I hate to have taken your money and your plane ride and breakfast and all, only to turn you down, but…”

“But what, Nate?”

“Nicky Dean is an Outfit man.”

“Syndicate, you mean. Crime Syndicate.”

“Yes. He’s one of Frank Nitti’s people. And I’m from Chicago. I live in Chicago. I work in Chicago. And I can’t do either of those things, particularly the first, if I get on Frank Nitti’s bad side. It’s his town.”

“So will this be, if something isn’t done.”

I started to rise. “That’s very noble, and I hope you can do something about it. I just ain’t going to be part of it.”

Patiently, he gestured for me to sit. “Hear me out.”

“Mr. Montgomery—”

“Bob. Hear me out. You came this far, after all.”

“Well. Yeah, I did come a distance. Okay. I’ll hear you out. But I’m afraid I’ll be wasting your time on top of your money.”

He sat forward, tapped his finger on a manila folder on the little table between us. “Bioff’s got one foot in the figurative grave already. Evidence gathered by an investigator, a former FBI man whom I hired with SAG’s approval, has already been turned over to the Treasury Department.” He pushed the folder toward me. “Those are your copies.”

I picked the folder up and looked in it. Photostats of letters on IATSE stationery from Browne and Bioff both; statements from disgruntled union members; nothing much. Except for one thing: a photostat of a check made out to Bioff for $100,000. Signed by Joe Schenck.

“Isn’t Schenck…?”

“Vice president of Twentieth Century-Fox,” Montgomery said, smiling like an urbane killer again.

“How did your investigator get this?”

He shrugged. “There are rumors of a break-in at the IA offices.”

“That’s illegal.”

“So is extortion.”

I flapped the folder at him. “Is that what you think Bioff’s doing? Extorting money out of the movie executives? Selling them strike-prevention insurance?”

He shrugged again, puffed at his pipe. “It would certainly be cheaper for the studios than paying their help what they’re worth.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking around. “It’s a tough life.”

He sat up straight; bristled. “Don’t judge Hollywood by these standards. I’m a lucky, lucky man. The rank-and-file union members in this town—in whose behalf Bioff and Browne are supposedly fighting—are average working joes and janes. They deserve better than being sold out.”

“But is that little pimp powerful enough to blackmail somebody like Schenck?”

Nodding forcefully, he said. “Or Thalberg or Mayer or Jack Warner or anybody else. Remember, Bioff has under his thumb the movie projectionists, who alone can shut down every theater in every major city in the country. And a few such dark days would deliver a blow to the industry that the studios couldn’t recover from.”

“If the Treasury Department has this evidence, they should be able to prosecute Bioff.”

“Perhaps. On income-tax evasion, which is fine, but I need to show Bioff for what he is. His drunkard friend Browne is a convincing public speaker; and conditions for workers were so wretched prior to unionization that Bioff and Browne can sell the working man out and he won’t even know it.”

“So you’d like to see Bioff smeared, to keep him and Browne and the union they represent from attracting any converts. Specifically, to keep the actors out from under their greasy thumb.”

“Yes. But ‘smear’ isn’t the word.” He pointed with the pipe.
“Expose.”

“Yeah. That’s why you linked up with Pegler.”

“Certainly. He’s a yellow journalist; a muckraker. But that’s what’s called for in this situation.”

“You have Pegler. You don’t need me.”

“I need a good man in Chicago. So does Pegler.”

“You’ve already hired a private detective.”

“He’s an L.A. man. Nate, the SAG board authorized me to spend five thousand dollars to investigate Bioff. You see, I assured them if the investigation didn’t prove that Bioff is a very sour apple, I’d personally refund the five thousand.”

“Five grand, huh? Uh, how much have you spent so far?”

“Let’s just say I’m prepared to offer you a thousand-dollar retainer, on top of the two hundred dollars you’ve already received, plus expenses, and if your daily fee eats up the thousand, I can authorize you up to another thousand.”

My mouth felt dry. “That’s a lot of money.” It wasn’t the most money I’d been offered for a case this week, but then again, unlike Eddie O’Hare, Montgomery was alive.

Montgomery gestured with his pipe, quietly convincing; he could’ve sold Ford a Buick. “You are reputed to be street-smart, where Chicago and especially the Nitti Outfit are concerned. You would in this instance work essentially undercover. Just talk to people you know, find out what you can, and prepare a confidential report for me. You wouldn’t have to appear in court. Your name would never be revealed. But the information would be shared with federal agents, the SAG board and, possibly, probably, leaked to the press.”

