Neon Mirage

“Unchanged.”

“I had a little talk with Guzik.”

His eyes tightened. “When was this?”

“Monday night,” I said. “It wasn’t my idea-he sent for me.”

I gave him the particulars, including Guzik’s claim that Siegel did the hit, including Guzik’s $200,000 offer. I didn’t see any reason to mention I’d been paid five C’s to deliver the message.

“Two hundred grand is chicken feed,” Jim said, sneering.

“It is?”

“My business is worth $2 million a year.”

“It is if you’re alive,” I said, not showing how impressed I was by that figure, mentally raising his daily rate. “Why not quote Guzik a price? Tell him what you would settle for.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Mostly mine. Then yours. Not Guzik’s at all.”

Jim laughed. “At least you’re honest, lad.”

“Don’t let it get around. It’s bad for business.”

“Do you think Greasy Thumb could be tellin’ the truth? Do you think this-” he gestured with his left hand toward his bandaged right arm “-could be the work of that crazy Jew bastard instead?”

“Siegel? Sure. It could be.”

“Are you looking into it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you trying to find out who did this to me?”

“Not really. I’m mostly just trying to keep you alive. I have been cooperating with Drury, who’s doing his best to find the shooters.”

“You think he’ll get the job done?”

“Stranger things have happened.” I told him about the trip to Bronzeville and the witnesses that Two-Gun Pete turned up for Drury.

“If the shooters are Outfit,” Jim said, almost gleefully, “that will prove it was Guzik behind it.”

“No it won’t. There are plenty of people in this town who do work for Guzik who also take on freelance work, from time to time.”

“But if it’s out-of-town talent who did it, that would clear Guzik, and point to Siegel.”

“Not necessarily. Frank Nitti used to hire out of town talent all the time, for his hits; just to confuse the issue. That’s what he did where Tommy Malloy was concerned, and O’Hare, too.”

“Damnit, Nate!” He pounded his bed with his good hand. “Give me some good news!”

“Take it easy, Jim. The good news is you’re alive. The good news is Guzik wants to buy you out, not kill you.”

“He says.”

“It’s his style. You’re not dealing with Ricca or Campagna or Accardo, here. Guzik’s favorite weapon is money.”

“How can I do business with a man if he tried to have me killed?”

“You don’t know that he did.”

“I don’t know that he didn’t. Find out for me.”

“What?”

“I want to look into it-work with Drury, but work on your own, as well. You have your contacts, your ways. Find out whether it was Guzik or Siegel who did this; I’ll pay a fancy fee.”

“I just love fancy fees, but I don’t want that job. Jim, I can get away with playing your bodyguard. I have enough clout with Guzik to manage that. But if I go snooping in Outfit business, it could get me killed.”

The features of his face squeezed tight as a fist. “You’ve been saying you think I should sell-well, I’m seriously considering it, now. But I’ll only do it, if it’s that crazy bastard Siegel who put the hit out on me. How can I sell to Guzik, if he took out the contract?”

“What’s the difference who took out the contract? Guzik’s willing to buy you out and, apparently, let you walk. Maybe those affidavits of yours, your ‘insurance policy,’ is working.”

Jim rubbed his chin. “That would explain it. Siegel could care less about those affidavits coming out. They’re no skin off his ass…”

“True. And if Siegel’s the one gunning for you, well, once you’ve sold out to Guzik, the heat’s off. Siegel would no longer have reason to want you dead. No matter how crazy he is.”

“Damnit, Nate! Find out for me! Find out whicha them bastards tried to kill me. Tried to kill us!”

I stood. “Jim I’m just upsetting you. I’m going to have to go. I’ll be outside the door, if you need me, till noon. That’s when another of my ops comes on for me.”

His expression pleaded with me; so did his words: “Nate…take the assignment. There isn’t a private dick in town, in the country, that knows these Outfit bastards better than you. You’re the only man for the job, lad…”

“Jim, you’re my friend, and more important, my client, and I’m doing my best to keep you alive. It ends there.”

And I went out in the hall. Breathed out some air. I felt battered. Even with a clipped wing, that Irish son of a bitch was a handful.

I went down to the lounge area where I’d spoken to Peggy last Monday night and, after bumming a cigarette off a passing doctor, sat and smoked. I don’t smoke, as a rule-I picked the habit up overseas, in the Marines, and dropped it when I got back. But now and then I got the craving. Usually when I started getting the combat jitters. I’d been smoking off and on all week.

A few minutes later, just as I was standing up, grinding the cigarette under my heel, ready to go back and help guard Ragen’s door, an orderly approached me, a colored kid of maybe twenty with a light brown complexion and dark close-cropped brown hair.

“Are you one of the detectives watching Mr. Ragen?” he asked.

I said I was.

“I think I have something I oughta tell you about.”

“Well why don’t you, then.”

He swallowed. “Okay. After work yesterday, I was playing ball over at the recreation grounds. At Wentworth Avenue? I was playing softball. I saw these men looking at me in particular. They was watching us play ball, I thought, but they was looking at me. I had my badge on that shows I’m an employee here at the hospital.” He swallowed again.

“Go on, son.”

“Well, one of them come up to me and asked if I work at the hospital. I say I did. He ask me some questions about Mr. Ragen’s condition. He say he was a reporter. Anyway, he ask where Mr. Ragen’s room was. I…I told him.”

“He gave you money, didn’t he?”

The boy looked at the floor and nodded.

“Did you tell him?”

“Just that Mr. Ragen was on the third floor away from the fire escape.”

“What did these men look like?”

“White men-real white. One had dark hair, real curly. The other had glasses and was kind of bald. They were both kinda big.”

Well, what do you know.

“What happened then, kid?”

“The man had some more questions-he was the one that didn’t have no glasses-and I said I didn’t think I wanted to talk to him anymore. Last night I was thinking about it, and I thought, what if he wasn’t a reporter? Those men didn’t look like reporters. I didn’t sleep so good.”

“Have you told anybody else about this?”

“No, sir. I heard you was a private detective and not city. So I waited to tell you. I didn’t want Mr. Ragen to get hurt, but I didn’t want to get myself in trouble, neither.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “You were smart to come to me.”

“I don’t want any money from you, mister.”

“Good, ’cause I’m not going to give you any. Now go back to work.”

I went down to the second floor, to the nearest phone booth, and tried to call Drury at home; his wife said he was still asleep and I told her not to wake him-I’d call back around noon. Then I walked back toward Ragen’s room and plopped myself down in a straightback chair next to the cop. He was reading the morning Tribune. I told him he ought to be more alert than that, and took it away from him, read it myself. But all I could think about was the two guys the orderly had seen.

About eleven o’clock I glanced down the hall and noticed the fire-escape cop was gone.

“Where’s your pal?” I asked the cop next to me.

“How should I know? Takin’ a dump?”

“I’m going to cover the fire escape till he gets back.”

I went down there and looked out the window. Down through the grating of the fire escape I could see a few psyche ward patients, in their green pajamas, enjoying the view of the I.C. tracks from their perch.

Maybe ten minutes later, a patient started up the stairs onto the third level; he was followed by another.

I stepped out onto the fire escape just as they had gotten onto the landing and said, “Nobody on this level, boys,” and realized I was looking at two sallow individuals, one of whom had dark brown curly hair and a widow’s peak and a wedge-shaped face, the other of whom was balding and round-faced and wore glasses, both of whom were wearing green psyche-ward p.j.s, but neither of whom were mentally sick, though I wouldn’t have minded giving either one of them a lobotomy with my nine millimeter, which I was grabbing out from under my shoulder.

“Hold it right there,” I said, pointing the gun at them.

They froze. The widow’s-peaked guy had a big nose and bushy brown eyebrows and thick lips and bad teeth and a couple of facial moles; the guy with glasses hadn’t exactly stepped out of an Arrow shirt ad, either, though he had more regular features that added up to a baby face, albeit a pretty ugly baby. They both had the blankly evil expression of the business end of an automatic.

“Put your fuckin’ hands in the air,” I added, and they did.

I knew them. I don’t just mean that they matched up with the descriptions given by Two-Gun Pete’s trio of colored witnesses, and the orderly’s description of the “reporters”: no. I knew them from the West Side. The widow’s-peaked guy was Davey Finkel. The guy with glasses was Joseph “Blinkey” Leonard. West Side boys-like me. Well, not quite like me, I hope.

“Okay, Davey,” I said to Finkel, “one step forward.”

With my left hand, I patted him down; under the loose green top, he had a.45 automatic tucked in his waistband-he was wearing slacks under the baggy pajama bottoms. I tossed the piece just behind me and it clanked on the fire escape floor.

“One step back,” I told him, and nodded to his balding friend. “Now you, Blinkey.”

I disarmed him, as well; he carried a relatively small gun, a.32 automatic, but it had a silencer attached, making it bulky. This, had I not intercepted them, would have been the murder weapon, the little darling that would’ve given Ragen a goodbye kiss. I tossed it just behind me, too, clanking.

“What’s a couple of nice Jewish bookies like you guys doing playing torpedo, anyway?”

“Why don’t you just let us lam out of here, Heller,” Finkel said, in his sandpaper voice. “You won this round, okay?”

“No hard feelings,” Blinkey said; his voice was higher pitched but just as unpleasant.

“I got hard feelings,” I said. “You boys tried to kill me last Monday.”

They shut their traps, glanced at each other, looked back at me. Finkel was scowling; Blinkey had a bland, blank expression.

“Now we’re all going to step inside,” I said, jerking my head toward the door to the Meyer House third floor. “You boys, first. Feel free to pull something and give me an excuse.”

Just behind them, coming up the fire escape steps, came a painfully thin patient, about thirty, with a gray pallor and dazed expression and green psyche-ward p.j.s. I knew just looking at him he was a veteran; he had combat in his face.

“Can you see the lake from here?” the man said, very slowly.

“Please,” I started, “get off…”

Finkel grabbed the skinny figure and goddamn hurled him at me, knocking me back against the fire-escape rail, hard; and quickly headed back down the iron stairway, Leonard already having a head start on him.

I brushed past the confused psyche patient and followed them down, the fire escape stairs rattling like a passing El. I had a gun and they didn’t, but they stayed a landing ahead of me and on each landing were more psyche patients, and when they reached the bottom, there were more psyche patients still, a sea of green nutcases they waded into, poor goddamn innocents that were in the way of me getting a shot off at these guilty sons of bitches. They didn’t head for Lake Park Avenue, possibly because a cop was patrolling it, but to the right, around toward the Meyer House parking lot and loading area.

Their car was probably in this small lot, but it wasn’t going to do them any good at the moment, because a food delivery truck was slowly maneuvering-and blocking-the narrow alley between the parking lot, the Meyer House and another hospital building. And that was the only way out.

So they were on foot, running down an aisle between parked cars, then squeezing past that delivery truck through the alley, two desperate men in green pajamas.

I followed, gun in hand, running through the parking lot, edging past the truck, following them out onto 29th; they were moving fast, but tearing at their outer covering, shedding their green tops, beneath which were white sportshirts. They crossed to Ellis Avenue, a street of two-and three-story buildings whose once proud architecture had long since decayed, cutting across a lot made vacant by an urban renewal project.

Finkel and Leonard were heavier men than me, but younger, and, so far anyway, faster. I could take a shot at them, but they were unarmed; wasn’t sure I could risk it. I was breathing hard, stumbling on the rocks and rubble of the vacant lot, watching up ahead as they climbed a fence that was half-fallen down already. When I climbed it, I found myself in an alley. Soon I was trailing them through a nightmare landscape, the garbage-strewn alley running past the ass-ends of crumbling tenements whose tiers of back porch balconies sagged, their wooden slats like rotting teeth about to fall out. But it was strangely deserted-not a single colored face looked out from a window; no children jumped rope or sang songs. Yet in the distance I could hear music. A marching band was accompanying us as we ran…

And, God bless John Philip Sousa, I was gaining on them; they were glancing back, seeing that I was, some panic in their faces, and I grinned and poured it on. Then, at alley’s end, they rounded the corner, on what must have been 32nd, and soon I realized why it was so deserted, understood the band music, remembered: Bud Billikens Day.

Thirty-second Street itself was thronged with colored kids in Boy Scout uniforms being lined up for marching purposes by similarly garbed dark adults; and some kind of high school marching band, in gaudy uniform, was already in rows, practicing a tune. Most of this activity was in the street itself, but there was overflow and parents and such on the sidewalks, including the two white men in white sportshirts and green pajama bottoms who went running through that crowd, knocking people aside, women and children included, and people were immediately pissed. Into that hostile arena I ran, having tucked my nine millimeter away as soon as I saw this mass of humanity, doing my best not to knock into anybody, slowing down accordingly.

And then I was at South Park Avenue, where the parade was in full swing, sidewalks packed; this boulevard, with its four lanes divided by a parkway, was thronged with colored people, in their summer finery, men in straw hats, women in bonnets, kids getting their Sunday duds stained from free ice cream and candy and pop, families filling the sidewalks, lining the parkway, as marching bands and floats streamed by.

Through this pushed my two psyche ward escapees, jostling an otherwise utterly Negro crowd that was too stunned by this Caucasian presence to do anything; I followed after, but was falling back, slowed by the sidewalk swarm. I felt hands on me, touching, slapping, but nobody outright grabbed me, or hit me, or had yet, at least. I couldn’t even make out any cries of outrage, in the general confusion of band music and the crowd noise.

I’d lost sight of them, now. Hopelessness rising in me, I got to the front of the packed sidewalk and looked for white faces in a black world. It was a Klansman’s worst nightmare come true.

And then there they were: they’d moved out into the street, were running alongside a float from Lake View Dairy, where a giant shredded paper milk bottle served as the backdrop for a throne for a lovely high yellow gal in a gown and crown, who was waving to her subjects.

By the time I caught up with the dairy float, Finkel and Leonard had cut across in front of it, and were up running alongside a pack of cyclists on decorated bikes. I cut in front of the float, too, fell in behind the two. They had perhaps twenty yards on me. I smiled. They seemed to be tiring; I was going to catch them after all-I was getting my second wind. People were pointing at us, shouting at us, perhaps some of them not quite sure we weren’t part of the festivities.

Then I saw the two of them veer off the street and back into the crowd, on the parkway side. Getting away from the parade.

I picked up speed, and a hand reached out and grabbed me and my legs went out from under me and I rolled forward, in an awkward somersault, skinning myself on the pavement.

When I finally picked myself up, a colored cop was standing there, glowering at me. He had a nightstick in one hand; the sun was glinting off the polished copper buttons of his blue uniform.

I glanced up ahead.

My psyche-ward escapees were gone.

I felt a hand on my arm, yanking me off the street as the dairy float floated by, the high yellow queen waving, enjoying her moment.

“I don’t suppose it would do any good,” I said to the cop as he pulled me through the crowd on the parkway, “to mention I’m a personal friend of Two-Gun Pete.”

“He’s Mr. Jefferson to you,” the cop said, and folded me in half with his billy club.

In the background, the colored crowd was cheering.

The Pershing on 64th Street, the top Negro hotel in Chicago, drew a lot of white trade at its Beige Room. On most any Saturday night, eight hundred people of both races packed themselves into this basement ballroom that was Bronzeville’s swankiest nightclub. Tonight, Peggy Hogan and I, just the two of us at a cloth-covered table for four, were among them.

“I haven’t been in a black-and-tan in years,” she said, sipping her stinger through cherry red lips. She looked terrific, wearing a stylish beige suit, in honor of the room, a white flower in her pinned back hair; Joan Crawford would’ve killed for those padded shoulders. “And this is the slickest black-and-tan I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm, “slick as a whistle.” I did not look or feel terrific. I was bruised and skinned-up and sore, from marching in the Bud Billikens Day parade (and having it march on me); if Two-Gun Pete Jefferson hadn’t spoken up for me at the Fifth District Station, I’d probably still be in a cell.

Yet here I was in Bronzeville, again-at Two-Gun Pete’s request, otherwise I wouldn’t have come within a mile of the black belt tonight. But Pete had asked me to meet him here around ten, because the Ragen shooting investigation was “really popping.” It was now ten-thirty-something.

I was already set to go out with Peggy this evening, and so I did, even though we got a late start. I had no qualms about bringing her into this part of town: she was a South Side girl herself, though obviously not from this particular part of the South Side. And besides, any effort I made on behalf of her uncle was jake with her. And I don’t mean Guzik.

The Beige Room was the latest, and most elaborate ever, of these so-called black-and-tan clubs to come into white vogue. Such clubs came and went, and only the Club DeLisa, which had been around for almost twenty years, seemed an exception to that rule. I preferred the DeLisa to this place; the prices weren’t jacked up there, even if the surroundings were less ritzy.

A girl with a milk chocolate complexion and a body that reminded me of a certain bubble dancer was leading a Caribbean conga line of colored babes out on the Beige Room’s stage. They had an elaborate floor show here, and if the names of the performers weren’t immediately recognizable, the M.C.-a smooth singer named Larry Steel-would remind you that this chanteuse was with Cab Calloway for four years, and that that comic appeared in a movie with Abbott and Costello.

The floor show had just gotten over and we were deciding whether or not to eat here or elsewhere when Two-Gun Pete strode up, wearing a flashy double-breasted tan suit buttoned over the bulge of at least one of his two guns, with a beautiful young light-skinned Negro woman on his arm. She was wearing a bright yellow dress that followed her curves; when she entered the dark room it was like the sun came out. She looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place her.

Pete introduced her as Reba Johnson and I shook her small, smooth hand and made introductions where Peg and me were concerned.

“You look pretty good for a man who spent the afternoon in the slam,” Pete said, sitting, a smirk on that sullenly handsome mug of his.

“It was less than half an hour,” I said. “But it did seem like all afternoon. They were understaffed, with the parade and all going on. It’s lucky you stopped by. So. Did you run your witnesses down?”

“Well, yeah, but since it was Bud Billikens Day, it wasn’t no picnic,” he said, and grinned, and his date smiled and giggled. The Billikens festivities ended up with a big picnic in Washington Park, you see.

I wasn’t particularly amused by anything to do with Billikens, thank you. I said, “You showed them some suspect photos?”

He nodded. “About a dozen that Drury brung ’round, with pictures of Finkel and Leonard mixed in. They both of ’em picked ’em out.”

“Both? You had four witnesses.”

“I never did track the newsboy down, and I’m meetin’ with the other eyeball, Tad Jones, over at the DeLisa in about an hour. But there ain’t no doubt in my mind. Finkel and Leonard was the boys with the big guns in the big green truck, all right.”

“I wonder if Drury has tracked them down yet.”

“I don’t think so,” Jefferson said.

“The dairy float queen!” I said, snapping my fingers.

“What?” Peggy said.

I pointed to Reba, who was smiling with pleasure that pretended to be chagrin. “You were on that float today!”

She smiled and nodded.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Peggy asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just proves it’s a small world.”

“Yeah,” Jefferson said, “but it’s a big city. And Finkel and Leonard are somewheres lyin’ low in it.”

“I hope your witnesses hold up, Pete. Because I don’t have a thing on ’em, where the attempted hospital hit is concerned.”

Peggy reached for my arm, gripped it. “How can you say that? You told me you caught them dead to rights!”

“I did. But by the time I got back to the hospital, their car was gone, and so were the guns I took off them.”

“Weren’t there any witnesses?”

“Oh, sure. Half a dozen nutcases. Maybe a few more, if you count the ones with split personalities twice.” I shook my head, chipped at my rum cocktail. “Nobody a prosecutor would dare put on the stand. And the cop who left his post, leaving that fire escape unguarded, claims he developed stomach flu and had to head for the shitter. Excuse my French, ladies.”

“You gonna have a little…talk with this sick cop?” Jefferson asked, with a very white, very nasty smile.

“I don’t think I’ll bother. I asked Drury to take him off hospital duty, and maybe Bill will do something about him. But I can’t go feeding the goldfish to a cop.”

“Feeding the goldfish?” Reba asked.

