Stolen Away

41

I woke up.

My mouth felt thick with the taste of sleep, and with something else, something bitter. Medication?

I was on my back in a bed. Hospital bed. I felt weak.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a woman said. “Good. Let me crank you up.”

The grinding sound signaled my being raised to a sitting position. I was in a private room. I had an IV in my arm. I could feel, or sense, the bandage on my side. Out the window, it was day.

“Where…?”

The nurse was an attractive brunette with lipstick as bright as a cigarette girl’s, but her nose was too big. Italian.

She smiled and it was white and nice and I forgave her her honker. “You’re in Jefferson Park Hospital,” she said.

“How…how’d I get here?”

“Private ambulance, I believe.” She checked my pulse, then brushed hair off my forehead. She gently pulled back the sheets; for a second I thought she was going to blow me, but I was only getting my dressing checked. Just my luck. I drifted away then.

When I woke up again, a small dark man with slicked-back, graying, perfectly barbered hair was sitting in a chair next to my bed, hands folded in his lap, patiently. He was wearing a tailored gray suit and a black-and-gray-and-white knit tie; he might have been attending a wedding, or a funeral.

“Hello, Frank,” I said, having to work to make my eyes focus on him.

“Nate,” Nitti said neutrally, and he smiled. It was a restrained smile.

Out the window, it was night.

“How’d I get here? Don’t tell me an ambulance.”

“That’s not important.”

I started to remember. “Belliance! He called you…”

“Somebody called. Who is not important.”

“Thank God. If he’d called Ricca…what about those torpedoes I shot?”

Nitti glanced around behind him, making sure the door was shut. He scooted his chair closer to the bed.

“You insist on talking about this,” he said, a little bit weary, a little bit irritated.

“What about those guys I shot?”

“Fish food.”

I swallowed thickly. Sleep taste. Medicine taste. The IV was still in my arm, I noticed. “Who were they, Frank?”

“Out-of-state talent. Freelancers. People the Waiter uses…used…time to time.”

“How’d they find me?”

“How should I know.”

That janitor at the Sheridan six-flat? Maybe he called Ricca.

“I think,” Nitti said quietly, “that Paul might’ve been having them watched.”

“The Belliances?”

He nodded. “He knew you was sniffing around. But I don’t think he was having you tailed. He knew you was under my protection, wouldn’t go against me unless he had no other choice. Besides, he knew the only way you could spring Hauptmann was if you found the kid. So he must’ve had the farmer and his wife staked out, in case you found the kid.” He shrugged. “You found the kid.”

“They were gonna rub out the whole fuckin’ family, Frank.”

He frowned, shook his head. “That’s terrible. That’s a bad thing. You stopped a bad thing, Nate. I admire that.”

I couldn’t hear any irony in the words. “You do?”

He touched his chest with both hands. “I’m a father. I got a son. You don’t kill fuckin’ kids. Paul oughta know that; he’s got a boy.”

“So does Capone.”

Nitti shook his head. “Some people got no morality. These are churchgoing people, too, Nate. Hard to picture.”

“Frank!” I tried to sit up.

“Here,” he said, and he rose and cranked the bed up, some; then he sat calmly back down.

I was not calm. “What have you done with the boy?”

“The boy?”

“Don’t do this to me, Frank. I don’t feel good.”

“He’s safe. He’s with his family.”

“He’s back with Slim…?”

“Slim?”

“Lindbergh!”

Nitti laughed, shortly. “Hell, no. He’s with his family.”

“The Belliances, you mean.”

“That’s not their name, now.”

“Where are they?”

“That’s something you can’t know, Nate. Something you can’t ever know.”

“Frank. I can’t let Hauptmann fry. He’s a fucking patsy, and I can stop it, now, all I gotta do is sit that kid on the Governor’s desk, and…”

“Don’t get yourself worked up. You’ll start bleeding or something.”

“I got to get out of here, I got to stop them, if I don’t…”

“Hauptmann’s dead.”

“Exactly!”

“No. I mean: Hauptmann’s dead.”

“What? He’s…what?”

“Executed couple nights ago,” Nitti said, matter-of-factly. “By the State of New Jersey.”

“What the fuck day is this?”

“Monday.”

“What date?”

“April sixth.”

“Jesus. Jesus.”

“You were hurt bad, Nate. We brought you back here, but you lost a lot of blood.”

“Fuck! You want me to believe I was in a coma or something. Bullshit, Frank. You kept me doped up! You kept me out of commission, out of the game.”