“And my name wouldn’t be attached to any of it?”

“Well, with one exception. We understand you once arrested Willie Bioff.”

“That’s a matter of public record.”

“It is?”

“Sure. He was convicted of pandering. I was the arresting officer.”

Montgomery smiled. “So we heard. It’s nice to have it confirmed.”

“Where did you hear all this stuff about me? How the hell did you and Pegler get a line on me in the first place?”

“Is that important?”

“Ness! Damnit, of course. You’ve been talking to Treasury agents, and your private dick’s an ex-FBI man. You asked them for a reliable, Mob-savvy Chicago private cop, and they checked with somebody they knew who’d know that sort of thing about Chicago, which was Eliot, and Eliot mentioned me. My old friend Eliot probably remembered hearing me ranting and raving about how much I hated that little fat prick pimp Bioff, remembered me saying I arrested him once and passed that along to you!”

“Mr. Heller. You are a detective.”

“Mr. Montgomery. Goddamnit. You just hired one.”

G
EORGE
B
ROWNE

N
ICKY
D
EAN

A little after nine that evening, dressed to the nines in a rental tux Montgomery had sent around, I strolled out of the Roosevelt Hotel into a balmy breeze with a touch of ocean in it and climbed in a cab.

“Eighty-six ten Sunset Boulevard,” I told the cabbie, and we rolled off into a night made day by neon.

Montgomery was picking up the tab for this night on the town, which with luck might turn into work. He wanted me to hit the Trocadero, one of the swankier joints in Hollywood, because Bioff, Browne and Dean frequently held court there. It seemed the “Troc,” as it was affectionately known, was owned by William “Billy” Wilkerson, an enterprising gent who had made the Strip what it was today, which is to say a gaudy, expensive trap for tourists, and stars and would-be stars looking for publicity, as the Trocadero and the Vendome (Wilkerson’s luncheon-only complement to the Troc) were gossip-columnist haunts. This was partly due to Wilkerson also being editor and publisher of the
Daily Reporter,
and, as Billy was eager to stay in Bioff and Browne’s good graces, no negative stories about the Stagehands Union and the Unholy Trinity who ran it should ever be expected to appear therein.

“Thank God for Arthur Unger,” Montgomery had said.

“You mean the guy who tipped Pegler to Bioff’s racket,” I said, recalling the columnist’s mention of the
Variety
editor. “But why would a big-shot newspaperman like Wilkerson be intimidated by Bioff and company?”

“Because he and Browne have the power to call Wilkerson’s restaurant employees out on strike. About the only story Billy’s ever run on Bioff is one in which he called the little pimp ‘the type of man the IATSE should be grateful for.’” Here Montgomery had paused, thoughtfully. “Although the winds may be blowing differently now,” he went on, “because there was a story in the
Reporter
just yesterday criticizing, however mildly, the IA’s labor methods. I’m surprised it got through.”

I resisted the notion of having any contact with Bioff, Browne and/or Dean while I was in Hollywood, but Montgomery suggested it would be safer than not.

“Let’s bring your trip to California out in the open, and not risk anyone finding out about it and reading something in. Develop a cover story, an invented reason for being here. And then you can run into the gentlemen from the Stagehands Union, casually, and perhaps they’ll invite a fellow Chicagoan to sit at their table, in which case maybe they’ll spill something more than Browne’s latest bottle of imported beer.”

“Bioff knows I hate his guts,” I said, shaking my head. “Browne I barely know. Dean I’ve had some contact with, but we’re by no means chums; hell, I used to see his girlfriend Estelle from time to time, before she was his girlfriend, that is. I admit it might be smart for me to try to mend some fences with Bioff, if I’m going to be nosing around…but no matter how you slice it, I wouldn’t count on them rolling out the red carpet.”

“We’ll see. At any rate, it will give you a firsthand chance to see how high on the hog these union officials are living. Did I mention the two percent ‘income tax’ they’ve assessed all their members?”

“No…”

“Since 1936 they’ve been getting two percent of all their union members’ salaries. We estimate their take in this regard alone is a million a year.”

“Jesus! This is no small operation.”

“No. And if they get their hands on SAG, it will mushroom further. Check out the Trocadero. You’ll see how union officials of the IA spend the rank and file’s hard-earned dues.”

