True Detective (18 page)

"There's somebody you got to meet," he said, leaning against the table, not sitting down, pointing with a thumb back at the door he'd just come through.

"Does she have nice pins?" I asked.

"It ain't a woman. Nate."

"Then I ain't interested."

"Nate, it's a famous guy."

"Barney,you're a famous guy, and I'm not interested."

"Some mood you're in."

"You're right. I'm sorry. I better start being nice to you or you'll start charging me rent. Who do you want me to meet? Some other goddamn fighter?"

His grin got silly again. "You'll see. Come on."

I finished off the last dill pickle and got up and followed him into the speak. The place was about half-full, and the patrons, all of them men, were craning their necks back to see the far corner booth by the boarded-up street windows, talking among themselves as they did. We headed to the booth that was causing the commotion.

For a second, just a second, I thought it was Frank Nitti. The same slicked-back blue-black hair, the same swarthily handsome, hooded-eyed look, though this guy lacked Nitti's vaguely battered quality, sported no pencil-line mustache, and was younger, thirty-five or fort)'. Like Nitti, he was immaculately groomed, in fact was a snappy dresser, sporting a dark gray pinstripe with lavishly wide lapels, and a black shirt with white tie. And. like Nitti, he wasn't a big man; he was sitting down, but you could tell standing up he wouldn't be more than five six or so. This was a more conventionally handsome Frank Nitti. with a little Valentino tossed in.

Barney and I stood next to the booth and the man smiled at us. rather remotely, while Barney introduced us.

"Georgie," he said, "this is a childhood pal of mine. Nate Heller. Nate, this is George Raft.
¹
'

We sat in the booth across from Raft, and I smiled at the actor and said, "I'm embarrassed. I should've recognized you."

Raft shrugged, barely perceptibly, smiled the same way. "Maybe if I been flipping a coin."

I nodded. "I saw that picture.
Pretty
wild."

We were talking about
Scarface
, the big hit of the year before, which had made Raft a star; it had caused a lot of controversy in Chicago, opening months later than anywhere else in the country, the local censorship board having fits over its depiction of their city (even though it was Chicago's own Ben Hecht who wrote the picture).

"I hear good things about it," Raft said. "I didn't see it myself"

Barney explained. "George never looks at the pictures he's in."

"Why's that?" I asked Raft.

"Who needs it?" he said. "I probably look terrible. My face'd scare babies."

He didn't seem to be kidding. I suddenly realized his remoteness wasn't a tough-guy pose, but a sort of shyness.

"Georgie's in town doing some personal appearances," Barney said. "What's the name of the new picture?"

"
Undercover Man
," Raft said noncommittally.

"Oh?" I said "Where you appearing?"

"At the Oriental Theater." Raft said. "I come out and talk to the folks, the orchestra plays, and I do some dancing. Did you see
Night After Night
?"

"Sorry, no," I said.

"That was a pretty good one. Not so much gangster shit. Got to do some dancing."

"Mae West was in that." Barney said, eating this up.

"Yeah " Raft said, smiling faintly, "and she stole everything but the camera."

"How do you two happen to know each other?" I asked Barney, nodding at Raft

"Oh. Georgie's a big fight fan," Barney said. "He was a fighter himself, weren't you, Georgie?"

Raft laughed a little. "Seventeen bouts and ten knockouts."

"That's a good record," I allowed.

"Not when it's you getting KO'd," Raft said.

"You won a few," Barney said.

"Three," Raft said, holding up three fingers.

Buddy Gold came over for my order. I asked for a beer. Neither Barney nor Raft was drinking anything. I knew why Barney wasn't drinking: he had a fight coming up later this month in Pittsburgh, with Johnny Dato.

"Don't you want anything, George?" I asked him.

"I don't drink," Raft said. "Bring me a coffee, would you, Buddy?"

"Sure thing, Mr. Raft."

