True Detective (48 page)

"I was going to kill you."

"But you didn't. You did me some favors, I did you some. Now we're even."

"The blond…"

"What blond? Forget it. This nonsense with guns, it's gettin' old. When people think of Chicago, let 'em think of the fair, not guns and gangsters. How do you like my fair?"

"Your fair?"

He smiled, nodded. "If a wheel turns on the fairgrounds, I got a cut of the grease on the axle. Got the joint sewed up. It's like… a trial nan."

"Trial run for what?"

He shrugged elaborately. "For everything. For the country. We got the world by the tail with a downhill start. We got the bartender's union, which means we'll have every bartender in the country pushing our brands of beer and liquor. They'll have to handle our soft drinks. They'll get their pretzels and potato chips from us. That goes for every hotel, restaurant, cocktail lounge, and private club in the forty-eight states. Like Al used to tell us, we'll see the day we make a profit off of even? olive in every martini served in America. This is big business, kid; that's why this playing guns crap has got to stop. Let these asshole bank robbers play guns all they want; like this guy Dillinger, let
hint
have the headlines- I don't want 'em. Bunch of hicks shooting up small-town banks, it gives the cops something to do, keeps the heat off us. Here. You sit back down. I'm going to call you a cab. There's glasses in the cabinet over the counter, if you want some of this milk. And help yourself to the lamb in the icebox."

He left me alone.

The gun under my arm felt heavy.

The photo of Jimmy and Mary Ann Beame. together, younger, was on the table; I put it back in my billfold.

I folded my arms on the table and rested my head.

After a while Nitti woke me up and. still in his pajama bottoms, walked me down his last mile of a hallway, an arm around my shoulder, guided me into his living room and to a doorway and down the front steps where a cab waited.

"Where to?" the cabbie said.

"Tower Town." I said.

I went up the red stairway and knocked on the door. I heard a chair move inside and then the door opened and she was there and her eyes were red from crying and her lips were trembling and she said, "Oh. Nathan." and fell into my arms. I held her there, on the porch over the open stairs, for a long time: stood there holding her in the cold and we were both trembling, but I don't think the cold had much to do with it.

Then we went into the yellow crumbling-plaster kitchen, with its oil stove and sink of dirty dishes and no icebox. A real comedown from Nitti's kitchen. She'd been sitting at the table, chain-smoking an ebony ashtray held the evidence of that. I'd only seen her smoke a few times, and then it was at the Dill Pickle or some other Tower Town tearoom, when she was striking a theatrical pose. Tonight the smoking, it would seem, had been no pose; she'd really been worrying about me. and that made me feel good, somehow, and guilty.

She was still in the chocolate linen dress; no beret, or shoes, or any other affectation, though. Her makeup had long since been cried off. She sat at the table and so did I and she held one of my hands with both of hers.

"Thank God you're here." she said. "Thank God you're all right."

"I'm fine."

"I thought that maniac would kill you."

"He didn't. I'm fine."

"I've been beside myself. I've been so…" And she came over and sat on my lap, tumbled into my arms, hugged me 'round the neck and cried. And cried.

"I I thought I'd lost you," she said.

I stroked her hair.

"What was it about? Nathan, why did he try to kill you?"

"Baby. Baby. Not now. I'm not up to it now."

Her arms still 'round my neck, she leaned back enough to look at me; study me. "You look- "

"Awful. Yeah. I can imagine."

She got off my lap; took command. Miss Efficiency of 1933. "We can talk later. Come on. Let's get you to bed."

She took me by the hand and led me through the big open studio room. Alonzo had moved out long ago- he was living with a man, now- but had left a couple of his "experiments in dynamic symmetry" behind. He'd told Mary Ann she could choose any two, and, to her credit, she picked the two smallest. But for some unexplainable reason, I'd taken a perverse liking to both of the paintings, meaningless abstract splotches of color though they were.

In the bedroom, with its blue-batiked ceiling and walls, its single, painted-out window, its four-poster bed. I felt safe. Secure. Hidden away from reality. The man in the moon over the bed seemed to be winking at me. We had a secret.

"You look so tired." she said, looking at me with furrowed brow, taking my coat off me.

"Yes. I am."

She undressed me- except for the gun. which she didn't like handling, and left for me to deal with- and then she slipped out of her clothes and put me to bed.

I said. "Could you hold me? Just hold me."

She held me. She was the mother; I was the child. I fell asleep with her cradling me in her arms.

When I woke, she was cradled in my arms. The room was dark, though she'd left the electric moon glowing. I got up and looked at my watch, on the dresser. Four in the morning.

She stirred. "What woke you?"

"I remembered something."

She sat up; the covers were around her waist. Her breasts looked at me curiously.

I said. "I remembered I haven't made love to you tonight."

She gave me that impish grin. "It's too late. It's morning already."

I felt my face turn serious; I couldn't make it do anything else. "It's not too late." I said, and went to her.

I came inside her. It was the only time I ever did that, came without using something, without pulling out. I came inside her and it was wonderful. We were both crying when we came.

We lay in each other's arms.

"That can lead to little Nathans and Mary Anns, you know," she said, looking over at me, with a faint smile.

"I know," I said.

