Chicago Confidential

12

The phone call seemed more than a little mysterious. I didn’t take it myself — it came in during the morning, when Lou and I were at the Drury funeral. When I drifted in after lunch, Gladys gave me the cryptic message: “Silver Palm, Bas client, come alone, 3 P.M.”

I almost went alone — the nine millimeter in the shoulder sling came along. The Silver Palm sounded like an obscure military medal; but it was a Northside strip club, a somewhat notorious one, and since the late Marvin Bas had been a Forty-second Ward politician, an attorney whose clients included a number of tavern and nightclub owners, that part of the message made a sort of sense. After all, Bas — despite his efforts to expose the incredibly corrupt Tubbo Gilbert — had been a protégé of flamboyant alderman Paddy Bauler, whose well-known slogan was “Chicago ain’t ready for reform!”

What disturbed me was that someone was connecting me to Bas — my former affiliation with Drury was well known; but Bas had only hired me a few hours before he was killed... a new record among A-1 clients.

I found a parking place for the Olds a block and a half away, and walked to the Silver Palm, which nestled under the El on Wilson Avenue near Broadway. My trenchcoat collars were up again — it was cold and drizzling, sending the streetwalkers and dope peddlers into the recesses of doorways for cover. This once respectable stretch had, during World War Two, developed into a war zone of burlesque houses, room-by-the-hour hotels and tattoo parlors, designed to service the servicemen from Fort Sheridan and the Great Lakes Naval Station, taking advantage of the Wilson Avenue express stop on the North Shore Electric railway.

The palm tree motif promised by the neon sign in the smeary window was half-heartedly maintained inside the surprisingly high-ceilinged room, with its faded South Sea hula-girl murals, fake thatched-hut roofing, and velvet paintings of topless native babes. The joint was crowded with chairs and little tables, with plenty of seats to furnish views from every angle, if you could see through smoke thick enough to slice and sell as bacon.

On a raised stage behind an endless bar, a slightly overweight/overage henna-haired stripper in pasties and G-string was bumping-and-grinding for the benefit of an exclusively male audience running from mouth-breathing dirty old men (whose raincoats weren’t as nice as mine) to sailor boys whose wide-eyed expressions indicated naked jiggling female flesh in the raw may have been a new experience for them.

On a Friday, in the middle of the afternoon, the place was maybe half-empty — call it half-full, optimist that I am. Strippers between their onstage stints, wearing diaphanous robes, joined slatternly B-girls to filter through the small crowd, conning customers into buying them watered-down drinks, while almost-attractive waitresses in frayed aloha shirts and tight slacks provided mixed drinks, bottled beer, and bored expressions. Most of the seats at the bar were taken — as this provided the best view of the Silver Palm’s cut-rate pulchritude — but I managed to find one toward one end.

I ordered a rum and Coke from a bartender who looked like he doubled as a bouncer, and watched as the henna-haired broad gave the crowd a flash of pasty-less bosom and bounded off, pleased with herself.

A bleached blonde of about fifty, weighing in at maybe two hundred pounds at five foot three, strutted out in a red-and-yellow muumuu and growled wisecracks into a microphone — “Big Mary, your mistress of ceremonies, but don’t get any ideas.” She worked blue enough to get a few laughs, and stayed on only a minute before introducing the next stripper, wisely not wearing out her welcome.

A slender brunette minced out overdressed in a Southern hoop skirt affair with Scarlett O’Hara bonnet, and she was down to her petticoats when I got the may-I-cut-in tap on the shoulder.

A thug with a flat nose, dead eyes, and broad shoulders — all wrapped up in a double-breasted blue suit with a blue-and-gray tie and a pearl gray fedora — was standing there like a potted plant with a shoulder holster.

“Yeah?” I said.

Suddenly I realized the thug was looking past me at the brunette, who was taking off her bra to reveal perky little titties with tasseled pasties. For a second I thought the guy wanted my seat; then he blinked and looked at me and remembered why he’d come over.

“Table toward the back,” he said, thickly. He gestured with a bratwurst of a pointing finger.

Through the smoke I could make out a table with a small man seated at it, way in back, off to the side — one of the worst seats in the house. Even the tables nearby were empty, affording this diminutive patron of the arts a modicum of privacy.

I thought I knew who it was — you might even say, I was afraid I knew who it was — and the thug accompanied me as I approached the little guy in the green snapbrim, who wore a gray tailored suit with a pale yellow shirt and darker yellow tie, his oval face dominated by a lumpy schnoz and close-set eyes and a blank impassivity.

Sam Giancana looked up at me and said, “Sit, Heller... Join me here in my office.” To the thug he said, “Sally — a little breathing room.”

As the thug faded toward the bar and the stage, I sat across from Giancana at the postage-stamp table; the lighting was nil — a glass-and-candle centerpiece remained unlit, the only light near us coming from a bulb placed under a wall-hung velvet painting of a native girl with breasts the size of coconuts... not exactly National Geographic material.

I’d brought my rum and Coke with me; Giancana was drinking coffee — he needed a shave, giving him a scruffiness at odds with his natty apparel.

