That CIA jargon, coming from Rosselli, was a little disconcerting. Not as disconcerting as having Chuckie and Mad Sam show up for you at your house; but disconcerting enough.
“So he threw a punch,” I said, shrugging, “and I slapped him. My read was, he’s a scrapper, and better to embarrass him than start a goddamn brouhaha.”
Rosselli was nodding. “That was probably wise. He’s an emotional little firecracker. He left this morning, by the way—back in Dallas by now. I mention him only because of this embarrassment with your client. The press agent from Milwaukee?”
The “embarrassment” was apparently Tom Ellison’s murder.
He spoke softly, his mellow voice soothing, friendly. “Listen, I’m aware he come to you for help, because of that money he had to pass along. You played bodyguard and that was that. Ruby being there, recognized by you, that maybe made somebody think a simple little handoff got turned into something … complicated.”
This was an admission that Tom indeed had become a loose end that got tied off.
“Nothing was complicated,” I said, “till somebody stabbed Tom Ellison in his hotel room.”
“I understand the Chicago PD says it was a hooker done it, or maybe some bar pickup. A bedroom boost that got out of hand.”
“Could be that.”
“But you don’t think so. Are you poking around because this Elliot was your friend?”
“Ellison, and no, John, I’m looking into it because the widow hired me to.”
The blue-gray eyes were narrow. “And just
how
are you poking around?”
His fresh Smirnoff on ice arrived.
“I’m not seeing how this is your business, John.”
“Humor me. I take an interest in my friends, Nate, particularly friends I’m involved with in, you know, various endeavors.”
I took that to mean Operation Mongoose.
“We’re looking into the victim’s private life,” I said, “and his business life, in Milwaukee mostly.”
“What have you turned up?”
I shook my head. “Too early. I may get a report tomorrow. We did some checking at the Pick, and some other hotels, to see if there’s a robbery ring using a female shill. Nothing on that yet, either.”
“Okay. Okay.” He sipped more Smirnoff. “I don’t see any problem with any of that.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Let it play out, and then tell the widow that you’ve done everything you could, send her a bill, and go find yourself other clients.”
“I would do that anyway, John. For a minute I thought you were saying I shouldn’t look into this killing.”
His gaze was thoughtful now. “No, I think you should. The police are as usual too hasty in their thinking, and you have a widow with her doubts … let’s assuage her.”
He did come up with the occasional five-buck word. Too much time in Hollywood.
“Then I don’t see what you’re asking,” I said, but really I did. “And I don’t know why you would send Dracula and Frankenstein over to see me, unless maybe you just dig Halloween.”
But really I did.
Rosselli said, “I don’t want you, and I don’t want any of your people, looking into anything having to do with Jimmy’s connection to him.”
He meant Hoffa’s connection to Ellison, of course.
“And,” the Silver Fox went on, “no digging whatsoever into anything related to the kind of business dealings that I am engaged in. And Mooney.”
The business dealings meant anything Outfit, and Mooney meant Giancana, the man he answered to.
“I wasn’t planning to,” I said.
“Good. Because the ramifications, they would stink on ice. And I don’t mean to threaten. To my knowledge, nobody thinks of
you
as a loose end, and won’t unless you start acting like one. And maybe I should apologize for insulting your intelligence by sending Chuckie and Sam around, to get your attention.”
“Well, they got it.”
“Just the same, I do apologize. The thing is, this could come back on us. And by us, I mean
us
… as in me and you and people we deal with. Jack Ruby, in particular. That envelope. You don’t want to know what that was about. Maybe I don’t even know what it was about. But that’s a door you cannot fucking open.”
“Okay,” I said.
I hadn’t asked “Why,” but he answered that question anyway: “It just might touch on a certain operation, Nate, a snake-killer-type operation? And we don’t want any of our connections to those kind of activities getting public scrutiny. Understood?”
“Sure.”
“Then we’re in agreement?”
“Yeah. I’ll let the Ellison investigation die a natural death.”
“You do that, and maybe you’ll be the one handed the next envelope of cash. How would you like that?”
