Chicago Confidential

14

Riverview amusement park — bordered on the north by Lane Tech high school, on the east by Western Avenue, on the west by the Chicago River, and on the south by Belmont Avenue — had been a fixture of the Northside as long as I’d been alive. In fact, one of its rides — the Pair-O-Chutes — loomed over that part of town like a Chicago Eiffel Tower; actually that’s what it had originally been called — the Eye-Ful tower, an observation deck that had been condemned by the city and cannily turned by the Riverview management into a freefall parachute drop. From miles around, you could see the oil well-like structure, crosshatched against the sky.

Some of my earliest and fondest childhood memories were of the so-called “world’s largest amusement park” — free entrance passes were routinely mailed out all across the city, and the park refunded the two-cent streetcar fare for kids (a big table of shiny pennies awaited inside the front gates), encouraging customers for what was already a bargain-packed extravaganza.

When I was a kid, I’d held onto my stomachful of cotton candy and popcorn through the wild ride that was the Jack Rabbit roller coaster, only to be defeated by the Crazy Ribbon, with its barrel-shaped cars rolling and twisting back and forth down an inclined track. Dreams during my adult life on occasion had returned me to the funhouse called Hades, a hell of a ride through dark passageways filled with flashing figures and unearthly noises.

And my memory still tingles with other vivid images of Riverview: the freak show with the Tattooed Lady, the Rubber Man, and Pop-Eye (not the sailor but a guy who could force his eyeballs to jut from their sockets); midget fire eaters; hootchie-kootchie dancers; the African Dip (colored guys dressed like jungle warriors who taunted you into hurling baseballs at them — “Hey man, that ain’t the gal you was here with las’ night!”); and of course every kid’s favorite, the Monkey Races, where you bet on the driver of your choice among the tiny terrified creatures “steering” cars of various colors, cute little critters but if you petted them you’d get nipped — don’t say you weren’t warned.

I hadn’t been a stranger over the years, and Riverview in full sway — especially at night — remained a wonderland unparalleled in the western world, or anyway on Chicago’s Northside. Ablaze with neon, flickering with banjo lights — pop-tune-blaring sound-system horns in dishes ringed by tiny flashing white lights on lamp poles — the midway was a twisty, turny paradise of sleazy nirvana. With a doll on your arm (with a doll under her arm that you’d won for her), you wound through two and a half miles of bright loud midway crammed into a three-block-by-two-block area. Frequently, the air would be torn by the shrill horrified screams of plunging patrons enjoying the park’s legendary roller coasters, sounds of terror giving way to the clanking of chains as more victims were dragged up steep wooden slopes to their delighted doom.

Like most Chicagoans, however, I hadn’t ever set foot inside Riverview in the off-season, much less after midnight. Having parked on Western, I approached the front gates — a white wide pillared archway trimmed patriotically in red and blue. Had I been here just a few weeks ago, that archway would have radiated with neon; now, in ivory-tinged light courtesy of half a moon and a scattering of stars and few streetlamps, the night reluctantly gave up dark shapes beyond the gates, like massive slumbering beasts, and the filigree outline of trees losing their leaves. I could also make out the lettering RIVERVIEW PARK on the ticket booth inside the six-foot fence, which I scaled without any problem, dropping to the cement without hurting myself or making a racket.

While the park was dark — not even security lighting of any kind — the sky glowed off to my left, strangely enough, as if a small sunrise was taking place in the midst of the night. Looming over everything, the steel lacework of the Pair-O-Chutes tower dangled its metal cables like weird tendrils. The air was crisp, almost cold; I was dressed for a night at Riverview, particularly a night I wanted to blend into — a pair of dark slacks, black gum-soled loafers, and a black horsehide jacket over a navy sportshirt.

The jacket was unzipped, to make it easier for me to get at the .38 in the shoulder holster... I had left my nine millimeter Browning at home, preferring to use this gun, which I’d taken from that elevator operator at the Barry Apartments, the night Drury and Bas were killed. Using someone else’s gun has its benefits.