“This is where Satira started, you know,” Giancana said.

“That stripper who killed her married lover?”

“Yeah — down in Havana Harbor, remember?”

I did — it had been page one stuff.

He was saying, “We paid for her defense, and the cunt paid us back by working for the competition across the street, when she got out. We trumped the bitch, though.”

“How’s that?”

He snorted a laugh. “We hired the widow of the guy she murdered. Booked her in and she out-stripped Satira.”

“That’s showmanship, Sam.”

“That’s nothing — I tried to book both of them. Wouldn’t that have stood Chicago on its ear? The murderer and the widow of her murder victim, peeling side by naked side.”

“That’s entertainment,” I said. “Little surprised to see you, gotta admit. The feds who tried to serve your subpoena think you’re in Florida somewhere — that’s what your gardener told them.”

Giancana shrugged facially, and had a sip of his coffee. “A few of us have to stick around and tend to business. I got a couple rocks left in this town I can crawl under.”

“That message you left at my office was a little vague, Sam. How did you know I’d show?”

“I know what makes you tick, Heller. You’re a fuckin’ snoop. Curiosity is in your blood.”

“And my blood is still in my veins, inside my body. I’m hoping to keep it that way.”

Giancana flashed a sick-looking grin; like Lee Mortimer, he had a gray pallor — I didn’t figure Sam for many camping trips... except maybe to bury an occasional stiff in a field.

“This is a friendly meeting,” Giancana said. He placed both his hands on the table, palms down, fingers spread. “Friendly on my part, anyway. Your friend Drury — that little scuffle we had at the Stevens... you tell anybody about that?”

“No.”

“You think you could keep that unpleasantness to yourself?”

“Yes.”

“That thing, that was nothing. Drury was like that — he saw anybody remotely Outfit, he went off on them. You know that.”

“I know that.”

“He rousted Guzik, Fischetti, even Accardo, tons of times.”

“I know.”

Both eyebrows raised. “You don’t think I had anything to do with what happened to him, do you now?”

I chose my words carefully. “...I think it was Outfit. I don’t make it as anything to do with you, Sam.”

He was studying me like a scientist studies a slide under a microscope. “And why is that your opinion?”

“Because you’re smart, Sam. You have a temper — you’ve been known to lose your head, if you get pissed off... no offense.”

“None taken.”

“But this was stupid. This is bringing heat, these killings. St. Valentine’s Day Massacre type heat. Jake Lingle type heat.”

He was nodding.

I continued: “The Crime Committee hearings are getting moved to next week, you know. Kefauver is tossing fucking subpoenas over this city like advertising leaflets out of a plane.”

“You’re tellin’ me. You know, he’s going after our wives next, the prick.”

I wondered where he heard that.

Shifting in my hard seat, I said, “I figure this is like when Dutch Schultz wanted to hit Dewey, and the rest of the New York boys said no fuckin’ way. You don’t hit a cop; you don’t bump off a public figure.”

Giancana’s expression was blandly friendly; but he was still studying me. “You’re not just sayin’ this, Heller. This is how you see it.”

“Sam, this is how I see it. I’m not just trying to talk my way out of a tight spot.”

“This ain’t a tight spot.” He nodded toward his hands, still spread on the table. “It’s a public place, Heller. That’s why I arranged to meet you somewheres like this. Specifically, this joint ’cause Bas was the lawyer for the management... and, after you sort through all the holding companies, I’m the management.”

All of this was news to me. “Bas was your attorney?”

“Only where certain businesses, like this one, was concerned. And Drury had no knowledge of that. don’t get thinking Bas was dirty, ’cause he wasn’t — he was just a lawyer with various clients... like a private eye can have various clients.”

“Right. Would I be overstepping if I suggested you might have been helping Bas in his efforts to unseat Tubbo?”

He twitched a grimace. “I’d rather not say. Tubbo has been a friend to Outfit interests for a lot of years — one-stop shopping, a fixer who can help with both the cops and the State’s Attorney’s office. But a guy that’s been around as long as Tubbo can get... too powerful. Too full of himself.”

For a guy who’d “rather not say,” Sam had said a hell of a lot.

I sat forward. “Was Tubbo involved in the Drury hit? The Bas hit?”

“Heller, I don’t know the answer to that question. But I know you — and know how you can go off on these... little rampages, now and then. You wouldn’t talk to the Kefauver Committee, but you might decide to settle some scores in your own way. You’ve done it before.”

I just shrugged.

He leaned forward, and lifted his right hand off the table, to gesture. “Now... there’s something you need to know, Heller: neither of these hits was... what’s the word? Approved — authorized. Just the opposite — Charley Fischetti asked to have this done, and was told not to. In no uncertain terms.”

“But he did it anyway.”

Giancana leaned back, raised another eyebrow. “Charley claims not — swears up and down, stack of Bibles, mother’s grave. This was a meeting at the highest level, understand — Ricca, Accardo, Guzik...”

“Do they believe him?”