Raft looked my way and said. "I been following Barney's career real close. He's won me some money. I admit to knowing more about boxing out of the tins than I did in it. I was a fight manager for a while. Discovered Maxie Rosenbloom."

Something was ringing a distant bell in my mind; like the round-ending bell in the ears of a canvas-prone lighter who's just been saved by it.

■ -

"Weren't you involved with Primo Camera?" I asked.

Raft seemed to flinch at that, again, barely perceptibly. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Barney's grin disappear. I'd opened a door better left closed I'd been rude to Barney's guest. But I let it ride.

"Not really." Raft said. "A friend of mine owned a piece of him."

"Owney Madden, you mean," I said.

"Yes," Raft said.

I could tell this was making Barney uneasy, so I didn't pursue it. It was natural that an honest fighter like Barney would be embarrassed by one of his friends being connected to Primo Camera and Owney Madden. Primo Camera was the big, lumbering heavyweight brought over from Italy who, through a succession of fixed fights and sportswriters on the take, was elevated to the Championship of the World. Camera was a slow, awkward giant with a glass jaw, but he made good show business, until a real fighter, Max Baer, took the championship away from him, and damn near killed the poor clown in the doing. New York gangster Owney Madden owned Camera, and Madden and George Raft were lifelong friends. The story I'd heard had Raft, just prior to his Hollywood days, slipping a mickey to "Big Boy" Eddie Petersen, a fighter who had refused to take a dive; Raft's mickey had paved the way for Camera's first major victory'- at Madison Square Garden, no less.

I knew Barney knew' this story: it was him who told it to me, with some disgust, when he was noting the climb of this guy Raft in the talkies, this guy who used to be Owney Madden's boy. But that had been a year ago, before Barney was into the heavy purses- and the papers- and before he met Georgie at Arlington Park, where they shared a mutual love.

"I kinda hate to admit how I got a lot of my boxing savvy," Raft said.

"Why's that?" I asked.

"Well, the boxing arenas were my stomping grounds, back in my pickpocket days. And I understand you're an ex-pickpocket detail dick. Maybe you don't want to be seen in public with an ex-dip."

I smiled at him, a bit charmed in spite of myself. "Some of my best friends are pickpockets. And as long as they sit
across
the booth from me, we stay friends."

"I understand you're a private dick now."

"That's right."

"Barney says you got an office upstairs."

"That's right."

"How 'bout giving me a tour? Who knows. I might have to play a private dick in a movie someday."

"Sure. You never know. Barney? You coming?"

Raft got out of the booth. "I'm expecting a phone call. Barney. Would you mind sticking around, in case it comes in? I'm on suspension from Paramount, at the moment, and my agent's Dying to work something out for me."

Barney shrugged, smiled. "Sure. See you guys in a few minutes."

Raft climbed into a black formfitting coat with a velvet collar, pulled a pearl-gray hat down over one eye. With his high trousers, spats, and pointy shoes as shiny as his hair, he seemed a movie star's idea of a gangster- or was it the other way around?

He followed me through the deli out onto the street and up the stairs to my office. He hung his coat and hat on the tree by the door, and took a seat across from my desk before I'd even got behind it. It was clear this was more than a movie star wanting to meet a real private detective for research purposes; besides. I had a feeling George Raft was one Hollywood actor who didn't need help researching underworld-related matters.

I got behind the desk; Raft was eyeing the box against the wall. "That looks like a Murphy bed," he said

"I'm supposed to be the detective." I said.

He smiled: wider, more at ease. "I spent years sleeping in worse places than my own office… lofts, pool halls, subways. Times are tough. You're lucky to be in business."

"You're kind of lucky yourself."

He got a silver cigarette case out from his inside coat pocket. "You said it. You mind?" I nodded I didn't, and he lit up a long cigarette with a bullet-shaped silver lighter.

"What's this really about, Raft?"

"Let's keep it friendly. Let's keep it 'George' and 'Nate,' all right?"

"Sure, George."

"I get the feeling, from that remark about Camera and Madden, that you know a little about me."