“He means working somebody over with a rubber hose,” Peggy explained.

“How do you know what that means?” I said, a little amazed.

“I wasn’t born yesterday,” she smiled, demurely.

“Sometimes I think you weren’t born this century,” I said.

“Besides, you’re not the rubber hose type,” Peggy said.

Jefferson smiled at that, tried with no luck to wave a waitress down to order some drinks. I suggested we go over to the Club DeLisa, where the drinks were cheaper and Tad Jones would be showing up before long.

The Club DeLisa was, among the black-and-tan niteries of the South Side, a true survivor; when the place burned down, proprietor Mike DeLisa just moved across State Street and started again. I’m always suspicious when restaurants or nightclubs burn down and reopen, but no insurance company ever hired me to investigate the DeLisa, so what the hell. I could enjoy the sixty-five-cent highballs, no minimum or cover, with the rest of the clientele, which was just slightly more colored than it was white. The room was as big as a barn and about as fancy; it had a low, ceiling-tiled ceiling, and used the time-honored nightclub effect of dim lighting to hide its flaws.

DeLisa, our short, white, deadpan host, who pumped the hand of every male patron as he entered, regardless of race, was said to have been a pal of Capone’s. That impressed out-of-towners.

“Haven’t seen you here for a while, Mr. Heller,” DeLisa said. He wore a dark suit and a red bow tie.

“I didn’t think you’d remember me, Mike.”

“Anybody who sits at Mr. Nitti’s table is worth remembering.”

“Anybody who sits at Mr. Nitti’s table these days is dead. Got a table for four live ones? I know it’s Saturday, and you’re packed-”

“I got a ringside saved for Serritella, but he ain’t showed yet. He’s an hour late.”

“Serritella?” That was sweet. “Well, give us his table, and send him over if he shows. We’re old pals.”

I pressed a fin into DeLisa’s hand and a smile cracked the deadpan, barely, and he handed it back.

“No tip’s necessary, Mr. Heller. Not for a man who’s friend to both Frank Nitti and Two-Gun Pete Jefferson.”

“Keep it anyway.”

He shrugged and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He was from Chicago, where you rarely turn down money, and you never turn it down twice.

“Mike,” Jefferson said, slipping an arm around the little white man’s shoulder as he walked us over to our table, “if somebody asks for me, fella name of Tad Jones, send him over.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Jefferson.”

From our ringside table we watched a wild floor show- while the Red Saunders Band played, a twentyish, scantily-clad colored cutie named Viola Kemp sang and danced and then stood on her head, then tied herself up like a human pretzel, legs tucked behind her head as she beamed, her face perched above her sweet bottom. Then a guy named Harold King tap-danced on roller skates on top of a rickety card table, blindfolded; it was the damnedest thing. Finally some sepia babes in tutus spoofed ballet steps to the band’s hot music. It was not as sophisticated a show as the Chez Paree-it wasn’t as sophisticated as the Beige Room, either-but it was sure as hell fun.

The waitresses were almost as pretty as the chorus girls, though instead of skimpy frilly outfits they wore simple white blouses and navy blue skirts, and one of them brought us our meals, and we all four had the specialty of the house, thick, juicy, onion-covered steaks, under four bucks per. For a moment I wondered why I didn’t come down to Bronzeville more often; then I moved a muscle, and the aches and pains from this afternoon reminded me.

DeLisa was escorting our way a slightly chubby white gentleman, perhaps fifty years of age, on whose arm was a beautiful young girl, also white; she was as blonde as Betty Grable, but a whole lot younger, possibly a Joliet Josie, which is to say jailbait, though her makeup sought to add some years and maturity. The part of her spilling out the top of her low-cut blue gown did a better job of it.

The slightly chubby gentleman-who was no gentleman- wore a nicely tailored dark suit with a red, white and blue striped tie; he also wore wire-frame glasses with coke-bottle lenses, behind which owlish eyes blinked. He had a weak chin and a prominent nose and a receding hairline; owl eyes or not, he looked a little like a fish, and about as harmless.

DeLisa was gesturing toward us-pointing out the “friends” who were awaiting the “senator” at his table-but as Serritella approached, his fish face fell. In the background, the jazz band was playing a frantic piece, which provided an appropriately unnerving backdrop for the first ward committeeman.

Serritella had been a political fixer for the Capone people since the late ’20s; he’d been appointed City Sealer under the incredibly corrupt and incompetent administration of Big Bill Thompson, and as Sealer had conspired with merchants to short-weight consumers. Later, quite by accident, he made Thompson’s mayoral defeat by Anton Cermak inevitable by causing a scandal that was outrageous even for a Chicago administration: Serritella and his chief deputy, a Nitti associate, were charged with conspiracy to “appropriate” funds collected for Christmas distribution to the poor. That kind of thing went over real big in the depression.

Nonetheless, Dan had, with Capone support, gone on to serve in the Illinois legislature for twelve years. Head of the newsboys’ union as well, which explained his ties with oldtime circulation slugger Ragen, he was a Chicago institution; they should’ve bronzed him and mounted him on one of the lions outside the Art Institute.

Before our distinguished visitor could waddle away, I stood and gestured to two empty seats at our table and said, “Dan- good to see you. Join us.”

Peggy looked up at me like I was crazy. It’s an expression I’d seen before on any number of faces.

Serritella swallowed and whispered something to the pretty young thing and came near the table with her, but didn’t sit.

“Heller,” he said, his voice rather high pitched and hoarse, “I know you don’t believe it, but I’m Jim Ragen’s friend. I had nothing to do with what happened to him.”

“Sure. Sit down. Sit down, Dan.”

He thought about that, and then came the rest of the way over, held a chair out for the girl, and she sat and he sat next to her, me on the other side of him.

“We’ll just stay a moment. Uh, this is my protegee, Miss Reynolds; she’s in show business and I thought she might enjoy one of these black-and-tans.” He directed his gaze toward Peggy. “Miss Hogan, you’re looking lovely tonight.”

Peggy said nothing; she was burning up, furious with me apparently, arms folded, staring straight ahead, toward where the floor show had been but where frantic jitterbugging by the patrons was now taking its place. Pete sat with his arms folded, watching me and Serritella, quietly amused; Reba, to whom our conversation must’ve seemed a foreign language, watched the jitterbuggers, too, but without Peggy’s angry glazed expression.

“We haven’t seen you at the hospital, Dan,” I said.

“I, uh, didn’t want to impose. I sent flowers.”

“Oh, and they were lovely. They meant a lot to Jim.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“He had me flush each flower down the toilet, one at a time.”

Peggy looked at me from the corners of her eyes, her attitude toward me changing.

Serritella drew back. “No.”

“I’m just kiddin’, Dan. He gave ’em to a nurse and asked her to give them to some worthy patient in Mandel Clinic.”

“I’m sorry to hear that Jim’s bitter. I passed my lie detector test, you know. Completely exonerated.”

“Yeah, and I heard about the questions. ‘Did you shoot Jim Ragen?’ Like anybody could seriously picture you a triggerman. ‘When did you last see Al Capone?’ Brother.”

“Well, it’s true. I haven’t seen Al in years.”

“So what? He hasn’t run the Outfit since liquor was illegal.”

He straightened his tie and tried to look indignant; it didn’t wash. “Well, Jim seems to think Al’s still in charge; that’s what he told the State’s Attorney’s office.”

“He told the State’s Attorney’s office that the Capone Outfit was out to get him. There’s a difference between Al Capone and the Outfit he left behind, as you damn well know.”

“That’s true, I suppose. But Jim did mention Capone…”

“Jim was just telling the State’s Attorney enough to send a warning signal to Guzik, but not enough to cause any real fireworks. You know that. You also know what’s in those affidavits Jim’s got socked away. He read ’em to you.”

Serritella nodded, his owl eyes blinking, double chin jiggling. “They’re dynamite. Jim should burn those. He really should.”

“I think Jim may be ready to negotiate.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t particularly like dealing with Jake Guzik personally. These meetings with mob chieftains look bad in my FBI file; I’ve been logged in surveillance records God knows how many times. They’ve tried to pull me in before Grand Juries because of it. Anyway, you’re a go-between, Dan. Everybody knows that. Do what you do so well. Take the message.”

“Which is?”

“Like I said. Jim might be ready to talk. But he needs something.”

“What’s that?”

“Assurance that Guzik wasn’t responsible for Monday.”

“Well, it was Siegel. Everybody knows that.”

“Even you, Dan? Who goes to so much trouble not to know too much? Just in case you have to take a lie detector test or something? You deal with these people daily, but you’re like a wife whose husband cheats but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t want to hear about it, what she don’t know won’t hurt her. Just as long as he’s bringing in a fat pay check, he can screw around all he wants.”

Serritella pursed his lips and reassuringly patted the arm of his blonde, who was taking this all in with wide eyes, like Shirley Temple watching Bill Robinson dance.

“You’re a very unpleasant man, Heller,” he said.

“I know what you mean-I can hardly stand my own company. What do you know about David Finkel and Joseph Leonard?”

He shrugged, shifting in his seat. “They’re bookies, aren’t they? West Side?”

“Yeah. Are they tied in with Guzik, do you suppose?”

“Geez, how should I know?”

“They’re the ones who shotgunned your friend Jim Ragen. Doesn’t that make you mad, Dan?”

He nodded, squinted his owlish eyes, tried to summon outrage, came nowhere near, saying, “Furious. The police should arrest them.”

“That’s a terrific idea, Dan. I’ll pass that along to Bill Drury; he’ll wish he’d thought of it. Now, from what I hear, Finkel and Leonard have dropped out of sight. It would be nice if they could turn up. Alive.”

Serritella nodded more slowly. “You mean, if they showed up alive, and held up under questioning…without mentioning Guzik…maybe mentioning somebody else…that might convince Jim of the sincerity of a certain business offer.”

“For a guy who don’t know what’s goin’ on,” I said, patting him on the back, “you got a lot of savvy, Dan.”

Serritella stood, pulled out the chair for his protegee, put her on his arm, and said to me, “I’ll see what I can do.” Then he smiled and nodded at the others at the table, including Peggy, who smiled at him pleasantly, though her violet eyes were icy. They were no longer icy when turned my way, however.

“Nice piece of work, Daddy-o,” Pete said, smiling one-sidedly, leaning back in his chair, arms folded over his massive chest. “You played that little fixer like a penny harmonica.”

“I may have come on a little strong,” I said. “He’s a weasel, but he’s a powerful weasel. On the other hand, he’s used to being looked down upon by his patron saints-a guy like Serritella is tolerated by Outfit guys, never liked, let alone respected. I thought I better treat him like I figure his bosses treat him.”

“Well you sure done a good job of it.”

“Thanks.” I looked about the room. “I don’t think your witness is going to show.”

“He’ll show,” Pete said. “Tad Jones is not gonna pass up a couple free rounds of drinks at the Club DeLisa. It ain’t even midnight yet. He’ll show.”

“Well,” I said, standing, easing Peggy’s chair out, giving her my arm, “I think I’ll leave him to you. Let me know if he i.d.’s Finkel and Leonard. Which he probably will. This is looking pretty cut and dried to me, now.”

“You think Guzik will sell out those two torpedoes?”

“Yeah-although they may just turn up dead in a ditch, especially if Guzik was who hired ’em. Will twelve cover my end?”

Pete said sure and I handed him a ten and two ones. For the food and drinks Peggy and me put away, it was a steal. And the babe who made a pretty pretzel out of herself hadn’t cost us a dime.

“Nate,” Peg said, later, in bed, “I want to thank you.”

“Well, I think I oughta thank you.”

Her smile was crinkly and wry. “Not about that, you goof. About what you’re trying to do for Uncle Jim.”

“What am I trying to do for your uncle?”

“Despite what all you’ve said, you really are trying to find out who tried to have him killed.”

I shrugged, as best I could, leaning on my elbow in bed. “I’m curious-it’s my nature. And your uncle is right, to a degree-doing business with Guzik would feel better if we knew that it was somebody else…Siegel, specifically…who paid for that hit.”

“So what’s your next move?”

“Nothing. There is no next move.”

“I find that hard to believe…”

“Well, strain yourself a little, kiddo, ’cause it’s true. Drury’s going to nab those would-be killers and, with a little luck, and more evidence than even the State’s Attorney’s office can ignore, he’ll get an indictment and a conviction.”

“Will whoever hired them be convicted, too?”

“Sure, if it’s a cold day in hell. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Guzik or Siegel responsible, you’re just not going to see that happen.”

“Why not?”

“That’s not the way the game works. The big boys are too well-insulated; the big boys can do too much damage to the families and friends of the small fry taking the rap. No, even if they get the chair, those two won’t implicate anybody, not anybody big.”

She almost looked like she was going to cry. “What happened to justice, anyway?”

“When was it, exactly, that justice was around? I must’ve missed it.”

She sat up in bed, looking very pale, very small, just a child, holding the sheet to her breasts, looking straight ahead. “If I knew who it was, I’d kill him myself.”

“That’s silly.”

She gave me a withering look. “It’s not silly. They tried to kill Uncle Jim!”

“Hey, they tried to kill me, too. You always seem to forget that little detail.”

She said nothing for a while; me, either.

Then, without looking at me, she said, very quietly, “I talked to Ginny again. Just before she left town, this week.”

“Ginny?” I said. Not quietly. “Virginia Hill? What are you talking to her for?”

“We’re friends. I’m allowed to have friends of my own choosing.”

“Yeah, yeah. But she’s just a hooker who got out of hand. You stay away from her.”

She paused, considering, then dropped her bombshell: “She does know Bugsy Siegel. She told me.”

“She does?”

“She’s…she’s sort of his girl.”

“Sort of his girl? Oh, great. Then she was trying to pump you about your uncle, that time…”

“Maybe. But she doesn’t know how I feel about Uncle Jim. About what happened to him. How close we are.”

“So? So what?”

“She offered me a job.”

“A job! What, riding trains with bags of mob money? Sleeping with senators?”

She ignored the nastiness of that. Said simply, “She needs a secretary.”

“What for?”

“She has business interests.”

“Well, where would this be? Hollywood?”

She nodded.

“You’re not seriously considering…”

She touched my arm; cool touch. “Nate, think a minute. If I were working for Ginny, I’d be close to this Bugsy Siegel person. I might be able to find something out.”

“Find something out? Are you kidding, or just crazy? You’re no goddamn detective…”

“If I get close to him, I can find out what he’s doing where Uncle Jim’s concerned.”

“That’s stupid. Siegel’s not going to say anything around the niece of the man he wants dead-assuming he does want Jim dead. This is lunacy. Don’t even think about this.”

“Ginny doesn’t know how I feel about my uncle. I could pretend we had a falling out; pretend to hate him.”

“What is this, a school play you’re trying out for? Forget this. This is stupid. You can’t accomplish anything, except maybe get yourself hurt, or worse.”

“I was hoping you’d think it was a good idea.”

“Yeah, well it’s a good idea for the radio. For real life, it stinks. I won’t hear of this. I won’t stand for it.”

“You really feel that strongly.”

“Of course I do.”

“Then…then I won’t go.”

I didn’t say anything. I came within an inch of saying, you’re goddamn right you won’t go. But instead, I just touched her face; smiled at her, gently. She smiled back the same way, though there was disappointment in it.

“Good girl,” I said. I gave her a kiss; just a peck. I turned out the lights and pulled the covers around us, as the Morrison’s air conditioning was downright chilly tonight, and we cuddled like spoons, me behind her, slipping a hand around to cup one sweet breast.

“I love you, baby.”

“I love you, Nate. I really do.”

We were just drifting off to sleep when the phone rang; it was after two-nobody calls me that late. I damn near ran to the phone, out in the other room, and it was Drury on the line.

“Nate,” Drury said. His voice sounded hollow. “It’s started.”

“What’s started?”

“Tad Jones is dead.”

“What? Christ…”

“He was killed by another Negro. Drunken scuffle over a watch is the story.”

“Pete was going to meet with him tonight…”

“Tad never showed up at the Club DeLisa. Pete’s going to look into the slaying, of course. It’ll be hard to prove anything. Even with Pete on the case.”

“This could spook the other witnesses. Pardon the expression.”

He sighed. “I know. I thought we had these bastards wrapped up in a bow. Shit.”

“What now?”

“I’m not giving up,” he said, as if a little insulted that I might think that a possibility, even though I hadn’t suggested it, except maybe by my tone. “I’ll put the other witnesses under protective custody, till we pick up Finkel and Leonard, and then we’ll have a show-up. If the witnesses can pick ’em out of the line, and we can get their statements, then we might still have something.”

“Damn. Is this Guzik?”

“Or Siegel? You tell me.”

“Finkel and Leonard are Jews,” I said, thinking out loud, “but then so are Guzik and Siegel.”

“And Davey and Blinkey don’t have any great ties to either of them.”

“But they’re bookies,” I pointed out, “meaning they got some ties to both of ’em.”

“Right.”

“I’m sorry about this, Bill.”

“Yeah,” he said, wearily. “Well, thanks for all your help, Nate. You’re a good man despite yourself.”

“I’m a goddamn prince,” I said, and hung up.

“What was that about?” she asked.

I turned and looked at her; she was in her little blue see-through nightie, looking about sixteen years old, a pale vision, those huge violet eyes melting me.

I told her what Drury had told me.

Her jaw tightened; her hands turned into fists. “They’re going to get away with it, aren’t they?”

I went to her; put my arm around her, daddy soothing baby. “I don’t think so. I don’t think Bill’s going to let them.”

She stepped away from me, just a bit. Her expression intense. “Can’t you identify them? You recognized them, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, at the hospital today-but not when they were shooting at me. I’ve already given a statement to that effect. Gone on record.”

“Can’t you say it just came to you?”

“A week later, I suddenly remember? After I have a run-in with these guys outside Ragen’s hospital room? The prosecutors wouldn’t want anything to do with me-once I was in court, even an inexperienced mouthpiece would chew me up, and with my checkered background, I’d be easily discredited, anyway.”

Her pretty mouth was pinched to near ugly. “I wish you’d just…go after them.”

“This isn’t Dodge City 1880, honey. It’s Chicago 1946. Which is a hell of a lot worse, in a way, but times still have changed. I’d do most anything for you, I think you know that-but I’m not going to go shooting it out with Outfit guys.”

“There’s no justice, is there?”

“Sure there is. It just doesn’t have anything to do with the legal system.”

“That’s why we should do something ourselves.”

“No,” I told her. “We got an honest cop, who has three live witnesses. He’s going to get the shooters. We’re going to bed. That’s all we’re doing.”

We did.

In the dark, she said, “Even if he does put them in jail, what about whoever hired them? What about him?”

Not that again.

“Baby,” I said, “go to sleep.”

I don’t know whether she did or not. I did-slept soundly and hard and my dreams were pleasant; I was riding the dairy float and Reba was sitting in my lap. Well, part of the time she was Reba, and part of the time she was Peggy, and part of the time she was that gal who made a pretzel of herself, and also that chocolate conga-line cutie was in there, somewhere. I loved Peggy, but I reserved the right to have dirty dreams about any women I chose.

I didn’t wake up till ten o’clock the next morning. Peggy was gone. I didn’t think much about it. She’d done that before. Later that day, I tried to call her, at her aunt’s, where she was still helping out, but she couldn’t come to the phone.

Then on Monday, at the office, my secretary Gladys had a message for me from Peg, who had called.

To say she was sorry, but she’d taken a morning flight.

To Hollywood.

The beautiful nude woman was swimming under the blue water of the Olympic-size pool. Well, she wasn’t entirely nude-she was wearing a white bathing cap. Her flesh took on the blue cast of the water and she looked quite unreal, much too perfect, as her arms and legs pumped ever so gently through the depths of the pool, sunlight shimmering on its surface, providing enough of a glare that you had to work to see the girl. But it was worth the effort.