What I would have liked was never sitting down again with the fucking likes of Johnny Rosselli. Years and years of having to deal with these Outfit psychopaths was wearing me the fuck down, and never seeing any of them again was my fondest desire.
“That would be nice,” I said.
His chicken cacciatore arrived. It smelled fantastic, but right now that marinara sauce reminded me a little too much of blood, draped as it was over dead chicken.
He asked, “I wish you would join me. Just have some minestrone soup. That won’t spoil your supper.”
“No thanks, John.”
He began to eat. His manners weren’t bad. No speaking with his mouth full, and frequent pauses to dab off red sauce with his white napkin.
“Nate, I can give you some nice reassurance, in the middle of this awkward unpleasantness tonight. I can tell you that there’s a change coming. Everything that you helped put in motion on our Miami trip, there at the Fontainebleau, it’s all coming to fruition. Great fucking things are coming, and you made it possible.”
I finished my rum cooler.
“That sounds swell,” I said. “But I do have to make one small point.”
“What’s that?”
“If Chuckie or Mad Sam show up on my doorstep again—alone or separate—I’ll just fucking shoot them.
And
whoever sent them. I may not be as cold-blooded as Nicoletti, or as screwy as Mad Sam, but people who cross me have been known to not be around anymore.”
That didn’t anger him. “You do have that reputation. But, Nate, remember … we are not adversaries. We are in this together. And if you don’t like this shit? May I remind you?
You
called
me
.”
Yes I had.
Goddamnit.
On my way out, I waved to Chuckie and Mad Sam, who were standing at the bar. Sam grinned and waved and Chuckie nodded. I lingered outside for a couple of minutes, waiting to see if the pair would come out to follow me. They didn’t.
Which was a relief, because had they done so, there might have been a gunfight, after all.
And as I drove back to Old Town, despite all the provocative and intimidating things Rosselli had said, all I could think of was a point I’d been careful never to raise with him.
That Mad Sam’s renowned weapon of choice was an ice pick, and that he would be plenty strong enough to pierce a guy’s sternum with one.
CHAPTER
16
Friday, November 1, 1963
Sitting surveillance on a street as busy as Division has its hazards, not the least of which is finding a decent goddamn parking place. Though it wasn’t ideal, each team watching that Victorian rooming house between the drugstore and the record shop was sharing the same spot, vacating it when each new team showed up. And feeding the same damn meter.
Eben Boldt and I, having taken the first shift yesterday afternoon, were taking this next afternoon shift as well. We were in a different Secret Service vehicle today, so as not to repeat ourselves—a navy-blue ’62 Chrysler—and had traded in suits for casual attire, zippered Windbreakers, sport shirts, chinos, sneakers. I’d skipped shaving today, in case we ever moved from vehicular surveillance to on foot. In the latter instance, looking somewhat scruffy could be useful.
We came on at two
P.M.
, and the team we spelled said the two Cubans hadn’t come out yet today. The team before them saw the subjects enter the rooming house at one
A.M.
, after a night of bar-hopping in the neighborhood, reported by the team before that. The night on the town did not involve the two white subjects, unseen as yet anywhere except on those Justice Department surveillance photos.
I was behind the wheel. Eben was watching the rooming house perhaps a little too intently.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re a chocolate guy in a vanilla part of town. Don’t advertise you’re casing that place. Somebody might call a cop.”
He frowned over at me in irritation, then thought it over. “Good point. Maybe I should check around back.”
I shook my head. “Their car’s in front. We checked that alley yesterday and there’s nowhere to park behind there, without blocking the way. Sit tight. Or, anyway … sit loose.”
“Okay, Nate.”
Here I was in my late fifties, successful, even relatively famous, pulling down high five figures (after expenses), owner of a detective agency with offices in three major cities, with money in the bank, a town house in Old Town, all my hair, all my teeth, and no medical problems except a few lingering scraps of shrapnel from bullets in various fleshy parts of my anatomy. What the hell was I doing at this late date sitting surveillance?
On the other hand, the President of these United States was due in town in twenty hours, and waiting for him was an unofficial reception committee of assorted malcontents with high-power rifles. So I would just have to put up with the indignity.