Wearing black leather driving gloves that fit like a second skin, I was carrying a duffel bag I’d packed with some old catalogs and newspapers, snugging in an extra revolver, a .32 that also couldn’t be traced to me. Whoever had abducted Jackie — assuming she had been abducted and wasn’t just party to some Fischetti scheme — was under the mistaken impression I had Drury’s notebooks, tapes, and papers; so the duffel bag seemed a necessary prop.

Riverview struck me as a good choice for the bad business my adversaries were up to — in the midst of the city, the abandoned sprawl of the off-season park provided a large, deserted landscape with many vantage points for positioning lookouts (and snipers) and countless possibilities for hiding, as well as numerous opportunities for hasty exits on all sides.

That these apparent kidnappers had chosen Riverview as a drop point made me suspicious of Fischetti involvement. For one thing, this was Charley’s turf — we weren’t that far from the Barry Apartments, in fact — and only a few blocks away from where Drury had been murdered in his garage. Also, gambling was Rocco’s sphere of mob influence, and it was well known that the Outfit got a cut of the games of chance at Riverview, in some cases ran them.

Just to my right inside the gate, lovely in the moonlight, a vast flower garden — one of numerous landscaped areas scattered throughout Riverview — seemed to be surviving the cold snap just fine. Behind the garden yawned the wooden scaffolding of the Silver Flash roller coaster, its silver-shrouded cars no doubt stored away in one of the numerous sheds and warehouses of the sleeping grounds.

What separated Riverview from a carnival or fair were the permanent buildings, from shuttered wooden carny stalls to the ornate, overgrown-gazebo affair straight ahead, housing the Tilt-a-Whirl; beyond it, to the left, the lagoon was barely visible through the thickness of trees surrounding. Train tracks ringed the lagoon, though the tiny streamlined engine and its cars were probably in storage; but the miniature railroad made me think of Rocco...

...Had he turned on Jackie, when he and his brother learned that wives could be forced to testify against their husbands, or face imprisonment? Had the lovely addicted Miss Chicago become a liability good only for bait, to lure a chump like me to her rescue?

That unlikely sunrise was off to my left, and I was moving in that direction anyway, since I’d been summoned to Aladdin’s Castle, which had taken the place of Hades, after the previous funhouse had, yes, burned down. Duffel bag in my left hand, my right hand poised near my unzipped jacket, I walked down the paved path, with the park-like lagoon area and its benches and miniature railroad tracks to my right. To my left were the various rides and attractions — the Dive Bomber with its two capsule-shaped cars on either end of a suspended arm; the sprawling Spooktown with its elaborate cartoony facade of ghosts and skeletons; an enormous ferris wheel, the spokes and wires of which threw shadows on me as I approached the source of illumination in the otherwise gloomy park.

Aladdin’s Castle was alive!

Alive, that is, with sequential moving lights — as if this attraction alone in the park were open for business. Book-ended on either side of the gigantic face and shoulders of a turbaned, bearded (and crudely drawn) Aladdin — his robe brightly striped red, a golden lamp in his massive hand — were the mosque-like towers of an Arabian castle. Somebody inside had thrown a switch — or two, or three — and the neon trim of spires and minarets and the progressive blinking light-bulb “jewels” of the giant’s turban and lamp were burning in the night. Even the wide-open eyes of Aladdin were moving side-to-side in their creepy trademark fashion.

Standing before the garish display — that childishly drawn yet vaguely fiendish Aladdin face, with its lumpy nose and prissy mouth, towering over me — I felt like a child again, a child too young to handle the bizarre thrills of Riverview. That the immense park lay shrouded in darkness had not been as disturbing as seeing this one attraction aglow in the night...

The door in the fence beside the minaret ticket booth stood open, and I lugged my duffel bag down a cobblestone path through Aladdin’s overgrown front yard to the stairway that lay flat against the facade and led up past the pointing beard to a doorway in Aladdin’s right shoulder. This door was open, too — and nobody asked for a ticket. Hadn’t had a bargain like this since I got those shiny pennies.