It was early afternoon, on a Wednesday, and I was sitting on the patio around the pool at a sprawling white-brick ranch style home on Coldwater Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills. The home belonged to the small dark man sitting nearby in a dark blue silk robe monogrammed gr. His dark, slightly thinning hair was slicked straight back, like Valentino, a trademark that dated back to his taxi dancer days. He was still hooded-eyed and handsome, though age had exaggerated his profile, his ski nose damn near rivaling Bob Hope’s. And he’d put on some weight: an extra chin, some gut pushing at the middle of the silk robe, which was sashed loosely. He sat on a deck chair near the little table, shielded from the sun by an umbrella canopy, an ankle crossing a leg, occasionally sipping a glass of iced tea, slowly shuffling cards but not playing anything, studying with a faint, seemingly dispassionate smile the girl who was now gliding on the surface of the blue water, tan arms flashing. The sound of the water as she cut gently through it mingled with big band music coming from a radio within the house.

“Glad you could stop by,” George Raft said to me, flatly, in his remote way.

I felt overdresed in my brown suit. I felt like I should loosen my tie or take my hat off or something, but I didn’t, and anyway my hand was filled with the glass of iced tea that Raft’s big lumbering bodyguard, “Killer,” who’d met me at the front door, had brought me. Killer, who was sort of a cross between a butler and Leo Gorcey, wore a blue polo shirt and white slacks and still managed to look like a guy called Killer, at least in California.

Me, I didn’t want to give in to California. It was a foreign place to me. There was just no excuse for this many palm trees and this much stucco being gathered anywhere, and certainly not within the borders of these United States. The weather out here was an incentive to doing nothing. It made me want to go door to door telling people about humidity.

“That’s white of you, George,” I said. “It’s been a long time. I hoped my name would ring a bell.”

His thin line of a smile increased its curvature. “How could I forget that piece of business-though it woulda been healthy to.”

What he and I were referring to was a job he had hired me to do, years ago, in 1933, to be exact. Only it wasn’t a job I did for him, really: it was a job I did for Al Capone, who was in the Atlanta pen at the time. Raft had only acted as the go-between, a role he was as used to as his tough-guy screen persona.

It was no secret Raft had been a bootlegger, that his gangster friend Owney Madden had sent him west, pulling strings to get him going in the movies. Not that former pickpocket Raft was bereft of show business experience: he worked a Charleston act in vaudeville, and a specialty tap act at Texas Guinan’s El Fay. Of course, he’d still been doing a little bootlegging for Madden on the side, as well.

“You say you’d like to meet Ben,” Raft said. “I think I could arrange that. But it’d be nice to know what it’s about, first.”

“Actually,” I said, sipping my minty ice tea, “it’s personal. I’m out here on business, but that business has nothing to do with Ben Siegel. The personal matter does, though.”

“Yeah?”

“I got a girl name of Peggy Hogan who came out here a little over a week ago. She and Siegel have some mutual friends. Have you heard of her, George? Met her? Has she been around?”

Raft took his eyes off the nude vision in the pool and looked at me, perhaps to let me know he wasn’t lying.

“Never heard of her,” he said with flat believability.

“I have reason to think she’s gotten herself tied up with Virginia Hill.”

Raft smiled a little. “Ginny attracts all sorts of people to her.”

“And she’s Ben Siegel’s girl?”

“She thinks she is.”

“Meaning?”

“Ben always has more than one woman in his life.”

“Well, that stands to reason, doesn’t it? He’s married, isn’t he?”

“Divorced,” Raft shrugged. “From Whitey Krakower’s sister. God rest his soul.”

Whitey Krakower, in addition to being Siegel’s brother-in-law, had been a sometime Siegel accomplice, according to the indictment in the Harry “Big Greenie” Greenburg murder, anyway. Whitey got bumped off in July 1940 in New York, after word got out he was talking. It was a hit Siegel had supposedly approved. Even arranged. Which would, I suppose, have put a certain strain on his marriage.

I was damn near a Siegel expert now. I’d been filled in by Fred Rubinski, an ex-cop from Chicago who had a small agency out here; he also owned a major piece of a restaurant on the Sunset Strip. One of my reasons for coming west was to talk to Fred about linking our two agencies; it was something I’d been thinking about for a while. Fred had an office in the Bradbury Building at Third and Broadway in downtown L.A. We were old acquaintances, if not quite friends, and he’d picked me up last night at Union Air Terminal in Burbank shortly after nine o’clock, the end of an all-day long, puddle-jumping flight that had begun at eight that morning at Midway back home.

We’d spent this morning in his office at the Bradbury, a truly weird turn-of-the-century building with wrought-iron stairwells, ornamental balconies, caged elevators and a skylight that bounced an eerie white light off the glazed brick floor of its huge central court. Fred, who was in his late forties and a hard round bald ball of a man, shared an outer office with an answering service overseen by a ditsy blonde, and the inner office was his alone. He had four ops in an adjoining office, and his business was going good. We’d discussed merging our operations once before, last year, when he came home to Chicago to visit family and friends for the High Holidays; and this morning we’d bounced it around more seriously.

But mostly I’d pumped Fred about Siegel, for whom he’d done some collecting.

“Bad checks,” Fred explained. “He’s got a piece of the Clover Club, you know.”

“What’s that, a nightclub?”

“Yeah, with gambling upstairs. It’s the stars’ favorite place to lose their money. He owns part of a Tijuana race track, too, and has interests in half a dozen joints in Las Vegas.”

“What else is Siegel into, besides gambling?”

Fred shrugged. “Narcotics, prostitution, diamond fencing, perfume smuggling, you name it. They say Luciano sent him out here, in the mid-thirties, to make sure the Chicago interests didn’t take over.”

I nodded. “That must’ve been shortly after Nitti sent Bioff and Browne out here, selling strike prevention insurance to the movie moguls.”

“Right,” Fred said, nodding back. “And word is Benny stepped in and took over where Bioff and Browne left off, after the feds busted their racket up.”

“How so?”

“Bioff and Browne had hold of the stagehands’ union, right? Well, Benny has control of the movie extras.”

“I didn’t know Siegel was so powerful. All I knew was he was running the West Coast end of Trans-American, the mob’s race wire.”

“Well, he’s doing that, too. And building some goddamn gambling casino in the desert. Near Vegas. Pipedream, if you ask me.”

I shook my head wonderingly. “I guess I just don’t know much about Siegel-mostly just what I’ve read in the papers. If he’s thick with Raft, like they say, I may have an in. I did a job for George, once.”

“Raft’s real thick with Ben. They’re close pals.”

Last year, it seemed, Raft had gone to bat for Siegel in court, when Siegel and his crony Allen Smiley were arrested for bookmaking. Raft had been present, but wasn’t arrested, and later insisted on the witness stand that the three men, together in a hotel room, had merely been placing bets on the phone for themselves. Raft had behaved like a movie tough guy on the stand, barely skirting contempt (“Don’t I even have the right of free speech?” he demanded of the judge) and attracting headlines, which came back to me as Fred filled me in.

“Why would Raft put his nuts on the line for a guy like Siegel?” I wondered aloud.

“Hey, I like Benny, too,” Fred said, with a shrug. “He’s never shown his temper around me-and he pays his bills. He’s fun guy to be around, too. Charm the pants offa you.”

“You don’t mind if I keep my belt buckled for the time being, do you, Fred? If Bugsy’s killed half the people he’s said to have killed, not everybody would agree he’s fun to be around.”

“Make up your own mind, Nate. But you’re gonna be surprised.”

Fred had a black book with the unlisted numbers of various stars and other celebrities and Raft was in there. I called the actor’s house from Fred’s office and caught him at home. Raft immediately remembered me, immediately invited me out.

Fred loaned me one of the three cars the agency owned-a two-tone gray ’41 Ford sedan-and I discovered I’d been out here enough times now to find my way around okay. I pulled into Raft’s driveway as a sightseeing bus went by, gawking tourists looking out the windows, squinting in the sunshine to see if I was anybody. They seemed disappointed when I wasn’t, but then neither were they, so it evened out.

Raft, sitting in his poolside deck chair, was somebody. I wasn’t sure for how long, though. His association with Siegel was getting him the wrong kind of press; and he was constantly studio-hopping, balking at roles, taking suspensions, battling his bosses. When he was a hot property, fresh off of flipping his coin in Scarface, he could get away with it.

But at fifty years of age, Raft was not the combination tough-guy and Latin lover he had once been.

The nude young woman climbed from the pool, her bare backside to us; that goddamn ass could have been made of marble, so perfect was it. Only it looked considerably softer than marble, and was tan. All of her was tan. The blue water had hidden that. She turned and faced us and stretched her arms, embracing the rays of the sun. Her pubic patch was blond. She tugged the bathing cap off and shook her long blond hair to her damp shoulders and she smiled, looking a little like Betty Grable, one of Raft’s lost loves, or so the gossip columnists said.

She walked over regally and stood before the small dark man in the blue silk robe; she was taller than he was, and half his age. Hands on her hips, she said, “Thanks for the swim.”

“Thank you.”

“Thanks for everything.”

“My pleasure.”

“Would you like me to stick around this afternoon?”

“No, baby. That’s okay.” He dug into his robe pocket and withdrew a C-note, folded in half. He handed it to her and she smiled toothily and trotted off, cheeks of her ass wiggling and finally revealing themselves to have some fat content, after all, and she disappeared inside to wherever her clothes were and where the big band music was coming from.

The girl had never acknowledged my presence. I might as well have not been there.

Raft was conscious of me, though, and as he lit up a cigarette he said, “It’s easier with hookers. I had too many romances fall through. Take my advice, Nate. If you got the dough, stick with call girls.”

I couldn’t understand why a guy like Raft, who even at his age could obviously get just about any woman he wanted, would pay. I didn’t say this. Just thought it.

But he said, “I’ll give you an example. Just this week I find out I got to go to court. This nightclub singer I was taking out last year is getting divorced and I’m named in the suit.” He shook his head. “Stick with call girls.”

“That’s probably good advice, George, but I’m serious about this Peggy Hogan. I want to find her, before Virginia Hill gets her hooks into her.”

“Who is this Peggy Hogan, anyway? How’d she get from Chicago to Hollywood?”

“She’s Jim Ragen’s niece.”

“Jim Ragen…the wire service guy?”

“Yes.”

“Ben’s in competition with that guy. Didn’t he get hit, what was it, couple weeks ago?”

Raft seemed to be sincere in his ingenuousness. He wasn’t a good enough actor, I didn’t think, to fake it so well.

“Yeah. You remember the story from the papers? Remember the part about the bodyguard whose shotgun jammed?”

He looked out at the pool, where no nude girl swam. “Naw. I don’t read so good. I just heard Ragen got hit.”

“Well, I was his bodyguard.”

“Are you working for him, Nate?”

“Yeah. He paid my way out here. He thinks a lot of his niece. He wants me to bring her back home.”

I didn’t see any reason going into why she’d come out here; no need to detail to Raft the desire Peggy (and for that matter her uncle) had to determine whether or not Ben “Bugsy” Siegel had hired that hit.

“Why don’t you go talk to Ginny,” he suggested, smoke curling out his nostrils as he looked out at the pool, not at me. “She’s probably home, or will be soon. She’s renting a place in Beverly Hills.”

“Peggy might be with her,” I said.

“Isn’t that what you want?”

I didn’t know what I wanted, really; I didn’t know how to go about this. On the endless plane trip I’d tried to figure what I’d say to her, how I’d get her home. I was furious with her, of course, but I was also worried. And I felt a little battered, too. She was supposed to love me. She wasn’t supposed to run out on me like this.

I’d waited a little over a week before the worry and no sleep got me on a plane. She didn’t call or even write, I couldn’t get in touch with her, it was maddening and I was scared shitless for her, besides. Jim was concerned for her absence, too, got really worked up, especially after I leveled with him about Peg talking about checking up on Siegel, by becoming part of Virginia Hill’s retinue. I didn’t like seeing the patient I was guarding get upset; it couldn’t be good for his recovery-even though Dr. Snaden said he thought Jim was doing much better than expected and would be going home in a matter of weeks. So I worked with Drury to tighten up security at Meyer House, putting Lou Sapperstein in charge of A-l’s end, and then proceeded to go west, middle-aged man.

“I’d be glad to call over there and see if Ginny’s home,” he said.

“Better not,” I said. “I don’t know if Virginia Hill would consider me a friend. I better just go over there. Can you give directions?”

“Sure,” he said. “Or just buy a movie star map. It’s Valentino’s old mansion.”

“La Hill doesn’t go second class, does she?”

“She probably uses mink tampax,” Raft said. “Sometimes I don’t know what Ben sees in her-she’s a coarse broad. She swears like a fucking stevedore.”

“I know her,” I said. “Foul mouth or not, she’s a babe, or used to be.”

Raft smirked. “Take a look around you, Nate. Every street corner has the four most beautiful women you ever saw standing on it, and next to ’em are the four second most beautiful. Guy like Ben can pick and choose.”

“What’s the reason he keeps her around, then?”

“Could be business. She’s tied in with a lot of his friends back east. It’s a partnership. A sort of marriage. And, yeah, she is still a babe. I remember what Benny said, after that first night with her, up at the Chateau Marmont…”

Raft looked skyward, as if summoning a romantic memory floating on some cloud.

“…‘Georgie,’ Ben said to me, ‘she’s the best piece of ass I ever had.’”

Touched as I was by that, I managed to ask a question. “How long have you known Siegel?”

“Forever. Since he was a tough little kid on the Lower East Side-and I don’t mean of Beverly Hills. He was always gutty and ambitious. He came out here to Hollywood because he wanted to be somebody. And he made it. He was hardly out here a few months but that I was seeing him at the track or around town with big names, George Jessel, Cary Grant, Mark Hellinger, guys like that.”

“And you.”

“Hey, I figured if he was good enough for them he was good enough for me. I never knew anybody who doesn’t like him. He’s a great guy.” His expression turned sober. “Of course a lot of his friends deserted him, after he started getting bad press. Particularly after that son of a bitch Pegler took off after him, in his column. Ben had to drop out of the Hillcrest Country Club.” Shook his head sadly. “Giving up golf really killed Benny.”

“I’ve seen pictures of him in the papers. He looks like he could be a movie star himself.”

Raft grinned, showing his teeth, looking at me. “He’s a frustrated actor; he’d love to have a movie career.” He leaned forward, sharing a confidence. “He’s always coming around the set, standing on the sidelines, asking the technicians questions. He owns more cameras, projectors and other movie shit than half the studios on Poverty Row.”

“What for?”

“Homemade screen tests. He had me photograph him one day. I took some footage of him with his camera in my dressing room.” Raft smiled some more, and shook his head. “He re-did one of my scenes. Wanted to show me where I got it wrong.”

“He isn’t serious about acting…”

“Not anymore. This was years ago. But he showed some footage around. He let it be known he was available for parts. Nobody ever hired him. Not with his background. I’m no saint, but I don’t have no rape arrests on my rap sheet.”

“Is he as crazy as they say?”

“He’s got a streak. But that name he hates-Bugsy-he didn’t get that ’cause he’s bugs, you know. It comes from when a judge at a trial, years and years ago, real disgusted, called him and Meyer Lansky a couple of bugs.”

“But the name ‘Bugsy’ stuck, even though nobody uses it in front of him.”

“Nobody uses it in front of him for long,” Raft said, nodding slowly. “He’s got a bad temper, all right. Particularly if you insult him. He’s real vain. He dresses great. He works out every day at the Hollywood YMCA. Goes weekly to Drucker’s barber shop in Beverly Hills. He showers for hours, goes to bed early, hardly drinks at all. He’s real sensitive about his hair.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, when he was a kid it was nice and thick and curly. But he’s losing it, now. I tell you, I damn near bought it when I pulled a gag on him on his birthday last year. I sent over a gift-wrapped toup. Thinking he’d laugh. He drove over here pissed off as hell and it took me an hour to settle him down. Lucky I know what button to push with him.”

“What button is that, George?”

“Well, I just call him ‘baby blue eyes.’ It compliments him and calms him right down. I don’t think it’d work for anybody else, though.”

“He sounds like a real interesting fella. I’d like to meet him-no matter how things go for me with Virginia Hill.”

“How long will you be out here?”

“How long do I need to be out here?”

“Well, Ben’s not in town much these days. He’s in Vegas, most of the time.”

“Oh, because of that casino he’s building-”

“Yeah, only it’s more than just a casino-it’s a full-fledged resort. Hotel, restaurants, swimming pool. Gonna be a real class joint. He’s putting it up out on the strip of land between the airport and Vegas. Sinking a lot of dough into it.”

“His own?”

“His own and everybody else he knows. Me included. Mostly guys back east, I think; and guys from your neck of the woods. Ben says it’s gonna be so fabulous it’ll make DeMille look like a piker.”

“I didn’t know DeMille was in the gambling business.”

“You don’t think the movie business is a gamble? Nate, you don’t get where I am unless the dice has been good to you.”

Killer came out and refilled our iced tea glasses from a sweating glass pitcher. Raft asked him if he’d got a cab for the girl and the Killer said yes, then went back into the house.

I sipped my tea. “Why isn’t Virginia Hill out in Vegas with him?”

“She is part of the time. But she comes back here a lot.”

“Why?”

“She hates the desert.”

“I hope she’s not a typical customer. So, I have to go to Vegas if I want to meet Ben Siegel?”

“No, he’s going to be back in town this weekend. Friday night. It’s the grand opening of the S.S. Lux.”

“What’s that?”

“Tony Cornero’s new gambling ship. Ben was one of Tony’s partners on the old S.S. Rex. You want to go? You can go with me, if you want.”

“That’d be swell.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Raft said, standing, tightening the sash of his robe over an expansive gut, “I want to catch a nap. I got a date tonight.”

Beverly Hills wasn’t always a big deal. The Hollywood hills were where movie actors, denied access to the country clubs and social circles of Los Angeles, fled, building fabulous mansions, riding their money past stuffy respectability into cheerful decadence. One of the first of those mansions was the sixteen-room Falcon’s Lair, Rudolph Valentino’s home for the year or so before his death.

Perched on a Benedict Canyon hillside, on Bella Drive, the place was impressive in size but otherwise looked just like another of these overinflated mud huts to me, bleached white with scalloped burnt-red clay tile roof; it was two stories with occasional dips to a single floor, and lavishly landscaped, lots of trees doing their best to shield the mansion, but not obscuring the hilltop view of Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and even Catalina Island on this clear, pleasantly warm July afternoon. The panoramic view stretched before me like a not quite convincing miniature in a movie. That was California for you-almost like real life.

I left Rubinski’s ’41 Ford in the open cement area before the mission-like front of the place. No other cars were around, but a stable converted to a garage was nearby. You walked through an archway to get to the front entry, a big dark double door, a pair of Mediterranean slabs you could break your knuckles on, knocking. Which is why they invented doorbells, I guess, and Falcon’s Lair had one and I rang it.

And I rang it.

Raft had called ahead for me, and Virginia Hill was supposed to be home, and she supposedly knew I was coming. It had been less than fifteen minutes since Raft’s call, and yet nobody was answering the door.

I rang again, the church bell-like chimes of it mellow and muffled behind the massive doors.

Which finally swung open, and there she was, poised within their V, fingers with red-painted nails caressing either door, a wry one-sided smile cracking her cool deadpan face, framed by flowing shoulder-length hair that was redder than it used to be, and green-gray eyes that laughed. Well, they didn’t say ha ha ha or anything, but you get the idea.

And did I mention she was naked?

Well, she was. I was starting to feel like a private eye in a quarter pocketbook. This made two naked babes today and it wasn’t even dark yet. Or maybe that was just what they were wearing in California this year. Nothing.

“Hiya, Heller. Long time no see. Come on in.”

Her Alabama accent was still there, but it seemed less lilting than I remembered it. A harshness had crept into the voice, giving it a smokiness that was not altogether unappealing, though she was slurring her words a little. If calling her drunk was less than fair, calling her sober was less than accurate.