“This is a hospital, Nate. Don’t say foolish things.”

“Hell. You run this fucking place.”

He shrugged. “What’s the difference? You’re alive, and Hauptmann isn’t. I’d suggest you go along about your business.”

“They…must’ve given him a few days’ reprieve. He was supposed to go at the end of March.”

Nitti was nodding. “Yeah. Right at the last minute, that hick detective Ellis Parker had Wendel arrested for confessing; it even went before a grand jury. They had to give Hauptmann a temporary stay.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Wilentz and Wendel got together and repudiated the confession. Wendel told tales of getting the shit beat out of him in basements and so on. Ellis Parker and a bunch of his boys are under arrest, now.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised. Goddamn!”

“Easy, now. Take it easy.”

“What about the Lindbergh kid?”

“They found that baby dead a long time ago.”

I tried to sit up but couldn’t. “You expect me to keep quiet about…”

“Yes.”

Rage and frustration bubbled in me; if I hadn’t been so goddamn weak, so fucking tired, I might have screamed or even grabbed the little bastard. But all I could manage was, “Or I’m fish food, Frank?”

He stood; he patted my arm, like a father soothing an infant. “Be a good boy, Nate. You think I let Hauptmann die? I didn’t let him die. Your pal Lindbergh did. You think that phony son of a bitch deserves his son? The only thing I’d like about that kid turning up is the embarrassment that phony flyboy would suffer. Any time anybody suggests to him his son might still be alive, he bites their goddamn head off. That boy is with a family who loves him. He’ll have a good home, a good upbringing, out of the public eye. What’s wrong with that?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. The image of the little boy clinging to Carl Belliance, saying “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” popped into my brain. The little boy loved the father he had, the father he knew. Would it be such a wonderful thing to yank him away from that? Hadn’t once been enough?

But the thought passed as quickly as it came. “That’s a bunch of bullshit, Frank, and you damn well know it.”

“You go looking for that boy, Nate, and you probably are going to have a dead kid on your conscience.”

“Why…what…?”

His lip curled ever so slightly; it was almost a sneer. “You think Paul and Al are gonna let this come out? You saw what the Waiter was gonna do; you were part of what he was gonna do. You go public, or you go looking, you’d be giving the Belliances a death sentence, and probably the boy, too. You want that on your conscience, Nate? You go ahead. You go look for ’em. I won’t be able to protect them, then. Or you.”

I thought about that. Finally I said, “What about you and Ricca?”

His smile was faint but it was there. “Now I have something, now I know something, something I can use, where Paul and Al are concerned. Now I’m not so worried about Al getting out, or Paul moving up.”

“Ricca could go looking for the Belliances and the boy…”

“Not without crossing me. Paul’s not ready to openly defy me just yet. And by the time he ever does, this will be ancient history.”

I shook my head, smiled mirthlessly. “You would never have let this come back on the Outfit, would you, Frank?”

“Never,” he admitted.

Hauptmann wasn’t the only patsy in this case.

Now I was worried. “Maybe you’re right that Ricca won’t go after the Belliances and their ‘son.’ But he sent those fuckers to kill me, too, Frank. What’s going to keep him from doing that again?”

He patted my arm. “Me, Nate. And you. Our respective reputations. I told Paul you were took care of. You been paid off. He’s heard about you, about the Lingle case; he knows you’re…discreet.”

I laughed harshly; it made my side hurt. “He figures I’m for sale. Maybe I am, at that. So what’s this worth to you, Frank? How much am I gonna get for keeping quiet about the ‘crime of the century’? It ought to be worth a lot.”

“Oh, it is. And I think you’re gonna like what you get.”

“What do you mean?”

“You get to wake up tomorrow, Nate.”

“Oh.” I tasted my tongue again. “Well. That is fair.”

“I’m even throwin’ in picking up your hospital bill.”

I was shaking my head. “Frank, there are people who are going to want explanations from me. Governor Hoffman, for one….”

He gestured with an open palm. “You came to Chicago to follow up a lead. You got shot up by some nasty fellows who didn’t like you. You wound up in the hospital. But the lead didn’t pan out. End of story.”

“I got no choice in this at all, do I, Frank?”

“Nate, every man has free will. Every man can choose his destiny. This is America. In America, a man can do whatever he thinks is right.”

I might’ve cracked wise, but he believed that shit; he was an immigrant who made good.

