True Detective (10 page)

Jeff slipped out of the coat, no tricks at all. and held his dark gray suitcoat open and there was no shoulder holster.

"You do what he did," I told Mutt.

Mutt slipped out of his topcoat; his suit was a blue pinstripe, but there seemed to be no gun under there, either. I had them both put their hands against the wall, or actually one of them put his hands against the door, because there wasn't wall space enough in that room for two people to be frisked against any one wall; and. standing there in my underwear. I frisked them, and they were clean.

"Sit on the bed" I told them.

They sat on the bed.

"Tell me what this is about." I said, and got my pants on, taking my time, keeping the gun on them, buttoning my fly one-handed.

"Mr. Nitti wants to see you," Mutt said.

"Oh, really? Isn't he a little under the weather to be having visitors?"

Jeff said, "He's gonna be okay. No thanks to you coppers."

I motioned with both hands, including the one with the gun in it "Hey. I'm not a copper anymore. And I wasn't in on it."

"You was there." Jeff said accusingly.

"And that was the extent of it," I said.

"Maybe so." Mutt said, "but Mr. Nitti wants to see you."

"So you come break in my apartment and put the muscle on me."

Mutt pursed his lips and moved his head from side to side slowly. "We got the key from the guy at the desk. It only cost a buck. You got great security here, pal."

"It's okay. I'm moving tomorrow. You boys can go now. Tell Mr. Nitti I'll talk to him when he's feeling better."

Mutt said. "This is a friendly gesture. He just wants to talk. That's why we didn't come heeled."

I thought about that.

"I still don't like it," I said.

"Look," Mutt continued, "you know if Mr. Nitti wants to see you, Mr. Nitti's gonna see you. Why not do it now. when you got a gun on
us
, and when he's on his back in a hospital bed?"

I nodded. "Good point. Car downstairs?"

Jeff smiled a little. "You bet."

"Okay," I said. "Let me get my shoes and socks and shirt on."

They watched me dress; it wasn't that easy to do while keeping a gun on 'em. but I did it and Mutt sat in back of the big black Lincoln with me. as we took Monroe Street over to the near West Side, to Jefferson Park Hospital.

There were four more guys in topcoats and hats in the corridor on the third floor where Nitti had his private room. The lighting in the corridor was subdued- it was roughly three in the morning now and I saw no doctors and only one nurse, a woman about thirty-five, stocky, dark-haired, scared shitless. Nitti's room was halfway down the corridor, and I stood outside with Jeff while Mutt went in.

Mutt didn't come out: a doctor did. A rather distinguished-looking man in his late fifties or early sixties, short, medium build with a paunch, gray-haired with a gray mustache. He had a near-frown on his face when our eyes met; he didn't approve of my being here, I could tell already. In fact I could tell he didn't approve of me, period

"I consider this ill-advised," he said, as if my being here was my idea. I told him it wasn't.

"Frank being here
is
your idea, though, isn't it?" he snapped, in a whisper.

"Actually, no." I said. "I got pulled into this by the short hair."

"You're the one who killed the boy."

I nodded.

He sighed. "My son-in-law insists on seeing you."

"You're Dr. Ronga?"

"That's right." He didn't offer a hand to shake; I thought it best not to offer mine. "I wouldn't have agreed to this at all if I couldn't see that Frank might get agitated if we refused him. and he does not need to get agitated right now."

"He is going to live?"

"No thanks to you people, I would say he is. I would say he's got as much chance to live as you do to drive back across town safely."

I glanced sideways at Jeff. "That could depend on who's driving, Doc."

Ronga said, "Frank needs rest and quiet. Absence of worry and shock." He pointed a finger at me.

"Which might open the wounds and cause a hemorrhage- if that happens it
could
'prove fatal."

"Doctor, I have no intention of agitating Mr. Nitti. I promise. Whether or not Mr. Nitti has any intention of agitating me is another story."