I followed her through a high-ceilinged entryway that you could’ve put my Morrison suite in and still had room to hold a cotillion. The place was lavish, tapestries and armor, wrought-iron wall hangings; but it was pretty much a blur to me. I was following a naked woman whose flesh was as creamy white as a carved ivory statuette, a few of which graced an occasional table here in Rudy’s shack.

Jiggling a bit, not being actual ivory, she led me into a big living room where she walked to a Hoover plugged in the wall on a long cord and began sweeping. The sound of it was fairly loud, but she managed to bray above it: “Sorry I didn’t hear you ring the doorbell, Heller!”

“That’s okay!” I yelled back.

She kept at it, sweeping an oriental carpet that extended out before a white marble fire place and its Tara-like pillars like a multi-colored lawn. Over the fireplace hung a dark murky painting with an Old Dutch Master look to it. By which I mean it was like a Rembrandt seen through a lot of cigar smoke.

She shut the vacuum cleaner off, kicking the button savagely with her bare foot, her long auburn hair swinging in arcs, her teeth bared in a snarl. “I hate this fucking place,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, glancing around at the smooth pastel walls and heavy dark Mediterranean furniture, sitting on a red brocade couch that was as comfortable as a guaranteed income. “It’s a real dump, all right.”

She made a face as if she were about to spit on the carpet. The floor on the outer edges of the carpet was polished to a gloss you could ice skate on. The room was immaculately clean and everything seemed to be in its place. The only jarring item, in fact, was the nude woman with the vacuum cleaner.

“I told that bitch I’d shoot her,” she said, pushing the Hoover to one side, going over to a heavy low-slung coffee table that ran damn near the length of the couch before me. She stood right across from where I sat and she lit up a cigarette, taken from a silver jade-inlaid box, firing it up with a silver-and-jade lighter. I could have stared right at her reddish pubic patch, which was trimmed into the shape of a heart, if I were that sort of guy, which of course I was.

She bent over, considerable breasts swaying, and poured, over somewhat melted ice, what was not her first tall glass from a soon-to-be-empty bottle of creme de menthe on the coffee table. Then she put the bottle back on the table next to a floral arrangement and a.38 Smith and Wesson revolver.

She threw back her head, and the glass too, and most of the green stuff was gone when her head and the glass returned; she filled the glass back up and killed the bottle. She looked at me curiously.

“Want something to drink?” she said.

“Sure.”

“What?”

“Rum.”

“Over ice?”

“Why not.”

She walked to a liquor cabinet against a far wall; she moved like sex on springs. I didn’t like this girl much as a human being, but I began to see how she’d gotten where she was today-even if, at age thirty or so, she was starting to show some wear and tear. Her body was holding up great, but then most women’s bodies are at least five years younger than their faces.

And Virginia Hill’s face, pretty as it was, was much older than the last time I’d seen it, back around ’38. Her eyes were a little baggy, the laugh lines turning into plain old fashioned wrinkles, and the hard lines around her mouth marked her as a dame who had her sour moments.

But that milky body, those gravity-defying breasts and that well-tended, trimmed, hennaed valentine between her legs, could make for some sweet moments.

On the other hand, there was that Smith and Wesson on the table before me, like a party favor courtesy of a demented host.

Hostess.

She handed me a short fat glass with rum and ice across the coffee table.

“Bottoms up and live, pal,” she said, hoisting her replenished tall glass of creme de menthe. “Tomorrow never comes and, anyway, if it does, you may be dead.”

I made a “salute” gesture with my glass, saying nothing, knowing I couldn’t top her cheerful toast, and sipped the rum and it was smooth, expensive stuff.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, gesturing to her nude self. Her nipples were dark, not erect, and about as big around as half dollars, but worth considerably more. “It’s a little warm today and we’re not air conditioned.”

“I don’t mind at all,” I said, thinking it was fairly cool in here, a whisper of a breeze blowing in from somewhere. “I just feel a little overdressed.”

She smiled over the rim of her tall green glass. “Maybe we can do something about that.”

“I thought you were Ben Siegel’s girl.”

“I am. He’d kill you if he found out.” She said this with a smile that made it clear she found that concept very amusing and a little exciting.

“Well, I’ll just keep my clothes on for right now. What’s the gun for?”

“The gun?” Her eyes followed my finger as it pointed to the.38. “Oh, that. I was going to kill that bitch.”

“Which bitch is that, Ginny?”

She squinted. “My housekeeper. Mexican girl. She doesn’t clean worth a shit. I have to do it over, after she does, just to make sure it’s right. Besides, I think she’s stealing from me.” She came around the table and sat next to me. Put her feet up on the coffee table. Her toenails were painted red.

“I may not look it,” she said, with some defensive pride, “but I can run a household. I raised my brothers and sisters, didn’t I?”

“Big family?”

“Ten of us kids and no money. You ever wake up in the middle of the night ’cause of a bad dream, Heller?”

“Sure. I have malaria flare-ups now and then, from the war. I have some doozies where nightmares are concerned.”

“Yeah, well I only have one nightmare. And it’s always the same. I’m locked in a cell for a life term. The outside of the place is a prison. But inside the bars it’s my shabby little house in Lipscomb, Alabama. That was a prison. My folks fought, mom ran off ’cause pa beat on her.” She made a face and drank some creme de menthe.

This sure was a different story than she’d given the columnists. Actually, she’d given the columnists a variety of stories of her early life, over the years, but they always added up to her being some Southern heiress of the sort cafe society ate up in the ’30s.

“My grandmother was chopping cotton for a living in Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, when she was eighty. I swore that would never happen to me.”

“At this point,” I said, looking at her long legs, pleasantly plump in a Petty Girl way, stretched out before me resting on the coffee table, feet near the gun, “I would think your cotton picking days are behind you.”

“They better be.”

“You weren’t really going to shoot your housekeeper,” I said. Making it sound like a statement not a question.

“Probably not,” she admitted. She seemed to be sobering up just a trifle, despite the creme de menthe she was putting away. Talking about her past had done it. “Look, why don’t I put something on. I’m just in an ornery mood. Looking for somebody to fuck, or fuck with.”

“Why don’t you put on some clothes,” I agreed. “You’re a great-looking woman, but I came around to get my girl back, not to bang her boss.”

She looked at me sideways; her smile was wide and white and appealing-a little like Peggy’s smile, actually.

“You’re pretty cute, Heller,” she said. “I think Peggy should’ve stayed in Chicago and married you or something.”

“Or something,” I conceded.

“But you can’t hold back an ambitious kid like her.”

“Ambitious kid?”

“Yeah, Peggy’s got a head on her shoulders. And I’m not just talking blowjobs.”

“Miss Hill, you have such a classy way of putting things.”

She stood and said, huffily, “Well, excuse my fucking French,” and flounced out. I couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not. Either way, she had a great ass.

But I must’ve really been in love with Peggy Hogan, because I’d just told Virginia Hill to put on her clothes despite my having the erection of a lifetime.

Which had fortunately wilted by the time she came in, in a white two-piece outfit, halter top and shorts, like Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Remembering how that movie came out was an incentive toward keeping my pants on and my dick limp.

“You want some more rum?” she asked.

“I’m not quite through with this, thanks,” I said, gesturing with glass in hand, rum swirling, ice clinking.

She still had some creme de menthe left. “I was thinking about killing my Chinese butler, too.”

“Oh? Where is he?”

“He left with the housekeeper and cook when I got the gun out.” She laughed; it was almost a snort. “Chickenshits. I didn’t even fire a shot.” She looked around the room. “I hate this fucking place.”

“Why?”

“It looks like a pimp’s idea of a palace.”

“Why don’t you redecorate? You got dough, I hear. That big handbag you lug around is usually packed with money, if the stories are true.”

“They’re true, all right. But I’m no fucking whore, Heller. I never asked a man for money in my life. Never had to. They just hand the green stuff over without me ever even asking.”

“That beats whoring all hollow.”

“I think so,” she said, with no sense of irony whatever. “But I can’t redecorate. Juan would kill me.”

“Who is Juan?”

She shrugged; her hair shimmered, tickling her shoulders. She smelled good-a combination of creme de menthe and, my detective’s nose deduced, Ivory soap. “He’s my agent. He used to be a dancer and made all the premieres, first nights, parties, all the big shit events. So he ended up turning theatrical agent, and publicity man, too. This is his place.”

“Does he live here?”

“Sometimes. Not right now. Anyway, he fancies himself the Latin lover type.” She laughed again. “Latin lovers, you can have ’em. Who was that girl that wrote that book? Latins Are Lousy Lovers?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t even read Forever Amber yet.”

“Well, she was right. Those fucking Italians. Peacocks, all of ’em. Needle dicks, to a man. I never knew a guy in the rackets who was well hung till I ran into Benny, and he’s a Jew! Aren’t you a Jew, Heller?”

“Half of me. But I got a hunch it’s the top half.”

“We could check that out. You don’t have to be a fucking detective to tell a Jewish dick when you see one.”

“Miss Hill, please. Take your hand off my zipper. I’ve been circumcised, if that answers your question.”

“It doesn’t, really,” she said, absently, looking away from me, glancing about the high-ceilinged room again. “This place looks like a fucking whorehouse, don’t you think? Juan, Latin lover, hah-he sleeps with the gardener, if that tells you what kind of Latin lover he is-anyway, Juan has this thing about Valentino. This was the great Sheik’s flop, you know. ’Cause he died after he built the joint, this castle’s supposed to be jinxed. Sat empty for years. Anyway, Juan decided to restore it-did his best to furnish and decorate it like it was when Rudy lived here. Yecch.”

“I kind of like it.”

“Then you live here. I swear. I gotta find a decent place to live.”

“Well, isn’t Ben Siegel building you a place?”

“Oh, there’s another dopey dream castle for you. The Flamingo. That’s what he’s calling it, you know. Named after those goddamn birds down at Hialeah. Except lately he’s been calling me his pretty little Flamingo. I ask you. Does this frame remind you of one of them spindly-ass birds?”

“No,” I said.

“I suppose I will move out there,” she said, with a weary sigh. “He’s building a suite for us in one of the buildings. Should be pretty posh, but shit. I hate the fucking desert. It’s hard on my skin. I got hay fever. I got an allergy to cactus, the docs say. Hell, my idea of outdoor living is sitting on a bar stool in the cabana of a Bel Air swimming pool.”

“Well, you’ll just have to stay inside. It’ll be air-conditioned, won’t it? If it’s as lavish a resort as I’m hearing, you should have a nice home for yourself.”

“Everytime I’m there, I get sick. I have to take those Benadryls, and they make you feel terrible.”

Particularly when you’re taking ’em with liquor.

“I just thought my girl might be staying here with you,” I said. “But I guess she isn’t.”

“Is she still your girl?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, either way, she’s not here. She only bunked here one night. We were in Vegas together, drove down there the day after she showed up. I came back on the weekend. She stayed.”

I sat up. “Stayed where?”

“In the fucking hell hole. Las Vegas.”

“What’s she doing there?”

“Staying at the Last Frontier.”

“Doing what in hell?”

“Heller, cool your nuts, will ya? She’s my secretary.”

“You seem to be here.”

“She’s my secretary, and she’s helping Ben, because I’m associated with Ben. We’re business partners, Ben and me.”

“You’re his partner in the Flamingo?”

“I’ve got some stock. I don’t like the place, but it might be a good investment. People like a nice hotel. People like to gamble. I play the horses some myself-don’t you?”

“Why’s Peg still in Vegas?”

“She’s doing secretarial work for Ben.”

“For Ben. For Bugsy.”

Her nostrils flared. “Don’t ever call him that. That’s a horrible name. He’d kill you for that. I might kill you myself.”

“Well, what’s stopping you? There’s a gun on the coffee table.”

She smiled. “Maybe I figure you’d bust me in the chops before I could fire.”

“But I wouldn’t do that, Virginia.”

“Why?”

“Because I got a hunch you’d like it.”

She didn’t deny that; she just laughed a little, and leaned back in the comfortable couch. “Peg’s a good secretary. I need her for things-errands and such; correspondence-I only went to eighth grade, and I need help with things like that. And she did my hair last week.” She fluffed the auburn stuff. “She did a nice job, don’t you think?”

“What’s she doing in Vegas, Ben’s hair?”

“This Flamingo hotel is a big project. It’s a huge endeavor.”

“That’s a big word for a girl who only went to the eighth grade-‘endeavor.’”

“Up your ass with a hot poker, pal. There’s a lot of paperwork involved in an enterprise like that. Yeah, ‘enterprise.’ Just don’t ask me to spell it. Ben can use a secretary.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it all.”

“Are you worried she’s gonna get seduced by the big bad Bug? Don’t be silly. Ben would never cheat on me.” She shrugged. “He knows I’d kill him.”

“You kids warm my heart with this great love of yours, but just the same I don’t like Peg being down there all alone with him.”

“There’s plenty of other people around. Ben isn’t looking for a new lay. He’s got the best lay in the world, right here. And he’s busy with his fucking Flamingo. That’s his mistress.”

“How do he and Peg get along?”

“Fine. I think she admires him. There’s a lot to admire.”

I didn’t argue the point. I couldn’t risk telling Virginia Hill that my real worry was not seduction by the Jewish Casanova, but Peg’s own misguided search for “justice.” She was obviously kissing Siegel’s ass (figuratively speaking, one would hope) to get near him and try to determine if he was her uncle’s would-be killer. It was a dangerous game she was playing. Only it was no game at all.

“I could drive down there,” I said.

“Why bother? They’ll be back Friday. For the opening of Cornero’s new gambling ship. You can see her then. I can get you an invite.”

“Maybe I should drive out there anyway.”

“She’s fine, Heller. I know she misses you, if that’s any consolation.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me so. She told me you were the best thing that ever happened to her. Made me curious. Why else do you think I tried to get in your pants? I’m not just another horny broad, you know. Or did you just think I was trying to give you an early Christmas present?”

I stood. “Maybe, but if you see Santa Claus, tell him something for me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Tell him there is a Virginia.”

And I got out of that place. Fucking place, as she would have said. Left it to the falcons, the ghost of Valentino, the frightened servants and a beautiful woman with a lovely face, a beautiful body and a mind more twisted than the road down into Hollywood.

The lights of Santa Monica had disappeared behind us, as our speedboat slipped into the night, and ahead was the searchlight of the S.S. Lux, sweeping slowly over the black water like the beacon at Alcatraz looking for prisoners out for a swim. It had taken thirty-some minutes to get this far, seated on an open-air water taxi that carried Raft, his brunette “starlet” date (Judy something), half a dozen couples and myself-and the tough-looking, fiftyish customer who steered the boat, looking uncomfortable in captain’s cap and a spiffy white mess jacket with S.S. Lux crest.

The couples ranged in age from early twenties into their sixties, and all were impressed by Raft’s suave famous presence, his cigarette making an amber glow and rarely leaving his lips, his profile as immobile as a ship’s prow. With the exception of Raft, however, who wore a white dinner jacket and black tie and red carnation, the other passengers weren’t dressed to the nines; like me, the men wore suits and ties, sure, but not tuxes, and the women-other than Judy the starlet-were smartly dressed but not in gowns. These were middle-class folks, maybe upper middle-class at best, wearing their Sunday Go To Meeting duds.

The ride had been fairly smooth-whitecaps at a minimum tonight-but the shock of the spray and the wet cold and the occasional lurch of the launch was enough to remind a fella he was a landlubber. So was the salty fresh smell of the ocean-for all the times I’d been on the lake, this felt different; there was a vastness, a sense of the edge of the world. A continent left behind.

After such lofty thoughts, the Lux itself was a letdown. Other than the searchlight and some blue neon trimming, the Lux didn’t stand out against the night like you’d expect it to. The only sound of merriment was some big band music coming out of tinny speakers on deck, “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons,” which echoed across the water like bad radio reception, barely heard over the motor of the launch. Any patron expecting a seafaring casino that glittered as well as floated was in for a disappointment, at least as far as the Lux’s exterior was concerned. She was a decommissoned Navy mine-layer, whose superstructure had been sheared away and replaced with a wooden shed that covered the deck but for outer walkways. The Lux looked more like Noah’s ark than Hollywood’s (or anybody’s) idea of a gambling ship.

Nonetheless, we were three miles out in a world where there was only dark water and the Lux. The ship, which wore its name on its side in huge white painted letters, was moored with iron cables and looked steadier than the Santa Monica pier. Our launch glided up alongside thick ropes that served as fenders near the well-lit landing stage. Several men in white Lux mess jackets, big enough to be bouncers but well-groomed and polite enough not to intimidate, bent down from the docking float to help the passengers up off the launch. Raft was, of course, recognized and the red carpet rolled out, figuratively that is. It would’ve been hard to roll anything up the steep stairs to the deck.

“You know in the old days,” Raft said, as he and Judy and I walked along the narrow deckway, “there were all sorts of gambling ships out here-the Johanna Smith, the Monte Carlo, the City of Panama, and plenty more. They were real popular.”

“What happened?”

“When Mayor Shaw got tossed out of office, things got moral all of a sudden. We had a crusading D.A. who wanted headlines. Him and that Attorney General character, what’s his name? Earl Warren. They decided to sink Tony’s fleet.”

“What about the three-mile limit? How could the authorities get around that?”

“With some cockamamie law that lets ’em go outside their ’mediate jurisdiction to, whaddya call it? Bait a nuisance.”

I think George meant “abate,” but I got his drift.

“How did Cornero manage to get the Lux afloat, then?”

“The Rex and all that was before the war,” Raft said, shrugging, tossing his cigarette overboard. “Times change. New palms make themselves available for greasing.”

We went on into the main casino room, where the joint was packed and jumping. If the exterior was a letdown, the interior was quite the pick-me-up. Owner Tony Cornero, the onetime cab driver who’d become “King of the Western Rumrunners” in the twenties, had sunk nearly two hundred grand in the place, Raft said, and it showed, and it obviously attracted a crowd. Sixteen water launches were being kept busy tonight, and my guess for the number of beans in this seagoing jar would’ve been well over a thousand.

The upper deck’s casino room was paneled in rich dark wood and was easily two hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet wide. A mirrored bar ran the length of one wall, making the room seem even bigger, and on the other wall were the slots, scores of them, like a row of metal and glass tombstones before which customers paid their respects. In between were half a dozen roulette tables, half a dozen chuck-a-luck cages, eight crap tables, a Chinese lottery, a faro bank where Cornero himself reportedly dealt.

And people. People and noise and smoke. The clink of drinks and chips, the laughter and wailing of winning and losing. I couldn’t spot any celebrities other than Raft, just middle-class types like those on our launch, with a scattering of socialites in evening dress. Also, some unattached beautiful girls in their early twenties, with their chests half showing, were circulating throughout the casino; when one would see a table doing slow business, she’d go there and play. A nice, subtle way to use a shill, if you ask me. Cornero obviously knew his way around running a casino.

Despite the crowd, a few stools were available at the impossibly long bar. We took three, the little starlet crossing her legs through a slit in her gown; nice gams on her, though she had a vacant look in her very brown eyes.

“Do you think Ben Siegel’s here?” I asked.

“Yeah, or he soon will be,” Raft said. “It’s after nine. He don’t like to gamble, particularly, and he goes to bed early. He’ll put in an early appearance.”

“Does he have money in the Lux?”

“I don’t think so. He had plenty in the Rex. He borrowed some of it from me, matter of fact, though he paid it back. For all the money he’s got rolling in, Ben’s always short of dough.”

“Why’s that?”

“He plays the stock market, and not too damn well.”

“I thought you said he doesn’t gamble.”

“He doesn’t think of the stock market as gambling. He sees it as business.”

“Tell that to the guys who took swan dives out their windows back in ’29.”

Raft twitched a smile. “You’re telling me. Me, I stick to the ponies and craps. It’s more fun and you can now and then beat the odds.”

A broad-shouldered, slightly stocky, roughly handsome guy in a tux eased through the crowd with a rolling gait, as if the ship were riding high waves. He came up and placed a hand on Raft’s shoulder. The man was in his mid-fifties and his neatly cut and combed gray hair had traces of its original black haunting it; his eyes were slate colored and just as hard.