The Troc was a long, low, rambling building, white-frame colonial with a red-tiled roof with a large central gable and a couple of smaller ones on either side, lorded over by an incongruously folksy weather vane. A striped canopy ran across the long front of the building, and at right, just over the canopy in squat art-deco neon, the words
CAFE TROCADERO
were tacked on like an afterthought; underneath the pastel glowing letters a smaller neon said
PHIL OHMAN’S MUSIC
. Potted plants stood like World’s Fair midgets along the front of the building. This hodgepodge of architecture and oddball trimmings didn’t add up to anything much in particular, and like a lot of structures out here it looked like one you could put your foot through without half trying. Hollywood’s idea of swank was just another plasterboard fantasy.

A colored doorman in a white linen double-breasted uniform with gold salad on the shoulders let me in; I wouldn’t have tipped the guy in Chicago, but this was Hollywood so I gave him a dime out of embarrassment; he said thank you sir, but didn’t show me his teeth. Maybe opening a door was worth a quarter out here. Inside the dark, vaguely Parisian place I smiled at the hatcheck girl, who I would have rather given the dime to. She had short dark hair and a nice smile, was wearing peach-color Chinese pajamas, and made me sorry I was out here alone. I wondered what she was doing later, but I had no hat to check so I stopped at the velvet rope where the captain asked if I had a reservation and I said I did if Robert Montgomery called one in for me like he said he was going to.

That didn’t impress anybody of course, including me, but I did have a reservation, although it would be fifteen minutes before my table was ready, so I made my entrance down a stairway designed for making entrances, into the bar. This was a Thursday night but crowded, the patrons at the bar standing two-deep; since there was just the one of me, I soon found a place to stand and had some rum, and nibbled at a bowl of parched corn, and took the place in. The French decor gave way to American colonial, here, red-and-black plaid, hanging copper utensils; either way, I sure wasn’t in Chicago. I didn’t see a lot of movie stars, though; somebody who might have been Cesar Romero was having cocktails with a little starlet over in the corner, but that was about it.

Finally I was shown to a table upstairs; most of the patrons were in evening dress, tuxes on the men mostly, an occasional white jacket, the women in slinky gowns, black sequins and silver lame, velvet trimmed with feathers, silk touched with fur. You’d have to check in at a nudist colony to find more female flesh unembarrassedly exposed. I wasn’t complaining.

It was almost ten o’clock before I ate, and since a movie star was paying I had the lobster, only it wasn’t as good as I could’ve got at Ireland’s at Clark and Ontario. I was wiping the butter off my chin when somebody tapped me on the shoulder.

When I looked up it was a honey-haired blue-eyed blonde in a black dress with her tits hanging out. That’s an inelegant way to put it, perhaps, but that’s what went instantly through my mind, a thought most any man this side of the limp-wrist set would’ve had.

“Could you join us?” she asked, in a chirpy, innocent voice.

I turned around in my seat and suddenly figured out that Montgomery must have requested a table in this specific area; because not far away, in a corner booth, sat Nicky Dean and George Browne and another girl, a stunning redhead, in a white dress with her…you finish it.

Dean smiled a little—very little—and waved me over. He was a round-faced man in a snazzy white evening jacket, with slicked-back black hair, a better-looking Edward G. Robinson. Even seated, the incongruously tall, slim frame below the balloon puss was evident. He had a single drink before him, and a cigarette rested regally in the hand he was motioning with. Next to him in the booth was the redhead, and next to her was George Browne, in a tent of a tux, double-chinned, wire-rim glasses, fat, bland-looking; what distinguished him was the array of beer bottles before him, half a dozen of them, various foreign labels. He was pouring one into a glass.

“Nate Heller,” Nicky Dean said, appraising me with the dark, matinee-idol eyes that were his best feature. The blonde was sliding in next to him; I was just standing there, rum cocktail in hand.

“Nicky Dean,” I said. “Who’s minding the store?”

By that I meant the Colony Club, his Rush Street joint, which had a restaurant and bar downstairs and a casino upstairs, a pretty fancy layout.

“My girl Estelle,” he said, without any apparent concern for, or effect on, the bosomy little blonde next to him who was smiling at him with considered affection, running her fingers idly through his slick black hair. “You remember Estelle, don’t you?”

So Estelle had mentioned me to Dean.

“I knew her back in my pickpocket-detail days,” I said, smiling nervously, shrugging the same way. “Cute kid. Smart as a whip.”

“Cute. Smart. She sure is. I miss her. Sit down, Heller. Slide in next to Dixie.”

I did. “Hi, Dixie,” I said.

“Hiya,” Dixie said, just barely looking at me, but she was the kind of girl who could load an hour of promise into a split second of glance.