"I know you used to be a bootlegger for Madden, and that he helped pull some strings to get you started in Hollywood."

Raft shrugged. "That's no secret. The columnists have had hold of that, and it hasn't hurt me. Nobody thinks a bootlegger's a bad guy; nobody who drinks, that is."

"You don't drink."

"I grew up in Hell's Kitchen. It was no fuckin' picnic. I was in a street gang with Owney. You woulda been too, if you grew up where I did. He went his way. I went mine. I was never a hood, really. I used to see them, though, when I was sitting 'round the dance halls. Sharp young hoods in candy-stripe silk shirts, flashing their roll. Was I green with envy. They had money to spend and their pick of the skirts, and I wanted a candy-stripe silk shirt so bad I was ready to pull one off the first guy I could catch alone in a dark alley."

"But instead you became a movie star."

Raft's hooded eyes blinked a few times, his face impassive. "I'm no saint. I was a pickpocket, a shoplifter. Then I found a trade- dancing. I got into taxi-dancing, I worked up a Charleston act, eventually. Did some vaudeville. Owney was in Sing Sing through all this, but when he got out, after Prohibition came in, he helped me climb. I worked the El Fey with Texas Guinan, and I was doing a little bootlegging on the side, for Owney. And Owney helped me make it to Broadway, and Hollywood. And I ain't ashamed of that. What are friends for?"

"This is all real fascinating," I said, "but what the hell does it have to do with me?"

Raft inhaled on the cigarette. Blew smoke out, like a movie tough guy. "This office. Barney set you up, right? Did a friend a favor?"

"Yeah. Right. So?"

"Friends do favors for friends. Sometimes you even do favors for friends of friends."

"You ought to sew that on a sampler. George."

"Don't be testy. I didn't come 'round here to look up Barney Ross; that was just for appearance sake. though Barney don't know that. It's you I come to see."

"Why, for Christ's sake?"

"I used to work at a place called the Club Durant. Jimmy Durante's place. There was a small garage below street level, connected with the club, that was the largest floating crap game in New York. That's where I got to know Al Brown."

"Al Brown."

"I saw him later, at El Fey's. And he was a good friend of Owney's. too. They were business associates."

"Oh. That 'Al Brown.'"

"Yeah. That one. I was in New York last week, and a friend asked me to do a favor for Al Brown."

"Why you?"

"It had to be somebody neutral. Somebody who could come around and see you without anybody getting any ideas. But somebody important enough for you to take it seriously."

"What does he want?"

"He wants you to come see him." Raft reached in his other inside pocket, withdrew a flat sealed envelope. Handed it to me.

Inside was a thousand dollars in hundreds, a round-trip ticket to Atlanta on the Dixie Express, and credentials identifying me as an attorney with the Louis Piquett firm.

"These tickets are for Monday," I said.

"That's right. I'm told if there's a conflict, they can be switched to any other day next week. No pressure,

Nate."

"Do you know what this is about?"

Raft got up. "I don't want to know what this is about. But I can guess. If it doesn't have something to do with another friend of mine, Frank Nitti, getting shot up by your mayor's favorite cops, I'll go back to taxi-dancing."

I got up. I extended my hand to Raft, who smiled tightly and shook it. "Sorry I was a wiseass," I said.

"I take it you'll do it."

"Why not? A grand is a nice retainer for a guy that sleeps in his office. And it isn't every day that George Raft stops by to play middleman."

"It isn't every day you take on Al Capone for a client," Raft said, and we went down and spent some time with Barney.

I took a sleeper to Atlanta, catching the Dixie Express at Dearborn Station early Monday afternoon; the next morning I was having breakfast in the dining car, finishing my last piece of toast as the train steamed into Atlanta's Union Station at half past eight. I caught a taxi, my topcoat slung over my arm (it was sunny, about sixty degrees not a Chicagoan's idea of a winter morning), and waited till I was in the back of the cab before I said, "McDonough Road and South Boulevard."