“Georgie,” he said, with a thin wide smile; there was some gravel in the voice. “It’s swell of you to come. Couldn’t launch this lady without ya.”

“Tony Cornero,” George said, after being a gentleman and introducing Judy the Starlet to the man, “this is Nate Heller, from Chicago. Him and Frank Nitti were pals.”

That was hardly the case, but I let it slide. Use whatever card you have to when you’re crashing a private club, I always say.

“Welcome to the Lux, Mr. Heller,” he said, lighting up at the Nitti mention, offering his hand. He had a firm grip but his hands were tapered and soft, like an artist’s. “What line you in?”

“I run the A-1 Detective Agency in the Loop,” I said.

“You know Fred Rubinski? He’s from Chicago.”

“Yeah. I’m out here to see him, as a matter of fact. We’re thinking of affiliating.”

“Fred’s a good man,” Cornero said. “He’s gonna do my bad check work. How do you like this place, Mr. Heller?”

“It’s a honey. Wish we had its like back in Chicago.”

“Well, I treat the customer right. Out of every dollar bet on the Lux, 98.6 cents’ll get returned in winnings. Try to find odds like that in Reno or Vegas.”

“Why do I think, in spite of that, you’ve got a floating mint, here?”

Cornero smiled his broad thin smile; he was clearly in his element, enjoying this grand evening. “Because I do, Mr. Heller.” He leaned in to whisper conspiratorially; he smelled like Old Spice-what else? “Back in the old days, on the Rex, a half million in profit in a given year, we considered slow business.”

Raft said, “Whatever happened to the old Rex? I heard you lost her in a twenty-four-hour crap game.”

Cornero nodded. “Yeah, after that bastard Earl Warren shut me down. That grand old girl went to war, eventually. The Nazis sunk her off the coast of Africa.” He shook his head, a sad expression taking momentary hold, as he considered this most heinous of war atrocities.

“You’re doing land-office business opening night,” I said. “Think you can keep it up?”

“Oh Christ, yes,” Cornero said, with an extravagant wave of the hand, happy again. “We’ll be open twenty-four hours a day. There’ll always be a full crop of squirrels to keep my ship afloat.”

“Squirrels? Is that anything like suckers?”

“Naw, my customers aren’t suckers. They’re squirrels-you know, lookin’ only for fun, entertainment. And that’s what I give ’em.” He offered his hand again and we shook again. “Mr. Heller, it’s nice to have you aboard the Lux.”

I smiled. “Always room for another squirrel, you mean?”

“Always room,” Cornero smiled. Then he leaned across the bar and told the bartender not to charge us for our drinks; Raft, incidentally, was drinking soda water with a twist of lemon.

Then the stubby broad-shouldered little guy disappeared back into his sea of squirrels, happy as a clam.

“Let’s see if Ben’s downstairs,” Raft said, edging off his stool. “Besides, we can grab a bite to eat.”

“Good idea,” I said, and I followed him and the starlet to a central stairway in the casino, leading down into a posh dining room trimmed in sky blue where the tables wore cloths and fancy place settings with dark blue napkins. The waiters were in tuxes and the bus boys were in white mess jackets, and it was like being in a fancy restaurant except that the air was a little dank. This dining room took up only half as much space as the casino above; an adjacent room, a five-hundred seat bingo parlor, took up the rest. According to Raft, the bingo parlor was used for off-track betting during the days, racing forms and scratch sheets provided free, cutting into Santa Anita’s action by paying track odds.

The maitre d’ treated Raft like a god and didn’t blink when he said he needed a table for eight for his party of three, in anticipation of the Siegel party joining us. We were led there, and sat, and ordered cocktails-well, Raft ordered soda water again-and then selected from the menu offering “cuisine by Battista, formerly of the Trocadero.” I ordered a fish platter, since it wasn’t every day I ate out on the ocean; but Raft nibbled at a small filet mignon while starlet Judy wolfed down a porterhouse that would’ve fed a South Side of Chicago family of six for a week.

We’d all decided against dessert when a pudgy, pasty-faced little man in a well-tailored dark gray pinstripe and blue and white striped tie, with an obvious underarm bulge, approached our table. The paleness of his flesh made his five o’clock shadow stand out, and he was just burly enough to make him seem bigger than he was. His nose had been broken any number of times, and a white scar stood out under his left eye; his mouth hung open, just a little, as if to say, I’m just a little thick, not terminally so. Nonetheless he looked like an exhibit for the defense in Clarence Darrow’s monkey trial.

“Mickey Cohen,” Raft whispered to me.

I nodded. I knew Mick from his Chicago stint; the little roughneck independent had run the biggest floating crap game in the Loop, before the war.

Cohen planted himself, smiled a little. “Hiya, Georgie.”

“Hiya, Mick. Ben here?”

“Yeah. He’s up top. He’s et already. He wants you should join him up in the casino.”

“We’ll be right up. How’d you get in with a piece on you? Cornero’s always had strict rules against hardware.”

“Rules was made to be broken,” Cohen grinned, good-naturedly. He had an edgy energy and a don’t-give-a-shit cheerfulness that would make him dangerous indeed.

“This is Nate Heller, by the way,” Raft said, gesturing to me. “Pal of mine from Chicago. Nate, Mickey Cohen.”

“Yeah,” Cohen said, squinting at me, as it dawned on him. “Heller! How the hell are ya? How’s your pal Drury?”

“Still kicking,” I said, smiling, shaking his hand.

“That Drury, some cop,” Cohen grinned. “Hates them Capone boys damn near much as me.” He gave us a little forefinger salute. “See yas upstairs.”

And he turned and went off with a bantam walk.

“That suit must’ve set him back two hundred and fifty big ones,” I said, wonderingly. “He didn’t used to dress like that.”

“He’s a regular clotheshorse now,” Raft said, matter of factly. “Ever since he got hooked up with Ben, anyway. If Ben takes one shower, Mickey takes two. If Ben gets his hair cut daily, Mickey goes twice.”

“When do these guys have time for the rackets?”

“The days out here are long,” Raft said, signing the check, getting up, putting Judy on his arm.

Back up in the casino, we spotted Virginia Hill, decked out in a clinging white suit with a big white picture hat and white gloves and lots of jewelry, emeralds and diamonds. Her lipstick was bright red, her wide mouth like an attractive wound. She was at one of the dice tables, shaking the bones in her cupped-together gloved hands, her smile white and a little crazed, cheering herself on, “Come seven, come on baby!” She hit her seven and hopped up and down like a kid dressed up in mom’s clothes.

Standing nearby, lending support but more restrained, was Peggy Hogan. She looked great, all that hair and those big eyes and cherry-red mouth; it felt good seeing her and it hurt to look at her. She was in one of those Eisenhower jackets, they called them, a square-shouldered, cream-colored crepe blouse drawn in and tied at the waist, with a black collar and skirt; it had a fake military insignia over her right breast, and big pearl buttons. I’d never seen her in that outfit before.

She was holding onto a big black purse-La Hill’s trademark bag, stuffed with cash no doubt-like the dutiful secretary she was. Neither she nor her boss lady spotted us as we moved along the edge of the crowd, heading toward the bar.

Which was where Bugsy Siegel was waiting for us.

He was perched on a bar stool, facing the casino, watching the action there with bland seeming indifference, a lean handsome man with languid light blue eyes, as sky blue as Jim Ragen’s, and dark, slightly thinning hair. He looked a little like Raft, actually, giving off that same sleepy sensuality that could get a guy inside a nun’s pants, a resemblance made startling by their wardrobe: Siegel, too, wore a white dinner jacket and black tie and carnation. Only in Siegel’s case the carnation was pink. I didn’t remember seeing a man wearing a pink carnation before, but I supposed if you were Ben Siegel you could wear a tulip in your ass if you wanted.

He had a drink in one hand and a pool cue of a cigar in the other, and didn’t notice us approaching. Cohen did, tapping him on the shoulder. Siegel hopped off the stool, setting the drink on the bar, and grinned at Raft and put an arm around his shoulder and hugged.

“How ya doin’, pal?” Siegel said, in a mellow medium-range voice. “Been a while.”

“Nice to see you, Ben. You been a stranger lately.”

“Lots of work to do on my baby, turning that desert into a paradise. You oughta come down and see the miracles we’re workin’. You’d be amazed.”

They broke ground on the Flamingo last December, Rubinski had told me.

“This is Nate Heller,” George said, nodding toward me.

Siegel turned his smile on me; it was a dazzler-white as winter and warm as summer. He pumped my hand and said, “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Heller. Really is.”

“Pleasure, Mr. Siegel,” I said, smiling tightly.

He patted my shoulder, puffed his cigar, smiled around it, apparently sensing my unease. “Tell you what. You call me Ben and I’ll call you Nate. How’s that sound?”

“Fine, Ben.”

He narrowed his eyes and made a mock menacing face. “Just don’t call me ‘Bugsy’ or you’ll find out what a crazy asshole I really am.” Then he laughed quietly and motioned toward an exit. “Let’s go out on the deck, Nate. I been wanting to talk to you.”

“Fine. I should say hello to a friend of mine, though.”

“Miss Hogan, you mean? She’ll keep. She’s keeping Tabby company, and Tab’ll be working this room till I drag her outta here by the hair.”

By “Tabby,” I gathered he meant Virginia Hill, who seemed to have as many nicknames as she did personality quirks.

“Mick,” Siegel said to his baboon-like bodyguard, “take a break. Have a beer or something.”

“Sure, Ben.”

Raft didn’t have to be told that Siegel wanted to talk to me alone; he just faded back to the bar and another soda water. I hoped talking was what Siegel had in mind. My Ragen affiliation might brand me an enemy, after all. I hoped his affability wasn’t a mask that would drop as he tossed me casually overboard. Three miles is a hell of a swim, particularly with a broken neck.

It was cool out on the dimly-lit deck, as we leaned against the rail. Big band music was still coming out the speakers, in a fuzzy, tinny way: “Am I Blue?” A few necking couples shared the rail with us, but none were close by. Siegel smiled out into the darkness, the tip of his cigar glowing red, as the blue of the ship’s neon trim bathed us.

“I hear good things about you,” Siegel said.

“I’m surprised you heard of me at all,” I said.

“Fred Rubinski says you’re one of the best in the business.”

“I’m good. If I were great, I’d be rich.”

“Not necessarily. To be rich you got to be born that way, or be willing to kill for what you want. You don’t look like you were born with a silver spoon, and the word is you don’t like shooting much.”

“Who does?”

“Cowboys like Mickey Cohen. It helps to have boys like that around sometimes, especially if they can be trusted. Anyway, story is you don’t like rough stuff but you can dish it out if you have to, and can take it too. And the story also is you don’t look down on people like me. You aren’t too proud to do a job for a guy like me.”

“It depends on the job and it depends on the money.”

Siegel smiled wide again, a smile that could charm an A-plus out of the meanest old maid school teacher. “I like you, Nate. I known you, what? Under five minutes, and I already know I like you. That’s a good sign. You know why?”

“Sure. It means I’ll wake up tomorrow morning.”

He waved that off, flicked cigar ash over the side. “Don’t be silly. Guys like me and Guzik, we only kill each other. A guy like you, if he plays it straight, even if he’s out on the fringes, he’s not going to buy it.”

“That’s encouraging news, Ben. And it’ll come as a surprise to that dentist who got drilled at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Frankly, I got a reputation for being tight with Outfit guys that ain’t entirely deserved.”

Long lashes fluttered over baby-blue eyes. “How’d you get that rep, then?”

I shrugged. “Mainly, when Frank Nitti asked me to come ’round, I came ’round. I didn’t see any other option.”

He smiled gently; the son of a bitch was almost pretty. “I suppose that’s right,” he said. “But word is you were privy to inside dope and you never took advantage of it, and you never leaked it. Not to the press and not to the cops.”

“Listen,” I said, putting as much edge in my voice as I dared. “I got friends who are cops. I even got friends who are honest cops. Don’t make me out to be a wise guy. Don’t trust me with any secrets. I don’t want to wander off the fringes to where I qualify for the ‘only kill each other’ club.”

He waved that off, too. “Don’t worry. See, I’m going straight. I’m turning this West Coast operation, most of it anyway, over to Dragna and Cohen. I’ll get my split, but the day to day shit, I’m not interested. I’m a legitimate businessman, now.”

“In the resort business.”

“That’s exactly right,” he said, gesturing with the cigar, waving it like a wand before the black horizon, as if he could make a rainbow at will. “Since the war thousands of people moved to L.A., and it’s just a half day’s drive to Vegas-and I’m going to make the Flamingo the greatest vacation spot in the world.” He flicked a forefinger off a thumb, riffling his carnation. “Pink. Flamingo. It’s on my brain-but it’s only the beginning. There’s Reno, there’s Lake Tahoe, all fucking gold mines if you can create vacation spots where people with a little money can have good rooms, good food, good shows, swimming pools, tennis, golf, and all the gambling they want, and all the broads they want. And all that shit’s legal in Nevada. And the politicians are for sale and so are the gaming licenses.”

“Sounds like the ideal place to go legit, all right.”

He went enthusiastically on: “I tell ya, Nate, I owe a lot of what I see ahead to my pal Tony, here. These gambling ships of his are the blueprint-he’s known all along the big dough’s not to be made from the highhats, or the high rollers, either-but the middle-class, the average joes, who can be sucked in to play the slots or a roulette wheel. Regular folk who ask only that a joint be clean, attractive, safe, professionally run. Tony’s known from day one that a casino is a volume operation-the big money comes from a lot of little square johns on vacation with a few hundred bucks to blow.”

“You and Cornero go way back.”

“I had money in the Rex. I don’t have any in this bucket, and that’s partly ’cause I got so much tied up in the Flamingo, and also that I’m not convinced Tony’s gonna get away with this.”

“You think he’ll get shut down?”

“I’m afraid so. Tony’s a sharp guy with great ideas, but sooner or later, every time, he hits a streak of bad luck. I only tore myself away from my baby ’cause I wanted to be on board to show him some loyalty. He’s an old pal, and that’s what it’s all about. You want to get ahead, you got to have friends, people you can depend on-you got to have their loyalty.”

I wondered where that left his dead brother-in-law, Whitey Krakower.

“Well, I got to admit your Flamingo sounds like a money magnet,” I said, not as convinced as I seemed to be. “You’ll have customers lining up in the sand.”

He nodded, smiled slyly. “That’s where you and Rubinski come in. It’s like I said, I’m strictly legitimate now. See, it’s like me turning my bad check action over to Fred. Think about it. Where would you expect a guy like me to turn for action like that?”

“Well, to be honest, I’d figure you wouldn’t go to a private detective, at least not a straight one like Fred. You’d use some juice collector, some arm breaker.”

“Right. But a legit businessman, he doesn’t do that, does he?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So there are things I need guys like you and Fred for, from time to time, that if I turned over to some enforcer, or even somebody with a few brains like Mick, would be handled with no fuckin’ finesse. Which is bad for business.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

The sound of a motor launch approaching interrupted us.

Then Siegel said: “Fred says you used to be on the pickpocket detail, back in Chicago.”

I shrugged. “That was my first plainclothes job. Most of my ops are former pickpocket detail guys. Fred isn’t, though.”

“Right. At the Flamingo I got a little staff of ex-L.A. and Hollywood cops who are my private police force, only those assholes couldn’t catch colds. I could use somebody to teach ’em the ropes, for general security and especially at nabbing dips.”

“With a resort like the one you’re building,” I said, “you will have a pickpocket problem. No question about it.”

“Would you take that assignment from me?”

“I might be able to send a man out, or find somebody qualified through Fred…”

He poked the cigar at me. “I want you. I like what I hear about you.”

“I’m flattered, Ben, really. But I’m a businessman, too, and I have an agency to run.”

“I know all about being an executive. I sympathize. On the other hand, there’d be five grand in it for you for a week’s work.”

“When did you want me to come out?”

He grinned, making dimples that made Shirley Temple look like a piker. “You are a businessman, aren’t you, Nate? I like your style. Anyway, I’ll be in touch. I plan to open before the end of the year-I won’t bring you in till we’re closer to being up and running.”

“I think it’s only fair to warn you about something.”

“Oh?”

“Jim Ragen’s a friend of mine. And a client. Even for five grand…even for more…I won’t be party to anything that would put me in a conflict of interest with Jim.”

“Of course not,” Siegel said, talking around his cigar, “that would be bad business. But teaching my staff to spot and stop pickpockets has nothing to do with Ragen, does it?”

“Well, I just thought it needed to be said.”

“I know about you and Ragen. I know all about it. It doesn’t bother me.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Why should it? Ragen’s no worry to me.”

“Flat on his back in the hospital, you mean, all shot up?”

“I wish he was up and around.”

That knocked me back a bit. I said, “Why in hell?” Thinking: so your people can get another crack at him?

“Ragen’s business is good for my business,” he said, flatly.

“That doesn’t make any sense…”

Siegel smiled, almost to himself. He pitched the cigar over the side and turned and looked at me and put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not a schmuck. Do I look like a schmuck?”

“No.”

“You were Ragen’s bodyguard when the hit went down. You swapped slugs with the shooters, who if they were my people woulda got the job done, by the way. And you been keeping guard on his hospital room. Am I right?”

“To a tee,” I said, feeling very uncomfortable with that friendly hand on my shoulder.

“It stands to reason that Ragen would hire you to find out who took the contract out. I mean, you’re his friend, and you’re already in his employ, and you got certain Outfit connections but you’re not in their pocket. Who else would he hire?”

“Pinkerton?” I asked.

“No. Nate Heller of the A-l Detective Agency at Van Buren and Plymouth. The guy who helped nail Bioff and Browne without even pissing Nitti off, which is a fucking miracle. And which opened some doors out here for me, thanks very much. You figure-Ragen figures-this hit coulda been bought by only one of two people: me or Jake Guzik. Guzik’s probably trying to make you and Ragen believe it was me behind it. Meanwhile he’s probably trying to negotiate a buyout, at the same time he’s trying to sneak somebody into Ragen’s hospital room to ice him. Am I cooking with gas here, or what?”

“Both burners,” I admitted.

He took his hand off my shoulder; looked out into the darkness. “From what I hear about Ragen, he must be a great old guy. I love it the way he’s standing up to those bastards. Those Outfit guys, they always want something for nothing. Out East we learned you work for what you get. Anyway, I’d be lying if I said I like Ragen, ’cause I only met him a couple of times, so I can’t even say I know him, really. But I wish him the best of luck.”

“You wish him the best of luck?” I asked. My mouth hanging open lower than Mickey Cohen’s.

“Sure. If he goes under, well, hell-sooner or later, I’m out of business.”

“I don’t get you. He’s your competition.”

Siegel laughed. “He’s no competition to me. Early on we had some rough stuff, sure; Mickey roughed up Ragen’s son-in-law, Brophy, back when we were trying to break in the L.A. market. But things have settled down since. Now, if I go in a wire room, or one of my boys does, they buy what I’m sellin’. No questions asked. If they like Ragen’s service better than mine, well they buy his too. How does that hurt me?”

“Not at all,” I admitted.

“I’m pulling in twenty-five grand a week on Trans-American, Nate. That’s my end alone. Sweet numbers, I’d say.”

“So would I.”

“If Ragen sells out, or if he dies and his family sells out, the Outfit will take over Continental and my pals back east, having business arrangements with Guzik and the boys, will cave in and shut Trans-American down. And I’ll be out of business.”

“I never of thought it like that,” I said.

“I hope Ragen lives forever,” Siegel said, his smile big and benign, “and I hope he hangs on forever with his business, too, fighting those bastards tooth and nail.”

I was shaking my head, wondering why I hadn’t figured it. “You really didn’t hire the Ragen hit, did you?”

“Of course not. It wouldn’t make any fucking sense at all.” He laughed. “You know, you got a great little girl there, Nate. I’m gonna hate to lose her.”

“What?”