“Fuck no. But Charley hasn’t been challenged over this. He’s still a powerful guy, Heller — Al’s cousin, remember. And a smart guy — knows the business side. Understands the politics. Which is why you’d think he’d know better...”

“So the boys are letting this slide?”

He shook his head, folded his arms. “Don’t think there isn’t a lot of displeasure. Don’t think guys like Ricca and Big Tuna like having to pack their bags in the middle of the night and beat ass out of town, like common punk crooks.”

The back of my neck was starting to tingle. “You’re not saying... You’re not giving me permission to...”

Tiny shrug. “I’m not saying anything. I might be implying that if you wanted to do something, personal, about Charley Fischetti... there would be no repercussions from certain circles. You know, when you might expect there to be.”

“...And just how would I find Charley Fischetti?”

“At a hotel in Mexico.”

I blinked. “What hotel in Mexico?”

Giancana reached inside his coat, almost as if he were going for a gun; but I wasn’t nervous, anymore. He just handed me a small piece of paper with quite a bit of writing on it.

“That hotel in Mexico,” he said.

I slipped the piece of paper in my pocket without looking at it. “I saw Bas go down.”

Giancana’s eyes flared; this really was news to him. “No kidding?”

“No kidding... Obviously, not in time to stop it. I got a shot off at the torpedoes — cracked their windshield. Got a good look at the bastards.”

“Anyone you know?”

“No.” I described the mustached pair. “Anybody you know?”

His expression gave away nothing. “Maybe... Maybe.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Sam?”

With his folded arms, and his tiny smile, Giancana seemed guarded, to say the least. “Heller, like you, I have to be discreet. I’m limited in what I can say. But I will say this — those two gunmen are almost certainly from out of town... just not very far out of town.”

“Jesus, Sam — what does that mean?”

Another tiny shrug. “That’s all I can say. That slip of paper I give you?”

“Yeah?”

“The number at the bottom — that’s a local number. You have any problems — need any... assistance... you call that number. If I don’t answer, somebody will, who can get me in a hurry.”

“You’re not going to Florida?”

“Not right away.”

“You, uh — mentioned Kefauver going after the wives of Outfit guys. Where did you hear that, Sam?”

“I just heard it, is all.”

“You have somebody on Kefauver’s staff, don’t you?”

“Now you’re asking too many questions, Heller.”

“Just tell me — is it Halley?”

“Fuck no! That vicious, slandering son of a bitch. If he was ours, would he make so many lives miserable?”

I kept pressing, though my tone seemed casual. “You know Rocco married that girl — from the Chez, Jackie Payne? Married her the other day so she couldn’t testify against him.”

Giancana smirked. “Yeah — little Miss Chicago. But word now is, Rocky was wrong... that canary can be made to sing, or sent to the slam for contempt. And you know what’s gonna happen then, don’t you?”

“What, Sam?”

“She’ll talk. She’ll sing her lungs out. I mean, shit, she’s a junkie... The feds will own the keys to her.” He shook his head. “Fucking Rocco — he’s a chowderhead, anyway, a real shit-for-brains. And he put her on the junk!”

“Maybe you wouldn’t mind if something bad happened to him,” I said.

His face was blandly expressionless again. “I’d get over it.”

Feeling like I was trying to put the pin back in a grenade, I ventured, “Sam — the girl. Miss Chicago?”

“Yeah?”

“She’s a friend of mine. I don’t want to see her hurt.”

He frowned — almost scowled. “Listen up, damn it: my friends and I are not trying to attract attention, right now. Drury and Bas getting splattered is the worst fucking thing that could have happened — bumping off a beauty queen, recently married to a Fischetti, is just as bad. Gimme a little credit, Heller, for Christsake!”

“Sorry, Sam.”

Smiling, he sat forward and patted my arm. “Hey — you and me, we have no problems. You need somebody like me, in my circles, to be your guardian angel. Like Nitti used to be. We aren’t in the same exact racket, but we can be helpful to each other. Do each other favors.”

Like have me bump off your fellow gangsters, when they’ve rubbed you the wrong way? is what I thought... but sure as hell didn’t say it.

“For example, a favor you could do me, Heller...”

“Yeah?”

“Introduce me to your pal Sinatra, sometime.” Giancana stood. “Listen... it’s going to start getting busy in here, Friday night, I need to be scarce.”

“Yeah — sure.”

“But you can stay, Heller — run a tab on the house. Some decent girls are comin’ out. You see anything you like, just tell Fred... the bartender.”

“Well, thanks, Sam...”

“But they’re not hookers, understand. Lay a double saw-buck on ’em in the morning, as a kind of gift, and you’ll have a friend for life.”

Giancana walked toward the exit, and his bodyguard — Sally — scampered after him, like a two-hundred-fifty-pound puppy. It was still daylight out there, and a slice of it knifed into the smoky joint, as the gangster and his thug slipped out.

I finished my drink, but I didn’t stick around, and I sure as hell didn’t take him up on his offer of my pick of the girls. It wasn’t that I was above that sort of thing; but I wasn’t sure I wanted a friend for life.

Particularly one named Sam Giancana.