I’d been through this place with a date, a time or two, but didn’t remember the layout. Immediately I was in a maze of screen doors; all the damn things looked identical and I hit dead end after dead end, until finally I was in a hall of mirrors — looking skinny and fat in various ones, and not particularly intelligent in any.

Soon I was passing through a room with a slanted floor, having to hold on with my free hand to a railing to keep from pitching onto my ass. Then I was in a dark corridor, and tinny speakers emitted snake charmer music, telegraphing the lighted-up wall recess in which a fake cobra lunged at me; I didn’t even react to that cheap shit, but I flinched when a scimitar-wielding dummy Arab appeared on the other side of me... damn near went for the .38...

This corridor emptied me into one of those rooms with a floor of round metal disks that rotated as you stepped on them. I had to use all my concentration to make it across without a tumble, and when I entered the adjacent corridor, another dark one, somebody grabbed me from behind, one arm looping powerfully around me, while the other arm came around and a hand deftly fished the .38 out from under my shoulder.

I didn’t have time to struggle — I was simply dragged bodily through a doorway into a little bare room with unpainted wooden walls and slatted flooring, and nothing in it but a big switchbox on one wall. The cubbyhole was barely big enough for all three of us: me, the guy behind me with his arms looped around my chest, and Jackie Payne, who was tied into a wooden chair, a handkerchief gag in her mouth.

She was conscious and her eyes were wide with alarm and concern and a hundred other things. The rope — greasy carny cord — cut tightly against her pink sweater and matching slacks... it was the same outfit she’d been wearing when I picked her up off the street corner on Sheridan... the ropes making smudgy stains, and obviously hurting her, her wrists behind her, her ankles tied together, not to the chair. Her feet were bare, which led me to think she’d been snatched out of her apartment. Her left sweater sleeve was yanked back and the tracks and bruises on her slender white arm were painfully apparent.

The guy shoved me past her, into a corner of the shack-sized room, and positioned himself opposite me, with Jackie in between, giving me my first good look at him — actually, my second good look, because not long ago I’d had another memorable view of him, when he and his partner were heading right at me, about to run me down in that maroon coupe in Little Hell.

This was the tall, lanky one, with the harelip scar through his mustache. Hatless, he had neatly combed longish brown hair, his eyes brown and cold, his cheek bones rather sharp — he was like a pale Apache; I put him in his late twenties, though there was experience in that hard face. He wore a glen plaid brown suit that had a tailored look and a silk green-and-brown striped tie; he was a natty son of a bitch, for a guy training my own .38 on me. Well, the elevator operator’s .38.

“You don’t have to die,” he said.

This was not the voice I’d heard on the telephone: so there was at least one more of them... probably the other mustached assassin, the smaller, round-faced one.

“Sooner or later, we all do,” I said.

That snake charmer music was still playing, distantly, over scratchy speakers.

The mustache curled into a small smile. “Well... it can be sooner, if you insist. You got what I want?”

He meant the Drury notebooks.

I hefted the duffel bag.

“That’s it?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“It’s not gym clothes,” I said. Truthfully.

Her eyes agonized now, Jackie — tied tight in her chair — was looking back and forth between us, as if she were following a tennis match with life-and-death consequences. Maybe she was.

As he pointed the .38 at me with one hand, he reached his other hand into a suitcoat pocket. Then he tossed something, which clunked on the wooden floor at Jackie’s feet. A pocket-knife — a good-size one.

“You give me what’s in that bag,” he said, “and I’ll just go. And by the time you cut the little junkie loose, I’ll be long gone. You’ll have what you want, I’ll have what I want.”

“Where’s your partner?”

A tiny shrug. “He might be anywhere. Maybe he’s up on top of the Pair-O-Chutes. Maybe he’s sitting in a ferris wheel car.”

“Somewhere he can shoot me from, you mean.”

But the pale Apache was shaking his head. “We don’t want to shoot you.”

Fuck him — I’d witnessed him and his partner killing Bas. I hadn’t come forward about what I’d seen, but the threat of my doing so still hung over them — which was part of why we were here at Riverview tonight, besides the fun and games of Aladdin’s Castle. To remove that threat.