Ronga gave out a terse, humorless laugh and held out an open, yet somehow contemptuous, hand in a gesture that said. Go on in.

I went in.

Nitti was sitting up in bed; his reading lamp was on, otherwise the room was dark. He wasn't hooked up to tubes or anything, but he didn't look well; he was even paler than usual and seemed to have lost about fifteen pounds since I saw him last- yesterday. He gave me a little smile; it was so little his mouth curved but his mustache didn't.

"'Cusa me if I don't get up," he said. His voice was soft, but there was no tremor in it.

"It's okay, Mr. Nitti."

"Make it 'Frank.' W^e're going to be friends, Heller."

I shrugged. "Then make it "Nate.'"

"Nate.

Mutt was standing on the other side of Nitti's bed; he came around to me before I could approach Nitti's bedside, and said, in an almost gentle way, "You're going to have to let me have your gun."

"This isn't a great place for a scene, pal."

"There's six of us here, Heller, me and five guys out in the hall, plus I think Dr. Ronga would be willin' to take your appendix out with a pocketknife."

I gave him the gun.

Nitti made a little gesture that meant I was to sit down in the chair that had been provided for me next to his bed.

I sat. Seeing him up close, he didn't look any worse. He was bandaged around the throat, from the slug he took in the neck, and he didn't seem to be able to move his head, so my chair was seated at an angle where he didn't have to.

"You didn't know, did you?" Nitti said.

"I didn't know," I said, and I told him how Miller and Lang had picked me up at that speak and brought me along for the ride, without telling me the score.

"Bastards," he said. His mouth was a line. He looked at me; his eyes were calm. "I'm told you quit the department."

"That's right." I said. "I've had it with those sons of bitches."

"You were the one that got an ambulance called. Those bastards woulda let me bleed awhile."

"I suppose."

"Since you quit, that means what? What are you gonna say at my trial? They'll try me for shooting that prick bastard Lang, you know."

"I know."

"You read that load of baloney in the papers that Miller's giving out? Is that the story they're going with?"

"More or less, I guess."

"You going along with it?"

"I'm going to have to. Frank."

Nitti didn't say anything; he looked straight ahead, at the wall, not at me.

"Cermak had me in for a talk," I said.

Nitti turned his head to look right at me; it had to be painful- he moved like the Man in the Iron Mask. His teeth were together when he said. "Cermak."

"I'm opening up a little private agency. Cop is the only trade I got. Cermak'll block my license if I don't play ball."

Nitti turned his head back and looked toward the wall again. "Cermak," he said again.

"And I killed a guy up there. Frank."

Nitti's mouth twitched in a one-sided smirk. "Nobody important."

"Not to you. maybe. I didn't like doing it. And since I'm the only copper up there who managed to
kill
somebody. I'm the one to take the fall if the stories don't jibe."

Nitti didn't say anything.

"If you have any other ideas, I'm open," I said.

Nitti said. "I don't suppose you'd want something with my outfit."

I shook my head no. "It'd be no different than the cops. It's something I want out of altogether. Thank you, though, Frank."

Nitti's eyes looked at me. They were amused. "You're a pal of Ness', aren't you?"

"Yeah." I said, smiling a little, suddenly feeling embarrassed. "But I ain't no Boy Scout."

"I know," Nitti said. "I remember the Lingle case."

A voice behind me said. "Frank. Please." It was Dr. Ronga.

"
Un momento, Papa"
Nitti said.

Ronga shook his head, shut the door, and Nitti and I- and Mutt, who was seated over in the corner- were alone again.

"I want you to know." Nitti said, "that I hold you no grudge. I understand your position. No reprisals will be taken against you. At this time. I don't even think reprisals will be taken against Lang and Miller. The bastards. They are not worth the trouble. As Al used to say, 'Don't stir up the heat.'"

I smiled a little. "Did he say that before or after Saint Valentine's Day?"

Nitti smiled a little, too. "After kid. After."

