A President In Peril

Chapter Six D₂ I₁ A₁ T₁ R₁ I₁ B₃ E₁ (n) a bitter, abusive denunciation

“I got another note at work today,” I said as Catherine and I sat down at the dinner table that evening.

“From those... those Nazis who claim they want to kill the president?” she asked with an involuntary shudder.

“Yeah, the ‘New Reich’, as they fashion themselves. This message claimed they were behind the motiveless shooting of that young cop on the South Side last night, and I have to think they were.”

“But why would they just kill someone for no reason?”

“If one is to believe their diatribes, it’s because they want publicity, specifically in the Tribune, for their message of hate.”

Catherine squared her shoulders, always a sign she’s taking a strong position. “Well, I know the paper doesn’t like Harry Truman one bit, but I certainly hope they’re not going to give those morons any kind of publicity!”

“No, they’re not,” I said, holding up a hand. I proceeded to relate my conversation with the managing editor.

“I’m glad to hear it, but it’s what I would expect of any paper or any right-minded person,” she said. “Do you think the president is really in any sort of danger from this fascist bunch?”

“Well, I certainly would not want to be the one to call their bluff. After all, they did kill a cop.”

“Or so they claim,” she corrected.

“Yes, or so they claim. But I’m inclined to err on the side of caution here and take them at their word. This looks to be a damn mean bunch.”

“Well, it’s not your problem any more — or the Tribune’s, for that matter. You’ve turned what was sent to you over to the police. They’re capable of taking it from there.”

When I didn’t respond, Catherine’s eyebrows went up and stayed up. “Steve... I don’t like that expression you’ve got.”

“What expression? I wasn’t aware that my incredibly handsome face was behaving in an unusual way.”

“It’s the face you get when you’re thinking very hard about something. Or maybe plotting is a better word in this case.”

“Hmm. I didn’t realize that you thought of me as a plotter. You have cut me to the very quick. Yea, wounded me to the core.”

“Right. You’re an innocent, and I’m the Queen Mother of the Netherlands. Now tell me just what’s going through that devious mind of yours.”

“Well, I know this guy who seems to have pipelines all over town. I’ve mentioned him to you before — one ‘Pickles’ Podgorny.”

This time Catherine raised just one eyebrow, a sure sign of skepticism. “That gambler and two-bit con man, right? What in heaven’s name do you need him for?”

“Gambler, yes, con man, not any more, to take him at his word. Pickles says he long ago gave up his grifting ways, and I believe him — well, as much as I ever believe him. It’s the con jobs that got him into the biggest trouble with the law over the years, not the pasteboards and the chips.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Like I said, he’s got sources all over the place. If there are Nazi groups operating inside the city limits, chances are he’ll either know about them or know how to find out about them.”

“So? Have him give his information to the police. Besides, shouldn’t they — the police, that is — know about any kind of group like this already?”

“First, Pickles will turn himself inside out to avoid any contact whatever with the cops; he’s had enough bad experiences with them over the years, although granted, most of those run-ins were of his own making. Second, Chicago’s Finest is a decent enough force overall, but it is by no means all-knowing and all-seeing. It’s clear from what Fahey has said to me that the department doesn’t seem to have a fix on any fascist groups operating around the city.”

“That seems surprising.”

“Not necessarily. Whatever this New Reich bunch is, it may have just sprung up. Or it may not even be a group but only a single wacko who has climbed out of his hole in the ground because he doesn’t like Truman in particular or Jews in general.”

“In any case, it doesn’t have to concern you any more,” Catherine said with finality.

“Except that I’m the guy who’s getting the damn love notes. I feel like a Ping-Pong ball with cops on one side of the table and a hate-mongering crackpot on the other. What’s to say that I won’t get more of these messages?”

“Well, promise me you won’t try to play hero in all of this. I’ve been married twice: the first one was a short-lived disaster, but this second one seems to have some promise, and I’d hate to see anything happen that would mess it up.”

“Seems to have some promise, you say? Seems to have some promise? I believe I have just been damned with faint praise. It sounds suspiciously like I’m still on probation.”

“Oh, no,” Catherine replied airily, “I really do think you’re working out just fine on the whole.”

“Well, I am glad to hear that, yes I am. Now I propose that we clear the table. You wash, I’ll dry, and then I challenge you to a no-holds-barred game of Scrabble.”

“Aha! Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he has grown so great?”

“The meat, my Shakespeare-spouting spouse, is thine own Yankee pot roast which we just consumed. And I now stand astride the world like a colossus.”