Last night, after I got back from Agostino’s, Helen was a wreck, anxious as hell, flying into tears when I stepped through the door of the downstairs apartment. She kissed me and kissed me and kissed me some more, and pulled me down to the carpet where suddenly my underwear and pants were around my ankles, her dress pulled up and her panties pulled down, and we were screwing there, rug burn be damned, and it was frantic and quick and intense, and the best time I’d had all week.
We were both too old to be embarrassed about such impulsive behavior, but we did take time to pull ourselves together. We shared a shower upstairs, purely cleansing, put on fresh clothes, and made our way to the Erie Café on Wells. We’d discussed Riccardo’s, but after Agostino’s and Johnny Rosselli, I was no longer in the mood for Italian.
Helen and I ordered the Erie Café house specialty—a seven-inch-thick broiled steak with their special steak sauce. Rare, which we would share.
“Those men,” Helen said, “they looked … awful. That one looked like the wild man from Borneo escaped from a circus.”
This was the first she’d directly mentioned Chuckie and Mad Sam. I explained that the gentleman who’d summoned me had sent them to make a point, and that everything was fine now.
Her head tilted, and her gray-blue eyes took on a sad tinge. “Will you always have to deal with those kind of people in your work?”
“Probably till I retire. You deal with a lot of them, yourself.”
She shrugged. “What can I do? They own the venues, and pay me to share my talents. I suppose in a way the same is true with you.”
“I try not to work for them.”
“Will you ever?”
“What, work for them again?”
“Retire, one of these days? As Sophie Tucker puts it.”
“I think so. I’m feeling like I’ve about had all the fun I can stand. I’ll probably go to sixty-five or so. I’m hoping when Sam gets out of college, he’ll take over the business. If he wants to. How about you, Helen? Great as you look, how long can
you
shake your … fans?”
“Maybe not much longer,” she admitted with a shrug. “Who knows? Maybe it’s time that you and I…”
A waiter brought us Poncinos—rum in very hot coffee with a lemon twist.
“You and I what?” I asked, after a sip of the deadly stuff.
Her smile twitched and seemed to be thinking about what it wanted to settle into. What it decided on was warm and lovely.
“Nate … we’ve been friends a long time. I have a kid, you have a kid. We have both been around and then some.”
“No argument.”
“I’m not sure we’ve ever exactly been in love. I’m not sure we haven’t been, either. And we’ve both had busted marriages, me more than my share. Still … maybe we should start thinking about, well … I mean, old age
is
coming, my darling.”
“Some mornings, it’s here.” I saluted her with my Poncino. “If that was a proposal of marriage, I’m in.”
She smiled. Patted my hand. “Maybe I’m just feeling sentimental. Maybe I’m feeling knocked around after a week of hustling from club to club trying to wrangle a booking out of guys younger than me. They look at me like … like I’m the Statue of Liberty or something.”
“Hey, sooner or later everybody visits the Statue of Liberty. And you
did
get booked.”
“Yes. At a strip club. And a strip club that is probably about to get itself shut down by the law, and in Chicago yet. Look, light of my life. Assuming the Frolics is still open in January, I’ll be back in town, and maybe I can borrow that downstairs apartment again, and upstairs bedroom, too. And we can pick this conversation up where it left off.”
Which is what it did—leave off. Our giant steak arrived, and our talk turned to other things, too dull for me to remember.
So now I was thinking about my fifty-something fan dancer as I sat parked in a Secret Service Chrysler on Division Street next to a Negro agent who was once again staring too conspicuously at the lodging place of our subjects.
“You’re doing it again,” I told him.
“They’re coming out.”
I sat up.
The two Cubans were in tan zippered jackets, chinos, and sneakers, same as before, but they were not joshing around with each other, not today. In fact their expressions were sober and they walked with what might be termed purpose. Or was I reading in?
Anyway, they got into their green Pontiac—Gonzales driving, Rodriguez riding—and pulled out into the light traffic. I caught a break by way of a lull that let me pull a U-turn and fall in a couple of cars behind them. They were in no rush, heading west into a run-down area, home of hookers who liked to call nearby Clark Street “the Rush Street of the Working Man.”