"I better be going. You get some rest. If you want to see me again, just call. You don't need to send anybody forme."

"Good. But stay a few moments. There are some things you need to know."

"Oh?"

"You know Cermak was ours, don't you? Al helped get him in, you know."

I nodded. Cermak's association with the Capone gang went back at least as far as when Tony was "mayor of Cook County," and let Cicero happen.

"But now this fair is coming in. This world's fair. And there's gonna be a lot of money to be made. People coming from all over. Hicks and high-hats and everybody between. And they're gonna want things. They're gonna need things. And somebody's gonna provide things. Whores. Gambling. Beer- on the fairgrounds if it's legal by then, in the speaks if not. Either way, it'll be our beer they're drinkin'. Lot of money to be made. I ain't telling you nothing you don't already know.

"But the bankers and the other swells, they know Chicago's got a bad rep. In fact, this fair they're throwing is supposed to bring people back here, to see what a great place this is, safe, wonderful, and all. So how can somebody like Ten Percent Tony clean the city up and still give the people what they want- like whores and gambling and booze- and keep his pockets nice and full, too? By putting the screws to us, the old Capone mob. The feds got a lot of mileage out of sending Al up. Your pal Ness got lots of press, 'Eliot Press' we call him, the fed who announces his next raid in the papers." He laughed, and flinched just a bit.

I said, "So Cermak's connecting with the smaller mobs, then. Roger Touhy. Ted Newberry. Small fry he can control, manipulate."

Nitti looked at me so hard it about knocked me over. "And throw us to the goddamn wolves. The people who made the son of a bitch."

"You're probably right. Frank. But what does it have to do with me?"

Nitti smiled. "I just thought you'd like to know that Ted Newberry put up fifteen thousand dollars for anybody who'd bump me off."

I leaned forward. "You're sure of this?"

"Dead sure. And added to all the other ways those sons of bitches Miller and Lang screwed you is they weren't gonna cut you in."

I just sat there.

"Just thought you'd like to know," Nitti said.

I stood. "Thanks, Frank. I hope you get well."

"You know," Nitti said, "I believe you do."

The fix was in at the inquest. It was held in a meeting room at the morgue, presided over by the coroner. Since all the cops on Cermak's hoodlum squad were officially deputy coroners, the phrase "conflict of interest" might come to mind. But not in Chicago.

Cermak had covered himself, where I was concerned: I was never asked to give my version- or any version- of Frank Nitti being shot. A signed statement by the still-hospitalized Lang was entered, which covered the Nitti shooting, and Miller testified to his part in the proceedings and backed up Lang's story (though he had not been in the room with us). The questions the coroner asked me were limited to the second, fatal shooting, with the foregone conclusion that the truth on the Nitti matter had already been entered into the record.

The rest of the (you should excuse the expression) gang from the office at the Wacker-Lasalle all testified as well: Palumbo, Campagna, the accountant, the two runners. None of them were asked anything about the Nitti shooting- and, in fairness, none of them had been in the room when it happened, so why should they and all of them confirmed my version of the death of one Frank Hurt (which sounded like something Nitti might've muttered deliriously on his way to the hospital). Hurt panicked, Palumbo said; the kid had commented on having an out-of-state warrant against him and not wanting to go in for a showup, and Campagna had suggested he take the ledge over to the fire escape while he had the chance. And I'd come in and somebody had thrown him a gun and I'd shot him. Everybody told it the same; nobody (including me) seemed to know where the gun had come from.

I think Nitti had put the fix in, too; I was starting to be glad he and I'd had that little talk. Both he and

Cermak had made the inquest easy for me.

So it was cut-and-dried. But it didn't start till ten-thirty, and with all those witnesses, it dragged on. and I missed a lunch date with Janey. I caught her in the office at the county treasurer's at City Hall by phone, about two. and apologized for standing her up.

"Did it come out okay?" she said. There was just the slightest edge of irritation in her voice. "The inquest?"