“You didn’t get the Bard quite right,” Catherine laughed, “but I’ll give you a gold star for effort. Now it’s off to the kitchen.”

Let the record show that I actually beat Catherine at Scrabble that night, albeit by the narrowest of margins — a single point, thanks to my coming up with ‘zodiac’ on my final turn. Let the record also show that I did not crow about my victory, although she claimed my smug expression lasted until and during breakfast the next morning. I don’t believe it.

Shortly after I got to work that day, I called Pickles Podgorny from my phone in the press room while my colleagues on the other dailies were wrangling over whether any states still used the firing squad as capital punishment.

Their noisy argument served as a good cover for my conversation. Pickles didn’t answer his phone until about the eighth ring.

“Good morning, sir,” I said in answer to his fuzzy “Hullo.”

“Snap Malek — izzat you?”

“Indeed. Don’t you recognize the voice of an old and dear friend?”

“I don’t recognize nothin’ or no one until much later in the day than this. Don’t you know I never get up before noon? Or sometimes one?”

“Sorry, I forgot you earn your keep between midnight and five or six A.M. hunched over a green baize table top piled high with poker chips.”

“Them damn piles of chips weren’t on my side of the table last night, sad to say, although I’m pretty sure the big winner was doing something funny with the cards. He ain’t never playin’ in that game again, you can be sure of it. Now why you callin’ me this miserable hour of the morning?”

“To buy you lunch, of course.”

“Oh yeah? And just what’s in it for me, pencil pilot?” he asked warily.

“What a thing to say, Pickles. Can’t a fellow buy an old pal of his a lunch without there being an ulterior motive?”

“I have to say it would be most unusual, but what the hell, I’ll chance it. Where and when?”

“Parker’s Grill on Wabash just south of Ninth Street. You know the place. One o’clock. That should give you time to pull yourself together.”

He muttered some words the Tribune will not print and said he’d be there. The firing-squad argument in the press room was still raging as I hung up.

“Hey Snap, settle this for us, will ya? You’re good at knowing inconsequential stuff,” Packy Farmer croaked between puffs on a smoke. “I say that someplace in the good old U.S. they still use a firing squad for executions. These two—” He jerked a thumb in the direction of Anson Masters and Dirk O’Farrell. “—say that I’m full of crap.”

“I’ve often said, myself, that you’re full of crap, Packy, but not in this case. In fact, the fine state of Utah uses the firing squad as capital punishment. Although those nice folks out there in Salt Lake City actually give the condemned man a choice between said firing squad and hanging.”

“Hah!” Farmer whooped, clapping his hands. “You each owe me a buck.” I thought that would be the end of it, but then Packy and O’Farrell went at each other loudly over whether it was better to choose the rifle or the noose as the instrument of your execution.

At five minutes past one, Pickles Podgorny shuffled through the doorway of Parker’s Grill and squinted around the crowded, noisy room, spotting me only after I’d waved my hand like I was trying to flag a cab at State and Madison.

Pickles, so named because of his liking for kosher dills, is not the most imposing gent on the block. He’s about five feet five, weighs maybe one hundred thirty pounds, has eyes that constantly dart around, and is usually wearing a battered flat cap and clothes that look like he slept in them. Today was no exception.

“Reporting as requested, Snap,” he muttered, sliding in on the opposite side of the booth. “Haven’t been in here since the days a few years back when I ran a little game of stud poker just down the block.”

“Ah yes, I seem to recall the police took exception to that entrepreneurial endeavor.”

A scowl further creased his basset-hound face. “Yeah, at the time they were more interested in breaking up little gatherings like mine than in going after hit men, pimps, and drug pushers. It’s one of the only times I got pinched because of cards.”

“Yeah, but didn’t you get nailed lots of other occasions for, shall we say, creative financial schemes calculated to relieve the unsuspecting of the cargo in their billfolds?”

He nodded. “True enough, true enough, I can’t deny it. Nowadays I find cards to be a much more rewarding — and safer — enterprise.”

“Glad to hear it. I’d hate to think of you in the stir; you’re much more valuable to me on the loose.”

“Hah! I knew there was a reason for this. I didn’t buy into your buddy-buddy, lunch-for-old-times’-sake line of baloney.”

“Number one, Pickles, you are getting a free meal — the meal of your choice from this wide-ranging menu. And two, who knows: there may be a few dollars heading your way if you can come up with some information.”