“Peggy Hogan. She’s your girl. I know that, and not just ’cause Georgie and Tab both told me. I got my sources. I’m going to hate to lose her, ’cause she’s got a great head for figures. I’d put her in charge of my whole office staff if she’d give up working for her uncle and move west permanent. But I bet she wouldn’t do that, or leave you behind, either.”

“Have…have you talked to her about this?”

“Ha! Of course not! She doesn’t know I know anything about any of it. She doesn’t know I know how tight she is with her uncle. She’s been trying to pump me all week, sizing me up, watching me. You ought to hire her on at A-l.”

“You don’t seem to be pissed off or anything…”

“With who?”

“With Peggy. For, you know…checking up on you.”

“Hey, I think it’s cute. She’s dedicated to her family. That’s a good thing. It’s like friendship. You can’t put a price on it. Take her back to Chicago, Nate, and marry the girl, before she goes all career girl on you and you’re shit out of luck. Take my advice. I know my women.”

I bet he did.

“Come on,” he said, taking me by the arm, “let’s go back and get you two kids back together. I’m a sucker for a good love story.”

Siegel ushered me into the casino, me on his arm like the starlet on Raft’s, and with his big winning smile stopped at the crap table where Virginia Hill, having finally crapped out, was waiting for another turn, sipping one of a succession of stingers, holding her own purse while Peggy looked dutifully on.

Only now that she saw me, Peggy’s mouth was, as they say, agape, which amused La Hill no end.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked Peggy. “Aren’t you glad to see your little boy friend?”

“Nate,” Peggy said, her always pale face downright ashen now, violet eyes round and wet and tragic, “what are you doing here?”

Miss Hill pressed hand to generous bosom and laughed like a braying mule, managing to say, “I don’t think she’s glad to see you, Heller!”

Siegel let go of my arm and went to Peggy, who suddenly looked very frightened. He touched her arm, gently, and she flinched. He didn’t let go, however.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he told her. “Nate’s a friend of mine. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine. He’ll tell you all about it.”

He let go of her arm and nodded to me. The eyes of the nearby crowd were on us. I felt like I was wearing a fig leaf and it slipped. Nonetheless, I moved to her and she looked at me angry and hurt and confused, but I put my arm around her and walked her away from the table, from the crowd, toward the bar, where Raft looked at us, lifted his eyebrows, put them back down, and looked away.

“Come with me,” I said. “Don’t be afraid.”

“Nate, I…I don’t know what to say…does he know about me?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean, that I was trying to find out…”

“Yeah, but don’t worry. Look, there’s a launch every half hour. We’ll catch the next one.”

In fact, the next launch took off in less than five minutes, and we made it, leaving the Lux behind, a fading blue neon-trimmed shape whose searchlight still fanned the dark sea. We sat with a few other couples, who were nuzzling, but we didn’t nuzzle; we sat close, but didn’t nuzzle.

The ride back was rougher; we felt the spray almost constantly, squinting into it, wiping it from our faces occasionally. We had to speak up to be heard over the motor.

“I figured you’d be mad,” she said, mad. “I don’t blame you for being mad. But how could you come out here and endanger me like this…”

I laughed harshly. “It’s a little late for you to be worried about the danger factor, baby. Now why don’t you shut up and I’ll fill you in.”

She gave me an exasperated look, but sighed and shut up and I filled her in. I told her I’d indeed come out here to retrieve her, but that I’d been careful not to tip her hand where her uncle’s interests were concerned-none of which mattered a whit, I said, considering what Siegel had just told me on the deck of the Lux, and filled her in on that, as well.

She, like me, was stunned.

“Do you believe him?” she asked.

I sighed. Shook my head no, not believing I could be saying, “Yes.”

She swallowed. “I do too.”

“Why?” I had reasons for my opinion; what did she have?

“Ben’s a good man, Nate. He’s gone straight. He just couldn’t have done it.”

Oh. She had opinions for her reason.

And she had more: “He’s an honest man.”

“Well, that’s rich.”

“Well, he is! He reminds me…”

“Don’t tell me. Of your Uncle Jim.”

“Well, he does! I’ve spent a lot of time with him this week, in Vegas, at the Flamingo. He works hard. He’s really…a very nice guy. People around him love him. He’s so…dedicated to what he wants. He’s like a…visionary.”

“He’s like a gangster, Peg.”

The boat lurched and I held her, one hand on the padded shoulder of her Eisenhower jacket. She let me. She didn’t seem to like it, but she let me.

“I find him charming, too,” I admitted. “I think I might even like the guy, given half the chance. But he came up the hard way. Don’t ever forget that. He kills people.”

“I don’t believe it. It’s just stories.”

“Well, the stories I’ve heard, and they’re not stories, are that he likes getting into the rough stuff, personally. A boss is supposed to limit himself to ordering hits-he’s supposed to plan ’em out, then get the hell to someplace where his alibi is ironclad. But don’t-call-him-Bugsy went out on a contract personally a few years back; just couldn’t resist, I guess, and went along with the boys to make sure it was done right, and pulled the trigger himself, and he almost went to the gas chamber over it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“The only reason he didn’t is because one witness got shot to death, a guy who happened to be Ben’s brother-in-law, in case you’re wondering why a charming guy like that is divorced. And also there was this hitman turned witness who got pushed out a hotel window at Coney Island a while back. Guy named Abe Reles. Murder Incorporated? Remember that from the papers?”

She folded her arms across her chest; she was squinting, not just from the sea spray that was hitting her, but from inward stubbornness. “He just doesn’t seem like that kind of man to me. And, anyway, I think he’s trying to make a new start of it. You should see this resort he’s building. It’s going to be fabulous. It’s exciting just to be around it, to be any small part of it.”

“Christ, you come out here to see if this guy tried to kill your uncle, and wind up president of his fan club! Did he do anything?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you sleep with him?”

She pulled away from me, glared at me. “How can you ask that?”

“I was gonna ask if he screwed you, but I thought that might be a little on the crude side.”

Working our voices up over the motor like we had to meant some of our nuzzling co-passengers heard an occasional word of ours; several of them were looking at us now and I gave them a big sarcastic insincere smile and they looked away.

She huddled to herself. “You’re terrible. He was a perfect gentleman.”

“You walked out on me.”

“I left word.”

“I ought to throw you off this goddamn boat.”

She made a face at me. “Why don’t you just try?”

“I oughta belt you.”

“You really know how to win a girl back, Heller.”

“I didn’t know I’d lost you.”

“I don’t think you quite have, yet. But keep trying.”

We sat in silence for a while-silence but for the launch’s motor and the boat riding through the whitecaps. And some of our fellow passengers whispering about us. I hadn’t had so much fun on a boat since the landing on Red Beach at Guadalcanal.

Then I said: “The point here is that we both believe Siegel is not who paid those guys in the truck to hit your uncle.”

She nodded.

“For me it’s woman’s intuition,” she said, putting her anger away, if not her poutiness. “What’s your detective’s instinct say?”

I ignored her smart-ass tone, saying, “It’s more than instinct. Siegel laid it out perfect-he’s better off with Jim alive. So, logically, Siegel’s not the guy who hired the hit.”

She was nodding. “And Jake Guzik is.”

“Jake Guzik is. The fat little man has been playing it real cute all along. Pulling me in, Jim’s own security man, and ‘confiding’ in me that the Outfit wasn’t behind it. Guzik even bought off one of my own men, but knew me well enough to know, I’d beat the truth out of the guy, so they were careful to make all contacts by phone and money drops. And he didn’t use Outfit guys for the shooters, but hired a couple of West Side bookies, to further confuse the issue. Then he sends me to Jim with a new, more generous offer, but also sends his two gunmen up the Meyer House fire escape, playing it from both ends. Those greasy thumb prints have been all over this from the beginning. I should’ve figured it. Took Siegel himself to wake me up.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means I’m going to tell your uncle that Guzik is responsible. I’m going to tell him to keep that in mind when entering any new negotiations with him.”

She looked at me with utter disbelief. “You don’t think my uncle would sell out at this point, after hearing…”

The launch lurched.

“I don’t know. 1 still think it’s his best option, but with this new knowledge he can go for more money and warn Guzik that he’ll cooperate with Drury and turn those affidavits over to the feds now, if the Outfit doesn’t pay now and stay away later.”

“Would that work?”

I shrugged, sighed, shook my head. “Hell, I don’t know. Anyway, the stubborn old bastard will probably want to keep fighting.”

She moved closer to me. “Do you blame him?”

I slipped my arm around her. “Not really. But I don’t envy him, either.”

Before too long we were in a warm bed in my room at the Roosevelt Hotel. The days apart, the recriminations, all of it, receded in the distance, like the Lux. Faded away, like a barely remembered bad dream. Now there was only the two of us, naked, in each other’s arms, loving each other, ready to put it all behind us and go home and start over.

It was a little after midnight when the phone rang and the bad dream kicked back in.

“It’s after two o’clock out there,” I said to Bill Drury’s staticky, disembodied voice. “What’s so important it can’t wait? Did you lose another witness?”

I was sitting up in bed; the phone was on the nightstand beside me. Peggy, asleep till the phone rang, was only half-awake, half-listening.

“Worse,” Bill’s voice said tinnily. “I’ve been trying to get you all evening. Didn’t you check for messages when you got in?”

“I was preoccupied, okay?”

There was silence for a few moments; the phone company charges for that, too, but it was Bill’s nickel so I just waited for him to speak up. Which he finally did:

“You got her back. Is she there with you? Peg, I mean?”

I smiled over at Peg and she smiled lazily at me. Did I ever mention she had violet eyes?

“Yes, Bill. She’s with me. She’s going to stay with me, too. I’m not giving her any choices.”

“You better give her some support, Nate.”

I winced. “What the hell’s happened?”

“Her uncle’s suffered mercury poisoning. Nobody knows how it happened yet.”

“Mercury poisoning…”

Peg sat up in bed, eyes wide now; she held the covers to her breasts, as if seeking protection.

The voice from the phone said: “He’s dying, Nate.”

It was well after visiting hours, in fact approaching midnight Saturday, when Peg and I walked down the hall at Meyer House toward her uncle’s room, footsteps echoing. Lou Sapperstein was standing guard, a uniformed cop sitting next to him, snoozing; Lou was in shirt-sleeves and suspenders and I hadn’t seen him look so haggard since those weeks after his brother died in the war. At least this time Lou wasn’t wearing a black arm band. Jim Ragen was still alive.

“I think he’s sleeping,” Sapperstein said. “His son Jim, Jr., is in there, keeping up the vigil. Family members been taking turns.”

Peg said, “I’m going in there.”

Sapperstein held open the door for her. I stayed out in the hall. This was family. I was just the hired help.

“You look like shit,” Sapperstein said.

“I feel worse. If God had meant for man to fly, He’d have given airliners comfortable seats.”

“All day ordeal, huh?”

“Yeah. Peg slept a lot, thank God. She was up most of last night, crying, wanting to talk it through. That made her tired enough today to sleep through most of the trip home.”

Lou shook his head. “I’m sorry as hell about this, Nate. I don’t know how our security could’ve been any tighter.”

“What happened, anyway?”

“Nobody’s sure. They’re saying mercury poisoning, but it’s a guess. Uremic poisoning I’m also hearing. He had a kidney operation Thursday. It’s been downhill ever since.”

“I want to talk to one of the medics. Who’s around?”

“One of the two family doctors. Graaf.”

“Where?”

“He’s been in and out. Try that lounge area down the hall- he’s probably grabbing a smoke.”

I walked down there and Dr. Graaf, a short, well-fed, mustached man of about fifty, in a brown rumpled suit, was sitting, smoking, looking dejected and tired.

He looked up and smiled wearily. “Mr. Heller. Back from the land of make believe.”

I sat next to him. “That’s right, Doc. I only wish I could make believe this isn’t happening.”

“You want a smoke?”

“Yeah. Why not.”

He fired me up and I sucked the smoke into my lungs, held it there, let it out slow.

“So,” I said, “is he going to make it?”

“If you’d asked me that Monday, I’d have said hell, yes. In a week I’d be calling him fully recovered from the wounds and the shock. Oh, impaired, certainly. But he was damn near out of this place, way ahead of schedule.”

“Then what?”

He sighed, raised his eyebrows. “Then he had a sharp decrease in elimination. Blood pressure rose sharply. Decreased urine output. Bloody stools, vomiting…”

“This is all very colorful, Doc. But what does it mean, besides I just lost my appetite for this year?”

“Those are symptoms of mercury poisoning.”

“So we’re talking foul play, definitely.”

“Very likely.”

“How?”

“How does the poem go? ‘Let me count the ways…’”

“I don’t buy that-I set up the security here myself. We put a lid on this joint.”

Graaf sighed. “Mr. Heller-mercury could enter the body through an alcohol rub, the likes of which Mr. Ragen has gotten daily; by enema; by intravenous or intramuscular injection, or absorption through the skin from an ointment.”

“But not orally?”

“That’s the easiest way of all. A tablet the size of an aspirin would contain approximately twice the dosage it would take to kill a man.”

“That’s the only other way-in a pill?”

“Hardly. The mercury could have been administered in coffee, milk, or tomato juice, or sprinkled on food. It would’ve been as tasteless as it was deadly.”

“You’re saying they’ve killed him.”

Graaf looked at the floor. “We don’t make judgments like that, not when a patient is still breathing. Tell me, Mr. Heller. In your line of work, do you ever take on a job that’s more or less hopeless?”

“Never,” I said, and shook his hand, and ground the cigarette out with my heel, and went back up the hall.

Sapperstein was leaning against the wall, standing next to the seated uniformed cop, who was awake now. Frankly, I trust Chicago cops more when they’re sleeping.

“It’s a poisoning, all right,” I said to Lou. “Somebody on the hospital staff, most likely.”

Sapperstein nodded. “I know. I already started poking around-they got twelve hundred people on staff, and in the menial areas, a lot of turnover.”

“Yeah, but we got a restricted guest list.”

Sapperstein gestured down to the clipboard leaned against the wall. “Sure we do, and that may help us find out who slipped your friend this killer Mickey Finn-but the damage is done, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It is. Damn.”

“He’s a tough old bird, Nate. I like him. I hate to see it end like this.”

“He’s an idiot. Banging his head up against the wall and expecting not to get it bloody. Goddamnit, I should never have played along on this one!”

Sapperstein, not much given to such demonstrations, put his arm around my shoulder and said, “We did what we could, Nate. I don’t think anybody could’ve done any better. He’s your friend, and your girl’s uncle, and this is a tough one to lose. But you been right all along-there was no winning this game. It was rigged from the start.”

I nodded. Smiled at him and rubbed my fingers over my eyes and got rid of the moisture.

Then I went into the room. Jim was asleep, all right; he already looked dead, only you could see his chest moving some. He looked skinny. Pale as milk but nowhere near as healthy. You could smell death in the room. Death and flowers.

Peg was sitting next to him, leaning in toward him, holding his hand as he slept. She was crying; not making any sound, just tears flowing. She hadn’t cried at all today, before now- when she hadn’t been sleeping, in the window seat next to me, she’d been angry. Not really saying anything about anything, just balling fists and shaking them at the air, face balled up, too. That expression “You’re so beautiful when you’re mad” didn’t apply to her; she was a lovely girl, but anger looked ugly on her.

She wasn’t mad now. She was merely devastated. It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d lost her father to a stroke. Now the man she’d put in her father’s place was slipping away from her, water through her fingers.

Jim, Jr., sat in the flowery chintz lounge chair, but he didn’t look very comfortable. He was in his shirt-sleeves, tie loosened, complexion gray, expression blank.

I went over to the boy-boy, hell he was probably my age- and squeezed his shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

“Okay,” he said, with a small, brave, entirely unconvincing smile. “My dad sets a good example. He never gives up, does he?”

“No. It’s not in him.”

Jim, Jr., swallowed. “Sometimes I wish it was.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Let’s step out into the hall and talk. I don’t want to wake your father.”

He nodded and rose; lost his balance momentarily, and I helped him. He’d obviously been sitting in that chair for hours.

We walked down to the lounge area; Dr. Graaf was no longer around. We sat.

“How’s your mom doing?”

“Terrible,” he said. “Just terrible. She’s so devoted to him. She’s not at all well herself, even without this.”

“Have they got her under sedation?”

“No-she refuses that. She wants to be able to go to Dad’s side, if he takes a turn for the worse.”

“I think he’s taken that turn.”

“I know. He’s going to die, isn’t he?”

“I think so. He’s tough, but…”

“He’s been poisoned. The doctors admit they ‘suspect a metallic poison has been introduced.’ They think if they make it sound formal, it makes them sound like they’re on top of things. That’s a laugh.”

“I’m sorry, Jim. The sons of bitches got to your father, and I wasn’t even here to try to stop them.”

“Heller, you’ve done everything anybody could. You put your life on the line more than once. And as for not being here-my father wanted you to go after Peggy. He’s nuts about that kid. And I don’t blame him, really. She’s been aces, all the way-like another sister to us.”

“I’m nuts about her myself. But this is going to be hard on her. Like it’s going to be on all of you.”

He shook his head. “Even Danny-I didn’t think he cared that much-he sat here this afternoon just telling Dad how much he loved him. Crying like a baby. Dad just patted him on the head, saying, ‘There, there, my lad,’ comforting him. Can you imagine?”

“Yeah. I can. You’re going to be under a lot of pressure to sell out, you know.”

He bristled. “Do you think I’d do that? Do you think after all my father’s been through, I’d…” He buried his face in his hands, bent over. He wasn’t crying. He was past that. “I’m so frightened, Mr Heller…I’m so very frightened…”

I patted his back. I couldn’t think of anything to say. There, there, my lad was taken.

“We’re going to lose him, aren’t we? And I’m going to be left to try to stand up to those people.”

I put my hand on his shoulder again. “When your father is dead, and the responsibility falls to you, and your brothers, then you’re going to have to make your mind what the right thing is to do.”

He lifted his head and narrowed his eyes. “You’re not…telling me to sell, are you?”

“I’m telling you when your father’s gone, the responsibility is yours, and so is the decision. Nobody could tell Jim Ragen how to live his life. I don’t think it’s fair for him, even in death, to tell somebody else how to live theirs.”

The flesh around his eyes tensed, momentarily, and I could see his father in his face, so clearly. Then he reached into a pocket and handed me a card. “What do you make of this, Mr. Heller?”

It was white, about the size of an index card but without lines. On it was a crude but unmistakable image: a yellow canary. The card was unsigned.

“Where did you get this? When?”

“In the mail today. What does it mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

“I…I think it’s the underworld’s way of saying my dad shouldn’t have ‘sung.’”

“That’s right. It’s a warning. For nobody else to get vocal. But it’s more than that.”

“More?”

“It means the Outfit is admitting, in its oblique way, that it’s killed your father. He isn’t even dead yet, and they’re telling you they’ve accomplished his killing.”

I handed the card back to him. He looked as if he were about to crush it in his hand, and I stopped him.

“You might want to show that to Lt. Drury,” I said.

He swallowed. “All right.”

“I don’t suppose it came with a return address?”

Young Ragen managed a little laugh. “No, not hardly.”

“Damn,” I said, with mock disappointment. “Detective work is never easy.”

He smiled at that, momentarily, and I patted his shoulder and rose and said, “Let’s go back to your father’s room.”

We did. I took over for Sapperstein, tired as I was, buoyed by coffee, and Peg stayed in there at her uncle’s side all night. Dr. Graaf went in a couple of times and so did several other doctors and nurses; I checked everybody against my clipboard, like a good operative. The barn door was open, the horse was gone, but I was keeping a watch on the stall anyway.

Very early the next morning, shortly after five, Jim, Jr., came out and said, “Dad’s awake. He’s asking for you.”

I went in. Peggy was standing, holding his hand, looking down at him with what I’m sure she thought was a supportive, encouraging smile. If anybody ever gave me a smile like that, I’d call the morgue myself and save somebody else the trouble.

I went around on the other side of the bed.

