Killing Time

Eighteen

The People’s Candy Store was on Kosciusko Street, a street running up the side of one of the steepest hills in creation. Cars were parked up and down both sides of it, and I had to leave the Ford a block away and walk back down the hill to the store.

Inside, the People’s Candy Store was just what it claimed to be, a candy store occupied by people. But it was other things, too. I stood by the candy counter while a couple of small-fry made up their minds what to do with four cents, and then I told the proprietor, a short, shiny-spectacled, mustached little guy, “Jack Wycza’s expecting me. Tim Smith.”

“Mr. Smith,” he said, the words heavily accented. “Yes, he told me. Go right on up.” He pointed. “Through there, and up.”

“Yes, I know.”

I walked down the row of candy counters, through the door at the back, and into a room where eleven men with hats on their heads played poker at two large tables. A green shade over the lone window effectively kept out all daylight, and the room was lit by sixty-watt unshaded bulbs hung over each table. The air was blue with lazily hanging clouds of cigarette smoke. Coins tinkled and bills crackled, and the cards whispered as they were dealt.

Nobody paid me any attention, and I kept on going. A door in the right-hand wall opened on a flight of stairs. I climbed these to the horse-room on the second floor, which was now empty and dark, these windows, too, covered with dark green shades. I walked across the echoing wood floor to the door of Jack Wycza’s office. The door was closed. I knocked on it, somebody said to come in, and I went in.

Jack Wycza was sitting behind an ancient wooden desk. Two other men leaned against the far wall, on either side of the room’s lone window. A girl — I recognized her as yet another Wycza relative, a cousin of some kind named Cindy — sat in the room’s only other chair, painting her nails with fire-engine-red polish.

Jack Wycza perfectly fitted the part of the ward politician, from the hat shoved far back on his shiny balding dome, through the stogie in his face and the white shirt open at the collar and the wide dark tie with the loose crooked knot, to the fat gut jutting out over his belt and the big soft hands unused to manual labor. His eyes were small and wide-set, squinting now from the cigar smoke, and his jowls were heavy and beard-stubbled. And for the first time since I’d known him, he looked scared.

He took the cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at me. “Tim,” he said, and he had a slight trace of accent, though he’d been born in this country. “Tim, they asked you to finger me.”

“News gets around fast,” I said.

“You turned it down, huh?”

“Sure I did,” I said.

He grinned happily and nodded. “You ain’t working for them any more,” he said. “Ain’t that right?”

“I’ve never been working for them,” I told him. “I’ve never been working for anybody except me.”

He stopped grinning. “What is this? What the hell are you talking about?”

I could have asked him the same thing, but I said, “I’ve never been one of that crowd. I’ve always been a free agent. I’ve worked with them, but that doesn’t mean I’m one of them. Hell, I’ve worked with you, too. I’ve worked with just about everybody in this town.”

“Tim, listen,” he said, and he was being very solemn now, “listen, this ain’t the time for that jazz. There’s gonna be a war in this town, Tim, and everybody’s got to line up, one way or the other. I heard about you turning them down when they wanted you to finger me to the reformers, so I figured you were quits with that crowd. I figured you’d be coming over with Abner Korlov and me.” Abner Korlov owned Amalgamated Machine Parts, where most of the North Side people worked. He and Jordan Reed had been bitter enemies for years. Reed had managed to grab control of the town, and Korlov had been trying ever since to get it away from him.

“You figured wrong, Jack,” I said. “I’m not picking any sides.”

“Tim,” he said, “listen. I’m in a bind. Up here, I know where I am, I know what the score is. Downtown, I’m lost. It’s out of my territory. Things have been okay up till now, but there’s a war coming. And I don’t have any contacts downtown.”

“Your whole damn family works for the city,” I reminded him.

He made a disgusted hand-motion. “They don’t know from nothing. Everybody knows they’re my people. Who talks to them, who tells them anything?” He frowned, then said, “Cindy, you two guys. Out a minute.”

Without a word, Cindy and the two guys left the room, closing the door behind them.

Jack leaned forward, his belly against the desk, his face serious and worried. “I got to know what the downtown crowd is doing,” he said urgently. “I was just lucky I heard about them asking you. That was just lucky. But I got to know what they’re doing, what they’re figuring. If I don’t they’ll crucify me. That’s why I want you, I need somebody downtown. And I know if you said you were with me I could trust you.”

“Jack—”

“Listen,” he said. “A deal, we make a small deal. I do you a favor, you do me a favor. That’s all there is to it. Okay?”

“What favor?” I asked him.

“You’re downtown,” he said. “You know what’s going on. If you hear anything that’s got to do with me, anything at all, you let me know. I’ll keep it under my hat, I swear to God, nobody will ever know it came from you, not even my wife. A personal favor to me.”

“Jack, listen—”

“Wait a second,” he said quickly. “I’ll give you something back. I’ll do you a favor back. Somebody’s been gunning for you, right?”

I nodded.

“You need a bodyguard,” he said. “You need somebody to watch your back, watch your sides. Those two guys that were here, I’ll have them stick with you. They’re good, Tim, they know what they’re doing.”

The idea was awfully appealing. Though it might not be so good to have two of Jack’s bully-boys on my flanks. “I don’t know if I’ll hear anything, Jack,” I said. “Everybody’s scared downtown, nobody’s telling anybody anything.”

“If you hear,” he said. “You don’t hear anything, okay, you don’t. I’m not even asking you to go looking. Just if you happen to hear. And you got these two boys to help you.”

I nodded. “All right,” I said. “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know. But don’t count on me.”

He grinned and leaned back in his chair. “They’re good boys,” he said. “They’ll take good care of you.”

“In what way, Jack?” I asked him.

He laughed. “Bodyguards walk in front, Tim,” he said. “That’s their job.”

He hollered for everybody to come back in, and Cindy entered, followed by the two good boys. “Listen,” Wycza said to them, “Tim’s gonna help us a little bit, and we’re gonna help him a little bit. Somebody’s been gunning for him. I want you two to go with him, make sure he doesn’t get hurt.” He turned to me. “Tim, that’s Ben and that’s Art. They’re good boys.”

Ben was dead-pan, and simply nodded, but Art grinned like the Cheshire cat and said, “You sure you need bodyguards, Mr. Smith? You don’t look like the type.”

I touched the bandage on my forehead, and I thought of the four tries the guy had already made. “I’m pretty sure,” I said.