The next morning I told her. Not the truth, exactly, but something close to it. I woke, and she was making tea, and I went into the kitchen and she smiled, standing there in that black kimono with red and white flowers she'd worn the first night, and poured me tea and I told her.

"Jimmy's dead"

She put a hand on her chest. Then she sat slowly down.

"Your brother was working for gangsters. With gangsters. He may have been doing it to get material for a story, to try and make his dream about being on the
Trib
come true. But that doesn't matter now. The point is he was working for gangsters and he got killed."

She raised the back of a fist to her face and bit her knuckles; her eyes were very, very wide. She looked about eleven years old.

"That's why I got pushed off that tower last night. I've been snooping around and it almost got me killed. I didn't tell you, but I was shot at night before last; a man I was with, a man who knew your brother, was killed. Standing right next to me. Killed."

She was shaking. I pulled my chair around and put an arm around her. She was staring straight ahead; it was like I wasn't there.

After a while I said, "There's nothing we can do.'

"But- how- when- where's his- I"

She got up, pushing me and the chair away, rushed out of the room.

I went after her.

She was in the bathroom, kneeling over the stool.

When she was through. I helped her out into the studio. Sun streaked down through the skylight. Alonzo's mattress had been moved out and a secondhand sofa put in its place; we sat there. Dust motes floated.

"Do the authorities know?" she asked. It was a strain for her to keep her voice from cracking.

"No." I said. "I can't even prove it happened."

She looked at me sharply, contused. "You can't- what?"

"I don't even know where he's buried."

"Then how do you know he's really dead?"

"Frank Nitti told me."

"Frank Nitti…?"

"That's where I went last night. From the fair. I thought that man had been sent by Nitti to kill me. I was wrong, but never mind. I'll try to explain. A gangster named Ted Newberry tried to have Frank Nitti killed; your brother died as a result."

Her eyes narrowed as she tried to think, tried to make sense of it. "Newberry," she said. "He's dead, isn't he? Wasn't it in the papers?
He
was the man responsible for Jimmy's death?"

That was only vaguely true, but I nodded.

"Shouldn't we do something? What can we
do
, Nathan?"

"There's nothing we can do. Newberry's dead. Nitti disposed of your brother's body. Nothing can be proved. I'm sorry. It's ugly, but you're going to have to learn to live with it."

"We should tell somebody. The police. The newspapers.
Somebody...
"

I held one of her hands in both of mine. "No. Your brother would be made out to be a dead gangster. Is that something you want to cany- with you? You've got a career, Mary Ann…"

"Do you think I'm that
crass
?"

"I'm sorry."

"I have to- have to at least- tell Daddy."

"I wouldn't."

She looked at me, confused again.

I said. "I think it'd just about kill him. Let him think Jimmy's riding the rails someplace. Let him think his son will rum up one of these days. It's kinder."

"I- I don't know."

"Mary Ann, believe me. there are some things people are just better off not knowing."

She thought about that. said. "I suppose so." and got up.

With her back to me. she said. "Nathan, could you leave me alone for a while? I think I need to be alone for a while."

I got up. "Sure."

I went out of the room.

I was going out the door when she caught me; she wasn't crying, but she was close to it. She hugged me again.

"Call me tonight," she said into my chest. "I love you. Nathan. I still love you. This doesn't change anything. Not anything."

"I love you too, Mary Ann."

She looked up at me. "I told you never to hold anything back from me. No secrets. No deceptions. You could have hidden this from me, but you didn't. That was brave of you. Nathan. That was very brave. I want you to know I respect you for it."

I kissed her on the forehead and went out; I could feel her eyes on me as I went down the steps.

Well. I had her respect; I didn't deserve it, but I had it. As for her love, that was already fading. Try as she might to turn me into a brave knight who had the courage to tell his fair lady the bitter truth. I knew I would never again be the same in her eyes. She didn't know I killed her brother; but she might as well have.

I killed her romantic notions about me. and that was just as bad. I killed the dream that I was the true detective who would find the heroine's brother and make the world right again.

I killed the happy ending.

The Big Fall September 1,

I was sitting working up some insurance reports, rain pelting the office windows behind me. when Eliot came in. dripping wet. not wearing a raincoat.

"Damn rain came out of nowhere." he said, coming over and taking the chair across my desk from me.

"Glad to see you know enough to come in out of it," I said.

"Looks like you're keeping busy."

"I'm having a good first year."

"Job at the fair alone made it a good year."

I nodded. Put my pen down. "So. You're leaving tomorrow."

"Morning. Me and Betty and a Ford full of belongings."

"What exactly did you do to the Treasury Department to deserve Cincinnati?"

"Well." he shrugged, "where else are they going to send a prohibition agent when Prohibition's winding down? I'm supposed to clean up the 'Moonshine Mountains.' Think I'm up to it?"

"A hillbilly's squirrel gun can kill you just as dead as a machine gun."

"I suppose. Still, I never pictured myself as a 'revenooer.'"

"'Still' is right."

That made him laugh a little. But he seemed kind of sad. I knew how he felt.

He said, "See if you can't get out Cincinnati way. one of these days."

"Will do. Your folks are here. I imagine you'll be getting back now and then."