The only thing keeping me alive was their need to get what they thought I had: the Drury papers.

“All right,” I said to him, as Jackie looked at me with affection and desperation in those big brown eyes. “I suppose if you wanted to shoot me, I’d be dead by now.”

“That’s right,” he said, accepting that as my actual line of thinking.

“You mind if I ask you who you’re working for?”

“Just give me the damn bag, okay?”

I held out the duffel bag, assertively — right out in front of Jackie’s face. “Take it, then. Fucking take it!”

The pale Apache winced in thought. Too much thinking is bad for some people. But it was clear he now figured I’d booby-trapped the bag somehow... maybe put a real cobra in it. After all, we had snake charmer music playing in the background...

He sneered at me; natty as he was, that mustache could use a trim. “You open it — slowly. Show me everything that’s in there, one item at a time... make a pile on the floor.”

“Okay.” I pretended to be trying to juggle the bag into a workable position. I gave him a frustrated look, saying, “Can I put the bag down?”

Sighing with impatience, he nodded.

I crouched and unzipped the duffel bag; he was watching me carefully, the gun poised to blow me away at the slightest sign of treachery. My hand found the .32 and I fired it up at him through some newspapers and the canvas of the bag itself, which muffled the sound almost as well as a silencer, and the son of a bitch never had time to realize what had happened, much less squeeze the trigger of the .38.

He just stood there for a moment, with the little blue hole in the middle of his forehead, like a third eye, and his other two eyes weren’t seeing any better than the new one; reflexes severed, his body flopped like a stringless puppet right about where I was supposed to pile the notebooks and tapes. The splash of blood and brains on the wooden wall behind him would have looked fine in a frame at Fischetti’s penthouse.

Jackie had an astonished expression — not as astonished as that dead mustached fucker, but astonished enough. He fell at her feet, so I shoved him aside to get at that pocket-knife, and flipped it open and started cutting her loose — the guy had played fair, providing a nice sharp blade, and I was able to free her within a minute... though that minute seemed like an eternity, since I couldn’t be sure the shot... however muffled... might not have carried well enough for the partner to hear.

With the ropes in a pile at her bare feet, Jackie stood — she weaved for a moment, put a hand to her head; she seemed groggy.

“You okay?” I said, slipping an arm around her waist. I’d already retrieved the .38 from my late host, the .32 consigned to a jacket pocket. “Can you make it, baby?”

She nodded, tugging her sleeve down over the bruises and tracks, and I went to that control box and found a switch in the OFF position labeled HOUSE LIGHTS, and another in the ON that said MASTER GIMMICK; I hit both switches, and when I walked her out of there, occasional bare work bulbs unmasked the mysterious corridor of Aladdin’s Castle as unpainted plywood. With my arm still around her waist, we moved down a sloping ramp that I seemed to remember would take us out.

The exit awaiting us was one of those big rolling barrels, so awkward to navigate without falling comically ass over teakettle; but it wasn’t rolling now. Before we could duck through it into the night, I paused, kissed her forehead, looked into those dazed-looking brown eyes, and said, “His partner’s out there, somewhere.”

She nodded. “Yes — he’s smaller.”

“Round face, also has a mustache.”

“Yes! They just showed up at the apartment... came into the den and grabbed me. I don’t know how they got in...”

“That can wait. But here’s the plan.”

I told her that right behind Aladdin’s Castle — separated by one knee-high fence and another somewhat higher one — was a parking lot; beyond that parking lot, and another fence, Western Avenue, along which my Olds was parked, in front of the quiet clapboard houses of the residential neighborhood in Aladdin’s backyard. I would go out first — to see if I drew any fire (but I didn’t say that) — and when I signaled her, she would join me, we would duck around the side of the building, and she was to climb the fences first as I covered her with the .38.

“Got it?”

She nodded; but she seemed woozy.

“Jackie, you have to get ahold of yourself.”