“Well, at least this is the Snap Malek I’ve known for years, the one who uses me shamelessly while pretending to be a friend.”

“Think of it as a partnership, you old reprobate. We’re using each other. Here’s our waitress, the efficient and adorable Sally. What will you have?”

“Corned beef on rye, extra beef, extra pickle, coffee,” he said. I ordered the same, less the second dill, and I grinned across the table at my wary guest.

“What’s so funny, headline hunter?” he asked, eyes narrowed.

“You seemed offended that I might be using you, that’s all, Pickles. Seems a touch humorous, coming from a guy who’s used people all his life, one way or another.”

“I am hurt, really hurt, that you should think of me that way,” he said in what might have been mock seriousness. With Pickles, you couldn’t always tell, which could be one reason why he was such a good poker player.

“That so? Well, no insult intended. Now, can we talk turkey?”

“Fire away. You’re footing the tab for this fine repast.”

“Before I go on, I just realized that I don’t know much about your distant past. Are you by any chance Jewish? I have a reason for asking.”

“Sort of, which is to say, I’m really not much of anything, at least not in what you would call a religious sense. My father was a Russian Jew, my mother a Romanian Catholic. They both were born in Europe, and they met on a boat coming over here way back before the turn of the century. Sounds like something out of a movie, huh?”

“And you were born here?”

“Yeah, right over on West Roosevelt Road, not two miles from where we’re sitting now. My parents got married in New York after knowing each other for only two weeks or so. Then they came to Chicago because my father had a cousin in the scrap metal business, and he took my old man on. It was enough to live on, I guess. Both my folks are gone now, and I was an only child, so I’m all there is. End of story.”

“Quite a story it is, Pickles,” I said as our food came. “Now I’ve got a story for you as well.”

“Just a wild guess, but does it have something to do with Jews?”

“Sort of, yeah. Seems there’s a group in town calling itself The New Reich.”

Pickles dropped his sandwich on the plate and gaped at me. “Geez, you mean like Nazis?”

“So it seems. They — or maybe it’s just one person — hate Jews.”

“Nothin’ new about that; it’s been going on for thousands of years. But I would have thought they’d pick some other word than ‘reich’ after the way it got used by Adolf and his goddamn thugs.”

“So you would think. No accounting for bigotry, I guess. Anyway, I thought you might have heard of this outfit, if that’s what it is.”

“Nope, not a word. And just how do you come to know about it?”

I proceeded to fill Pickles in on the last few days, omitting nothing.

“My God, whoever this is claims they want to bump off Truman?”

“That’s how it looks, and I’ve got to wonder what else is going to happen before the president gets to town. Pickles, you have a lot of pipelines running all through the, shall we say, underbelly of this city. What are the chances you can find anything out about these wannabe Nazis?”

The little gambler bit a chunk out of his second kosher dill and frowned. “I got me a couple ideas. I know I shouldn’t be mercenary, what with a president’s life maybe at stake and all, but what’s in this for me, oh gazetteer to the masses?”

“Gazetteer, eh? That sounds like a good Scrabble word.”

“Scrabble? What the hell is that?”

“Never mind. Okay, Pickles, I think we can come up with a few greenbacks to reward you for your noble efforts.”

“Would that by any chance be in the form of... an advance?”

I sniffed and reached for my billfold. “Here’s a crisp Hamilton, looks like it’s just off the press. If you find out anything helpful, I’ll match it.” I made a mental note to put the sawbuck on my expense account under ‘sources’, which had always worked before.

Pickles folded the ten-dollar bill, then folded it again and slipped it into a vest pocket. His expression was joyless. “Ah, Snap, I must say that I was hoping for more up front, an Andy Jackson at the very least, and maybe even a U.S. Grant. But because of our enduring friendship, I will reluctantly settle for less than I deserve.”

“What you deserve remains to be seen, you old rogue. And erase any thoughts of a piece of U.S. Grant currency. Fifty-dollar bills are not part of this discussion. Care to tell me anything about those ‘couple of ideas’ you claim to have?”

“At present, I do not. I gather from what you said earlier that the esteemed chief of detectives is at a loss regarding all of this.”

“So far, yes.”

A twinkle came to Pickles’ watery eyes. “Now wouldn’t that be something if I beat the coppers to the punch. Seems like it would be worth maybe a double sawbuck or even more, eh?”

“Not so fast, Poker Puss. Let’s just see what you come up with first,” I told him as I left a tip on the table and rose to leave.