“Peggy says you found some things out,” Jim said; his voice was weak, but it still had some steel in it. Or maybe that was just the mercury.

“We did,” I said. “I met Siegel. I’m convinced he didn’t do any of this to you.”

“Guzik, then.”

“Guzik.”

“And I’m expected to do business with that devil.”

“If you do, insist on a hell of a deal.”

I filled him in, some. He listened alertly, as if oblivious to his pain; but he was feeling some, otherwise he would have interrupted more often.

“You know it does make sense, lad,” he said. “When the Outfit put Trans-American together, they had to turn to the eastern boys for help. Guzik could handle Chicago and Milwaukee and so on-but he needed Lansky’s help out east, and Siegel out west. “That’s why they want my set-up-it’s national. We’re everywhere.”

“We can talk about this later, Jim.”

“No we can’t. I’m dying. Nobody will tell me, but I can feel it. They poisoned me, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How much longer do I have?”

“Do I look like a doctor, you crazy Irish bastard?”

“Don’t give me that. How much longer, Nate?”

“They didn’t tell me. I tell you what-why don’t you just take your own sweet time about it.”

“I wish I had some time, lad.” He turned to his niece. “Peggy my girl-peg o’ my heart. Give your uncle a kiss.”

She kissed his cheek.

She stayed near him and he said, “I know I’m dying-there’s an angel at my side.”

“Uncle Jim, please don’t say that…”

“Peg, you’re a good girl. I told Jim, Jr., before-you’re always to have a place in the family business. A piece of it is yours, my dear.”

“Please, Uncle Jim. I don’t care about that…”

“I think you do. You’re not just like a daughter to me, lass. You’re like a son. You could run that business of mine, if ye were.”

“You can run it yourself, Uncle Jim…”

“I need…need two things from you, lass.”

“Anything-”

“I want you to marry this poor excuse for a detective, here. He’s going to need your help. Besides-he’s a good man, even if he is only half a mick.”

“I do love him, Uncle Jim.”

“Good. That makes me glad to hear.”

It made me feel pretty good, too.

“The other thing is something you have to do right now. You can’t wait.”

“Yes?”

“Find me a priest, lass.”

He died at 6.55 a.m. His son had time to call Ellen Ragen to her husband’s side. Also at his side were his other two sons, and one of the three married daughters.

The coroner’s initial report barely mentioned the mercury poisoning, attributing Ragen’s death to “hypotensive heart disease and nephritis complicated by gunshot wounds.” There were “traces of mercury found in a qualitative analysis.” And that was that.

But it wasn’t. Lt. Drury made the point to Coroner Brodie that an important legal question needed to be definitively answered: namely, whether Ragen died due to the gunshot wounds, making for a murder case against the gunmen in the green truck; or heart disease, making it death by natural causes, reducing the charge against the gunmen to attempted murder; or nephritis brought on by mercury poisoning, making for a different murder case, against person or persons yet unknown.

About this time, Coroner Brodie received several threatening phone calls that he and his family were in danger unless he “minded his own fucking business” where the Ragen matter was concerned. Brodie moved to a secret office and ordered police guards put on his home, and on the vault at Mt. Olivet, too, where Jim Ragen had been recently interred, the cops protecting the vault till Brodie could receive the permission of the court and Mrs. Ragen to perform a second autopsy.

Mrs. Ragen did object, but the courts overrode it, and it turned out Jim had enough mercury in him to kill three men.

The affidavits? Ragen’s so-called insurance policy? It must have lapsed, because via the family lawyer, Ellen Ragen told the press the affidavits would not be released to the authorities or anyone else. They could not, the lawyer claimed, be found.

An investigation into the hospital staff (not led by Drury, by the way) turned up nothing. Several promising leads fizzled, particularly the revelation that a tube had been inserted in Ragen’s stomach to relieve gas, the night before he died, a tube containing mercury. But the mercury was a different kind than that found in Ragen’s liver and kidneys, a liquid mercury that passes right through the system and can’t be absorbed.

By the end of August two things were obvious: Jim died due to mercury poisoning; and the killer would never be found.

Predictably, Peggy couldn’t accept that. She came storming into my inner office, on the last Saturday in August, and said, “What are you going to do about it?”

I gestured to the client’s chair across from my desk and she sat. She was wearing a simple black suit with pearls and black gloves; she’d either worn black or at least an arm band every day since Jim died.

“About what?” I ventured.

“Mickey McBride just bought out Continental!”

“Really?” Actually, I knew all about it. Jim, Jr., had asked my opinion and I had told him to do what he thought was right.

The violet eyes flashed with anger. “After everything my uncle did, after all his suffering, his family sells him out! How can they be such weasels!”

“Peg, your uncle was murdered because he wouldn’t sell out. Nobody else in the family, except maybe you, is dedicated to the racing wire business. It’s not like it’s a noble profession or anything. It’s a racket.”

“It’s legal!”

“For the moment, and barely. This is a rough time for your aunt and her children. I don’t happen to think some of ’em have a hell of a lot of backbone, myself, but young Jim seems like a good man, and I think he’s worried about his mother’s health. I don’t think he wants to lose another parent.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying cut ’em some slack.”

“But they sold Continental! Lock, stock and barrel!”

“Yeah, to Mickey McBride. Not to Jake Guzik.”

“What’s to stop Mickey McBride from selling to Guzik?”

“Nothing.”

“Goddamnit, Nate-you’re impossible!”

I gestured with two open hands. “Look, it’s not going to happen right away. Even the Outfit knows if they move in on Continental now, on the heels of your uncle’s murder, the roof’ll come crashing down on ’em. They may cut a backroom deal with McBride, but what the hell-McBride and your uncle were business partners for years. You should be able to accept whatever avenue he decides to take the business. And you should be able to accept him as your new boss.”

She folded her arms tightly across her chest. “I wouldn’t work for that company now. Not in a million years. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

“Well, why don’t you take your uncle’s advice, then?”

“What?”

“And marry me. Go the picket fence route. Make little Hellers.”

“Nathan, your timing doesn’t exactly rival Fred Astaire.”

“Sorry. So what now?”

She sighed heavily. “What’s happening where those West Side gunmen are concerned?”

“Drury’s case is progressing pretty well, considering he lost a witness. The other witnesses haven’t backed out, amazingly enough. He’s i.d. ’ed the driver, another West Side bookie-who incidentally was just caught dumping something in Douglas Park Lagoon, which turned out to be a sawed-off shotgun barrel.”

She sat up. “When was this?”

“Last night. Drury called me this morning about it. Don’t say I never have any good news for you. Anyway, Drury’s going to have no trouble getting a grand jury indictment, now.”

I expected that to improve her disposition.

It didn’t.

“But those men didn’t kill my uncle. They tried to, but they didn’t. What about whoever did? What about whoever poisoned him?”

“The cops are looking into that. You know that.”

“Why don’t you look into it?”

“Why should I?”

“Why don’t you just go up to Jake Guzik and shoot him in his fat head?”

“That’s a swell idea. Then the prison chaplain can marry you and me while I’m walking down that long, long hall. I hope you like weird haircuts.”

“I don’t think you’re funny.”

“I don’t find any of this funny. There are things in this world you can’t do a fucking thing about, Peggy. There are battles that can’t be won. Sometimes you just got to be happy to be able to hang on to your life, for a while.”

“That’s you, all right. Nate Heller. You’re a real survivor.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

She stood. “Well, maybe I want more out of a man. Maybe I want more out of life.”

“And where are you going to find that? Las Vegas?”

She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me; sooner or later every woman I know does that to me. “Maybe I will. I don’t like this town. I don’t think I can live here anymore.”

“Peg. Why don’t you just sit back down…we’ll talk a little more and…”

“I’m sick of you. I’m sick of my family. I’m sick of Chicago.”

And she went out the door.

I thought about going after her, but I just kept my seat. She was as stubborn as her uncle, after all. And I’d had my fill of hopeless cases for one year.

But I did stand, to look out the window and watch her catch a cab. Wondering if she’d really do it. Really go running to Vegas and Siegel and that lunatic Virginia Hill, as if that were really an alternative to the madhouse of Chicago.

No, I thought. No way in hell.

She took the morning flight out.

I got on the train at Union Station on Alameda Boulevard at a quarter to seven that Sunday morning, and promptly fell asleep in my seat. When I woke up mid-morning and looked out the window, I found Los Angeles, and civilization (not that those terms necessarily have anything to do with each other), long gone. In their place was desolation, the literal kind, as opposed to the spiritual brand the City of Angels breeds. I spent the rest of the morning watching the desert roll by my window like a bleached tan carpet covering the world. I kept trying to picture somebody putting up a casino in the middle of all that sand and sagebrush, and couldn’t manage it.

It was after two when the train rolled into the modern, many-windowed Union Pacific Station at the west end of Fremont Street, and I soon found myself standing, single bag in hand, in a restful shaded park, enjoying a very dry breeze, looking down a busy street lined with wide-open casinos: the Las Vegas Club, the Monte Carlo, the Pioneer, the Boulder, the Golden Nugget. Despite the slight shock of seeing casinos sprawled over two very American blocks, I felt vaguely disappointed. While the Sunday afternoon crowds filled the sidewalks and kept Fremont’s two modest lanes hopping with traffic, it nonetheless looked a little shabby, not at all glamorous. A small boy’s idea of a sinful good time, complete with Hollywood-style frontier trimmings. Maybe at night, when neon lit up Glitter Gulch, I’d revise my jaded Chicagoan’s opinion.

Shortly before two-thirty, a black Lincoln Continental glided up to the curb. Out of it scrambled a balding, rodent-like man in a three-hundred-dollar black silk suit. His tie was wide and red and his face was oblong and pale.

“Nate Heller?” he said, with a sideways smile, thrusting a hand forward.

I nodded, took the hand, shook it, found it moist, let go of it and, trying not to call attention to the act, wiped the moisture from my palm on my pant leg.

“Moe Sedway,” he said, jerking a thumb to his chest, smiling nervously, his tiny, close-set eyes as moist as his handshake, his nose a big lumpy thing like a wad of modeling clay stuck there by some kid.

He took my bag and walked around to the rear of the Lincoln; I followed him there. He put the bag in the car’s trunk, which was bigger than some coldwater flats I’ve seen. “How was L.A.?” he asked.

“Swell,” I said.

“So you’re a pal of Fred Rubinski’s, huh?”

“Yeah. Business partners, actually.”

“You say that like it’s two different things. Where I come from business partners can be pals, too. In fact they should be.”

I shrugged at this piece of curbside philosophy. He shut the trunk. With nervous energy to spare, he moved around me and opened the car door on the rider’s side. He gestured for me to get in, smiling nervously.

I got in. He went around and got behind the wheel. “Ever been to Vegas before?” he said, lighting up a long, thick cigar that was much too big for his face.

“No,” I said.

“Want a cigar? Havanas. Two bucks a piece.”

“No thanks.”

He’d left the car running. He pulled out and headed up Fremont Street. Mixed in among the tourists, many of whom wore dude-ranch style Western clothes, were occasional real westerners: men with the weathered faces of the true rancher or ranch hand; an Indian woman with a baby cradled on her back; a toothless old prospector who made Gabby Hayes look like a Michigan Avenue playboy.

Beyond the casinos and clubs was a business district, Western-style souvenir shops and barbecue restaurants mingling with modern offices and the dime store chains.

“What do you think of our little town?” Sedway said, blowing smoke.

“It’s not Chicago,” I said.

Past the downtown was an unimpressive residential district; in fact some of it was downright shabby-trailers and cinder-block houses-distinguished only by tacky wedding chapels, often hooked up with motels, that lined the thoroughfare. Pastel stucco with neon wedding bells and hearts and such. The vows of a lifetime served up like a cheeseburger at a white-tile one-arm joint.

“Yeah,” Sedway said, his moist eyes dreamy, cigar between his fingers like Churchill, “ain’t Vegas the greatest place?”

I nodded, and looked back out the window, the sleazy landscape blurring when Sedway picked up speed as we passed the city limits.

“Ben didn’t say why he brought you out,” he said, smiling over at me. He was smiling too much; I wondered why.

“I’m going to give your security people the rundown on pickpockets,” I said.

He shrugged with his eyebrows. “We open day after Christmas, you know.”

“I know. Should be time enough.”

“How well do you know Ben?”

“I only met him once. He seems like a nice guy.”

“Oh he is,” Sedway said, quickly, almost defensively. “We go way back, Ben and me. I known him since we was kids on the Lower East Side.”

Fred Rubinski had told me about Little Moey Sedway. He had mentioned that Sedway and Siegel went “way back”-but he had also mentioned something Sedway neglected to.

“Little Moey only recently got back in his boss’s good graces,” Fred told me. “For almost three years, Moey was given jobs out of Siegel’s sight and told to stay away from the Bug or risk getting hit in the head.”

Seems Sedway, who’d never done too well for himself despite the constant help of his boyhood pal Ben (recent failures by Little Moey included botched bookmaking operations in both San Diego and L.A.), had become a big man in little Vegas. As Siegel’s on-site rep for the Trans-American race wire, Sedway wormed his way into part ownership of several Fremont Street casinos. He bought a nice house, a big car. He became chummy with the city fathers, dropping dough into charity and church hoppers. When a group of respectable citizens asked Mr. Sedway to run for city commissioner, he accepted.

And when his boss found out, the man who didn’t like to be called Bugsy went bugsy, and started slapping Little Moey around.

“We don’t run for office, you little schmuck!” Siegel had roared, slapping his stooge, whose name happened to be Moe, although he was getting slapped more like he was Larry or Shemp. “We own the politicians, you dumbass cocksucker!”

Moey had done his best to back out of the election, but his name was already on the ballot. Sedway became a laughingstock in mob circles, the butt of a much-repeated anecdote (attested to by Rubinski relating the story to me) as the only politician who ever had to spread the graft around to make sure he didn’t get elected.

All this was three years ago, more or less, and in recent months Ben Siegel had called upon his once trusted second-in-command to come back to his side.

“You ought to be warned,” Moe was saying, “that Ben’s a little on edge these days. Lots of pressure on the boss. Lots of pressure.”

“Why?”

“Well, you heard about the dough he’s laying out on this layout.”

“I heard over a million.”

“He’s spilled more than a million. I tell you, though, it’s gonna be a fabulous place, this Flamingo.”

“So why’s he under pressure?”

“To open on time. I don’t think the hotel’s gonna be finished.”

“Then why open? What’s the rush?”

Sedway shrugged. “Ben don’t like to wait on nobody or nothing. Everything’s now with him. Here we are.”

Where we were was not the Flamingo, but the Hotel Last Frontier, or so said the horizontal sign, cartoon letters of crisscrossing logs outlined in neon, resting atop a short brick wall in the midst of a vast landscaped lawn. The Frontier, and the similar nearby El Rancho Vegas, were the only gambling resorts on the so-called Strip that was highway 91, the two-lane blacktop heading southwest to Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

Sedway pulled in the drive of the sprawling, rustic hotel past a swimming pool near the highway, where a good number of bathers were sunning and splashing. He parked and got my bag out of the trunk and we walked up to the central thatch-roofed, whitewashed adobe building, which like the other buildings was low-slung and supported by rough wood beams, decorated by wagon wheels and steer horns and other dude-ranch touches. It was all about as authentic as a Gene Autry movie, maintaining the phony cowboy airs I’d witnessed in downtown Vegas, but admittedly establishing a friendly “come-as-you-are” atmosphere. Which only made me feel out of place in my gray suit and gray skin.

“That’s a nice car you got, Moe,” I said, as we moved away from it. “Is that yours, or one of Ben’s?”

“It’s mine,” Sedway said, with tight, quiet pride. “The race wire business pays good, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, resisting the urge to point out that an almost identical black Lincoln Continental had been driven by Jim Ragen a certain afternoon.

“Ben’ll get you some wheels while you’re here,” he said. “He’ll fix you up royal.”

I followed Sedway into the open-beamed lobby; the registration desk was at the left. The Western motif continued- wood-and-leather furniture, sandstone fireplaces, pony-express lanterns hanging from wagon wheels. The rough wood-paneled walls displayed mounted buffalo heads. Indian rugs and western prints, with the directions to the casino, dining room, showroom and coffee shop burned into the walls as if with a branding iron. The desk clerk wore a string tie and a plaid shirt. He was friendly, but stopped short of calling me “pod’ner.” Thank God for small favors.

If there were bellboys, I didn’t see any. Sedway was carrying my bag and I let him lead me down a hallway and up one flight of stairs to my room, 404. The numbering apparently had something to do with which wing you were in, because not only was I not on the fourth floor, there wasn’t any fourth floor.

My room was nice enough-not small, not large; modern furnishings and rustic walls and a print of an Indian chief. Sedway put my bag on a stand and I sat on the edge of the bed.

“What now?” I said.

“Ben may stop by and see you tonight,” he said, shrugging.

“Where is he now?”

“Up the road.”

“Up the road?”

“At the Flamingo. Working.”

“Doing what, exactly, Moe? This is Sunday.”

“Not at the Flamingo it ain’t. Workers are working damn near ’round the clock, up there. And Ben’s supervising. That’s his big problem, you know.”

“What is?”

“He wants to keep his eye on everything, his finger in all the pies. He’s hardly getting any sleep. Running himself ragged.” He made a tch-tch sound, and shook his head, trying to convince me he cared deeply about his boss’s health. Sure.

“And you think he ought to delegate authority, more,” I said.

“What?”

“He ought to trust the people around him. Give them some responsibility.”

“Yeah,” Moey said, smiling, nodding. “He ought to do that.”

“Don’t you still handle the local end of Trans-American for him?”

“Sure. He gets out of my way on that. It’s just the Flamingo he don’t want anybody touching. You’d think he was a goddamn artist. You’d think it was a goddamn picture he was painting.”

“Maybe to him it is.”

Sedway shrugged. “Maybe. But it ain’t his paint, entirely.”

By that I took him to mean the money Siegel was spending was mostly that of the boys back east. Lansky and Costello and Adonis and Luciano-although Luciano wasn’t back east, anymore, unless you viewed Sicily as east of New York, which I guessed it was. Whatever the case, the deported “Charlie Lucky” was said to still be running things, albeit at a distance.

“What am I supposed to do till Ben comes around?”

“Have some fun. You can run a tab on anything except gambling. Food’s good here. Hit the bar. Ride a horse. Have a swim.”

“I didn’t bring bathing trunks. Never occurred to me.” Back in Chicago, there was snow on the ground. A lot of it.

Sedway was turning to go. “You can get a suit in the gift shop. I got to hook back up with Ben. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Why don’t I just come with you…?”

He stopped and turned and looked at me. “Look, Nate. You better get this straight right now. You do things Ben’s way when you’re in Ben’s world, which is where you are. Ben wanted you to relax after your long train ride. So that’s what you’re going to do. Is relax.”

He pointed a finger at me and went out.

I slept for an hour, in my clothes, and then got up and undressed and showered and unpacked and put on a sportshirt and slacks and prowled the place. I had a rum cocktail in a replica of a forty-niner saloon, complete with bullet-scarred mahogany bar and saddle-shaped leather bar stools; then I rode on into the main casino, where the ceiling was covered with pony hide and the walls ornately papered and peppered with bawdy house nudes in heavy gold-gilt frames. Despite these distractions, I played blackjack for a couple hours and ended up ahead a few bucks. I bought a swimming suit in the gift shop, or rather charged it to my room, where I went back to put the thing on, feeling somehow foolish to be wandering across a landscaped lawn with a towel around my waist in the middle of December.

But the pleasantly warm desert air took that thought away, and for a moment I wondered if I was still asleep, as this seemed nicer than real life; when I dove into the blue pool, the cool water refreshed and awoke me, making me realize I was not dreaming. I was in fact in a desert oasis, getting paid for this.

I stretched out on a deck chair on the sandstone apron by the pool and let the sun have at me. It was getting late in the afternoon, but I could feel the warmth on me, like a soothing blanket. Maybe my Chicago pallor would go away. I would walk into the A-l office a bronze god, and sweep that pretty secretary of mine off her feet. Fat chance.