Browne was drinking his latest beer. A barmaid in black and white with her legs showing came over and brought him three more bottles with three other labels and piled the empties on her tray while Browne handed her a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Let me know when that’s gone. Keep the last five for yourself, honey.”

She thanked him, and was gone, and he looked over at me. “I know you,” he said, bloodshot eyes narrowing on either side of a bloodshot nose. “You’re that dick.”

The two girls looked at me.

“That’s right,” I said. “I have my own little agency on Van Buren.”

The girls looked away.

Dean blew a smoke ring and said, “What brings you to Tinseltown?”

“Business. What brings you boys here?”

Dean smiled at Browne, but Browne wasn’t looking; he was pouring his next beer.

Dean said, “We work out here. For the Stagehands Union.”

“Really? Is that a good racket?”

Browne belched into his hand. “It’s not a racket,” he said, having to reach for the indignation. “We serve the working man. Without us, they’d be out on a limb. You can trust an employer just so long as you’re shaking hands with him. When he relaxes his grip, you’re had, unless
we’re
on your side. Excuse.”

Browne had chosen the outside seat for a reason; he was up and gone.

“Little boy’s room,” the redhead explained to me. “He does that every half hour.”

“You could set your watch by it,” the blonde said.

“Girls,” Dean said, and that meant they were to be quiet. “What kind of business you out here on, Heller?”

“Wandering daughter job. A Gold Coast swell hired me to find his little girl. She’s out here trying to make it in the movies.”

“I’m an actress,” the blonde said.

The redhead chose not to declare herself.

“You’ll find there’s lots of actresses out here,” Dean said. “Any luck?”

“Yeah. The father had an old address on her, which I checked out. Found she’d been doing a little work as an extra. Tracked her through SAG.”

Mention of the Screen Actors Guild didn’t raise a ripple out of Dean. He merely said, “The girl going back home?”

I shook my head no. “I didn’t expect her to. They had me give her some dough, which’ll underwrite another six months out here.”

This story was more or less true, by the way, should Dean go checking—only the job dated back a couple months and had been handled by me over the phone from Chicago. This afternoon I’d called the moneybags papa long distance and asked if he wanted me to look in on his daughter, while I was out here, and see how she was doing; he’d said yes, and to write her a check up to five C’s if she needed money, for which he’d reimburse me and then some. The bit about finding her through SAG was baloney, though—she’d left her new address with her old landlady—but Montgomery had checked for me and she did carry a card. The story would hold.

“If she’s a good-looking kid,” Dean said, “she won’t need their money.”

The blonde sipped her drink; the redhead lowered her eyes—I thought I saw contempt there. Whether for Dean or herself or the world in general, I couldn’t say.

“You may be right,” I said, “but she took the dough.”

Dean shrugged. The orchestra was starting up, across the room. They were playing “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

Browne returned, sidled his heft back in the booth. “Where’s that waitress? I’m down to one beer.”

Nobody answered him.

Dean said to the little blonde, “Do you want to dance, Dix?”

“Oh, sure, Nicky.”

He turned his dark gaze on me. “Dance with her, Heller, would you.” It wasn’t a question.

“My pleasure.”

I threaded Dixie through tables to the crowded dance floor and held her close. She smelled good, like new hay. I hated the thought of the kid being in Dean’s arms.

However, the first thing she said was, “Isn’t Nicky sweet?”

“He’s a peach.”

“Inn’t he, though? Ooh, look. There’s Sidney Skolsky.”

“Who?”

“You know, Sidney Skolsky, the columnist! I wish you were somebody. I could get in his column.”

“I was somebody last time I looked.”

She looked at me, with melting embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound like that.”

“It’s okay, Dixie. Is it okay if I call you Dixie?”

“Sure. How should I call you?”

“Any time you want.”

She giggled and snuggled to me and we moved around the small packed floor awhile; we danced three or four numbers. It turned out Dixie was her stage name—the last half of which was “Flyer”—but she didn’t want to say what her real name was.

“Oooh, look! There’s Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor!”

I looked over and there they were, at a little table together. They looked small.

“Inn’t it nice,” she said, “that people leave them alone here? I hope when I’m famous people aren’t all the time bothering me for autographs.”

“There’s worse problems in the world,” I said, looking at Dean looking at us from the booth. Browne wasn’t; he was just drinking his current beer.

“There sure is! Hey, you’re kind of cute. What’s your name again?”

I told her, and the orchestra let up, and we made our way back. I waited for Dixie to slide in next to Dean, then slid in next to her.

“You two make a cute couple,” Dean said.

“Thanks,” Dixie said.