She nodded again, more assuredly. Then she touched my face and looked up at me with a longing expression. “You really do care about me, don’t you?”

It sounded childish — and both absurd and slurred — yet it was so tender my heart broke, a little. She was another man’s wife... and I suspected that man had sent her here to die.

“You know I do,” I said, and I kissed her — a short, sweet kiss.

Then, 38 in hand, I ran through the barrel, and exited into the crisp, somewhat breezy night; I was on a platform that, if I followed it to some stairs, would present another round of adventures in the other wing of the castle. I would pass on that privilege.

I slowly scanned the landscape — the thickness of trees surrounding the lagoon, empty benches, the idle railroad, the empty expanse of paved midway, curving around the lagoon at left and right. The tower of the Pair-O-Chutes adjacent to the castle seemed to me an unlikely spot for a sniper — no elevator went up there, after all, only those dangling chains (whose chutes and harnesses were in storage), and I doubted my round-faced adversary was hanging up there by a chain or two, waiting to get a good shot off.

I looked at the castle’s next-door neighbor on the other side — could someone be up in one of those ferris wheel cars?

I hopped off the platform, motioning for Jackie — waiting on the other side of the barrel — to stay put. Moving as silently as possible, I stepped out into the castle’s lawn, one slow step at a time, listening for any sound that might give movement away.

Nothing.

Nothing but the wind rustling the tarps and rattling the shutters of Riverview in hibernation, the scaffolding of various roller coasters whining and creaking; and the occasional honking car horn and other late-night traffic sounds of the nearby streets.

Where was the son of a bitch? Had he heard the shot and panicked and fled? Had he positioned himself elsewhere in the park — was he roving the midway, to see if I’d enlisted backup, despite warnings to the contrary?

If he’d seen me, he’d had plenty of opportunity to take a potshot.

I turned toward the barrel — which was positioned as if at the end of one of the giant Aladdin’s sleeves — and waved at Jackie to join me, which she did. At my direction, she took the lead, as we ducked around the side of the castle, and I moved in circles, gun fanned out, trying to be ready whatever direction the shit might fly from.

We were approaching the first, shorter fence, when the shot split the night open, a gun blossoming orange from just behind the castle building, across the fence — near the damn parking lot! The bastard had anticipated my move, was waiting for me.

I caught a glimpse of him, his pale round face like a mustached moon in the night, as he ran right at us, his dark suitcoat flapping, his hat flying off, and I yanked Jackie down off the fence, onto the grass, another round blasting, the bullet flying over us as the little man charged toward us.

I took her hand and almost dragged her away from that fence, back toward the park. Our pursuer had to climb that smaller fence and that would slow him down. Then I turned back toward where he was coming, with Jackie in front of me, and without taking time to aim threw two shots in his general direction, just to give him something to think about.

Then we ran again, Jackie stumbling, but I pulled her along as we fled down the midway, cutting to the right, in front of Aladdin’s, then rounding the lagoon, heading down the midway, back toward the looming roller coaster scaffolding and the front gates.

But Jackie wasn’t making it — she seemed about to collapse, sweating, tottering, and finally I had to duck with her between two shuttered stalls, a Skee-Ball and a penny arcade, and I knelt at the mouth of the little grassy alleyway, while she leaned against the side of the stall, next to me. I was watching the midway for our pursuer, but also sneaking side glances at my fading companion.

“I’m... sorry,” she whispered, out of breath.

“Shhh,” I said, 38 poised.

“They... they gave me a fix.”

“What?”

“Be... before you got here... so they... could handle me better... didn’t want one... didn’t need one...”

I knew I should keep my eyes on that midway, but I turned to her, and she looked terrible — ghostly white, perspiration pearling her forehead, despite the breeze. “Christ, Jackie — had you already shot up?”

She nodded, swallowed, her breath heaving; she seemed dizzy, as if about to pass out.

Had she overdosed? Surely that would have taken more immediate effect; but perhaps not — perhaps what she’d been put through... and was being put through... had taxed her system, her heart...

And who the hell knew what they’d slammed into her?