I was sleeping again. It was my third nap of the day. But then for months now I’d been sleeping more than usual. My habit was to sleep six hours or so each night, especially since the war, after which I’d started having cold-sweat nightmares. Actually, immediately after I got back from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, I’d had mostly sleepless nights. It had taken a good long time to work up to six hours per.

But lately I’d been sleeping twelve hours. And catching naps, too. I was working hard, sure, but no harder than normal, and doing damn little field work. Why was I so tired?

Hell, I wasn’t tired. I was escaping. I was at a point in my life where I’d rather be asleep than awake. Where I’d rather be out like a light than alert and thinking.

When I was asleep I was safe, safe from memories and pangs. I was kind to myself in dreams-with the exception, of course, of the occasional combat nightmare-and when Peggy came to me, in dreams, it was as a lover, not as a love lost.

She would speak to me in my dreams. Tell me she loved me. Call out to me.

“Nate,” she’d say. “Nate. Nate!”

I opened my eyes, slowly.

Before me, in the soft focus of Hollywood and the half-awake, was a vision of Peggy. The sun was behind her, making a halo around the dark curly mane of her hair; her skin was golden, not pale, but her eyes were as violet as ever, her mouth scarlet and smiling, teeth white as purity. This wasn’t Peggy. Not the Peggy who’d bolted from my office, hating me. This was the Peg of my heart. Of my dreams.

“Nate!”

I blinked. Sat up on the lounge chair.

“Peggy?” I said. My mouth was thick with sleep. It tasted as bad as she looked good.

And did she ever look good. She loomed over me, little woman that she was, her trim figure caught in a damp black swim suit, top half of her breasts peeking out whitely above the black. She was still smiling, but she’d hidden the white teeth away for the moment. She’d plucked the dark eyebrows some, making them more conventionally curved. The sun had made her freckles stand out more. She was a little thinner, the chipmunk chubbiness of her cheeks gone. She at once looked younger and older than I remembered her.

She sat on the edge of the lounge chair.

I ran a hand through my hair, waking up, wishing I could brush my teeth.

“How are you, Nate?” she asked.

“Okay.” I said. “Okay. How are you?”

“Okay,” she said.

She smiled tightly at me.

I smiled tightly at her.

“I didn’t write,” I said. “I didn’t know where to write.”

“I know. I didn’t write, either.” She shrugged. “I thought a clean break was best.”

I said nothing.

She said, “You’re not surprised to see me, though.”

“I thought maybe you might still be out here,” I admitted.

“Didn’t you know?”

“How could I?”

“You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, not a psychic. You didn’t even tell your family where you were. You dropped off the face of the earth.”

She shrugged again. “I just dropped off the face of Chicago.”

“Same difference. Anyway, you look great.”

“You look good, too.”

“No I don’t. I’m fat.”

A half-smile crinkled one cheek. “You are a little pudgy. How much do you weigh?”

“Almost two hundred pounds.”

“How do you account for that?”

“I’m just your typical successful businessman. Fat and sassy.”

“Really.”

I sighed, smiled one-sidedly myself. “All I do these days is eat and sleep. It’s my way of compensating.”

“Compensating for what?”

“The loss of my girl.”

Her smile disappeared, then returned briefly, just a twitch, and she said, “I hope you didn’t come looking for me.”

“I didn’t. I’m here on a job.”

“I know. Ben hired you. For pickpocket work.”

I nodded. “He approached me months ago. Back on the S.S. Lux.”

“Did you say yes then?”

“More or less. He approached me again, through Fred Rubinski, who I’m in business with now. The money is good. It’s cold in Chicago. Good time of the year to go west. As Elmer Fudd says, west and wewaxation at wast.”

She shook her head, smiled again, sadly. “I think you came looking for me, Nate.”

“So do I. But I also came for the money, and the sun.”

“The sun. How many times last summer did I get you to the beach?”

I thought. “Three times?”

“Once,” she said. “Nate, it’s a mistake.”

“What is?”

“Coming here. A part of me still loves you, but it’s over. I don’t want either one of us to get hurt. It’s just not going to happen again, do you understand?”

“I don’t understand, but if you want me to keep my distance, fine. I may be pudgy these days, but I still don’t have to force my intentions on women.”

“You’re a good-looking guy, a good catch for any girl.” She pointed at her half-exposed bosom, which was droplet pearled. “Except this girl.”

“You got a new guy, is that it?”

“That’s not really any of your business, at this point, is it?”

“No need to get nasty. Just don’t tell me you want us to be friends, Peg. I’m not good at that.”

“I know. Me too.”

“It runs too deep. I can’t turn it into being pals. I might be able to turn it into hate. I could work on that, if you want.”

She swallowed. Her eyes were as wet as her swim suit. “I don’t think I’d like that.”

“Okay. Then why don’t I just love you at a distance, and you can feel about me however the hell you care to, at a distance, and I’ll do this job, and put half a continent between us as soon as possible.”

She nodded. She stood. “I think you should pass on the job, too.”

“Why?”

“This is a bad time to be around Ben.”

“I hear he’s under a lot of pressure.”

She nodded. “He’s very brave, and very smart. But I’m afraid for him.”

“Well, if he called me out here to be his bodyguard, I’ll be on the next plane out. The last time I took a job like that, everybody got burned.”

“Including…” She shook her head. Not finishing it.

I finished it for her: “Including your uncle. You know, if you insist on getting attached to headstrong gangster types, you’re going to spend a lifetime crying over spilt blood.”

“You can be cruel sometimes.”

“Sure. I learned that from life. And from Chicago.”

“Same difference,” she said.

“Are you still Virginia Hill’s secretary?”

“No. I’m working for Ben. His confidential secretary.”

“That sounds very high-tone. What about La Hill?”

“She’s in and out of here. She’s allergic to cactus, doesn’t like the climate.”

“But she doesn’t like leaving her boyfriend’s side, either.”

“No,” she admitted. “She goes on buying trips. She’s helping him decorate the Flamingo. The hotel part, anyway.”

“Is she here now?”

“Yes. She’s over there with him this afternoon.”

“That must be hard on you.”

“What?”

“Knowing he’s with her.”

“What do you mean?” She bit off the words.

“Well, you love him, don’t you?”

She squinted at me. Hatefully. Upper lip curling. But she said nothing.

“I thought so,” I said.

“It’s none of your business,” she said, and she turned and walked quickly away. Her legs were tan and bore not a trace of fat; the cheeks of her sweet ass showed under the cut of the black swim suit. I wanted her, in every way you could want a woman.

I dove back into the cool water, but it didn’t do any good. I was a goddamn detective with a detective’s goddamn instincts. I climbed up on the side of the pool and water ran down my face, from my wet head, although a salty taste was mixed in.

“I thought so,” I said again, to nobody.

The rest of that afternoon slipped away from me. I left the pool and returned to my room, dressed casually and found my way to the moderately busy casino, where I played blackjack till I lost what I’d won earlier, drinking several rum cocktails brought to me gratis by the cowgirl waitresses who kept the customers well lubricated and free spending.

At around seven I was back in my room and, thanks to the free drinks and a general glumness that had settled over me, I managed to fall asleep again, taking nap number four of the day. When I awoke, the room was dark but for a bathroom light I’d left on, and it was after eight.

Must’ve been hunger that woke me, because my gut was burning. The last food I’d had was a sandwich and fries on the dining car of the train. I couldn’t quite bring myself to wear a sportshirt to supper, so I put on my other suit, which had hung out pretty well by now, and went down to the restaurant.

Like the casino, the Last Frontier’s dining room was doing good if not spectacular business. I wasn’t the only guy wearing a suit in the rough-paneled room, but apparel again was definitely dude ranch, not Monte Carlo. I helped myself to the elaborate “chuck wagon buffet,” which I was relieved to find was not serving up the sort of pork-and-beans and barbecue fare one might expect. In fact, there was an ice sculpture of a swan lording it over a lot of fancy food items, particularly salads and cold cuts, fussily arranged on platters by a chef who obviously did not have “Come’n get it!” in his vocabulary.

I was sitting in a booth by myself, working on my second plate, seeing just how much rare roast beef a human could eat, when Ben Siegel and his party came in.

Siegel, looking very tan, was wearing a maroon sports jacket and navy slacks and alligator shoes; he wore no tie, the points of his off-white shirt’s collar reaching down so that one touched the embroidered BS on his breast pocket, from which came a slash of lighter maroon silk handkerchief. On his arm was Virginia Hill; she was wearing a black halter-top and matching slacks, her reddish brown hair pinned up. She wasn’t tan at all, her mouth a scarlet gash in her pale face; she’d put on some weight but carried it well. She didn’t look hard to know, as more than one mob guy had put it. Bringing up the rear was Sedway, in his black suit and red tie, and Peggy who alone among them looked touristy in her white eyelet blouse and full blue and white vertical-striped skirt. Peggy was not on Sedway’s arm; in fact, she stood apart from the mole-like Moe. Her make-up was subdued.

Siegel didn’t notice me at first; Virginia Hill did. She tugged his sleeve and pointed me out. He smiled like he’d spotted an old friend, and motioned his party over to the table reserved for them, and headed my way.

I patted a napkin to my mouth, slid out of the booth and shook hands with him.

“Good to see you, Nate. Why don’t you join us?”

Without waiting for my answer, he stopped a passing waiter and instructed him to move my food and iced tea (I’d had enough cocktails for one day) over to the larger table across the room where his party was even now ordering drinks.

He slipped an arm around my shoulder and we walked over there.

“I’m glad you decided to take me up on my offer,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll be sorry. We’re making history, and you’re going to be part of it.”

“I’m not all that interested in history,” I said, good-naturedly. “I’m more interested in money.”

“We’re going to make that, too. Sit down, sit down.”

Siegel took the head of the table. Virginia Hill was at his left, and the chair at his right was mine. Next to Miss Hill sat Sedway, and across from him-next to me-sat Peggy. I nodded at her and smiled politely; she smiled the same way, and looked away, as if fascinated by the activities of a waiter clearing a table nearby.

Siegel sipped his wine and smiled his dazzling smile. He was the same handsome, charming soul I’d met aboard the Lux, with one exception: beneath the almost feminine long lashes and baby-blue eyes were dark circles; he tried to cover that up with powder or make-up or something, but he couldn’t fool me. I’m a detective.

“Did you hear about Tony?” he asked me, the smile settling in one corner of his mouth.

“Tony?” I asked.

“Cornero,” he said, as if I should’ve known. “The Coast Guard shut the Lux down a couple weeks after she launched.”

“You had a hunch that would happen,” I said.

“Yeah, those gambling ship days are over. You’re sitting in the middle of legal gambling in America. Say, uh, I’m very sorry about your friend Ragen.”

I nodded my thanks. Peggy lowered her eyes.

“That’s that bastard Guzik for you,” he said.

I said nothing.

He clapped his hands, dismissing that subject. “Ready to get to work?” he asked. “You only have ten days to whip my little police force in shape.”

“It won’t take me long,” I shrugged. “I assume there’s not much for them to do till you open-that I can have their full attention for a while.”

“Whatever you need.”

“Should be no big deal. They’re ex-cops, aren’t they? They should pick up fast on this stuff. They probably had some pickpocket training already.”

“They’re good boys,” Siegel said, nodding. “They’ve been on my payroll for years.”

“Anybody mind if I eat?” Virginia Hill asked, with poor grace.

“Feel free to feed your face, Tab,” Siegel said, just a little snidely.

“Just be more of me to love,” she said, and rose.

Siegel and I stayed behind, as the rest of his party went to the chuck wagon buffet. Siegel ordered off the menu-a steak, medium rare, and a salad; he was drinking a single glass of white wine. “Tabby,” as he referred to Miss Hill, had already run through her first two stingers.

“I may have some other work for you, Nate,” Siegel said, now that we were for the moment alone.

“Oh?”

“I may have a little security problem that can best be served by somebody from the outside-somebody like you.”

“I don’t understand. You said the boys on your security staff are longtime, trusted employees…”

“I don’t remember saying I trusted them. These are ex-cops, remember. They’re tied to me by the juice I spread around when they carried badges. These boys are, remember, what washed ashore after the shake-up in L.A. when his honor Mayor Shaw got booted the hell out. The rest are vets of a similar house-cleaning in Beverly Hills.”

“What sort of security problem are we talking?”

He sighed, sipped his wine, shrugged with his eyes. “Priorities,” he said, disgustedly, shaking his head. “Trying to put up the Taj Mahal in a fucking desert in eight months is enough of job, let alone having to goddamn do it whilst dancing around postwar priorities. Building materials and labor…both in short supply.” He shrugged with his shoulders this time. “But I’m getting the job done just the same.”

“How?”

“How do you think? Pulling strings. Paying top dollar. You know who Billy Wilkerson is?”

I nodded. He was the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and the restaurateur behind Ciro’s and the Trocadero. I’d seen the little man in the latter nitery, a few years back, kissing the collective ass of Willie Bioff and George Browne, Frank Nitti’s Hollywood union bosses.

“Wilkerson’s one of my investors,” Siegel said. “He’s got influence on the movie execs. He got me lumber, cement, pipe, and you wouldn’t believe what all, right off the studio lots. And I got enough political clout in this state to get me steel girders, copper tubing, fixtures, tile and so on.”

“Sounds like you got it dicked.”

He sighed. “It takes dough, but yes, I do. And Moe’s been on my case because the community’s unhappy-VFW here held protest meetings, ’cause they couldn’t get materials for their new homes when I could for the Flamingo. I tell Moe, let ’em thank me for the money I’m gonna be pumping into the town. But some people can’t see something that’s right in front of them, let alone the future. Anyway, thanks to those protests I ended up having to do some dealing with fucking lowlifes to get materials.”

“Black marketeers, you mean.”

He nodded, frowning. “And I’m getting suspicious.”

“Of?”

“Of why I’m spending so goddamn much money on materials.”

“You think maybe you’re paying for the same materials twice.”

He leaned forward, cocked his head. “A truck pulls up, and it’s full of lumber, and I pay for it. How am I to know where they got it? They could’ve got it the night before from our own construction site.”

“It’s a common enough scam,” I granted him. “Who’s in charge of purchasing and receiving?”

“Me. I am.”

The others were returning now, plates of food in hand. Both girls had modest platefuls; my guess was Virginia Hill’s added weight came from drinking. They all took their places, the conversation going on, as if Siegel and I were still alone.

I sipped my iced tea. “Handling the purchasing and receiving yourself…don’t you have bigger fish to fry?”

His smile was disarming but also, I thought, mildly crazed. “Nate, I fry all the fish at the Flamingo. I’m where the buck starts and stops. When we’re up and running, well, sure I’ll hire some people to take care of the day-to-day proceedings. Down the road, I will. But this is my dream, and it’s up to me to make it come true. It’s up to me to supervise the kitchen crew, hire the big name entertainers, appoint the pit bosses, choose the decor for the hotel rooms…not a single employee is getting hired without my personal approval.”

“You’ve hired a hotel manager, and a casino manager, I assume…”

“No. That I’ll get around to. Down the road. For the time being, I’m it.”

“You have an accountant, for Christ’s sake…”

He smiled over at Peggy and she smiled briefly, nervously, back. Virginia Hill smirked and sipped her latest stinger.

“Miss Hogan is helping me look after the books,” he said, toasting her with his wine glass. “She’s got a background in that area. Down the road, we’ll hire somebody, or maybe I’ll put Peg in charge and get myself another secretary. But right now I need to have my finger on the pulse, so to speak.”

I sighed. Said, “Look. Mr. Siegel. No offense meant…”

“Keep it Ben, and speak your mind, Nate.”

Sedway, concentrating on his food (or pretending to), lifted an eyebrow and put it down.

“You can’t handle a job this size by yourself,” I said, “and expect not to get taken advantage of. How much have you spent so far?”

A waiter put Siegel’s salad in front of him. “Well over five at this point,” he said, picking at the lettuce with his fork.

“Five? Million?”

“Million,” he said with some condescension. “You don’t build palaces for peanuts, you know.”

“Where has it gone?”

“Where hasn’t it gone? Hell, I spent a million bucks on plumbing alone.”

“Plumbing?”

He grinned, flushed with pride. “Sure. Every one of my two hundred and eighty hotel rooms has its own private sewer system, its own private septic tank.”

“Ben,” I said, trying to keep my jaw from scraping the floor. “The best hotels in Chicago don’t have that.”

“That’s good enough for Chicago, maybe, but not the Flamingo,” Siegel said, flatly confident, eating his salad. “That place is going to stand forever. No goddamn wind or earthquake is going to blow that place away. I built the walls out of concrete-double thick.”

What particular advantage that would be in a climate this mild, where chicken wire and plaster would suffice, I couldn’t guess. But I didn’t say anything. I’d been in this conversation long enough to know that disagreeing with Bugsy was like arguing with, well, with a cement wall. A double-thick one.

A waiter removed Siegel’s half-eaten and pushed-aside salad and put the steak before him. “You wouldn’t believe what I been through here,” Siegel said, ignoring the steak. “Everything went wrong…take the other day, the fuckin’ drapes. Turns out they’re highly flammable and got to be shipped back to L.A. for chemical treatment. Then they install the air-conditioning system with intakes but no outlets and that all has to be ripped out and re-done. And when the heating equipment shows up, the concrete housing in the boiler room turned out to be too goddamn small and had to be built over. Jesus, there’s no end to it. I been paying fifty bucks a day to carpenters, bricklayers, tinsmiths, steel workers. Twelve hour days, seven days a week. With this labor shortage, I have to fly most of ’em in, from all over the country. That means paying bonuses, providing living quarters…” He was working himself up into a lather, and sensed it apparently, because he backed off, shrugging “…but the job’s getting done, that’s the important thing.”

“Moe here said the hotel may not be ready in time.”

Sedway flashed me a dark look, as if I’d betrayed a confidence.

“It’ll be done,” Siegel said, his eyes narrowing momentarily, looking down at Sedway, who by this time was giving all his attention to his plate of food. “Tomorrow they’re doing the landscaping. It’ll be done.”

“If it isn’t,” I said, “can’t you just postpone?”

“I’d lose face,” Siegel said, “and that’s the one thing no gambler can afford to lose. Look, I’ll be straight with you, Nate…” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “…I got construction costs I gotta cover. Del Webb’s threatening to put a half-mil lien up against the place. If I can open up, take advantage of the holiday crowds, get the money flowing, then the people I owe will back off.”

By that he meant Lansky and company.

I said, carefully, “I take it you can’t go to your investors and ask for more…”

“You can only go to the well so many times.” His mouth tightened. “Besides, those thick-headed, unimaginative bastards, it’s them I want to show. They don’t think I know what I’m doing. Hell, I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“I’m sure you do,” I lied.

“There’s money to be made in the fucking desert. Just take a look around you.” And he gestured around at the rustic surroundings. “This place is fine, for what it is. But it’s the wrong fantasy. You want to take money away from people and make them smile while you’re doing it, give them Hollywood, not Tombstone. Give ’em chrome and winding staircases. Swirling silk, marble statues, Greek urns…”

“How much does a Greek earn, anyway?” Virginia Hill asked, stinger poised.

He ignored her. “Picture it, Nate: revolving stages with top-name entertainment. Water ballets for the chorus girls. Wheels of chance spinning every night, night and day, in a dream setting, a place where time stands still, ’cause there’s no goddamn clocks. It’s gonna make Monte Carlo look like a penny arcade. And it won’t just be the Flamingo, no. You’ll see this whole three-mile strip out to the airport lined all along with luxury hotels and fabulous casinos. Legal. All of it.” He smiled like a naughty child. “The beauty part is you can use it for a money laundry. The government’s got no idea how much the tables take in. You can skim the hell out of it and then write off other shit. It’s the perfect set-up. That’s what going legit can do for you, and one day, before you know it, the boys back east are gonna wake up to it.”