“Well,” I said. “That family loves that little boy. And he loves them. And you’re telling me, they’re protected, they’re off somewhere raising that little boy, living a nice quiet life?”

“Yes.”

“Well. I guess I can live with that.”

“My point exactly,” Nitti said, and patted my arm and went out.

A few days later I was back in my office, trying to pick up the pieces of my life, my health and my business. I was calling a list of my regular credit-check customers on the phone when the damn thing rang under my hand and scared the hell out of me.

“A-1 Detective Agency,” I said. “Nathan Heller speaking.” “Nate,” a voice said. A familiar, throaty female voice, conveyed in that one word a world of disappointment. “Evalyn,” I said.

“What happened to you?”

“I was going to call tonight,” I lied. I did intend to call her, but I wasn’t near ready. Governor Hoffman I intended to write, refunding the balance of my retainer minus the days I’d worked and my somewhat padded expenses.

“What happened, Nate?”

“I just got out of the hospital. I was following up a lead, and stepped on the wrong toes. I got shot in the side, actually.”

“I see,” she said.

It was an odd reaction: I thought when she heard I’d been shot, I might buy myself some sympathy. For Evalyn Walsh McLean, her response was uncharacteristically cold.

“By the time I woke up,” I said, “it was too late. Hauptmann was already dead. The cause was already a lost one. I’m sorry, Evalyn.”

“You disappoint me, Nathan.”

Now I was feeling tired; just plain tired. “Why is that, Evalyn?”

“You’re not the only private detective in the world, you know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, exactly, Evalyn?”

“I was worried about you.” Now I could hear emotion in her voice. “I hired someone to look for you, to see if you were all right, to see if you were in trouble….”

Oh shit.

“Well, that was sweet, Evalyn, but…”

“Sweet! The first thing the operative discovered was that you’d made a phone call from my house to a number in Chicago. The number was that of a business, a ‘cigar stand,’ owned by a certain Mr. Campagna, who is a Chicago mobster, as you well know.”

“Evalyn.”

The husky voice sounded strangely brittle, now. “You lied to me. You were reporting back to them, weren’t you?”

“This isn’t anything you should pursue, Evalyn. It could be dangerous for you, if you did.”

“Are you threatening me, now?”

“No! Hell, no…I just don’t want you to get yourself in trouble.”

“You were in the hospital, all right. And I know it was a gunshot wound, and I was concerned, I am concerned, and maybe there’s a good explanation, maybe you can make me feel good about you again, but can you answer one thing?”

I sighed. “What’s that, Evalyn?”

“Why were you in a hospital where the chief of surgery is the in-law of some top gangster?”

“Your private detective found this out, did he?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Evalyn, those ‘gangsters’ run Chicago. It’s just a coincidence. Don’t make it something it’s not.”

“Do they run you?”

“Sometimes, yes. When they want to. And when I want to keep breathing. I sometimes accommodate them.”

“Bruno Richard Hauptmann is dead.”

“So I hear. What exactly can I do about that at this juncture?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

“Evalyn. Evalyn, are you crying?”

“Fuck you, Heller! Fuck you, Heller.”

Most women get around to saying that to me, eventually. Even the toney ones.

“I’m sorry, Evalyn. I’m sorry I’m not what you’d like me to be.”

“You still could be. I know you’re a good man, underneath it all.”

“Oh, really? Does that mean the chauffeur’s position is still open?”

“Now you’re being cruel,” she said, and I’d hurt her. I’d meant to, but I was sorry.

I told her so.

The earnestness of her voice would’ve broken my heart, if I’d let it. “Nate, that little boy is out there somewhere…I just know he is. If we can find him, we can clear Richard Hauptmann’s name.”

“A posthumous pardon will leave him just as dead as he is now. Maybe history will clear the poor bastard; but I’m not going to. Besides, I’m not so convinced that kid is alive.”

“I’m going to keep looking, Nate. I’ll never stop.”

“Yes, you will, Evalyn. You’ll find some new cause. There’s always another cause to support, just like there’s always another diamond to buy.”

“You are cruel.”

“Sometimes. But not foolish. Goodbye, Evalyn.”

And I hung up.

I just sat there for a while, and then I slammed my fist on the desk, and the phone jumped, and I split a fucking stitch. It hurt like hell. I unbuttoned my shirt and there was blood on the bandage. I’d have to go back to the hospital for a little outpatient number. God, it hurt. I started to cry.

I cried like a baby for several minutes.

I told myself it was the wound. But there are all kinds of those.