“I’ll get you out of here,” I said to her.

She summoned a weak little smile. “I’ll be... all right. I’ll be... all right.”

“I’m getting you help, baby.” And I didn’t mean just tonight.

“I’ll be fine... just let me... let me catch my breath.”

I heard movement and snapped my attention back to the midway and saw him — my round-faced assassin.

He wasn’t running — he was prowling, staying low, fanning his gun out now, as if it were a flashlight in the darkness, walking close to the trees, not on the midway itself, rather on the grass, behind the benches, near the train tracks.

If he would just keep coming, keep that same pace and direction, stepping into that shaft of moonlight, I could get a good shot at the son of a bitch...

The night cracked, like a whip, and the bullet stood the little assassin up straight, as if he were coming to startled attention — and then dropped him on his face.

From in back of the fallen assassin, Tim O’Conner came into view, his expression as stunned as if he had been the one who’d been shot... not the one doing the shooting.

I left her propped against the side of the booth, whispered, “Stay put, baby,” and she nodded, as I scooted out into the midway, 38 in hand.

I wasn’t sure whether Tim had seen me or not — I guessed not, because he seemed in a sort of trance as — damn! — he fired again, his revolver belching orange as he shot down into the figure already sprawled across the little train tracks.

“This is for Bill Drury, you lousy cocksucker,” he said, and then he put one in the back of the dead assassin’s skull; the sound was like a ripe melon hitting cement.

O’Conner stood there, his revolver limp at his side now, the acrid smell of cordite heavy in the air.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

He blinked, swallowed, looked up at me with that stunned puss. “Are you? I heard the gunshot, and came running.”

Tim’s job had been to scope out the park, even as I was entering it, and take care of any sniper in the woodpile, or shut down any other sort of trap that might have been laid for me; after that, he was to position himself on the other side of the lagoon, close enough to Aladdin’s to maneuver himself no matter what took place. Shooting one of Bill Drury’s two assassins in the back was his own idea.

O’Conner seemed almost embarrassed, as he nodded down at what he’d done. “Jeez, Nate... I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” I said. “You through?”

O’Conner nodded, and I kneeled over the corpse, turning it over just enough to get at the guy’s wallet. I flipped it open and the metal of a badge caught the moonlight and winked at me.

“What the hell,” O’Conner said, leaning down. “Is he a cop?”

I nodded, reading the ID card. “Calumet City. I bet his dead partner’s got the same kind of tin in his wallet.”

This made an awful sort of sense: Tubbo Gilbert — the State’s Attorney’s investigator running for sheriff — did business with crooked cops all around Cook County, and the state for that matter. The Calumet City P.D. was a handy place to recruit a pair of contract killers whose faces would be unknown in Chicago.

O’Conner was saying, “His partner is dead, too?”

Distant sirens announced we had outworn our welcome at Riverview — the gunshots and the lights of Aladdin’s Castle had attracted neighborhood attention.

“Fill ya in later,” I said, trotting over to where I’d left Jackie, but she wasn’t leaning against the stall now — she lay prone on the ground.

“Shit!” Kneeling over her, I saw awful signs: the brown eyes were open and empty, a trail of spittle ran down her cheek. And she was motionless.

O’Conner was right there. “What is it? What’s wrong with her?”

I was trying to find a pulse. “I think she’s overdosed — help me with her! We have to get her to a hospital!”

He was bending beside her now, taking a closer look, touching her throat. “Nate — I don’t think...”

“Help me carry her!”

O’Conner’s hand gripped my shoulder. “Nate! She’s dead! We have to get out of here, unless you want to explain all of this — maybe to the State Attorney’s investigators? Leave her!”

I could have knocked his teeth down his throat for that, except for one thing: he was right.

She was dead.

“No helping her,” I said.

“What?”

“No helping her — not now.”

I kissed her forehead, and O’Conner and I went over a fence behind Spooktown, cutting through a parking lot over to Western Avenue. Blinking through tears, I was heading south on Western when the two police cars came zooming north, sirens screaming like riders on the Silver Rash.